Despite the weather this week we have had a cosy warm week exploring the new set up of the preschool room. Over the half term and during the inset day on Monday we have made some changes to our lighting to make the room calmer without having the overhead strip lighting on. Miss Jo and I constructed a beautiful wisteria tree above the reading area and Miss Sharon provided us with a couple of standard lamps. All the staff feel that the room has a much cosier feel to it now. Also, during the half term, we made some changes to the areas of the room, in particular making the ‘home’ area a bigger space. Before half term we felt that the children were using this area much more and needed more space to be able to role play. This week the children worked together to use the resources in the garden to make a train. They made sure there was room for everyone and then set off for the beach! We also celebrated Alfie’s birthday this week, the children enjoyed the cakes Alfie shared with them. There has been a big interest in ‘junk modelling’ this week, the children have used the available resources to create diggers, tractors, submarines and rockets to name a few of the creations. Yesterday the children explored a monkey ‘game’ that we were kindly gifted at the end of the summer term. The children worked individually and in pairs to join the pieces together and they used the handle to turn the cogs which then made the monkeys move round and round.