The Camera Failed

So sorry to let you all down this week. The camera seems to have completely lost it! It is just one big blur so until I can get it re focused I am afraid I have no photos. It is just typical on such an exciting week.
On Tuesday this week we dug a very deep hole in the garden. The children shifted lots of the earth and really enjoyed themselves. What a shame I have no photos of the state they were in before we cleaned them up for you---or a photo of the state of the preschool room !. We then put all sorts of rubbish in the hole and covered it all with soil.
Just before Easter we will dig it up and see what sort of rubbish has begun to rot and which still looks the same.
The other days this week groups of 4 children at a time have gone to Morrisons with some money. They were asked to buy something which had a wrapping which didn't need to be wrapped and something which had a wrapping which really did need a wrapping
Most of the groups have really understood what they were doing and talked about all the different things in Morrisons. I know my group had a lovely time watching the butcher wrap packets of chops etc.
Next week you will be able to see what they chose but to give you an idea --Liquid soap and a tin of baked beans needed to be wrapped to get them home whilst a cucumber and a French stick really didn't need to be wrapped as they were.
Anyway Happy Mothers day to you all. We hope you enjoy your garden lights at your next Barbeque .

Family names at R'Fives

Today at Rising Fives we talked about our family names and what they may mean..

We wondered if one of our boys called Bird may have had a Great GrGrGrGrGrandad who looked after the carrier pigeons. Perhaps Lindsey's family the Deponeo's looked after the ponies while maybe our little girl called Scully had a family who ferried people across a river.

We then made some family name plaques for our front doors using little tiles. Everyone worked so hard and concentrated so well.

Even the little girl with the gigantic name of Broomfield quietly completed her work all by herself.!

Freezing Refuse Collectors

The first week back is litter week but it has been absolutely freezing outside all morning long. These children wrapped up well and walked down Upton Drive to see if they could find any rubbish. They filled several bags but as you can see they looked very cold when they returned.Linda and Julie went with them and said the children were quite disgusted by all the rubbish they were finding.
The second picture is at interest table time were they showed the other children all the rubbish they had found and we began to talk about which bits of rubbish may rot away and which will stay there for a long time.

The perfect Garden

Our theme this term is recycling and we started this with aweek on litter. These children are spending a bit of time with Heather designing their perfect garden .

Chinese Dragon Dance

The last day of January half term saw the Rising Fives groups putting on a Chinese Dragon Dance for their Mums. It ended with the Dragon and the Lion rearing up at each otheer and for one dreadful minute wee thought we may have war !

Organising my wardrobe

Today the children helped me to organise my messy wardrobe. We sorted a mountain of clothes into hoops . One hoop was for cold weather clothes,another for rainy weather clothes and a third hoop for hot weather clothes.It was all organised in double time and now my wardrobe looks well tidy!
We also had our pancakes today. A day late I know but we had two assessors in yesterday looking at our N.V.Q. students.Mums don't forget our lunch on Friday!

Games on a Monday

Today at preschool we had a game to develop concentration and a game to develop the memory.

Our first game was one of Lola's favourites. We all had a chop stick each and we had to pass around a Hoola Hoop from one to another. It is certainly not as easy a it sounds but we did manage to go around all 18 children and we only broke three Hoola Hoops! .

Later we played Kims game. We had fifteen things on a tray which we looked at carefully. We closed our eyes and one was taken away. We then had to remember what was missing.

We were all very good at this game!

Chinese New Year (correct version)

At Rising Fives today we began our work on Chinese New Year. We watched a short D.V.D.on Ian's New Year who is a little Chinese boy . He goes to watch the New Year parade in Manchester.

We talked about China ,cut open a tea bag and looked at some rice.

Shea was able to tell us how to say Happy New Year in Chinese,well done Shea!

We then did some Chinese writing on some red plates then decorated them. These will go on our dragon and our lion next week for our special dance for you Mums.

We tried on some Chinese costumes and had Chinese noodles for our snack. Everyone managed the chop sticks very well.

We hope you Mums are looking forward to our dance next week!

Chinese New Yyear

Let It Snow

So we were promised snow today and we all looked forward to it but it didn't come !!!!!!!

However the weather was cold and so very blowy. We talked about the cold day and how the rain was freezing and making some rather nasty hail .Our pictures show how we had some frozen shapes to watch.

These children tried to melt the cubes and the shapes as fast as they could. Someone had the idea of warming their hands on the radiator then transferring the heat on their hands to the ice cubes. Very clever ----and you can see from our last picture that this worked for one smiling little girl. (Our radiators are at a constant safe low temperature in case you were wondering!).

Out in the messy passage some children helped Janet to do another page of our book while others printed lovely snowy pictures like this creative young lady.