Week beginning 8th September 2025
Starting our year together
We have loved welcoming everyone back to the playhouse following the summer break. Our term started with our new starters induction morning, meeting all of our new children and their families whilst enjoying lots of play together and learning all about what they like to get up to. The next day we opened the doors to everyone and the fun, learning and exploration began in earnest. As we got to know each other and friendships were rekindled and established we explored the all about me theme. We are all unique and enjoy different things and our families are diverse, so we spent time thinking about who makes up our families, the different housing we live in, the things we enjoy and also what makes us who we are. As usual there was lots of fun activities for everyone to explore. We had a fantastic week together and are all looking forward to lots more fun and exploration next week Our books of the week were For the Rising fives • Elephant me • Owl babies For the 2-3 year old • Goat goes to playgroup • Owl babies
Week beginning 15th September 2025
Emotions and Golden Rules
In our second week together we spent time thinking about emotions and our Playgroup Golden Rules. It’s so important that our children can talk about how they feel and also label their emotions and recognise the emotions of others. We also think it’s important that everyone feels happy, confident and respected so we have some golden rules that we all support each other to follow. Playgroups golden rules are • We are kind • We are helpful • We listen • We are good friends • We look after the toys To help us think and learn about these things we explored Emotions with the help of the colour monsters linking colours to the different emotions and thinking about how we might feel and what we might do if we are feeling certain emotions. Our daily planning also featured one of our golden rules each day so we made friendship bracelets and hanging love heart decorations to give to someone We created kindness potions and used our listening ears to play sound bingo. We even thought about what emotions the playgroup dinosaurs might have in our dino exploration tray…… And I can tell you there were lots of grumpy, angry T Rex’s stomping about! Our stories of the week were For the rising fives: The colour monsters and Giraffes Can't Dance For the 2-3 year olds: Little Monkey Calms Down Mr Panda's Feelings
Last week we created lots of things for our Owl Babies display board and it was finally dry so we were able to finally finish our Owl Babies board this week
Week beginning 22nd September 2025
Exploring Autumn
As we say goodbye to the long hot sunny days of summer here at Community Playgroup we start using our senses to explore the changing season. The sights smells and sounds of Autumn are all around us and the children begin to notice and explore, from running through crunchy leaves to gathering countless conkers and acorns….. and the school site has an abundance of acorns this year. This week we spent time thinking about the animals we associate with autumn from the hedgehogs who are busy laying down fat stores to see them through hibernation to the busy squirrels dashing about hiding the autumnal bounty to sustain themselves over the winter months. So we made hedgehogs from both clay and bread and we helped develop our counting skills with our number hedgehogs. We also made some lovely bushy tailed squirrels using wool and other soft materials. We looked at the colour changes we could see in the leaves all around as they start to change from brilliant green to beautiful shades of orange and yellow. We hunted for insects in our autumnal themed tray and also had a go at making webs using our rattan threading webs and sari silk ribbons We used our sense of smell in our autumnal sensory tray exploring the scent of some warming seasonal spices like cinnamon, cloves, and star anise. We also had lots of fun making conker runs with guttering strips and foam bricks, looking to see what happened when we use taller piles of bricks. The engineering skills were amazing, and some of the children realised the holes on the bricks were really good places to stuff the conkers which really enthralled a little group who like to explore the enveloping schema. Our stories of the week were • The Leaf Thief • Leaf man
Week beginning 29th September 2025
More Autumnal Fun
This week at playgroup we continued looking at all things Autumn using colourful leaves, shiny conkers, acorns and sticks in our play and exploration. We had lots of fine motor activities on offer like using tongs to collect conkers, threading leaves onto pipe cleaners to make leaf caterpillars and carefully placing conkers on bits of pool noodles using tongs which I can tell you was very tricky and took lots of patience. We made some hedgehogs using leaf glitter and some lovely natural frames to display our autumnal artwork. We enjoyed colour mixing in our autumn colour tray mixing paint into the shaving foam using sticks and more conkers. We also made some Autumn lanterns, carefully applying glue and seasonal coloured tissue paper leaves to glass jars. When we added tea lights the playhouse was aglow with autumn colours. Our cooking activity this week was apple cinnamon pinwheels, the children helped to cut the apples into tiny pieces mixed the sugar and butter and spread it all onto the puff pastry before carefully rolling them up. There were many other activities on offer all of which were explored with energy and gusto as you can see from the photos. Our stories of the week this week were • Oliver’s wood • Owl • The leaf thief We hope you enjoy seeing what we got up to this week, why not come back next week as we learn all about Harvest and take a trip to our local food bank to drop off our harvest collection donations and learn about the work they do.
