This week the children have been learning about hedgehogs and hibernation through group discussion and activities on offer each day. We have read ‘Say Hi to Hedgehog’ a few times this week which was very informative about what Hedgehogs eat, what their babies are called and why they hibernate through the winter. The children decided they’d quite like to eat lots and sleep for a long time!! The children have also used the playdough and clay to create hedgehogs, carefully placing their spaghetti spikes in. The children have also used the spaghetti as paint brushes to create pictures with. Miss Jo collected some lovely natural autumn resources for the children to use to decorate hedgehog pictures. There has been a lot of interest in the water tray this week and we also had the arrival of a water wall. The children were fascinated with how the water travels from the bucket up through the tube to the top when they use the pump. We also saw the arrival of our new mud kitchen this week and there have been some lovely creations with the soil and leaves. Over the last few weeks, the children have spent lots of time working together to build boats, cars, trains and aeroplanes therefore this week we set up a large-scale construction area inside. The children continued to work together to build, using their imaginations and adding resources to their play too. Also, this week there has been some fantastic number recognition and matching of numeral to quantity with our hedgehog pegging activity. As part of our school readiness plan Miss Pippa has made the children their own dry wipe name cards. This have been used frequently over the past couple of weeks as a way of name recognition and for those children that excitedly want to practice their name writing. As the weather begins to turn wetter and colder, we would advise you to bring wellies and waterproofs for your children, we aim to get outside in the garden and for short walks each day. With the addition of the water wall too the children may get a little wet. If you would like to keep a pair of slippers at preschool for your child/ren then that’s absolutely fine. 
