May 2021

We’re now into the last couple of months of our preschool year at Hatch Warren 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.

One of our themes this term has been transport, we spent two weeks with our role-play corner as a garage and the children used lots of tools to fix the cars and bikes.

The children also loved driving toy cars through the gloopy messy tray and then taking them outside to clean up at the car wash – great fun! And on the art tables the children painted some great traffic light pictures. Staying with the theme of transport, we learnt the Makaton signs for boat and train. We plan our themes around the children’s interests each week, so coming up next we have dinosaurs.

In our rising 5 sessions we have continued with the Gruffalo and the children have been very creative with making Gruffalo face sandwiches, using different fruits and cheeses. We also set up a preschool cinema to watch the Gruffalo movie – complete with popcorn and milkshake! Next up in Rising Fives is Jack and the Beanstalk so we’ll be growing beans and measuring big and small.

We were very excited to have our first visitor into preschool for a very long time! The lollipop lady came into visit and taught the children all about crossing the road safely.  The children asked some great questions and practised crossing on our very own zebra crossing.

April 2021

It's hard to believe we’re now into our final term at Hatch Warren Under Fives!

Spring term was all about springtime – the children learnt all about the season of spring and all about baby farm animals too. In the lead up to the holidays we enjoyed lots of Easter activities, we made Easter bonnets and wreaths, painted eggs, made Easter nest cakes, found lots of eggs hidden around the garden and we even had a visit from the Easter bunny who arrived with a basket full of chocolate eggs for everyone.

We have created lots of different role play areas in our home corner over the last few weeks, but the children’s favourite has definitely been the farm shop. The children went shopping for carrots, onions and potatoes at the farm shop and then chopped them up to make a vegetable stew. The children have also been busy planting their own vegetables in the garden and growing spring flowers too.

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 to 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.

Parents can also support with the transition from preschool to primary school at home by introducing some fun and simple activities to support mathematics in the Early Years. For example you can:

• Make skittles with your little one, using plastic bottles.  Put numbers on the skittles. Play games where we have to keep score of how many skittles you have knocked down. Can your little one say what number was on the bottle they knocked down?

• Let your little one sort the clothes; ask them to put all the ones with the same pattern or colour together and tell you if they are red, spotty or stripy etc.

• Let your little one make a pattern with buttons or lids, like `big, small, big’.  How many patterns or groups can you find?  

These activities for home link with the Early Years Foundation Stage of mathematics whereby your little ones are beginning to count reliably with numbers, and say which number is one more or one less than a given number.  Also, your little ones begin to explore characteristics of everyday objects and shapes and use mathematical language to describe them. 

March 2021

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

It’s been a busy few weeks – we celebrated Mother’s Day a few weeks ago and the children made beautiful cards and planted flowers for Mummy. The lead up to Easter has been equally fun with lots of Easter crafts and egg hunts in the garden. We have also been learning shapes on our maths tables, so as well as planting flowers, the children have been making pictures of flowers using different shapes.

Our topic this term has been spring, so we have been on walks through the woods to look for signs of spring. We are also looking at mini beasts, so we are uncovering logs and leaves in the woods to see if we can find any little mini beasts hiding. Spring is the time of year when we get busy in our garden so the children have been busy planting spring flowers and vegetables in our garden planters. We are eagerly checking our flowers and veggie patch every day to see what is starting to grow.

This term we introduced a new “Rising Fives” group to preschool. In Rising Fives we work with small groups of children through the week to focus on school readiness. We work on gross and fine motor skills, pencil control, literacy and numeracy, attention and listening skills. Our current theme is the Hungry Caterpillar where we have been looking at life cycles, story sequencing and retelling a story, naming and counting fruits, size ordering and prepositions. We have also been using the story of the Hungry Caterpillar in our yoga classes, practising balancing and being very still and calm. All of our Rising Fives activities are also broken down into simplified activities for our younger children so they are able to work alongside and share in the fun.

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

We’re continuing to spend lots of 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 and vegetables.

We’re currently revamping our preschool garden and introducing choosing units to encourage independence for the children with their outdoor activities. We’re also installing curiosity approach equipment, such as crates, planks and obstacles, to encourage problem solving, sharing, and turn taking.

February has been a busy month - we've enjoyed celebrating Chinese New Year and trying prawn crackers and fried rice at snack time, we even tried some chopsticks. We also had lots of fun racing and flipping on Pancake Day and we created cards and pictures for Valentines Day too. 

We learnt all about the weather this month   and we decorated clouds, made rainbows, talked about what clothes we wear for different weathers, froze water and melted ice and we chalked lots of weather pictures in the garden.

Numbers have featured heavily in our play at preschool this term. We have created ladybirds and number trains with the children, we have used our counting skills when selling items in our role play shop, as well as using numbers in our small group activities and in singing games. Our favourite number songs are Currant Buns, Speckled Frogs and Little Men in a Flying Saucer - you might hear your little ones singing these 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 Hatch Warren Under Fives we are working hard to stay safe and to make preschool fun and positive for our children, despite these strange times.

It’s lovely to welcome the children back to preschool, and we’ve had lots of new children starting who have all settled in brilliantly. 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!

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.

You can see weekly updates from Hatch Warren Under Fives on our Facebook page “Hatch Warren Under 5s Preschool”, where you will see lots of photos and learn our Makaton signs of the week. 

Merry Christmas - December 2020!

After a very different 2020 we've finished the year on a high note at Hatch Warren Under Fives. We've had a magical December and our Christmas month has been all about glitter and sparkle and making wonderful Christmas crafts. We also transformed our role play area into Santa's workshop where the children wrapped presents and stacked them on a sleigh to deliver to their friends.

We've practised numbers with hanging numbered stars on our Christmas tree, we've explored ice and melting ice in our messy tray and danced (a lot) to Christmas music. And we've had a lot more fun in between.

As always, we finished the year with a fun and games filled Christmas party for all of our children. We even had a magical grotto and Father Christmas was waiting inside to deliver presents to the children! Unfortunately families couldn't join us this year but we took lots of pictures which were all uploaded to Tapestry for parents to see the fun.

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 on outdoor walks in the woods looking at autumn colours, listening to autumn sounds and collecting lovely natural resources to use in preschool. One of our favourite autumn activities was hammering golf tees into pumpkins – a great activity to help with children’s fine motor skills. 

We had lots of events to get involved with in November too – we started the half term with fireworks and Diwali. The children listened to the story of Diwali, danced to Diwali music and made clay Diwali tea light holders. Fireworks were all about colour and texture and the children made some amazing pictures, as well as making some special firework biscuits. Remembrance day was another November highlight – 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 in November with some super Pudsey inspired activities and lots of dressing up throughout the week! And we supported anti bullying week by wearing odd socks to preschool.

We are continuing with our small group work each week with Write Dance, a super fun session and a fantastic way to build motor skills and introduce writing skills; Science experiments – this week we looked at how a lit candle needs oxygen to stay alight and what would happen if you limit the amount of oxygen. And the children still love our cooking sessions when they make or bake treats to take home each week. Next on the baking table will be some yummy Christmas goodies!

October 2020 - first half term

We're nearly ready for our half term break, and what a wonderful first half term we've had!

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. Our messy tray has been full of lots of autumnal resources and textures and we have also been making pumpkin pictures, hammering golf tees into butternut squashes and using broccoli as our paint brushes to create autumn tree pictures. 

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.

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 on more autumn walks where the children can 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.

Our weekly science experiments are still going strong – our favourite this half term has been creating lava lamps in wine glasses. The children loved watching the chemical reaction of oil, water, food colouring and alka seltzer - they enjoyed recreating the experiment by themselves too!

Coming up in our next half term 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 will be exploring lots of sounds for firework night too. 

September 2020 - Happy to be back!

It’s been so lovely welcoming our children back to Hatch Warren Under Fives  - it's been six months since we've seen some of our older children so it’s been very exciting seeing how they’ve grown and we've loved meeting our new children too. 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. 

Our first few weeks are always all about setting in, building confidence and ensuring our children are happy. 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 have lots of fun 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 to start our new term so the children have been making the most of the garden and we've been on some wonderful outdoor walk across the fields and through the woods. Over the summer holidays the Community Payback scheme has been busy removing 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 planting herbs, lavender and spring vegetables.

We have been doing lots of colourful things this month with paint mixing and science experiements about colour and we’ve been looking at shapes too. We also have our topic of Autumn to look forward to where we’ll be enjoying lots more outdoors time on some autumn “listening” walks and trips to the woods to collect sticks and leaves to build bug hotels and hedgehog houses.

COME ON A VIRTUAL TOUR OF HATCH WARREN UNDER FIVES PRESCHOOL!

We've posted a video on our Facebook page to take you for a look inside our lovely HATCH WARREN UNDER FIVES preschool and to meet our wonderful team.

Please copy and paste this link into your browser to have a look around:

https://www.facebook.com/HatchWarrenUnderFives/videos/590405208239804/

Celebrating Chinese New Year 2020 

We had a great week at preschool celebrating Chinese New Year.  We set our role play area up as a Chinese restaurant and the children had some lessons in how to use chopsticks.  On our mark making table, we compared Chinese writing with our own and also looked at Chinese newspapers.  In our maths area we built the great wall of china using Lego, and we all had a guess as to how many bricks we might need.  And on our craft tables we created lanterns, fans and dragons, some of which are now proudly displayed on our back wall.

During group times the children celebrated the year of the rat by taking part in dragon dancing, trying on animal masks, whilst listening to the story of Chinese New Year, and tasting a selection of Chinese food.  We had some mixed reactions to this; some liked the sweet chilli sauce, others said it was too hot, but everyone seemed to enjoy the prawn crackers!   

For our science experiment the children were able to shine a penny and take it home in a lucky Chinese New Year money pouch. 

Happy Chinese New Year!

Happy New Year from Hatch Warren Under Fives! January 2020

A new year, a new decade and a new term at Hatch Warren Under Fives – and the fun is already in full swing. We’ve had a great start to 2020, we’ve welcomed lots of new children who have all settled in brilliantly and we spent our first week back hearing lots about Christmas, who the children spent time with, where they visited and what presents Father Christmas delivered. 

We are back to enjoying our weekly science experiments, cooking and baking, play dough gym, yoga and makaton. We have also introduced “Focus Time” this term, this is small group work which takes place after register each day where we focus on our phonics by introducing a letter of the week, and we help our children understand our 'golden rules' of sharing and turn taking, kind hands, kind feet and kind words. We also learn a Makaton sign of the week in our focus groups - you can see our Makaton word of the week on our Facebook page, where our lovely Dee signs a different word each week. All of our focus time activities are based on the individual needs of the children and help to develop skills outlined in the Early Years Foundation Stage.

We have a busy half term coming up - 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. 2020 is the year of the Rat so we’ll be celebrating Chinese New Year, which will include some food tasting and we’ll be trying to use chopsticks too!

Happy Christmas 2019

What a great end to the year at Hatch Warren Under Fives! Our children performed amazingly in their Christmas performance to a very packed house, and we even had a visit from Father Christmas!

Happy Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of our families - we look forward to seeing you all in January. (the new term starts on Monday 6th January).

A great first half term

November 2019

Our first half term at Hatch Warren Under Fives has flown past; the children have been busy with lots of craft, autumn activities, baking and science experimenting.

There have been lots of things to discover for our topic of autumn - we’ve been looking at the changes in the garden and the different colours of the leaves and we’ve taken autumn walks to listen for the crunching sounds of leaves. We’ve also had great fun jumping in big puddles as part of our weather theme! 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).  The children made some wonderful hedgehog houses and baked hedgehog bread rolls (these are much harder than they look – so a huge well done to the children!) We have also been looking out for conkers, pine cones and leaves, which are all great natural resources to use in preschool at this time of year. 

We continually promote British values at preschool, but this term we’ve had great fun with “Democracy”. The children have been voting for which book to read at circle time, they have loved casting their votes and learning about different choices. One of our favourite books this half term has been Room on the Broom and the children created a wonderful wall display all about the book.  Another new wall display is our lovely birthday board, the children have been helping put their own candles on the cupcakes for their birthday month.

In our weekly science experiments we’ve seen impressive foaming explosions when we mixed mints with coke, we’ve made jelly volcanoes with baking soda and vinegar and we’ve also learned how rain is formed. 

We've celebrated some special days at preschool this term too - Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights,  bonfire night and Children in Need.  

Welcome to a new academic year!

September 2019

Welcome to a brand new academic year at Hatch Warren Under Fives. It's been lovely welcoming back our older children and seeing how much they've grown over the summer. We've had lots of new children joining us this September too, who are all doing brilliantly.

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 Hatch Warren 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’ve had some gorgeous weather to start our new term so the children have been making the most of the garden. Over the summer holidays we had some wonderful new transfers designed on our playground floor – which include an alphabet caterpillar, hopscotch and a number square. Our playground floor is now really bright and colourful and the transfers make a wonderful addition to our garden. 

Summer term 2!

June/July 2019

The final term - always our busiest at preschool! 

Our older children have been making visits to their new schools and it's lovely to see how excited they all are. They have gained so much confidence and are so ready for their next big adventure.

As a charity run preschool, we hold lots of fundraising events through the year. Our big event in June was our sponsored obstacle course race – just like a mini sports day! Some of the children changed independently into their PE kits as part of their school preparation, and we had a fantastic couple of days with parents coming along to cheer the children round the course.

We also had a day just for our Dad's to celebrate Father's Day, with a Dad's version of afternoon tea which included lots of doughnuts!

Our Play Yoga sessions have been so popular that we’re now running yoga lessons twice a week. 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.

We've also had a new addition to the garden, a fabulous new water table, even more encouragement for our children to get wet and have great fun with water play! And there’s been lots to smell, see, feel, taste and touch at preschool as we’ve been learning all about our five senses.

Coming up soon is our final event of the year - Graduation day. After a morning of play at Beggarwood Park we’ll be heading back to preschool to join family and friends for afternoon tea and our graduation ceremony to say goodbye to our leavers. We’ll have tissues at the ready!

Summer term 1!

April/May 2019

Our older children had some very exciting news over the Easter holidays - they found out which schools they will be going to! So the start of our summer term has been all about school readiness. We 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 also start to focus much more on numbers, health and self-care and communication and language.

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. The sunny weather has also been a perfect opportunity for us to hunt for mini beasts and learn lots about nature and flowers.

This term we learnt all about the lifecycle of caterpillars transforming into butterflies and we had our own butterfly farm in preschool. We got tiny caterpillars that fed and fed and almost doubled in size each day– the children loved making daily checks and watching our caterpillars grow and then transform into chrysalis, and after patiently waiting for the chrysalis to hatch, it was wonderful to release the butterflies into our garden. This sparked lots of curiosity to discover more little creatures that appear in the garden at this time of year, so we made a fantastic bug hotel. The children are really enjoying adding new resources to attract mini beasts to their hotel and checking each day to see what new bugs and mini beasts they might find.

We’re having lots of fun with our weekly cooking and baking sessions; the children made some amazing ladybird biscuits after finding ladybirds in the garden and they made some very yummy pitta bread pizzas too! Our weekly science experiment still remains a firm favourite with the children, and our weekly play dough gym and yoga sessions are another favourite activity!

Spring term 2!

March 2019

We’ve had a wonderful end to the spring term at Hatch Warren Under Fives.

February started off with lots of Valentine's fun - including our fantastic preschool family disco! We were super creative for Chinese New Year and made Chinese lanterns, fans and dragon flags, we also experimented with chopsticks and tried some new yummy Chinese food (the prawn crackers were a big hit!)

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're also enjoying spending some quiet (and not so quiet!) time in our new cosy corner - a great place to chill out and read stories.

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

We enjoyed a visit from a fantastic preschool Play Yoga teacher. Our session focused on breathing, yoga, creativity, mindfulness and reflection and the children really enjoyed it!

We've been busy with lots of fun days this term... We had great fun with pancake day – flipping pancakes, tasting new toppings and pancake racing; we celebrated St David’s Day with leeks, welsh cakes and daffodils; St Patrick’s Day passed in a haze of green – green painting, green play dough and shamrocks… And it was lovely to see how many children (and adults) dressed up for World Book day - we all came to preschool dressed as some wonderful characters from our favourite books, the children looked amazing, and it’s great to see just how much they enjoy stories and reading. We also took part in Red Nose Day and came to preschool with crazy hair!

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

A new year at Hatch Warren Under Fives!

We’ve had a great start to 2019, we’ve welcomed lots of new children to our preschool and we’ve heard so much about Christmas, who the children spent time with, where they visited and what presents Father Christmas delivered. The Department for Education's "Early Year's Outcomes" 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".

The children settled back to the preschool routine well and are enjoying their weekly science experiments and their weekly cooking and baking. We’ve also introduced play dough gym into our weekly activities, a super fun activity that helps children develop the core muscles they need for writing. Makaton is also used every week at Hatch Warren Under Fives with our rhyme of the week. 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.

In January we have been looking at winter and the seasons. We’ve looked at animals that hibernate and have also explored the colder weather, which included experimenting with shaving foam and baking powder to make snow and making snowman biscuits! 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.

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, Pam and Melissa, for all of their hard work and for the wonderful opportunities we are providing for our children.

Hatch Warren Under Fives and the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)

Within the EYFS we look at how children develop their imagination. At Hatch Warren Under Fives we love observing children in the role-play areas and seeing how they use their imaginations throughout the day. Here are some examples of typical behaviour we might expect to see during the age range of 30 - 50 months old:

• Notices what adults do, imitating what is observed and then doing it spontaneously when the adult is not there.

• Engages in imaginative role-play based on own first-hand experiences.

• Builds stories around toys, e.g. farm animals needing rescue from an armchair ‘cliff’.

• Uses available resources to create props to support role-play.

• Captures experiences and responds with a range of media, such as music, dance and paint and other materials or words.

Happy Christmas 2018!

What a perfect end to the year at Hatch Warren Under Fives! Dinky Dancers put on the best Christmas party fun for our children - lots of games, dancing and Christmas songs... Our naughty elves were causing lots of mischief and laughter and Father Christmas really put the magic into the morning. This was all topped off with an amazing performance from the children in our version of "T'was the Night Before Christmas", including a solo of Jingle Bells from one of our little ones to a big audience of families and friends - simply amazing! The children have worked so hard this term and we really couldn't be prouder...
A very big thank you to Dinky Dancers for putting on such great entertainment, to our parent helpers and committee members for their help setting up, and to everyone that contributed to our great party food spread. 
Wishing you all a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year. See you in 2019!

October 2018

A month of amazing visitors  

We've had an amazing month so far for visitors - during our emergency services week we were lucky enough to have some amazing visitors to make our topic extra special!
We've had a visit from the fire engine - the children climbed aboard and met the firemen; we've had a police officer visiting to chat with the children, they were of course on very best behaviour! And we've also had a nurse, so the children loved bandaging their "patients" under an expert eye.

We had more fun with Louise Weston from Hatch Warren Infant School - she introduced play dough gym to our children, a super fun activity that helps children develop the core muscles they need for writing. 

It's our favourite season, so we've been stepping into Autumn and enjoying all the colours, sounds and foods of the season! The children have been chopping vegetables and making lovely soups with lots of seasonal vegetables. Yummy!  Conkers, pine cones and leaves are a great resource at this time of year – we’ve been on walks in the woods where the children have collected lots of natural resources and looked at the changing colours on the trees. We’ve also been listening to the sounds of leaves crunching underfoot on our woodland walks.  

We continually promote British values at preschool, but this term we’ve had great fun with “Democracy”. This month the children have been voting each day for which book to read at circle time, they have loved casting their votes and learning about different choices.

September 2018

The start of a new year!

It was a Royal Welcome back to Hatch Warren Under Fives; we had a very special delivery during our first week - a thank you card from the Royal Family! Last year our children made a wonderful wedding card for Prince Harry and Meghan, and we received our own royal thank you card! What an exciting start to the new preschool year!

It was lovely to welcome back our older children and our new children have settled in fantastically!

Our staff training this month was all about the outdoor learning environment, so we have some great activities planned for extending our children’s learning outdoors all year round. We’ll also be learning about autumn this term and exploring colours, outdoor sounds and hibernating animals. And we’ll be holding weekly cooking sessions and weekly science experiments throughout the year too.

So far we've conducted volcano experiments using bicarbonate of soda, red food colour and vinegar inside apple and lemon volcanoes, we've experimented with how rain is formed and blown up balloons using bicarbonate of soda and vinegar - no puff required!

We also had a visit from "Debutots" for some story telling and drama activities - such a great activity for preschool children, by exploring our stories vocally and physically we really help with their literacy and communication development. 

June 2018

A busy month!

We are now in the final stretch of our preschool year at Hatch Warren Under Fives – how did that happen?! There is now a great emphasis on school readiness for our older children. Each day we are having fun with activities to promote number recognition, personal/social skills, listening/understanding and health and self care to name a few. Many of our children will also be making their first visits to their new schools this month, very exciting times.

We've been having a busy time in preschool, we held a sponsored obstacle course for the children who were all amazing. They were cheered on brilliantly by lots of parents and raised lots of money to buy indoor and outdoor tents to upgrade our “cosy corners”. We also had visits from Drama Tots who spent the afternoon on an adventure with the children, encouraging them to use music and play and lots of imagination. Laura, the veterinary nurse from St Kitts Vets joined us in preschool with Dudley the Dog, the children loved looking after Dudley and making him feel better. And we had a great Royal Wedding themed week making flags, invitations, crowns and bunting. The children also decorated biscuits and made sandwiches to have at their own royal tea party. This month we also celebrate Father’s Day with doughnuts and bacon sandwiches for all the Daddies that join us to play in preschool.

MAY 2018

The start of summer...

We started the new summer term with the exciting project of hatching some real eggs with our sister preschool, Kempshott Under Fives. It has been a brilliant experience for the children to follow all of the stages from egg to chick over the past two weeks. The eggs were hatched in an incubator and then the chicks moved into a special heated box where the children could feed them and watch them grow! Our little chicks have now gone off to enjoy some more space at the farm.

There has been more excitement for our older children who have recently 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.

April 2018

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter from all at Hatch Warren Under Fives.

We’ve had a busy term learning about spring and looking at baby animals and life cycles. We’ve also had lots of fun looking at the weather… And as if by magic, during our weather topic came the snow, we couldn’t have timed it better! This was the first proper snow experience for many of our little ones and they all had so much fun.

There have been so many celebrations over the last month – but one of our favourites of the year is Mother’s Day. We had a great turnout of Mums and Grandmas who came in to join us for afternoon tea to celebrate Mother’s Day with their little ones. We also had a very busy week at the craft tables making beautiful Mother’s Day cards and special clay tokens with red hearts, created by the children’s thumb prints. Definitely a present to treasure!

Our Easter activities will continue after the holidays when we will be hatching our own chicks with our sister preschool Kempshott Under Fives. This is a hugely exciting project for us and the children can’t wait to receive the eggs and watch for signs of our baby chicks emerging!

When we’re not chick watching this term, we’ll be enjoying a focus on healthy eating and exercise. We’re busy planning a mini Olympics and will ask children to come to preschool dressed in PE kits. This also ties in with getting ready for school – because this month many of our children will be finding out what school they will be going to in September. We’ll be getting many other preparations for school underway including lots of mark making and activities that strengthen little hands for handwriting. Our older children will be focusing on writing names and the numbers 1-10.

FEBRUARY 2018

Stepping into Spring...

We love spring term at Hatch Warren Under Fives! The days are getting lighter and longer, the sun is starting to shine more and it’s one of the best times of year to see wildlife and flowers. Throughout spring term we'll be exploring the season of spring and discovering new buds on trees, flowers that are growing and learning about the baby animals that are born in springtime.

We recently 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). The children became Little Red Riding Hood and decorated biscuits to take to Grandma; the Three Bears had small, medium and large chairs to sit and eat porridge and Jack and the Beanstalk cut up runner beans, looking for the magic ones!

Our other February highlights were Chinese New Year, Pancake day and Valentines Day - lots of yummy food, pancake racing and busy craft tables full of hearts and sparkles.

DECEMBER 2017

He's Been!

Our excited children at Hatch Warren Under Fives had a surprise visit from Father Christmas on the last day of term. They all visited a wonderful Christmas grotto and received presents from Father Christmas - which was followed by an amazing Christmas performance to some very proud parents and family!

Merry Christmas everyone!

December - the most magical time of the year!

After having lots of fun with our recent topics of sports, hospitals, autumn, animal books, nursery rhymes and pirates, we suddenly find ourselves in December – the most magical month of the year at Hatch Warren Under Fives.

At circle time we’ll be talking about the importance of family and special people at Christmas. We’ll definitely be hearing about presents, but we’ll also talk about giving presents to others, sending cards, cooking festive dinners for loved ones and about the real meaning of Christmas and helping others at this special time of year. Of course, there’ll be lots of excitement about Father Christmas and we’ll find out what’s top of the Christmas lists this year too!

The craft tables are awash with tinsel, glitter, sparkle and bright colours this month, with our little creators making cards, decorations and lots of fabulous Christmas crafts.

Our singing voices have been warming up nicely for the last few weeks with practices of Christmas songs and with our nursery rhymes topic. Naturally following on from singing and rhymes is music – this has moved the children on to the second phase of their Phase One Phonics programme where they’ve been tuning into the different sounds made with musical instruments. As always, guitars are a big hit with the children and they’ve loved playing matching games with percussion instruments from the sound bag.

The Christmas performance is our highlight this term, and our little superstars will be taking to the stage to perform this year’s play, based on the entertaining storybook “Jesus’ Christmas Party”. We’ll be putting our own twist to the traditional tale of the grumpy innkeeper who can’t get to sleep because of all the shepherds, angels and bright stars knocking on his door…

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!

News from our first half term - 20.11.17

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

We had brilliant fun with our theme of hospitals - the children loved bandaging and nursing our poorly teddy bears, they practiced mark making by ‘writing’ observation charts and prescriptions and also looked at bones and body parts, learning lots of interesting new words such as arteries and esophagus.

During our restaurants and cafes week, we set up different cafes and restaurants every day and all of the children prepared food, peeling and chopping vegetables; they used chopsticks to pick up and count and explored cereals and noodles in the messy play tray.

Our recent theme is autumn. 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). Conkers, pine cones and leaves are a great resource at this time of year – the children have been bringing in conkers they’ve collected, leaf painting and looking at seasons and the changing colours on the trees. We’ve also been listening to the sounds of leaves crunching underfoot on our autumn walks. And of course this month we have firework night – lots more sounds and noises for us to explore, and lots of colourful fireworks crafts too.

Welcome to a new school year - September 2017

It’s great to see how much the children have grown over the summer holidays – and to welcome lots of new faces to our preschool too!

Our first few weeks are always about settling in and helping our children make new friends and get to know staff. 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. 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.

As the weather changes we’re beginning to think about autumn and exploring colours, outdoor sounds and hibernating animals.

We have new staff to welcome this month – Rhian Cooper joins us as our Preschool Leader, bringing a big smile and a wealth of experience with her. And our lovely Head of Preschool, Michelle Tejevo, has stepped up to an Area Manager role between Hatch Warren and Kempshott Under Fives. Vanja Martyn has also joined us as an Early Year’s Practitioner to cover Nicola’s maternity leave.

June - our final term!

We are now fast approaching the final stretch of our preschool year at Hatch Warren Under Fives. School preparation is well underway for our older children and we also have a few fun dates planned for June.

We’ve recently enjoyed a fantastic book theme – we discovered lots of new Julia Donaldson books with the children, although the most popular stories still seem to be the old favourites, The Gruffalo and Stickman. Our little ones used their fantastic imaginations by offering alternative endings, they described characters and managed to continue with the rhyming strings. Some of our children even dressed up as characters from their own favourite books for a day and shared their stories with us.

Coming up, we have our preschool trip to Finkley Down Farm – always a great day out and a brilliant opportunity to see all of the animals that we learnt about during spring term.

We have also been invited to take our older children on a bus trip to Asda. As well as being hugely exciting for the children, it will be a great exercise for school readiness. We can practice some fun literacy and numeracy skills by choosing foods beginning with certain letters, looking at shapes, counting items in our baskets and picking out foods which are healthy.

There is now a great emphasis on school readiness for our older children. Each day we are having fun with activities to promote number recognition, personal/social skills, listening/understanding and health and self care to name a few. Many of our children will also be making very exciting first visits to their new schools!

Dads are very important this month too – it will be all about Daddies for a week in June when we have our annual ‘Bring your Dad to preschool week’ to celebrate Father’s Day.

2017 Summer Term Begins...

We had a great end to last term – we looked at "Our Senses and Our Bodies” and the little ones had a fabulous time exploring all five senses with activities such as food tasting (sweet and sour – lemons were very popular!), baked beans and gloop for touch, listening activities, Kim's game (sight) and flavoured playdough/flowers (smell). The children also learnt some interesting words like “Oesophagus” during their experiments about how the lungs work and how food travels to the stomach (questioning why things happen and how things work is a "Speaking" Early Learning Goal for a typical child aged 30 to 50 months).

We also enjoyed a theme of sport – the children completed obstacle courses, football games and basketball competitions. They also had a go at table tennis, golf and skateboarding (showing increasing control over an object in patting, throwing, catching and kicking is a "Physical" Early Learning Goal for a typical child aged 40 to 60+ months).

Our Easter egg hunt was a brilliant way to end the spring term, we had a great afternoon following the Easter egg trail, the sun was shining and everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves. A big thank you to Tesco, Co-op, Asda, Sainsburys and Waitrose who all kindly donated eggs for prizes, a great support for our preschool. In the lead up to the Easter egg hunt, the children did a duck hunt around the preschool (of course we had to find who had laid the eggs for the Easter trail!)

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? There’ll be a big focus on numbers, health and self-care and communication and language.

Celebrating Special Days in March

We’ve had a great month celebrating special days, and we’ll be finishing the term on a chocolate high with our family Easter egg hunt, always such a fun afternoon!

We celebrated Pancake Day, St David’s Day and St Patrick’s Day in March, enjoying lots of fun activities – pancake races, mud pancake making, bulb planting, drawing daffodils, playing with green pasta and playdough and trying green snacks, plus experimenting with all sorts of other snacks – including pancakes, leek soup and colcannon…

Our most special celebration was Mother’s Day. We had a fantastic turnout of Mums for our “Mother’s Day Stay and Play Week” and we had two lovely Afternoon Tea dates, with the Mummy’s being served by our very excited little ones!

In between all of the special days and celebrations, the children have enjoyed (yes, enjoyed!) the theme of “Bugs, Slugs and Creepy Crawlies”. The children loved playing with the electronic tarantula, digging for creepy crawlies in the mud and making worm pies. The craft table was awash with butterfly painting, clay bugs and paper plate ladybirds. We also made caterpillar name trains watching very carefully to see if children could form recognisable letters, which meets the "Literacy" Early Learning Goal of a typical child aged 40 to 60+ months.

We’ve also enjoyed a “Music and Dance” theme, with all of our girls and boys having a great time dressing up in tap shoes and tutus. Dancing and movement can help strengthen the hand muscles in preparation for writing. One fun way in which we do this is through "Write Dance". Write Dance is an approach (used by schools) that provides opportunities so children can develop the physical skills needed to develop their handwriting skills. The children have so much fun with this and the writing movement is driven by the music.

Hatch Warren Under Fives and the EYFS

Here are Hatch Warren Under Fives we love to make marks. This can be using pens, paper, paintbrushes, chalks, pens or even using our fingers to make marks in soil, jam or flour.

Why is Mark Making Important? Mark making gives children the opportunity to explore imaginatively, physically and creatively, to test their ideas and extend their play. Writing begins long before a child can physically hold and control a pencil or crayon effectively, the journey to becoming a confident writer begins at birth and mark making is the foundation that underpins a child’s ability to write. Remember children learn that marks have meaning by watching adults writing. Encourage your child to ‘write’ with you e.g. shopping lists, phone messages, memos and greeting cards.

The EYFS states that we can expect to see a child of 30 - 50 months sometimes giving meaning to marks as they draw and paint and ascribe meanings to marks that they see in different places. Let your little one enjoy lots of mark making opportunities to build on their writing skills!

Happy New Year from Hatch Warren Under Fives!

It has been wonderful listening to the children talk about their Christmas holidays and who they spent time with. And it’s been lovely to see them recreating some of their festive memories through their play. We’ve seen children making Christmas cakes in the role play area, having dinner with Nanny and Grandad, even opening and requesting to wrap presents so they could be just like Mummy. All that present wrapping has involved lots of visits to the craft cupboard for extra paper! 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".

Our Main Room has been buzzing with activities based around new toys and gifts the children received for Christmas. The Home Corner became a garage with car park, car wash and transporter. Outside, the children have enjoyed a spot of fishing, shooting at targets and taking teddy bears on a picnic. In the mark making area we had Paw Patrol themed paper and Argos books for the children to cut out pictures of their amazing new toys. The children have also been kept busy in the Garden Room washing and feeding their new babies and making Superhero balloons and bracelets.

Glitter Season! November/December 2016

The buzzword for this term at Hatch Warren Under Fives has to be GLITTER! December is a truly fun and magical time at our preschool and it’s definitely beginning to look a lot like Christmas everywhere you go… But at Hatch Warren Under Fives we’re true believers that you can’t ever have too much glitter, so we started our “glitter season” straight after half term with Party Week!

With many of our children celebrating birthdays around now we decided to create our own party theme to explore number recognition with the children. They counted candles on cakes, made birthday badges with their ages and practiced their mark making skills by creating party invitations. Lots of fun was had decorating biscuits and cakes and getting messy with our favourite party food, jelly. 

We’ve had lots of play around traditional fairy tales - planting beans with Jack and the Beanstalk, Building houses with the Three Little Pigs, building bridges with the Three Billy Goats Gruff and creating a Goldilocks corner with different sized bears, chairs, spoons and bowls. 

The room has been alive with noise and music this term too - the children have moved on to the second phase of their Phase One Phonics programme and have been tuning into the different sounds made with musical instruments. Guitars have been a firm favourite in the preschool and we’ve been playing matching games with percussion instruments from our sound bag. The children have made their own rain sticks and cup shakers and had great fun experimenting with sounds such as crunching leaves and noisy cereals.

To add to the excitement this term, we also welcomed 12 new children into our Under Three’s group. They’ve settled in beautifully and are having huge amounts of fun making new friends and exploring their new preschool.

December is set to continue in a glittery, sparkly, Christmassy blur of making cards and decorations, singing our favourite Christmas songs and of course, putting on an amazing Christmas performance for the parents. Our children will be starring in “A Christmas Musical Melody” and will be showing off their new musical skills to full effect! 

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!

Our amazing first half term of 2016

The children have been busy, busy, busy learning through play this term. Our Rising Fives Coordinator, Pam, has introduced the themes of cars and transport; and colours, shapes and numbers. We’ve had boats floating on jelly, a car wash, we’ve made traffic light sandwiches and name trains. And to complete our cars and transport theme, the children had a visit from the local lollipop man – he even bought along a mini lollipop stick for some role play with the children.

The little ones have also been mixing colours, painting toast and going on walks to look at shapes and colours in our environment.

At HWU5s we introduce pre-phonics skills through the Phase One Phonics programme. Our early phonics teaching initially focuses on developing our children’s listening skills. Angela, our SENCO, has been having a great time with the children on indoor and outdoor walks listening to the sounds in our environment. The children have been listening attentively to the sounds all around them and talking about what they’ve heard. We’ve shared rhyming books and had great fun guessing the sounds from the listening box – socks full of marbles, pots full of buttons, squeaky dog balls, jingling bells, and lots more...

The children also joined in with Macmillan’s World’s Biggest Coffee Morning this year and opened their very own coffee shop. Parents came along for coffee and cake – all served by our preschool waiters and waitresses. The children took all the payments and manned the tills, collecting £112.50 for this wonderful charity.

And in our last week before October half term, Hatch Warren Under Fives spent a week in the great outdoors. Our annual Woodland Week is a firm favourite with the children, they had a great time discovering bugs, eating barbeques, making dens, and collecting some lovely autumn leaves and pine cones. And while we were down in the woods this year, Hatch Warren Under Fives and their sister preschool Kempshott Under Fives, hosted their own Teddy Bears Picnic for siblings, friends and families. We had an amazing afternoon and the children and their favourite teddy bears enjoyed a teddy bear trail, face painting, games and there was even a prize for the best-dressed teddy! A huge thank you to Sainsburys who showed fantastic support by very kindly donating food for the teddy bears picnic.

Our first half term has gone so quickly... But as they say, time flies when you're having fun! Have a happy half term - and we look forward to more adventures in November.

Teddy Bears Picnic

A massive thank you to all those that came to our Teddy Bears Picnic! We all had a wonderful time going on a Bear hunt, racing teddies, having face paints & picnics, best dressed teddy competitions and eating lots of cake!! Our picnic food was so generously donated by Sainsbury's - Thanks Guys!

Hatch Warren Under Fives Graduation Concert

We had a beautiful day for our 2016 leavers concert, the children and staff went to Beggarwood park with the children to have a final play and ice cream then walked back to the preschool where we were clapped into our main hall by all our lovely parents and carers.

Music, singing, awards, food, face painting and games followed with plenty of laughter and fun had by all.

Good luck in your new schools class of 2016 - we'll miss you!

Finkley Down Farm

Hatch Warren Under Fives recently visited the fabulous Finkley Down Farm!

Parents, Early Year Practitioners and children had a wonderful time playing in the park, the sand pit and the indoor play centre! They also had plenty of time to look at all the animals and have a cuddle with one or two.

We look forward to visiting you again next year!