Weekly Focus of Learning:

Here at Threemilestone Preschool, we firmly believe in the positive impact that books can have on teaching children and the enjoyment of sharing these stories with their families. We focus on a particular story over a 2 week period as we have noticed in the past through evaluating our planning that this allows the children to really consolidate their learning and extend their listening and attention skills. By implementing a 2 weekly planning schedule, this allows us to expose the children to a variety of stimulating activities to develop and inspire the children, it also enables us to extend and challenge the children’s learning and development. During this time, we teach the children new words and vocabulary to deepen their understanding in a variety of scenarios.

As Staff we thoroughly enjoy this approach to learning as the children mirror our excitement, which is not only rewarding but also inspiring….we hope you feel this way too!

The Preschool Team

Watch out.......Tiddler's about!
In actual fact you can catch an animation of our recent class reader Tiddler on BBC 1 on Christmas Day. There are also many other Magic Light productions on over the festive period for you to enjoy with your children.

It's Nativity week!!

Wow, what a fantastic performance the children put on for their families!!  A huge well done to ALL of the children and thank you to everyone for attending, we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. 

Congratulations to all of our raffle winners and thank you all for supporting our Preschool throughout 2024.

The staff all wish you and your families a wonderful christmas and we look forward to welcoming the children back in the new year on Monday 6th January 2025, we are also looking forward to meeting our new starters too!

We were also extremely lucky to have a special visitor bearing gifts which delighted the children. "It's SANTA!" one child exclaimed as they caught sight of him coming through the hall.

The Christmas Pine by Julia Donaldson (Week 1)

The Christmas Pine is a wonderful story, which was originally a poem, about an actual christmas tradition that happens every year between two countries.  Every year a Christmas Tree is given by Norway to the UK, to thank us for sheltering their King during the Second World War. The tree is transported by container ship to the UK and then decorated with lights and stands proudly in London's Trafalgar Square.

Here is a link for you to enjoy the story with your child: Tom Hardy reads The Christmas Pine ? | CBeebies Bedtime Story - YouTube

The children have been busy little elves over the past couple of weeks, creating beautiful homemade gifts to proudly give to their families for christmas......it's been like Santa's workshop!!

Our songs of the week are songs from our nativity performance to make sure that we are getting plenty of practice in.

Five little men in a flying saucer (Week 2)

We will be continuing our focus on ways of protecting our planet in particular the importance of recycling. The children have been bringing in items from home for discussion by naming what material they are made from and identifying recycling logos on them.

In our maths focus, we are encouraging the children to subitise (the ability to look at a small set of objects and instantly know how many there are without counting them). To facilitate this we are using a dice, we will then prompt the children to count of the corresponding number of shells or pine cones to reinforce the value.

Our preschool nativity production is rapidly approaching, so we are continuing our rehearsals in both the morning and afternoon sessions. You are in for a treat!

Week beginning 25th November 

Five little men in a flying saucer - (Week 1)

This week the children will embark on an educational journey centered around caring for the environment. We will introduce the various recycling symbols and discuss their meanings and important topics such as deforestation, pollution, landfill and emissions and their impact on our world. We will even be sorting some recyling into the appropriate coloured boxes, we are hopeful that the children will make this link to the recycling that happens in their homes.  

As we are now entering the winter season, we will be encouraging the children to notice changes in the world around them.  To develop the children's sense of resposibility, the children will all get the opportunity to make their own bird feeders for home to promote respect and care for our planet and the animals that call it home.

Our words of the week are:

Alien, factory, traffic jam, emissions, forest, before, after, wlidlife, landfill, rubbish, recycling, emissions, caring and protecting, hibernate, cold, hungry.

Tiddler - (Week 2)

This week we're all about imaginary play! The children will be consolidating their learning based around our class reader 'Tiddler' and working in groups to create their own underwater  sea world in our water tray. The children will be encouraged to share and take turns placing items into the tray to work collaboratively whilst creating Tiddler's world.

We will also be studying an Atlas of the world to reinforce to the children how much of the earth's surface is made up of water.

Outdoors, we will be playing 'What's the time Mr Wolf?' as part of our mathematics and practising the "O'clock" phrase. We will also be blowing bubbles outside to represent the bubbles that the fish make in our story.

Words of the week:

Tiddler, tall tales (fibs), Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, O'clock, dawdling and recognise.

Tiddler - (Week 1)

This week our focus of learning is based on a book by Julia Donaldson titled 'Tiddler', which tells the story of the smallest fish in the sea who tells the tallest tales. The story talks about days of the week and different O'clock times.

We will support the children to understand that there are 7 days in a week by singing our days of the week song whilst showing them to the words in text form. We will be using an interactive clock to introduce the children to different times of the day and encourage them to say the phrases e.g. "Five O'clock" etc. This will also link back to our opposites learning a few weeks ago when we discussed the big and small hands on a clock face.

Our song of the week is 'Hickory, Dickory Dock.' 

Please listen along with your child at home: 

Hickory Dickory Dock - Children's Song with Lyrics - YouTube

Green Emily will also be teaching us Ocean Yoga poses, ask your children to teach you them at home.

Week beginning 4th November 2024

The Colour Monster (Week 2)

This week we are continuing with our focus on 'The Colour Monster' story and will use our special colour monster toys to encourage the children to match the colour to the emotion.

Following on from last week's activities with mirrors, we will introduce the children to the word 'Reflection' and explore lines of symmetry with a variety of shapes and a mirror.

Before registration we will encourage the children to find their name cards and then to place it into the 'Happy' or 'Sad' feelings box to enable them to express their feelings to their teachers and their peers. We will also validate that is ok to feel sad sometimes and what we can do to help someone that is feeling sad.

Week beginning 21st October 2024

The Colour Monster by Anna Llenas (Week 1)

This week we explored a whole range of emotions to help the children to understand the feelings of themselves and others. We used emotions cards as a visual aid alongside a mirror to look at what the feelings may look like. The colour monster story links colours to the different emotions so we created our own colour monsters with paint, cotton wool and a wooden block to "Splat" the colour monsters onto the paper. 

Our class song this week was 'If you're happy and you know it'. Green Emilym is our resident Yoga Guru,  guided the children to combine feelings with yoga poses.

You will find a link to 'The Colour Monster' story on the EYLog for you to listen to and enjoy with your child. 

Week beginning 14th October 2024

The Great Nursery Rhyme Disaster (Week 2)

Last week one of our class songs was 'Hey Diddle Diddle' which references the moon, so this week we are exploring the Solar System in more depth. We will be looking at the names of the planets and their position in relation to the sun. We will also be introducing opposites such as hot/cold, big/little, close/ far away etc.

The children will also be incorporating the Solar System into their Maths and communication and language too, learning that there are 8 planets and we will be introducing the language of 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc. To do this we will be sharing our planet song which you can find the link for here: The Planet Song | Space Explained by KidsLearningTube - YouTube. Please enjoy listening along with your child at home. 

The Great Nursery Rhyme Disaster by David Conway (Week 1)

This week our focus is based around our class reader 'The Great Nursery Rhyme Disaster' by David Conway.

The children will have a variety of activities to participate in relating to the various Nursery Rhymes within this story.

We will have water play with different sized containers like Jack and Jill, 'cooking' in the outdoor play kitchen (weather permittting) with real saucepans and kitchen utensils like the Queen of Hearts, exploring musical instruments and marching together as the soldiers did in The Grand Old Duke of York and we will also be encouraging the children to join in with the nursery rhymes together as a group to name a few.

You will notice that at the end of last week we sent a message via our EYlog to Parents and Carers asking if you could send us in a photograph/ video of your child with their favourite bedtime story for us to share with their peers.

We have already had a good response which the children have loved sharing, keep them coming please!

The Rainbow Fish Story (Week 2)

This week, we are our continuing with our Rainbow Fish topic.  The children will have the opportunity to paint their own rainbow fish to explore the colours of the rainbow.  To reinforce the joys of sharing they will add one shiny, dazzling scale to their work.

The Rainbow Fish Story by Marcus Pfister (Week 1)

This week the children will be encouraged to listen to the Rainbow Fish story by Marcus Pfister which is a delightful story about learning to share.  Some of our activities will include searching for Rainbow Fish hidden in the environment, water play with animals from the sea, relaxing to ocean sounds and calming music as well as yoga poses relating to the sea.  As part of our maths focus the children will be matching fish cards before washing their hands for snack by describing the colours and patterns on the fish.

Our ‘Words of the Week’ will be scales, shimmer, shiny, dazzling, glittering, friends, sharing and happy.