It’s been a great month at Hatch Warren Under Fives - we have welcomed all of our children back to preschool and it’s been so lovely to see everyone together again.

It’s been a busy few weeks – we celebrated Mother’s Day a few weeks ago and the children made beautiful cards and planted flowers for Mummy. The lead up to Easter has been equally fun with lots of Easter crafts and egg hunts in the garden. We have also been learning shapes on our maths tables, so as well as planting flowers, the children have been making pictures of flowers using different shapes.

Our topic this term has been spring, so we have been on walks through the woods to look for signs of spring. We are also looking at mini beasts, so we are uncovering logs and leaves in the woods to see if we can find any little mini beasts hiding. Spring is the time of year when we get busy in our garden so the children have been busy planting spring flowers and vegetables in our garden planters. We are eagerly checking our flowers and veggie patch every day to see what is starting to grow.

This term we introduced a new “Rising Fives” group to preschool. In Rising Fives we work with small groups of children through the week to focus on school readiness. We work on gross and fine motor skills, pencil control, literacy and numeracy, attention and listening skills. Our current theme is the Hungry Caterpillar where we have been looking at life cycles, story sequencing and retelling a story, naming and counting fruits, size ordering and prepositions. We have also been using the story of the Hungry Caterpillar in our yoga classes, practising balancing and being very still and calm. All of our Rising Fives activities are also broken down into simplified activities for our younger children so they are able to work alongside and share in the fun.

Our older children will be learning which primary school they are going to over the Easter holidays, so we are eagerly awaiting to hear the big news when we get back to preschool after the holidays. Next term we begin our preparations for the transition to big school. We will start by giving the children lots of mark making opportunities and activities that strengthen little hands for handwriting.