This Month at Downend
December

It’s been an exciting month in Kindergarten as we wind down for the end of the year and start getting ready for Christmas celebrations. We’ve had so much taking part in lots of activities to celebrate the festive season. We started off with decorating our Christmas tree - we especially loved our wooden Julia Donaldson ornaments and spotting our favourite characters on the tree. Then we ate a delicious Christmas dinner together - we spoke about all the yummy food we were so lucky to eat and had a new addition to our plates this year - Yorkshire puddings!

We invited parents and carers in to take part in our annual Christmas craft event where we explored a red-nosed sensory tray, read Christmas stories and made colourful potato-printed Christmas cards. This week we welcomed more special visitors in the form of Father Christmas himself! He was accompanied by a penguin and a polar bear from the North Pole who came to tell the children a story.

Other activities this month included making our very own musical instruments out of recycled containers, fabric and elastic bands with bits of spaghetti placed inside to make the sound when we shook them! Down in the dining room we practised our chopping skills with some banana chopping at snack time and out in the garden we explored one of our favourite type of sensory trays - shaving foam!

One of the most exciting days in Kindergarten this month was Mini Beast Day where the whole setting celebrated everything bugs. We saw some brilliant costumes from staff and children. We hunted for bugs around the room and even dressed up as explorers! We used magnifying glasses and nets to help us spot and catch them. We explored a sticky, gloopy tray of creepy crawlies, made our very own Bumblebees out of playdough and printed lots of spidery patterns out of recycled toilet paper tubes. What a busy month!

This month in Pre-School we got out into our local community, visiting Downend Library! We got into pairs for our journey, speaking lots about road safety as we walked there. We realised these are things we have to do to keep us safe, like waiting before crossing the road, then looking and listening for cars to double check it’s clear! We had conversations about the different shops and the hairdressers. We arrived and began to independently explore books that captured our interests! We read a story that had many animals in and we named these brilliantly. A lovely librarian then read us some Christmas stories which we enjoyed, talking about sending Santa our Christmas wishes or even leaving out a stocking. What a great way to spend our morning!

We've been wrapping up warm to explore the garden, paying particular attention to the vegetable patch which still has some plants growing in it! We looked closely at the rhubarb, noticing there were some holes in the leaves. We discussed what might have caused this - we suggested it could have been a slug, a snail, or maybe a bee! We looked at what else might be available in the garden for insects to eat, and noticed that at the moment there aren't many leaves or berries for them. 

Back inside we've been developing our mathematical skills with the counting cubes! We were able to match the colours on the flash cards, and recognise the numerals to then count up the correct number of cubes for each card. The adults then extended our learning by challenging us to add or remove 1, 2 or 3 cubes and tell them how many were left. We did a great job with this! 

Christmas is on the way so we've been stuck into all kinds of festive activities! We engaged all our senses with a playdough activity, helping to add all the different ingredients. We added glitter, and different smells like vanilla and cinnamon! We then used our strong hand muscles to stretch and roll the dough, giving it a sniff to experience the Christmassy scent. We then tried shaping the dough using the cutters!