Kingswood

January at Kingswood 2023!

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Happy New Year!

Here are a few things that we have been getting up to at Kingswood this month…

In the run up to the New Year, the children took part in an inspiring firework tuff tray activity. They talked a lot about the New Year and how people may celebrate.

Here are a couple of the children playing in the tuff tray.

People who help us!

Pre-School have had some visitors in this month! Thanks to some wonderful parents that willingly gave up their time to answer our call for their assistance, the children were able to learn about what they do for a living and how they help within their role. Among others we were lucky enough to hear from a barrister and a doctor. The children got to try on different items relevant to the jobs and gain knowledge about the roles.

This then inspired great conversations around what they want to be when they grow up, and fabulous role play!

Chinese New Year!

Here we celebrated by having all the children try some delicious Chinese food! We had vegetable spring rolls, prawn crackers and Quorn and vegetable chow mein noodles. The children used their skills to make lanterns, we spoke about it being the Year of the Rabbit, and what everyone else’s birth years were.

Big Garden Bird Watch and Squirrel Appreciation Day!

As part of the Big Garden Bird Watch, and Squirrel Appreciation Day,  the children went on a walk around the wooded area across from the setting. We also took a trip to the local park. The children all wanted to see what birds they could find and see if they could spot any squirrels. They looked into where the animals natural habitats were, and came back to make their own animals, and houses for them to live in.  

National Storytelling Week!

As part of National Storytelling Week, the Pre-Schoolers took a trip to one of the local libraries. They enjoyed listening to stories and looking at the books while they were there.

Staff have been reminding parents about our own Lending Library, and many children have taken advantage by borrowing a book to take home and enjoy with their parents.

Reading stories at nursery with all the children is very important; afterwards, as a result, they engage in role play, tuff tray activities, and many more, relating to the books that we read. It also contributes greatly to their language development & increasing their vocabulary.

We are now looking forward to World Book Day in March!

Arrrr-gust at Kingswood!!

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This month at Kingswood, we have all really enjoyed incorporating pirate month into our activities. The children have dressed up, read books and learnt all about everything pirate! They have been making pirate ships, having treasure hunts, making treasure maps, hats and eye patches.

Here you can see them using the tea bags to make the paper look ‘old’

Commonwealth Games

The end of July and the beginning of August saw the excitement of the Commonwealth Games, held in Birmingham. We here, in our Pre-School room particularly, decided to hold our own Commonwealth Games activities. This really helped support the children’s physical development, as well as understanding the fun and importance of taking part in the different activities that we did. These included beanbag tossing, jumping and measuring how high, skipping, and hopping races, to name a few!

Yorkshire Day

To support Yorkshire Day the children engaged in a number of different activities. We had teabags in our sensory, we printed and used gluing and sticking to make our own roses, and also moulded the playdough into the shapes of roses. A highlight had to be enjoying our vegetable stew with Yorkshire puddings for lunch!

International Owl Awareness Day

This day also incorporated other nocturnal animals, including bats, and sparked plenty of interest and discussion about what animals are nocturnal, and why they are. It then extended into chat about day time and night time, light and dark, animal sounds, things you can hear and much more! Another extension was making masks of the different animals and role playing their own interpretation of the animals – highly entertaining!

Final Goodbyes :(

Finally, this was the month that we wished farewell to our last lot of school leavers heading off to ‘big school’. It has been so lovely to watch and see them progress throughout the years that they have been with us and we wish them all the best in the future.

Kingswood In March!!

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We have been getting very busy this month here at Kingswood. Starting with Pancake Day and Ash Wednesday where the children got to experience yummy pancakes for snack and a vegetarian corn beef hash for lunch. We incorporated this into our healthy eating by adding fruit and talking about how the fruit and vegetables keep us healthy.

HEY AWARD – Here at Kingswood we have been working towards our Healthy Early Years Award, between the Deputy Manager Chloe (who is currently on maternity leave) and the Acting Deputy Amy, they have provided staff with the HEY Toolkit, making them more aware of the correct portion sizes, exercise goals, bottle feeding best practice, safe sleep best practice and many more that is included. The beginning of March saw us have our HEY inspection and we are now awaiting our result.

World Book Day came next. The staff and the children enjoyed dressing up as their favourite characters and raising money for the Crackerjacks Children’s Trust. We managed to raise a grand total of £120 – huge thanks to all of those who contributed. The children engaged in story making activities, read their favourite stories and set up book-themed tuff trays. We also promoted our lending library for children to take them home.

Science week stemmed some great exploration, the staff helped the children explored in many different experiments. From bubble wrap painting to volcano eruptions. We continued this on water day talking about the water cycle and conducting an experiment to help explain this cycle.

Comic relief saw the children come dressed in red! We talked to the older children about what comic relief represented and asked questions about how they think people could help. We focused some of our activities around the theme incorporating it into the children’s interests.

We have generally had lots of fun outside, especially the week running up to mothers day where the sun started coming out for Spring.

Mother’s Day the the children did some planting, we talked a lot about what plants need, the beginning of Spring and the cycle of plants. I hope all had a lovely Mother’s Day and we will see you next time our blog comes along.