One of our children was celebrating a birthday this week and brought in a beautiful platter of fruit to share at snack time with their friends. We thought that this was a lovely idea.

As well as our bug focus there has been lots of things for us to enjoy playing with – we’ve had construction with Stickle Bricks, feasts and tea parties in the home corner, colour mixing onto texture card, pop up and ball toys and our lovely new cogs and gears set.

The sun is shining and the sandpit is newly filled and open for play at preschool. It has been lovely to feel the sand between our toes, to dig and to make sandcastles.  It also gives the children a good opportunity to practise taking off and putting shoes back on.

Bugs have been a big thing this week and the children have been hunting high and low for caterpillars, beetles, slugs, snails, ants, woodlice and anything else they can find.

They have been building habitats for bugs and nests for birds at the craft table using natural material and egg boxes, decorating ladybird pictures, and practising their scissor skills cutting caterpillar shapes in the busy fingers area.

Small world play indoors has been about different habitats for bugs too and looking at bugs from around the world.

We had a special delivery of our caterpillars on Monday. They were very tiny but are growing so very fast. This is giving the children the opportunity to see them grow and observe the stages of transformation into a butterfly.

It may be the last week of half term this week, but it has been a busy one. Our focus this week has been air and sea travel and transport. The children have been making hot air balloons at the busy fingers table, helicopter pictures at the craft table, “Zooming to the Moon” during music and movement, sailing pirate ships and boats with water play and exploring space travel through our small world play.