September 2004
The summer has gone by so quickly and the end of last term seems a lifetime ago. We would just like to say how much, as a staff, we enjoyed the end of term festivities. The Teddy Bears picnic was a great success and it was lovely to be able to wish all the leaving children good luck on their next adventure. We would also like to thank everyone for the kind messages, cards and presents that we received - it was quite mind blowing!!! The cards and messages have all been filed away in our memory boxes.

The new term has started with the returning children behaving like big children already. The smaller numbers at each session have helped us to settle the children back into their routine and in turn, this will help us to welcome the new starters that will appear next week.

We are planning trips out to various exciting local places and would urge people to sign up to accompany us - outings are great fun. We were able to do an impromptu walk today - shopping at Flower Thyme and each choosing our own books at the library. 

July 2004
The summer term is nearly over and all the staff are preparing to say goodbye to those children who are starting 'Big School' in September. We wish them all the best and hope they will soon settle in to their new world and enjoy every minute of it. We are also looking forward to welcoming back the 'littlies' in September when they will miraculously become 'biggies'!!!

Life at Playgroup has been very, very busy recently - not only is the end of term rapidly approaching with all the exciting activities such as Sports Day, Teddy Bears Picnic, Open Evening and swimming, there was also the visit of Paula Hunt, the OFSTED inspector. We will never forget the memorable way of celebrating Helen's birthday! Thank you to all the team and the committee for their help and support and encouragement during those two days. We proved what a great team we all are - thank you. We await the published report - suffice to say we are all smiling!

We have spent time looking at various languages including out body language, we are able to do some Makaton signing, speak a little French, Spanish, Welsh, American and Japanese. We visited a French cafe and ordered out snacks in French ( and ate loads of crusty French bread).

The Olympics has proved very popular as a theme. We spent some time looking at the origins of the Olympic movement and played out the first games held in Olympia using small world figures. We discovered why there was an Olympic flame, what the rings on the flag stand for and made medals to celebrate success. We are also experts on cricket, football, gymnastics, weightlifting, netball, hockey and bowls. No wonder we all enjoyed doing the races in our Sports Days. The weather didn't spoil the day and the children proudly wore their rosettes.

Finally I would like to thank all the children, Mums, Dads, Grandmas, Granddads, Aunty Katrinas and everyone for their support over the past year at Playgroup. We have had a great time with so many memories to look back on - thank you. May you all have a lovely summer brake enjoying the sunshine!

June 2004
We are thoroughly enjoying the summer weather at our Playgroup sessions with the Inny Outy choice available at every available opportunity. The children love the experiences on offer outside and eavesdropping on various conversations is proving amusing. When cleaning the workman's hut, the children involved decided that they had done enough work and so went off to order some fast food from Burger King, Telephones were used to send their order and then when the food arrived, they sat down if the hut and had their break. Work was eventually resumed.

The number 36 as a topic proved to be fantastic for encouraging an awareness of large numbers and several children benefited from grasping the concept of how numbers repeat themselves. We also used the number as the route number for our large model of the Playgroup bus that we entered in  the Scout Carnival. Thank you to all those who came along to support us. Thanks you for the badges too Kirsty - they looked lovely.

The time medium term plan which involved looking at measuring time (clocks, watches, timer) and historical time (what toys Mummy and Daddy used to play with) worked well. We made shadow makers which we used to watch the changing shadows, used the one minute timer to see how high our friends could make a tower and made food time clocks as well as watched that nearly ticked.

Looking at historical time proved fascinating. Thank you to all those parents who responded to the request to send in their old toys. We say Jonathan's Granddad's cricket bat, original Barbies, counting games, dolls, a money box where the coins got swallowed by a puppet as well as Lego and some of the first Crayola Crayons. We looked at then and now transport, toys, swimming, cooking and clothes. Cooking without electricity was very hard work but the cakes tasted scrummy and Carol and Megan had a great time dressing up in old fashioned clothes.

The first swimming at Big School was so warm - the water was 33 degrees - it would be nice to see a few more people coming along. We are so lucky to be able to use this facility - and splashing Helen in great fun!

May 2004
Wombat Goes walkabout' Open Afternoon proved to be a great success. Thank you to all the team members, committee and parents who supported this venture. We sent out lots of invitation and were delighted that so many people were able to come and join in with all the workshops. Barbara Jones (artist), Vikki Holroyd (AWE) and Annie Bishopton (Early Years Centre) came and were pleased to see a Wombat hole. Susan from Bishopton Early Years Centre came with her camera and will be putting an article in her next newsletter. Heather (cluster group teacher ) was impressed by her first visit to our setting and Dea Godley (PLA) was pleased to be included too! It was also nice to see Alec and his wife ( Methodist minister), Gena (Compton Verney ) and Dave Gill ( who spent the afternoon weaving withies and helping the children.)

We should have a great selection of photographic evidence of the celebrations - including the Wombat cake. It was nice to see photos on the web site the very next day. 

Thank you once again to all of those who worked so hard to make the afternoon a success ( especially the jam scones!).

The summer term is in full swing - Inny Outy sessions are running well. We have planted seeds and potatoes on our garden as well as finding out all about animal farming. We have also touched on global farming too. We made hats to protect our heads in the rice fields of China, Tried grinding coffee from Columbia, made smoothies using Bananas from Belize and made coconut macaroons using coconuts from Barbados.

Sue proctor, the Health Visitor from Little Thatch Surgery is retiring at the end of the month. We wish her well and welcome the return of Caroline Donnelly who returns to her old job. We look forward to re-establishing the strong links, which were previously made.

April 2004
The time is flashing by really quickly and Easter has arrived already. Life at Playgroup has been as busy as ever. The last few weeks have been dominated by the work with Barbara Jones, the artist in residence. We have had great fun being creative. The wombat hole at Playgroup is now being used for the role-play activities and every child has had the opportunity of developing their creative skills in an amazing number of ways. We have kept photographic evidence of the fun we have had doing work with withies, tie dying, painting with acrylic paint, using pastels, creating 3D sound tubes, hanging mobiles, weaving, making prints, using modroc and lots more!! We are planning a celebration of all our creativity - watch out for more information on the notice board.

To See Our Wombat Gallery please click here!

The medium term plan of the U.K. proved to be a great success. The children learnt map-making skills, joined in mark making, recognised different parts of our fantastic heritage. Definitely an area we will revisit again. The children are very proud of their map, which is in the quiet room - they even matched up the shape of Cornwall on the postcard from Lauren. We were very impressed!

Ee has been looked at in great depth over the past two weeks. Eggs have featured a great deal - we have decorated them, put them in nests, cooked them, used the shells as well as hiding them in the garden to fins an egg on an egg hunt. Elmer has helped make some beautiful collage pictures - he can fly in one of the pictures!!

The term finished with the visit of the Thursday afternoon older children to an Easter service at St. Peter's church. Heidi changed from being Jonathan's mummy to a lay reader and helped us celebrate Easter. The story of the rabbit in the garden of Gethsemane was delightful and all the children received a rabbit to remind them of the service. Thank you so much Heidi - it was a lovely treat.

The staff at Playgroup would like to wish everyone a very Happy Easter and thank all those people who have taken toys home for the annual spring clean  .

March 2004
Our new children are beginning to settle in to Playgroup and life continues to be busy.

The artist - Barbara Jones - arrived and inspired us to do lots of exciting things in order to create Wombat's hole. We tried painting fire pictures on a large scale using acrylic paints, used soft pastels for flame pictures, started to make the tunnel into the hole using fresh withies and spent time weaving using a variety of plastics, ribbons and lace. All this on one day and very soon, the old climbing frame will be transformed into the hole that Wombat dug. The story 'Wombat Goes Walkabout' is a fantastic story and as March unfolds, we will create more parts of the story at Playgroup and Big School. Special thanks must be made to Kirsty for eventually removing the ladders and slide from the climbing frame - they were really rusted on!!

Our medium term plans continue as well. We are all experts at coin recognition having spent time shopping in the role play area and at the Market Stores. Thanks Pete for letting each child buy a piece of fruit and pay with a variety of small change. Helen went in later to settle up the real bill!! We made price tickets, shopping lists and even managed to design our own credit cards. The computer programme that we are testing for Nursery Education (review in April 2004 edition) proceed very useful and was a popular activity linked with shopping and using money.

Our exploration of the U.K. is progressing well. We have looked at England and are just finishing learning about Wales ( not like sharks, you know). The children have really taken to this topic and are able to relate to the concept of where we live and the other parts of our country. We can even count up to 5 (pump) in Welsh. We await to discover facts about Scotland and N. Ireland. The map showing the U.K. is developing as the weeks unfold. England has been allocated the colour red, Wales is yellow and Scotland will be blue and N.Ireland green. Let's hope the extra sticky tape used to keep it on the wall carries on working!! 

February 2004
Last month was very busy welcoming all the new starters – we hope they enjoy their time at Playgroup. Children that we knew as ‘bumps’ now happily say goodbye and come into Playgroup!

Our ‘Words for Maths’ made everyone stop and think and we had great fun making the washing line full of T-shirts to help our number recognition and sequential ordering. The washing line is in constant use – children have been spotted standing underneath checking that all the dots are correct. We also examined pairs, patterns, positional terminology and made size comparisons between Lisa, Stanley the Spider and a visiting ladybird.

Looking at the letters ‘w’ and ‘s’ proved to be very entertaining. Bob the Builder was able to supply Scoop, Skip and Spud and Wendy and Wellington boots. The ‘w’ week included very wintry weather (we do it every year!!) and the wall building for Humpty Dumpty was changed in to igloo wall building for Pingu (and the Inuits). Strawberry jam sandwiches were very popular and we experimented with sand and spades. Some of the older children joined in with a quite complicated listening to sounds game – some sounds needed us to really focus and do ‘good listening’.

The plans for the Artist In Residence – Barbara Jones – are progressing well. Miss Emms and I have had a meeting with her to plan the logistics of children being in different places and we now await the artist’s list of resources needed and activities that she is planning. The whole experience is to be based on the book by the Children’s Laureate, Michael Morpurgo, which is titled ‘The Wombat’s Walkabout’. Michael is a friend of Carol and we are hoping to make contact with him when plans are further advanced. Tuesdays after Half term will certainly be a little different!

Life has been physically demanding for the team over the past few weeks due to the fact that the hall is being used more frequently in the evenings and we now seem to spend more time moving furniture than being with our fantastic group of children. The team at Playgroup are an extremely dedicated group of professionals who have been prepared to support each other during this period of furniture removals. The complete clearing of the stage for the Barn Dance involved a great deal of lifting, sorting and fitting things into spaces that we never realised existed in order to make the mammoth task of setting up on Monday morning an achievable task.  Roll on the move to our new building?

January 2004
Thank you to everyone for all our Christmas cards and presents - these were all greatly appreciated. All the staff at Playgroup would like to wish everyone a very Happy new ( and exciting ) Year.

The month of December seems so far away now - but we enjoyed celebrating the Nativity Story in all its various forms. The children became experts in the telling of the story and they all did fantastically well in their performance of Toby's Christmas Drum. They sang, they said their words in the correct places, they looked beautiful and, most of all , they thoroughly enjoyed all the practising and going on stage. The children will talk about it for many months to come. We hope all the parents were proud of their children - we certainly were!

The Christmas bag that was taken home in the last week of term held goodies that the children had worked hard on. The card and gift tag showed robins ( in various flock sizes) and a bird feeder which all will know how to make up the mixture top replenish it. A great big thank you must be conveyed to Marie's dad as he prepared all the wood for the feeders. 

We have started welcoming the children who become 3 in the Spring term. It is always nice to welcome new parents and also to re-establish links with 'returners'.

The Spring term looks to be a extremely busy one - especially with the plans for the link with Big School and an 'Artist in Residence'- more details as soon as they are known!!!