Garden Revamp - June 2021

We couldn't be happier with our garden revamp.

Our new climbing equipment is a huge hit with the children and they have all contributed to some thoughtful new rules for using the equipment safely. 

We are also enjoying our tyres, musical pan wall, buddy bench, obstacle equipment and our garden planters. So much to keep our little ones busy!

After we unveiled the new equipment on Friday, the children didn't want to come inside, so we literally spent the whole day in the garden and took all of our lunchboxes outside for a picnic!

May 2021

We’re now into the last couple of months of our preschool year at Kempshott Under Fives – the year has flown by.

Over the last few weeks, and up until the end of the school year, we are putting lots of work into school readiness for our older children. Each day we are having fun with activities to promote number recognition, personal and social skills, listening and understanding, and health and self care to name a few.

We are currently learning all about lifecycles – we’ve had a delivery of caterpillars and we are watching them grow every day, patiently waiting for them to change into butterflies. We are watching them wiggle and eat and are keeping a diary of the changes we see. It’s very exciting and the children are looking forward to releasing butterflies into the garden. We also had a new tough tray delivered which we used to look at frogspawn. We will soon be looking at tadpoles and learning about the life cycle of a frog.

We had deaf awareness week in May and talked about how signing can help people communicate when they can’t hear or talk. We use Makaton as part of our learning at preschool and our children are taught new signs each week. To tie in with lifecycles we have been learning how to sign butterfly.

We’ve continued to spend lots of time outdoors. We’ve made obstacle courses together and the children created their own seesaw with a step and a wooden plank. We have seen so much teamwork, ideas, critical thinking, predicting, gross motor skills, core strength building and turn taking in our garden activities, which is just amazing.

Exciting New Garden Plans

Work will soon be underway to revamp our garden at Kempshott Under Fives.
We are very excited to be adding new areas and equipment into the garden to enhance the children's outdoor play and learning experiences.

The new equipment includes a log walk for the children, a tyre area, fantastic new climbing equipment, a wildlife area and a construction area.

There will be so much to keep us occupied outside and the children have been working with us to create new rules for keeping us safe when using the new garden equipment.

April 2021

It's hard to believe that we’re now into our final term at Kempshott Under Fives.

At the end of our spring term the children created some amazing arts and crafts during our Easter week – they made cards, Easter bonnets and they made Easter nest cakes and decorated them with little eggs. They also created amazing footprint carrot pictures, which the children found very tickly on their toes and we did an Easter egg and carrot hunt in the garden. We even had a special visit from the Easter bunny who arrived with lots of chocolate eggs.

One of our spring themes has been baby animals. This prompted lots of conversations about different pets, so we surprised the children with a visit from Coco the French bulldog. They loved having Coco to visit and took turns to walk her on the lead.

This term we will continue to look at baby animals, the environment and life cycles. We’ll be following the life cycles of frogs, caterpillars and chicks and we’ll hopefully spot some butterflies in the garden. We are also busy gardening and planting lots of seeds.

The most exciting news to start the new term has been finding out which schools our older children are going to in September. It’s been lovely to hear all about the “big” schools and who is going where. So this term is when our “school readiness’ begins. We will begin to introduce lots of activities to prepare our bigger children for school; for example, can the children change into their PE kit by themselves? Can they independently wash their hands and open the food in their lunchbox? We’ll also start focus much more on numbers, health and self-care and communication and language.

School readiness is described in the foundation stage as “Children reaching a good level of development in the prime areas and literacy and mathematics”.

Some of the expected characteristics that should be displayed by a child to show school readiness;

• Independent in toileting
• Able to dress themselves
• Understands expected levels of behaviour
• Confidence and self-esteem
• Can take turns and share
• Can sit still for a short period
• Can separate from parents/carers
• Communication and language skills needed to communicate needs and listen to others
• Can actively learn and creatively and critically think

Some of these characteristics may of course be difficult for all children to achieve and this shouldn’t leave parents or practitioners concerned that a child isn’t school ready.

March 2021

March has been a great month at Kempshott Under Fives - we have welcomed all of our children back to preschool and it’s so lovely to see everyone back together again.

It's been a busy few weeks – the children made beautiful Mothers Day cards and have been very creative with their Easter decorations. We also celebrated Holi Hindu, an ancient Hindu festival to welcome the arrival of spring and celebrate the end of winter. It’s also known as the festival of colour so the children had a great time paint and powder splatting as part of our celebrations. Another of our painting projects has been watching daffodils wake up and bloom and painting them each day until they are in full flower. The children also asked to plant our own daffodils so that we can watch them grow, so we are now enjoying watching them shoot in the garden.

It’s been a good month for dressing up – we enjoyed a superheroes week where the children dressed up as lots of wonderful characters and then we celebrated more superheroes, in the form of doctors, nurses and other health care professionals. During first aid week the children were very attentive with checking temperatures, wrapping bandages, applying cold compresses and administering plasters. They also listened to each other’s heartbeat through a stethoscope, which was great fun. The role-play area was transformed into a surgery and the children made medicine, took phone calls, made appointments and filled out accident forms.

As part of our health care week, we took part in a very thoughtful community project of decorating love hearts for the NHS. One love heart is given to the patient and the other is given to their family - although they can’t visit in these times, the hearts which our children decorated are a constant reminder to the patients and families of how much they are loved and missed.

Our small group work this month has been focussed on maths and phonics. We have been identifying numerals, looking at simple adding and subtracting and learning to read number sentences. In our small group phonics work we have been listening to the initial sound in a word and matching it to a letter.

Our older children will be learning which primary school they are going to over the Easter holidays, so we are eagerly awaiting to hear the big news when we get back to preschool after the holidays. Next term we begin our preparations for the transition to big school. We will start by giving the children lots of mark making opportunities and activities that strengthen little hands for handwriting.

February 2021

We’ve really enjoying seeing little signs of spring appearing this month – a reminder that brighter days are coming.

We’re continuing to spend lots more time outdoors and the children have been great detectives and really taken notice of the seasonal changes in the garden. They have pointed out new leaves on trees and we’re starting to see some flowers coming through too. We’re looking forward to doing our own bit of gardening later this term and planting some spring bulbs.

This month we have enjoyed Chinese New Year when our role play area transformed into a Chinese restaurant. The children tried Chinese food for snack and used chopsticks to eat it too! We printed cherry blossom tress, discovered our zodiac animal and made dragons and lanterns. "Gung hay fat choi!"  For Valentine's day the children made lovely cards and practised sewing hearts. We also had a special valentines snack time with love heart toast and red jam. We had more special snacks for Pancake Day, and some pancake flipping too!

February was children’s mental health and wellbeing week. At Kempshott Under Fives we promote mental health and wellbeing every day by role modeling positive language and communications, by showing emotions in positive ways and using calming techniques when we encounter big emotions. We did lots of dancing to release some feel good feelings, we practised yoga to keep us balanced and calm, we took lots of welly walks to splash in puddles, we played emoji faces to describe our feelings and we complimented our friends and listened to all the lovely things they had to say about us.

Numbers are part of our everyday play at preschool – this term we have been using lots of mathematical language in the garden when creating our obstacle courses - such as balancing, weight, counting and time We have used our counting skills when selling items in our role play shop, as well as using numbers in our small group activitiesand in singing games. Our favourite number songs are Currant Buns, Speckled Frogs and Little Men in a Flying Saucer, you might even hear your little ones singing these songs at home!

Happy New Year - January 2021

Well, we didn’t expect to start 2021 with another full national lockdown and although all schools around the country are now closed, Early Years settings are currently fully open – so at Kempshott Under Fives we are working hard to stay safe and to make preschool fun and positive for our children, despite these strange times.

Our main focus this term is on wellbeing for the children. As routines have changed at home for most families, we are focusing much more on the area of personal, social and emotional development. It’s very obvious that the children are all loving being at preschool, and we are spending much more time in the garden and on nature walks – rain or shine – which makes for very happy children when there are puddles to splash in!

Last term we spent time looking at winter and the seasons, so all of our outdoor activities this term will continue to enhance our children’s understanding of the world with more weather and seasons activities in the garden and on our walks. We are also continuing to encourage the children’s growing independence by practicing putting on scarves, hats, gloves and wellies before going outside.

February will be a busy month for us - we have Valentine’s Day, Chinese New Year and Pancake Day to look forward to. As well as pancake races, we’ll be having pancakes on the snack table and there will be lots happening on the craft tables during Valentine’s Week. 2021 is the year of the Ox so we’ll be celebrating Chinese New Year with some food tasting and we’ll be trying to use chopsticks too!

Our new Tuesday afternoon sessions have had a great uptake this year - Tuesdays are now all about less toys with a specific focus on messy play, outdoor phonics and preschool yoga.

And of course we are incredibly lucky to have our staff member Alison, who is a speech and language specialist, working hard with the children each week to fill the gaps which have been made by the speech and language services delaying or cancelling appointments due to covid. 

Like most preschools and nurseries, we do have some children opting to stay at home during lockdown – so we’re sending some preschool fun home each week through the children’s Tapestry accounts so they can still get involved with all of the things we are doing at preschool – including our scavenger hunts, French lessons, yoga, phonics and messy play.

You can see weekly updates and lots of photos from Kempshott Under Fives on our Facebook page “Kempshott Under Fives”. 

December 2020

This time of year is always magical at preschool and Christmas always comes early to Kempshott Under Fives. Christmas songs snuck on to our playlist in mid November, and preschool has been been filled with glitter, Christmas sparkle and children making wonderful festive creations for the last few weeks. 

We have finished off a very different 2020 with a lovely Christmassy month. The children decorated our tree, practiced their numbers with a daily countdown on our advent calendar and our resident Elf on the shelf arrived too. He has got up to lots of mischief in preschool, much to the delight of the children! 

And we couldn’t have Christmas without a party, so on our last day of term we threw a lovely Christmas party for all of the children – complete with a socially distanced Christmas singsong to families over a zoom call. So although families couldn't be with us in person this year, they still joined in over the computer airwaves!

We have exciting new plans for 2021, so December has also been a chance for us to trial our new Tuesday sessions. In January we are introducing structured Tuesday sessions with some of the most popular activities we do throughout the week. Tuesdays will now have less toys and a specific focus on messy play, outdoor phonics and preschool yoga.

• We have been doing preschool yoga sessions for some time so we already know the children love it! Yoga has many proven benefits for preschool age children, it helps children manage anxiety, it improves children’s emotional regulation, boosts their self esteem, increases body awareness and mindfulness, enhances children’s concentration and memory and helps develop strength and flexibility
• Messy play is another firm favourite, not only is it great fun, it provides children with exciting tactile and sensory experiences which improves their curiosity, imagination and exploration skills and encourages communication and language development. It also supports children to play independently. 
• Phonics is so adaptable that it can be taught in a number of different ways and taking it outside can increase the children’s attention span and their willingness to learn. Learning in the fresh air, with natural light, smells and sounds has proven to be more enjoyable, as well as rewarding for children. In the UK it is recommended that phonics should be the first way to introduce reading skills to children.

We are also very excited to announce this month that our part time staff member Alison Cuss will now be with us for four days a week. Alison is a Speech and Language Specialist and does an amazing job with individual and group work in our preschool. Speech, language and communication are vital life skills for children and allow them to express themselves and engage in conversations, understand instructions and get the most out of their education and life experiences. During covid, many services for speech and language have ceased and face-to-face appointments have been delayed, which obviously impacts the children's development. Alison is vitally important for us at this time to fill the gap from those services so we’re delighted that she is now with us for 4 days a week. If you would like advice or support on speech and language in your child’s preschool journey, please let us know and Alison will be happy to chat to you.

HOPE YOU ALL HAVE A VERY RELAXING CHRISTMAS AND HERE'S HOPING FOR A BRIGHTER 2021!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

November 2020

Over the last month we’ve been exploring the season of autumn and have spent lots of time outdoors looking at autumn colours, listening to autumn sounds and collecting lovely natural resources to use in preschool. 

There were so many activities that we got involved with this month – starting with fireworks and Diwali. The children listened to the story of Diwali and made clay Diwali tea light holders. Our fireworks theme was all about colour and the children made some amazing pictures. Remembrance Day was another highlight this month – the children created some beautiful poppy prints and they learnt all about the meaning of Remembrance Day. They even joined in with a two-minute silence and did an incredible job! 

We also joined in with Children in Need with some fun Pudsey inspired activities and we enjoyed dressing up and wearing our pyjamas into preschool. And we supported anti bullying week by wearing odd socks to preschool.

World Nursery Rhyme Week took place this month too and we joined up as a nursery rhyme ambassador. Nursery rhymes are a really important part of our day at Kempshott Under Fives, they help to boost early literacy skills, language development, early numeracy and social, physical and emotional skills. By signing up to become a nursery rhyme ambassador we are able to access so many wonderful resources to share with our families so they can enjoy the benefits at home too.

We are of course continuing with our small group work every week with Write Dance, a super fun session and a fantastic way to build motor skills and introduce writing skills; Science experiments and our cooking sessions when we make or bake treats each week. Next on the baking table will be some yummy Christmas goodies!

October 2020 - a fantastic first half term!

We’ve had hugely successful first half term at Kempshott Under Fives – our little ones have adjusted well to our new routines and are thoroughly enjoying all of our topics and activities.

Our most recent topic has been “Autumn”. We’ve been making the most of our outdoor time and discovering all the autumn colours, patterns and the changes that we see in the environment as the seasons change. While we’ve been outdoors, we’ve been looking out for conkers, pine cones and leaves, which are all great natural resources to use in preschool at this time of year. After half term we will be spending more time outdoors and encouraging the children to get their listening ears on and listen out for the wonderful sounds of autumn such as crunching leaves, wind in the trees, splashy puddles and lots more.

We are also looking at animals that hibernate as part of our autumn topic. Lots of children have spoken about hedgehogs, so we have been collecting lots of lovely natural resources to build hedgehog houses. Hedgehog has also been one of our words to learn in our weekly Makaton signing lessons.

We continually promote British values at preschool, one of which is “Democracy”. Every two weeks the children vote for a new book to read at circle time, they love casting their votes and at the same time they learn all about different choices. We learn a new song, a new Makaton sign and a French word every other week too. We also do "write dance" where we lay on our tummies and move our arms with a crayon in each hand in time with the music. This helps to strengthen children's core muscles and to build on arm movements and co ordination which assist with pre-writing skills.

The children have really enjoyed creating our new display boards – we have a birthday display with all of our handprints, and we have a tree that we add to each week by creating something from our books and topics and adding it to the tree. It’s a lovely way to remember what we’ve been learning.

Coming up in November we will be getting creative with clay when we celebrate Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, and with bonfire night coming up we’ll be using lots of colour to create our own fireworks and we’ll be exploring lots of sounds for firework night too. It’s pumpkin season too so we’ll be making some yummy pumpkin soup with the children.

Happy to be back - September 20202

It’s been so lovely welcoming our children back to Kempshott Under Fives. We haven’t seen some of our older children since March so it’s been very exciting seeing how they’ve grown and we've loved meeting our new children, they have all settled in fantastically. Children and staff are all very happy to be back to the preschool routine. We’re really impressed at how well the children have adapted to the new hygiene measures too, they are all amazing at washing their hands. 

At the start of any new academic year change is ahead for our little ones and the first few weeks of settling into a new environment is a time of crucial importance to a child's later happiness within a setting. Our first few weeks are always about helping our children settle in, helping them to explore the new environment, make new friends and get to know staff.

Our first topic of the new academic year is always “All About Me” - this is a great chance for the children to learn all about themselves, their new friends and their families. We've been using stories, arts, crafts and songs to help our children discover what is unique and special about themselves and each other. 

We’ve had some gorgeous weather too for the start of our new term so the children have been making the most of the garden. We had a surprise snow storm in the dinosaur enclosure, and then had lots of fun making footprints in the snow! We also have a new outdoor water channel wall, which the children love, it’s been especially popular in the warm weather. Over the summer holidays the Community Payback Scheme removed posts from the maze at Beggarwood Park, these were kindly donated by the council to one of our staff members who has transformed them into amazing planters for preschool. The children will be busy this year growing lots of vegetables in the new planters through the different seasons.

We’ll soon be starting our topic of autumn where we’ll be enjoying lots more time outdoors collecting sticks and leaves to build bug hotels and hedgehog houses.

COME ON A VIRTUAL TOUR OF KEMPSHOTT UNDER FIVES PRESCHOOL!

We've posted a video on our Facebook page to take you for a look inside our lovely KEMPSHOTT UNDER FIVES Preschool. Take a tour around with our wonderful Deputy, Rachael, by pasting this link into your website browser:

https://www.facebook.com/KempshottUnderFives/videos/617774542142377/

February 2020

It's now halfway through our spring term and we’re spending lots more time outdoors and the children are being great detectives and really taking notice of the seasonal changes in the garden. They have pointed out new leaves on trees and we’re starting to see some flowers coming through too. We’re looking forward to doing our own bit of gardening later this term and planting some spring bulbs.

We have recently introduced small group time each day. Every morning we focus on an area such as phonics, numbers, dough gym (fantastic for fine motor skills) and our resident French teacher Sophie has also started teaching French at small group time too. 

We have also welcomed our new puppet to preschool. The puppet has arrived to talk to the children each week about emotions - the children love our puppet activities. Our puppet talks us through scenarios of good choices and the children join in too and she also talks with the children about what makes us happy and what makes us sad.

Weekly yoga is back, which is one of our most popular classes, and our Makataon learning is going from strength to strength with a new word introduced to the children each week.

Coming up in March we have World Book Day when our children will be bringing in some of their favourite books. We will also be celebrating St David’s Day and St Patrick’s Day this month, and of course, Mother’s Day. We expect to see lots of busy hands at the craft tables making surprises for Mummy!

A New Year at Kempshott Under Fives, January 2020

A new year, a new decade and a new term at Kempshott Under Fives. We’ve had a great start to 2020, we’ve welcomed some new children to our preschool and everyone has settled back into the preschool routine really well. We are back to enjoying our weekly cooking and baking, yoga and makaton and we've made erupting volcanoes for our science experiment. We are continuing to enjoy our book of the week, which the children now vote for each week. We have recently enjoyed some books that the children have brought in from home - Scary Sid has been our most recent book of the week and the children enjoyed making their own wraps for snack, which is Scary Sid's favourite food!

Chinese new year has been a big highlight this month, our role play area became a Chinese restaurant and the children enjoyed trying different Chinese foods and even using chopsticks!

We've been spending time looking at winter and the seasons, and this term we have continued to enhance our children’s understanding of the world with more weather and seasons activities - the children always love getting outside in the garden and learning about nature. We are also continuing to encourage the children’s growing independence in the colder months by practicing putting on scarves, hats, gloves and wellies before going out in the garden.

Coming up in February is another busy month - we have Valentine’s Day and Pancake Day to look forward to. As well as pancake races, we’ll be having pancakes on the snack table and there will be lots happening on the craft tables during Valentine’s week too. 

Happy Christmas from Kempshott Under Fives, December 2019

December is our favourite month of the year at Kempshott Under Fives, we have played lots of Christmas music, the children have decorated our tree and we have had so much fun with all things Christmas. As you can imagine, we did a LOT of sparkly craft this month, we practiced our number skills with a Christmas tree number hunt and we also did a daily countdown on our advent calendar. On 1stDecember our resident Elf arrived, much to the excitement of the children! We named him Alfie. Alfie taught us some new songs for our Christmas performance, helped us bake Christmas cakes and he loved joining in on our Christmas craft table!

To finish off our amazing term we held a Christmas party for all the children and invited parents and families to join us for a Christmas sing–a-long and buffet. The children loved singing to the families and we even had parents rocking around the Christmas tree!

When we return to preschool in the new year we are looking forward to hearing the children talk about their holidays, what presents they got for Christmas and which special people they spent time with. We’ll also be back to our story of the week, we have some great books lined up for January, and we will be looking at the season of winter.

Staff news for the New Year; we are looking forward to welcoming Angela Chapman who will be joining us every afternoon from January as an Early Years Practitioner. Angela is an experienced KS1 and KS2 teacher, who has more recently moved into working in nurseries to specialise in early years education. 

HAPPY CHRISTMAS! Enjoy the holidays...

A great first half term

November 2019

One of our favourite things at Kempshott Under Fives is our “books of the week”. We continually promote British values at preschool, one of which is “Democracy”. The children vote each week for which book to read at circle time, they love casting their votes and at the same time they learn all about different choices. Our favourite book so far has been “Going on a Bear Hunt”. We went on a big bear hunt outside using all the themes in the book – we swished through grass, squelched though mud and splashed over water all while singing our bear hunt song! The children also made bear masks and made paw print biscuits.

We'e now starting to focus on Julia Donaldson as our Book of the Week author – can you believe it’s been 20 years since the Gruffalo was first published? We’ve loved reading Spinderella, The Gruffalo and The Stick Man and we’ve had great fun making Gruffalo crumble, following Gruffalo footprints to seach for the Gruffalo in the garden and we even had our own Stick Man visiting us for the week too!

Outside in the garden we discovered lots of things for our autumn theme. We collected leaves for leaf painting and looked at the changing colours on the trees. We also listened carefully to the sounds of leaves crunching underfoot. The children have also been collecting conkers, pine cones and leaves, which are all great natural resources to use in preschool at this time of year. Some of the children have spoken about seeing hedgehogs in their gardens; so to extend their learning we included hibernation as part of our autumn topic (being able to talk about the natural world and show concern for living things is an expectation for a typical child aged 30 to 50 months).

We had lots of fun celebrating some special occasions and events in preschool this term too - Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, bonfire night, Remembrance Day and Children in Need. 

Next month we're expecting a visit from our resident elf on the shelf and we can't wait to start all things Christmas! 

Welcome to a new academic year!

September 2019

Welcome to a brand new academic year at Kempshott Under Fives!

It's been great to welcome back our older children and see how they've grown over the summer, and we've enjoyed welcoming lots of new children this September too.

The start of a new term can sometimes be a difficult time for young children and the first few weeks of settling into a new environment is a time of crucial importance to a child's later happiness within a setting. Our first few weeks are always about helping our children settle in, helping them to explore the new environment, make new friends and get to know staff.All children are individuals, and while some children will adjust fairly easily and quickly to new routines, others will take longer to feel comfortable and secure. At Kempshott Under Fives we work hard to ensure that all children settle happily.

Our first topic “All About Me” is a great chance for the children to learn all about themselves, their new friends and their families. We use stories, arts, crafts and songs to help our children discover what is unique and special about themselves and each other. 

We had some gorgeous weather to start our new term so the children have been making the most of the garden. This term we will also be learning about autumn and each week we'll vote for a book and a theme of the week to focus on with the children. We'll be cooking very week too. This week the children voted for "animals", so we've had a fun week of learning and reading all about our animal friends!

Summer term!

June / July 2019

The year has flown at Kempshott Under Fives, and it will soon be time to say goodbye to our children leaving for primary school. They’ve all gained so much confidence and independence and are completely ready for their next exciting adventure… But we’ve still got lots more fun to squeeze into our final few weeks!

There’s been lots happening this term… Our older children have been busy with visits to their new schools and we’ve had a strong focus on school readiness and independence.

We’ve started a preschool yoga class each week, which has been a big hit with the children. It’s magical to watch the children engaging with their teacher and trying so hard! Yoga is great for children to enhance their physical flexibility and it also develops focus and concentration. Our teacher uses lots of fun activities to encourage calm and help our little ones cope with strong emotions.

Our topic this term has been the Hungry Caterpillar, we’ve made healthy fruit smoothies and the children have been writing their names on our caterpillars. We also have our very own butterfly garden to study the lifecycle of caterpillars transforming into butterflies. We got tiny caterpillars and have been watching how quickly they grow – the children love their daily checks as our caterpillars grow, we're now waiting for them to turn into chrysalis and can't wait for butterflies to emerge that we can release into our garden.

We’ve taken delivery of some wonderful new resources this month too, including a fantastic mud kitchen, some new maths resources to help us with our number skills and a new bookcase. And we’ve introduced daily exercise time each day, which is very similar to “activate” in schools. We exercise with the children to songs, which is designed to increase physical fluency, agility, balance and co-ordination. It also develops attention, concentration and listening skills, self-awareness, self-confidence and self-esteem (and we all have lots of fun doing it too!).

Our fundraising event his term was our sponsored obstacle course, just like our own mini sports day. And of course we had our annual “Dad’s Day” to celebrate Father’s Day – an afternoon of doughnuts and cups of tea just for the Dads, Grandads, Uncles and Father figures.

It’s been lovely to feel the weather getting warmer, so we’ve been making the most of the garden with lots of outside play. We also take lots of walks at this time of year to the nearby trees and fields, it’s a perfect opportunity for us to hunt for mini beasts and learn lots about nature and flowers.

Term will end all too soon with our biggest event of the year – our Graduation ceremony and family picnic. We can’t wait, but we'll definitely need the tissues handy!

Summer Term!

May 2019

We had such a wonderful end to the spring term at Kempshott Under Fives; it’s hard to believe we’re now heading into our final term!

In the lead up to the holidays the children created some amazing arts and crafts during our Easter week – they made cards and Easter bonnets and for baking they made Easter nest cakes and decorated them with little eggs. We chose E as our letter of the week (of course!), the children were great at finding things beginning with E, and we chose the colour yellow to look for too. The children also enjoyed spending some time in the church and Nicola, the Vicar at St Mark's, read us the Easter story. We did an Easter egg hunt in the church and each egg had a colour or letter inside, it was a really fun and topical way to practise our phonics and colours.

Our older children had some very exciting news over the Easter holidays – they found out which schools they will be going to in September! It’s been lovely to hear all about the “big” schools and who is going where. So this term is when our “school readiness’ begins. We will begin to introduce lots of activities to prepare our bigger children, for example, can the children change into their PE kit by themselves? Can they independently wash their hands and open the food in their lunchbox? We’ll also start focus much more on numbers, health and self-care and communication and language.

School readiness is described in the foundation stage as “Children reaching a good level of development in the prime areas and literacy and mathematics”.

Some of the expected characteristics that should be displayed by a child to show school readiness;

• Independent in toileting

• Able to dress themselves

• Understands expected levels of behaviour

• Confidence and self-esteem

• Can take turns and share

• Can sit still for a short period

• Can separate from parents/carers

• Communication and language skills needed to communicate needs and listen to others

• Can actively learn and creatively and critically think

Some of these characteristics may of course be difficult for all children to achieve and this shouldn’t leave parents or practitioners concerned that a child isn’t school ready.

Spring term!

March 2019

We’ve had a wonderful spring term at Kempshott Under Fives.

February started off with lots of Valentine's fun - including our fantastic preschool family disco! Chinese New Year was a chance to try some yummy Chinese food and get creative making Chinese lanterns, dragons and fans. We also released our worms back into the garden - we'd enjoyed caring for them and watching them grow and wriggle in our worm farm - but we found a nice muddy spot in the garden and we are sure the children will see their worms popping up to see them from time to time!

Our lovely new play house arrived this term too - it's a great new addition to the garden and the children are really enjoying it.

We've been busy continuing our weekly cooking and baking, science experiments (we've had volcanoes, turning old coins into shiny treasures and colour dyes to name a few), and we're getting really good at our makaton signing too!

We had great fun with pancake week – making pancakes, flipping pancakes, tasting new toppings, pancake racing and we drew numbers on our pancakes to practise our number recognition too. We celebrated St David’s Day with leeks and daffodils, St Patrick’s Day passed in a haze of green – green painting, green play dough and we baked shamrock biscuits too… We also took part in World Book day and the children came to preschool dressed as some wonderful characters from their favourite books, they all looked amazing, and it’s great to see just how much our children enjoy stories and reading. We also took part in Red Nose Day and came to preschool dressed in pyjamas.

We have a special celebration for Mother’s Day coming up and have invited Mums and Grandmas to join us for afternoon tea with their little ones. It will be a lovely end to a busy week of making some very special Mother’s Day treats.

And with Easter just around the corner, we'll be having lots more fun with Easter arts and crafts. We may have a chocolate egg or two to hunt for before the end of term too!

We’re eagerly awaiting the big news of primary school places for our older children. Places are announced during the Easter holidays so we’ll be keen to get back to preschool and find out which schools they are going to in September. Next term we begin our preparations for the children’s transition to big school. We will start by giving the children lots of mark making opportunities and activities that strengthen little hands for handwriting. Our older children will be focusing on writing names and the numbers 1-10.

After the Easter holidays, we’ll also be taking delivery of a little butterfly garden. We’ll be looking at life cycles and watching caterpillars grow and transform into beautiful butterflies that we can release into our garden!

January 2019

Happy New Year!

We’ve had a great start to 2019, and all the children have settled back into the preschool routine really well. The children are enjoying their weekly science experiments and their weekly cooking and baking - this month the children have enjoyed chopping veg to make warming winter soup. We’re also using Makaton every week during our singing and nursery rhymes. Using Makaton can help children gain a sense of importance and boost their self-confidence alongside their language and communication skills. Children love to use signs and share these with others during activities, especially singing.

Last month we spent some time looking at winter and the seasons, and this month we continue to enhance our children’s understanding of the world with more weather and seasons activities. We’ve looked at animals that hibernate and have also explored the colder weather. The children always enjoy learning about nature – last term the children noticed there was very little food for the birds in the garden so we made bird feeders – so we’re now watching what birds come in to the garden to feed.

We also continue to encourage the children’s growing independence in the colder months by practicing putting on scarves, hats, gloves and wellies before going out in the garden.

An exciting new addition to the room this month has been our tent - the children use their imaginations brilliantly and have been using it in role play, they've made it into a big bears den and into a house. And the tent is now the favourite spot for our story at the end of the day.

This month we had an important visit from Maria Miller, MP for Basingstoke. Mrs Miller was visiting to congratulate the managers from Hatch Warren and Kempshott Under Fives on achieving Millie's Mark. The big pink Millie's Mark mascot also made an appearance, much to the delight of the children. During the visit Mrs Miller took part in a play dough gym session and she thanked our Managers, Melissa and Pam, for all of their hard work and for the wonderful opportunities we are providing for our children.

December 2018 - Happy Christmas!

We've had a fantastic term and had so much fun with all things Christmas. As you can imagine, we did a LOT of sparkly craft, we practised our number skills with a Christmas tree number hunt and we also did a daily countdown on our advent calendar. A resident Elf arrived for December, who the children named Pixie. Pixie taught us some new songs for our Christmas performance, helped us bake Christmas cakes and watched us make snow globes!
Our end of term finale was amazing – the children had so much fun at their Christmas party where they had a surprise visit from Santa. Our parents and families joined us for a Christmas sing-a-long where we sang lots of Christmas favourites plus our own fun take on Baby Shark with our “Christmas Shark” song. 

We hope you all enjoy the Christmas break and we're looking forward to our first week back at preschool and hearing the children talk about their holidays, what presents they got for Christmas and which special people they spent time with.

We’ll also be back to our story of the week, we have some great books lined up for January, and we will be looking at the season of winter.

Staff news - we have welcomed Sara Gibson who has joined us as an Early Years Practitioner. She spent the week before Christmas getting to know our children and has settled in wonderfully!

October 2018

Fun with Julia Donaldson!

We’ve had some brilliant fun with our “books of the week”. The children have absolutely loved The Gruffalo and Stick Man by Julia Donaldson.

During Gruffalo week we followed Gruffalo footprints on a treasure trail around the garden, we made Gruffalo masks and even made Gruffalo crumble. We also took the children on a walk around the deep dark wood – they didn’t find a Gruffalo or a mouse, but we did discover lots of things for our autumn topic.

Next the children had a lovely surprise visit from a 'Stick person!'  Using our British Value "democracy", all the children voted at circle time for the gender and name. The children come up with 'Steve the Stick-man!' Steve had lots of fun playing out in the garden, wearing his waterproof. 
Poor Steve then had an accident. So the children gave him a cold compress and a big cuddle and filled in an accident form. Steve then was a little hungry and joined in with snack and made lots of mess....the children were very helpful and helped tidy away Steve's mess.
Steve was a little tired after all of today's events and sat down for a story! After a little rest Steve then decided he wanted to have a dance with Angela! All the children then joined in and started dancing. Such a great day!

We'll have lots more activities with Steve... lets hope he makes good choices!!

During our woodland walks the children collected leaves for leaf painting and looked at the changing colours on the trees. During our walks we also spent time listening to the sounds of leaves crunching underfoot.

The children collected wonderful natural resources on our woodland walk to create their own autumn gardens back at preschool. We’ve also made bird feeders this term so are hoping to see lots more birds feeding in our garden.

September 2018

Welcome to a New Year at Kempshott Under Fives!

Welcome to a new school year at Kempshott Under Fives! It was lovely to welcome back our older children and our new children have settled in fantastically. The start of a brand new term can be a difficult time for young children and the first few weeks of settling into a new environment is a time of crucial importance to a child's later happiness within a setting. Our first few weeks are always about settling in and helping our children make new friends and get to know staff.

Our first topic of a new academic year is always “All About Me”, this is a great chance for the children to learn all about themselves, their new friends and their families. We use stories, arts, crafts and songs to help our children discover what is unique and special about themselves and each other.

Our postman bought a very special delivery to us on our first week back - a Royal thank you card! Last year the children made an amazing book for Harry and Meghan's wedding present. Well done to all of our children - it was amazing to have a royal thank you!

Our September staff training was all about the outdoor learning environment, so we have some great activities planned for extending our children’s learning outdoors all year round. As the weather is still warm, the children have been enjoying lots of outdoor play on our new patio, which was built over the summer holiday. This will provide a much bigger and cleaner outdoor play space for us during the muddy winter months!

Speaking of new things Charlotte made our children a wonderful sensory board over the summer. This is a wonderful addition to our resources at Kempshott Under Fives - the children love exploring the board and these type of sensory experiences are vital for young children's brain development. A sensory board can also help fine motor skills as children coordinate their movements to feel the different materials. It also helps children to gain a sense of themselves as they begin to develop preferences to which textures they like and dislike and it can help children learn new words as you use words to describe the different things they are feeling.

At Kempshott Under Fives we love natural resources, we've collected lots of interesting natural materials over the summer. The children have been very curious and very creative with our resources and have created their own balancing beams and painted pine cones to hang on our "stick people" as garden decorations.

The favourite cooking activity this month was pizzas - who doesn't love a pizza?

We've also enjoyed Farmer Duck and Five Little Ducks as our Books of the Week.

FEBRUARY 2018

Stepping into Spring...

We love Spring term. It's a great time of year to see wildlife and flowers, throughout spring we’ll be exploring the season and looking at trees starting to shoot new leaves, flowers starting to grow and the baby animals that are born in springtime.

We've also had fun doing lots of different nursery rhyme activities. We followed National Storytelling Week and read lots of stories with the children, encouraging them to make up their own endings and asking lots of questions aimed at developing their thinking and understanding (Listening to stories with increasing attention and recall is an expectation of a typical child aged 30 to 50 months). We loved reading the Gruffalo, Going on a Bear Hunt and Goldilocks. To continue our books and storytelling theme, we will also be joining in with this years World Book Day on March 1st.

Our other February highlights were of course Chinese New Year, Pancake day and Valentines Day, so much yummy food to taste and a busy craft table full of hearts and sparkles!

We have been awarded a GOOD Ofsted! (February 2018)

We are delighted to announce the result of the first ever Ofsted inspection at our Kempshott Under Fives setting, which was carried out on 15th January. Our overall grading is GOOD.
 

The inspector reported on many wonderful observations including, “The newly appointed manager works closely with staff to evaluate practice and drive continued improvement. She obtains feedback from parents and invites children to express their opinions. She has an overview of all children's progress and any gaps in their learning are quickly addressed.”

The report also states that, “Staff provide a friendly and welcoming environment. They interact well with the children to help encourage their emotional well-being. Children's behaviour is good.”

The inspector also recognised that our children’s speaking, listening, writing and maths skills are good and well supported, and that outcomes for children are good.

Melissa Keane, our new Manager, has been instrumental in creating a wonderfully warm and caring environment for all the children within our care. We delight in providing new experiences for all children to engage and motivate their learning, whilst aiming to form close bonds with families and carers. We are very proud of our amazing children and of our wonderful Kempshott Under Fives team.

JANUARY 2018

Happy New Year from Kempshott Under Fives!

As usual, our first week back will be a wonderful week of listening to the children talk about their holidays, their Christmas presents and the special people they spent time with. We are sure to see the children recreating some of their Christmas memories through their play. We’ll have pretend Christmas cake making in the role play area, pretend dinner with family, and paper and sellotape to wrap presents, just like Mummy does! This links perfectly to the Department for Education's "Early Year's Outcomes" which says that a typical child aged 30-50 months should be able to "remember and talk about significant events in their own experiences" and "recognise and describe special times or events for family or friends".

We’ll also be exploring nursery rhymes this month. We’ll be having fun with traditional nursery rhymes and creating some fun activities – cotton wool painting with black paint for Baa Baa Black Sheep, making spider webs for Incy Wincy Spider and hunting for the lost toy sheep when Little Bo Peep appears. We’ll hopefully be learning some new rhymes too.

When we look at our season of winter, we’ll introduce the theme of nature and birds. As there’s not much food for the birds at this time of year, we’ll be making bird feeders with the children so they can watch the birds come and feed in the garden.

We have some exciting staff news for the New Year – Melissa Keane, our current Deputy, has been promoted to Preschool Leader at Kempshott Under Fives and Angela Blomquist, who is the SENCO for both Kempshott and Hatch Warren Under Fives, will be stepping into the Deputy position to work alongside Melissa. Congratulations to you both!

The most magical time of the year - December 2017

December is always a magical month at Kempshott Under Fives, there is always so much planned and so much to prepare!

Sadly we said goodbye to Yvonne, our Preschool Leader, at the end of November. Yvonne has been offered the opportunity to combine her childcare experience with her volunteering work and her faith in a role as an outreach worker for the Methodist church. In her leaving speech Yvonne said, “It is with sadness that I will be leaving the preschool, it has been an honour to have met and watched your children grow and develop into the wonderful little people they are. I have had the privilege to work with the most amazing individuals who understand the importance of the early years and have been blessed with wonderfully supportive parents.” We wish her lots of luck.

December is a wonderful time of year for circle time – we’ll be talking about what Christmas is, about special people and family and giving presents to others. We’ll also be talking more about sending cards, cooking festive foods and about helping others at this special time of year. Of course, we’ll also be hearing about Father Christmas and what’s top of the Christmas lists this year too!

This is also our favourite time of year for crafts – we have a month of glitter, bright colours and sparkle on the craft tables with cards, decorations and Christmas creations to make. The tree is up and has been fantastically decorated by all of our clever little hands.

Our Christmas performance is our highlight of the term and it’s been a busy time preparing. Lots of little superstars will take to the stage to perform our Christmas play for parents. The Christmas play always ties in well this term’s Communication and Language learning target - for children to maintain attention, sit quietly and introduce storylines into plays – this is a perfect opportunity to demonstrate how well our amazing children are doing.

And of course, it wouldn’t be Christmas without a party – so before our little ones take to the stage, they’ll be having a fun-filled Christmas party. And if we’ve all been good, we might even get a surprise visit from Father Christmas!

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. See you back at preschool on 4th January 2018.

A great first half term! 20.11.17

We’ve had a great first half term at Kempshott Under Fives – our little ones have adjusted well to new staff, new friends and new routines and have thoroughly enjoyed our first topics.

We’ve spent the past few weeks learning about autumn – we’ve looked at animal that hibernate, collected leaves for leaf painting and looked at the changing colours on the trees. It’s a great season for getting outside so we’ve also spent time walking and listening to the sounds of leaves crunching underfoot. While we’ve been outside the children have noticed lots of cobwebs, so we’ve also made spiders and cobwebs on our craft tables. We’ve been baking too - for our Harvest Festival celebrations the children helped bake bread and attended a small service in church.

This term we’re looking at light and dark. We have bonfire night coming up, so at preschool we’ll be creating lots of colourful crafts, and exploring the sounds of fireworks. The children will also get creative with crafts for Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights.

Our first event took place before half term with our annual Teddy Bears Picnic. Children from Kempshott Under Fives went down to the woods with family and friends (and of course their favourite teddy bears), and enjoyed a teddy bear trail, face painting, games and there was even a prize for the best-dressed teddy! A big thank you to Sainsburys, Hatch Warren, who kindly donated picnic food for the event – generosity from local businesses is always hugely appreciated by our charity run preschool.

A new school year, September 2017

It's lovely to be back for a new year at Kempshott Under Fives, to meet our new children and to see how much our older children have grown over the holidays!

We've spent our first few weeks on the topic of All About Me - a great chance for the children to learn all about themselves, their new friends and their families. We use stories, arts and crafts and songs to help our children discover what is unique and special about themselves and each other. The children have learnt lots of names, created some self-portraits and compared the colour of our hair and eyes. The children have also been cutting out pictures of things they like – animals, flowers and of course lots of toys.

The theme for the term is Autumn. There's so much fun to be had learning about Autumn - just some of the things we'll be exploring are animals and hibernating, there'll be lots of leaves and colours, leaf painting, listening to the sounds of leaves crunching underfoot on our Autumn walks, we'll be making spiders and cobwebs on our craft tables and looking at the changes outside throughout the season.

June 2017

June is always the perfect time of year to enjoy lots of great outdoor activities at preschool and it’s also when we get busy preparing our older children for school!

We all love the garden at Kempshott Under Fives and this month our little gardeners have really seen their work pay off. They’ve grown some wonderful lettuces and strawberries – we’ve also attempted to grow sunflowers (although these seem to be taking their time)

We recently took part in the National Children’s Day activities, which aims to promote the importance of a healthy childhood. We created our own mini Olympics for the children and held a sponsored obstacle course, which was great fun.

We will soon be joining our sister preschool, Hatch Warren Under Fives, for a preschool trip to FInkley Down Farm. This will be a great opportunity to see all of the baby animals that we learnt about last term.

This month we will be talking about which schools our children are going to and will also begin to introduce lots of activities in preparation for big school.

School readiness is described in the foundation stage as “Children reaching a good level of development in the prime areas and literacy and mathematics”.

Some of the expected characteristics that should be displayed by a child to show school readiness;

• Independent in toileting
• Able to dress themselves
• Understands expected levels of behaviour
• Confidence and self-esteem
• Can take turns and share
• Can sit still for a short period
• Can separate from parents/carers
• Communication and language skills needed to communicate needs and listen to others
• Can actively learn and creatively and critically think

Some of these characteristics may of course be difficult for all children to achieve and this shouldn’t leave parents or practitioners concerned that a child isn’t school ready.

May 2017

This term is when our “school readiness’ begins, so we will begin to introduce lots of activities to prepare our bigger children for school. Can the children change into their PE kit by themselves? Can they independently wash their hands and open the food in their lunchbox?

We’ll also be having some exciting learning adventures all around the theme of mini beasts. Mini beasts is a perfect project for spring and summer and we’ll be spending plenty of time out in the garden hunting bugs. We’ve also had a new arrival to preschool - baby caterpillars - which we’ll be watching grow and transform into butterflies to eventually release in our garden. While we’re learning about life cycles of a butterfly we’ll be taking a look at The Hungry Caterpillar – this is always a great opportunity for lots of fun crafts and counting. Our Hungry Caterpillar topic also introduces us to healthy eating and learning more about different fruits and where they come from.

This term we welcome a new Deputy to Kempshott Under Fives, Melissa Keane. And congratulations to Tanya Welton who is now a permanent member of our team!

April 2017

The term has flown by again at Kempshott Under Fives. We’ve had amazing fun planting, growing, crafting and celebrating…and we have one last blast to come with our preschool Easter egg hunt, always a great afternoon and brilliant to finish the term on a big chocolate high!

The craft tables have been busy over the last couple of weeks with Easter cards and bonnet making - we’ve seen some fabulous Easter bonnet creations so far. We’ve also been remembering the real story of Easter during circle time this month.

When the children return to preschool after the Easter break they will be keen to get out in the garden and see what’s grown. They’ve spent weeks planting a vegetable patch and tending carefully to their seeds, so we’re hoping the children will soon begin to see the fruits of their labour.

After the holidays we’ll also have some new pets to introduce. We’ll be watching caterpillars’ transition into butterflies, which we’ll release into our preschool garden.

March 2017

March officially marks the beginning of Spring, so for the second half of our Spring term we’ll be doing a spot of gardening at Kempshott Under Fives.

We’ll be creating a garden centre at preschool where the children can plant and tend and help with their very own vegetable patch. We’ve also got some fun experiments planned to teach the children more about plants.

When we’re not in the garden we’ll be learning all about doctors and hospitals with lots of fun role-play listening to heartbeats and bandaging our patients.

Also coming up in March we’ve got our annual Mother’s Day Afternoon Tea – a treat for all of our Mummy’s who will be served tea and cake by their little ones.

February 2017 

This month you won’t be able to miss the reds, pinks and hearts in preschool. But our big activity for Valentines will be baking with love, because there’s no better gift on Valentines Day than a homemade treat from your little loved ones!

We have a fundraising event for Valentine’s Day too. As a charity-run preschool we organise a number of fun events throughout the year and on February 11th we’re holding our first ever preschool Valentine’s Disco – a fun date for all the family featuring face painting, glitter tattoos, glow sticks and of course lots and lots of disco dancing!

January 2017

A New Year at Kempshott Under Fives and we continue to enhance our children’s understanding of the world with our weather and seasons activities. Our first dusting of snow this year caused huge excitement among the children and inspired by the snow outside they created a very adventurous art project of a giant snowman for the wall - it looks amazing. We also had fun making our own snowstorms to prolong the magic of the white stuff.

The theme of nature has also been introduced this term. As there’s little food for the birds at this time of year we’ve been outside making bird feeders – and we’ve all thoroughly enjoyed watching to see what birds come in to the garden to feed.

November/December 2016

When the robots came to town

They came on Christmas Day

They didn’t like the turkey

So they threw it all away

They ate the knives and forks

And then they asked for more

I’ve never seen a Christmas

Quite like it before

…Except at Kempshott Under Fives – it’s a truly fun and magical time at our preschool and it’s definitely beginning to look a lot like Christmas everywhere you go! The children kicked off the Advent season with fun rhymes and favourite Christmas stories at circle time. We’ve also discussed what Christmas is – of course it’s when Father Christmas visits, but we’ve also talked about giving presents to others, sending cards, cooking special foods and that Christmas is a time of year where we think more about helping others. 

December is set to continue in a glittery and sparkly blur making cards and decorations, hanging them, singing Christmas songs and putting up our preschool Christmas tree. And of course, as Kempshott Under Fives is located in St Mark’s Church, the children will be lucky enough to perform their nativity play inside a church. One of our learning targets this term for Communication and Language is for children to maintain attention, sit quietly and introduce storylines into plays – our Christmas Nativity will be a perfect example of how well our amazing children are doing!

Christmas at preschool wouldn’t be complete without a party, so we’ll end our term with a fun-filled Christmas party, maybe with a little visit from the big man himself. Ssshhhhh, don’t tell the children!

As exciting as it is, Christmas hasn’t been the only topic we’ve covered this term – we’ve had many other celebrations to discover during autumn including Thanksgiving and Bonfire Night. We had some pre-Christmas sparkle with our fireworks theme. The children created amazing firework pictures and we focused on the noises, words and sounds of fireworks to support the literacy area of our learning. Poppies then filled our room for Remembrance Day and the children did a fantastic job of upholding two minutes silence on 11/11.

September/October 2016

They say time flies when you’re having fun, and we’re amazed at how quickly the first half term of 2016 has gone at Kempshott Under Fives.

Our main focus this term has been on families, our community and ourselves. The children have drawn around each other to learn all about different sizes and to measure the tallest and shortest in the group. They've also had great fun creating their own shops as part of the community theme. And we've been digging a huge hole "Down Under" in our mud garden, back to Australia where one of our children used to live.

Making mud pies in the garden is one of our most loved pastimes, so we've extended this activity inside the preschool and have been doing some real baking with the children so they can actually eat their creations!

Our new resident Toby was introduced to the children a few weeks ago. Toby is our preschool mascot, and he arrived with his own bag packed full of colouring sheets and a diary so he can go back with the children for sleepovers and new adventures. 

We also spent a week in the great outdoors before half term. Woodland week is a firm favourite on our activities calendar and the children had a great time discovering bugs, making dens and collecting some lovely autumn leaves and pine cones.

And while we were down in the woods this year, together with our sister preschool Hatch Warren Under Fives, we hosted our own Teddy Bears Picnic for siblings, friends and families. The children and their favourite teddy bears enjoyed a teddy bear trail, face painting, games and party food and there was even a prize for the best-dressed teddy!