(Reg Charity 1199330)
C/o Greystones Primary School, Tullibardine Road, SHEFFIELD S11 7GL
Telephone: 0114 2671111 email:greystonespreschool@ymail.com
18th October 2022
Dear all,
I cannot believe that we have already completed the first half term of the academic year. It doesn’t seem two minutes since we were meeting you and your children for the first time on a home visit or at one of our stay and play sessions. The children have really settled well and we have had so much fun getting to know one another. During this half term we have looked at the topics of families, similarities and differences and the season of autumn and this week we are looking and talking about the festival of Diwali. I was looking at the photos that we have taken of the children over the last 6 weeks and have noticed just how many different activities we have done and how kind the weather has been to us, there has not been many wet days so far.
After the holidays the clocks will have gone back giving us shorter days. I am sure that the weather will also change and become more inclement. Please ensure that your child brings a coat and wellies if the weather is wet.
Next half term we will be looking at different festivals, light and dark, nocturnal animals road safety, space, feelings, advent, giving, kindness and celebrating together. We will be looking at shapes and numbers in the environment and working on phase 1, aspects 2-3 (instrumental sounds and body percussion) in our letters and sounds work. We will also be starting our back room activities and our lovely dance teacher Charlie Armitage will return.
The first day back after the holidays will be Halloween and we thought it would be nice for the children to come to the setting dressed up if they want to. On the Monday we will be carving out pumpkins, playing with a messy tray including pumpkin seeds, play foam and cooked spaghetti enhanced with a few spiders for good measure. We will also be making potions outside and having a Halloween dough disco at the end of the day. The role play area will be changed into a witch’s kitchen for this week. During the rest of the week we will be celebrating the festival of bonfire night. We will be making firework pictures, talking about how to be safe on bonfire night as well as making some yummy parkin. We will also be starting our topic of light and dark, looking at shadows and telling stories with puppets in our shadow puppet theatre.
Thank you to those of you who have booked to join us at the Greystones on the 30th October at 1.30 pm for the Halloween Concerteenies performance. I can now confirm that this particular concert is now sold out, but there are a few tickets left for the performance at 11.45pm. Danielle and I will also be attending and would like to invite you to join us afterwards in a reserved area of the Greystones for a social event for the families that have attended this very special concert.
As you are aware Danielle has set up a private Instagram account showing what the children are getting up to each day. The reason for this was to evidence to Ofsted how we interact and communicate with parents. We have received fantastic feedback from the parents who have signed up to the group, but have also had suggestions that running a private group on Facebook would also be helpful as not all parents use Instagram. We have therefore set up a new Facebook group, please note that if you have already returned your permission slip for Instagram you will allowed onto the Facebook group, this means that you now have the choice of which social media platform you prefer, the posts however will be exactly the same on Instagram and Facebook. If you haven’t sent in your permission slip and want to see what lovely activities your children participate in, please return the signed slip to the setting as soon as possible and we will give you access.
We are still looking for volunteers to join either our trustees or fundraising team. Please speak to me if you would like further information.
Home learning challenge
Whilst out and about during half term look for numbers and shapes in the environment.
Take a photo of a special activity that you have done as a family during half term and bring it into the setting for show and tell.
If you are going on holiday or away for the day, bring in a post card of where you have been.
On behalf of me and the staff team we wish you all a very happy half term and look forward to seeing you all the week commencing 31st October 2022.
Take care,
Julie.