What we have been up to!

Take a look at what we have been up to...

Last Day Celebrations!

What a way to end the year! We had the BEST day at Farmer Teds to celebrate our school leavers! We had so much fun seeing so many animals! We even got to brush the ponies!! We got to ride mini tractors, diggers and loved riding the toboggans! We had a game of kicking the balls in the targets, throwing the bean bags at the targets - and this was all even before lunch!! We really did have the best day and we hope we made more memories that will last a life time 💜

Graduation 2024!

Last week we said goodbye to our school leavers as we celebrated their graduation! It was such an emotional morning… seeing the children in their caps and gowns knowing they are more than ready for their journey in reception…. we’re just not ready to say goodbye 💜 The children did absolutely amazing - they chose the songs they wanted to sing and even sung a song using makaton! They talked about their favourite things in preschool and what they’re looking forward to in big school! Well done and congratulations to St Marks Preschool graduates 2024! We wish each and every child the best of luck for their future. We know they will go on and continue to be the superstars they all are 💜

Election Day

In preschool we promote British Values on a daily basis. One of the British Values is “Democracy.” As part of promoting this British value we support and encourage the children to make decisions together. We ensure there are regular opportunities for our children to develop enquiring minds and provide an environment and an atmosphere where questions, thoughts and opinions are valued. We hold regular votes in preschool over various things but yesterday as it was Election day, we discussed this in a child friendly way and provided the children with a more visual learning experience of voting. The children needed to decide which book they wanted to vote for us to read at story time. We gave them 2 choices and encouraged them to think about which one they would like to share and why. Then they came to the polling station and cast their vote by placing the relevant card in the ballot box. Whichever story the children voted for they added a cube to a tower for that story. This allowed the children to see the immediate affect their vote had and encouraged thinking and discussions. “My vote made it bigger, we might win now!” When everyone had cast their vote we counted them in and found our winner!

Pride

We have loved celebrating pride in preschool! We have encouraged everyone to think about the things that make us unique and celebrate each other! We have shared stories that have helped us consider similarities and differences between each other and had some very effective group times where we discussed the things that make us who we are and that we are all amazing! Today we all wore bright colours and enjoyed waving our flags to show we are who we are and we are proud! Well done preschool!

Come on England!

Come on England! St Marks preschool have been getting into the football spirit and cheering England on ready for the match! We know you can score those goals and win! We’ll be cheering you on and waving our flags! We even enjoyed our very own football matches today!

Eid!

This week we have enjoyed celebrating Eid in preschool!

Safety Week - Road Safety!

To extend on from our road safety session in preschool we were visited by the road safety team at St Helens council who delivered a fun, child friendly session on the importance of and how to keep safe on the roads! We listened to a story, joined in some roleplay as we discussed how we keep safe and got to share some handouts to take home to our families! This was such a valuable session!

Safety Week - Fire Fighters!

We were privileged enough to experience a visit from the fire brigade as part of our Child Safety workshops! The firefighters came to preschool and talked to us about keeping safe and knowing what to do in an emergency! The children listened so well and after our discussions we got to go outside and see the fire engine! Firefighter Mike and his team shown us their uniforms and even let us try some on! They shown us some of their equipment and even let us have a sit in the fire engine! To end our visit we got to spray the hose which was SO much fun!

Safety Week Continued!

This week we have had so much fun whilst learning valuable life lessons we hope our children will keep with them as they continue to grow up! This week we have been promoting Child Safety Week in preschool! We have covered many different aspects of how we can keep safe including keeping safe around water, what’s safe to put in our mouths, road safety, first aid and how the police help to keep us safe! This week we have visited our local park to take a look at the water and consider what’s important to keep safe around the water! We have also thought about we can and can’t put in our mouths and had a hands on experience chopping foods into safe sizes and shapes to prevent choking! We loved our visit from the police and this helped us think about if we don’t ever feel safe who to contact! We have enjoyed a road safety session where we enjoyed some imaginative role play acting out different scenarios and thinking what we can do to keep safe when crossing the roads! We have ended the week thinking about first aid and if we do ever become hurt or find someone else we know what to do! We think we can safely say it’s been a very successful “safety week” and we hope we have provided our children with activities and experiences they will remember and intimately will keep them safe!

Safety Week!

Today as part of our activities and experiences we have been providing to promote child safety week we have been fortunate enough to be visited by Merseyside Police! The police officers came into preschool to help us understand and know that the police are always here to help us if we ever need them. Mario and Evie talked to the children about what to do if anyone ever got lost of if they needed help. We got to have a look at and even try on some of the police officers uniform and also try out some of the things they use such as their radios, handcuffs and batons! Then we got to go outside and have a look at and even sit inside the police car! Mario and Evie even put the lights and sirens on for us! This was such a lovely experience for the children and by the end of the visit everyone was confident around the police officers and have learnt that the police are kind, friendly and there to help us when we need it and help to keep us safe! #childsafetyweek

First Aid!

Some of the St Marks team have been busy today, renewing their first aid training and refreshing their knowledge!

Happy St George’s Day!

We’ve had so much fun learning about and celebrating St George’s Day in preschool!

World Book Day 2024!

We’ve had the best day celebrating world book day 2024! We’ve spent the day bringing lots of our most loved stories to life! We enjoyed feeding the caterpillar and some sensory spaghetti play from the story “The Very Hungry Caterpillar!” We enjoyed some frozen, glittery water in our water tray with a “Frozen” theme! The sand tray resembled a portion of “Gruffalo Crumble” and our tuff tray was filled with enhancements from the story “Goldilocks and the three bears”! Our construction area was transformed into the houses from “The three little pigs” and our small world area became the scenes from the story “Squash and a Squeeze”! We enjoyed a lovely tea party in our home corner - luckily no tigers came to this tea party! And our creative area saw the creation of the most beautiful rainbow fishes you have ever seen! Throw in a stay and play session and we think we’ve had the best world book day ever! Thank you so much to all of our families for taking the time to come to our stay and play and also for the amazing costumes your children came in today! We love bringing stories and songs to life every day at St Marks preschool but World Book Day gives us even more of a reason! #bringstoriestolife #makelearningfun #sparkimagination

Celebrations!

What fun we’ve been having in preschool! We’ve been learning about and celebrating a few events this week! From pancake day, to Valentine’s Day to Chinese New Year! To celebrate pancake day we enjoyed some imaginative roleplay as we pretended to make our own pancakes! We shared the story “The Wolfs Pancakes” and made our own lists of what ingredients we need to make pancakes but unlike the characters in the story, we all helped each other and were very kind and helpful! We enjoyed eating some yummy pancakes! For Valentine’s Day we focused on what love means to us and how it makes us feel! We enjoyed taking it in turns to each give our friends compliments and describe what we love about each other! We made some beautiful Valentine’s Day cards too! Today we have had an amazing day celebrating Chinese new year! We have enjoyed lots of Chinese crafts - paintings, making dragon paper chains and Chinese fans! We had lots of fun dancing to Chinese music with our dragons! We also learnt about the Great Wall of China and got busy building our own version in the construction area! Of course we enjoyed some yummy food tasting and tasted some Chinese food! We also made our own fortune cookies in our Playdough area! We’re sure you’ll agree we’ve been very busy and had so much fun! We’re looking forward to a week off ready to come back after half term for lots more fun and learning! We hope all our families have an amazing half term!

Rainbow Fish

Today, we have been learning about different emotions, talking about what we can feel and what makes us feel that way. We decided to focus on the story ‘Rainbow Fish’ as we thought this gives us lots of opportunities to talk about different feelings as we refer to the characters throughout the story. After watching the story, we got creative and made our very own shiny scales. The children loved getting creative, choosing different colours and materials to design their own scale. Once we had all made our individual scale, we added them onto our rainbow fish costume to make a real life rainbow fish. For group time, we used this to bring the story to life! While acting out the story, the children noticed the different emotions for each story character. At the end of the story, the rainbow fish began to share the scales with her friends. The children noticed that the fish was no longer sad and instead was happy again! Everyone then took their indvidual scale that they had been given and stuck it on to our rainbow fish picture. The children was so proud of themselves for all working together to create a beautiful rainbow fish. It’s took pride and place on our wow wall!

Today our sign of the day is ‘sad’. This fitted in perfectly with our theme as the children used the sign for sad when talking about the characters feelings. Take a look at our ‘sign of the day’ and sign it at home!

Grinch Themed Day!

Today was our Grinch day St Marks Preschool! We enjoyed a Grinch themed snack, before exploring all our Grinch themed activities. We couldn’t believe it when we got a knock at the door and it was the Grinch himself! The Grinch came into preschool to say hello to all of the children and he even stayed to have dance with us all. We ended a great day by sharing a Grinch story while enjoying a yummy hot chocolate. What another lovely Christmas themed day!

Santa Claus is coming to St Marks Preschool! 🎅

This afternoon we had our Christmas stay & play and what a turn out we had!! A massive thank you to all of the families that came to join in with all the fun. We had the best afternoon with you and your children. We also can’t believe that we was even lucky enough to get a visit from Santa himself. If we wasn’t feeling Christmassy we definitely are now!

Happy Diwali!

We had so much fun celebrating the Hindu festival of lights yesterday! We came to preschool dressed in bright colours and enjoyed a variety of different activities and experiences to help us learn and understand about this festival! We made salt dough candle tea light holders and decorated them in bright colours and of course lots of glitter! We designed our very own Mehndi hand art and had lots of fun decorating paper hands and even each others real hands! We shared a story all about Diwali and enjoyed watching some interesting videos!

Remembrance Day!
Today we visited the cenotaph in the town centre to lay some of the children’s art work to show our respects for our fallen soldiers. We have been talking about remembrance day this week, learning about who and why we are remembering. The children enjoyed seeing the cenotaph and the poppies for themselves and took great pride in laying the poppies they have made.

We are back!

We have had the most amazing couple of weeks welcoming everyone back after the summer holidays! We have also loved getting to know all of our new children and their families! We have been super busy participating in several different activities to find out about our children’s likes, dislikes and interests! Take a look at what we he have been getting up to…

Leavers Fest!

On Friday we said goodbye to our graduates 2023. Wow what an emotional day it was 🥹💜 We started off the day by inviting all our families into watch the children’s graduation ceremony. We couldn’t of been any more prouder of all the children. They all sang and danced their little hearts out! Once the ceremony was finished we said bye to our families as it was then time to celebrate! 🎉 The children entered LeaversFest via the VIP entrance with their VIP wrist bands and the festival began. The children enjoyed playing several festival themed games. Each game they earned a ticket which had their points earned on. Once all the games was finished, the children headed over to the prize stall to count up their tickets and choose a prize. It was then time to eat a festival theme lunch before our special visitor arrived. In the afternoon ‘Dazzle the Clown’ came to LeaversFest to preform some magic tricks. The children loved the magic show, they giggled all the way through it and even learnt some magic themselves. Once the show was over, we enjoyed some festival dancing and got to have some yummy candy floss. We finished off the day by saying an emotional goodbye to all our children and their families. Each child received a special gift that will help them remember St Marks Preschool forever. We would like to take this opportunity to wish all our graduates the best of luck for their next adventure. We know they are going to ‘rock’ their big school! A big thank you to all our amazing families for all the lovely kind messages, cards and gifts we have received. We really are one big St Marks Family and we will always be here for you all. We hope everyone has a lovely Summer break and we will look forward to welcoming some of our children back in September as well as welcoming some new children and families into the St Marks Family. 💜

Busy Term!

We can’t believe we’re approaching the end of another half term already! They say “time flies when you’re having fun” and that’s definitely true for us in preschool! The weeks are running away with us! We’ve been so busy having lots of fun, making sure our children have fun, stimulating activities and opportunities all the time they’re with us! We’re getting ready for our final half term of the academic year and we’ll be coming back for our final term with plenty more fun and learning! We’re already working hard to plan and make sure our next and last term of the year is OUTSTANDING!!! We hope all our children and families have the best half term!

Easter Fun!

We have had such fun over the last few days getting ready to celebrate Easter! We have been thinking about why we celebrate Easter and have enjoyed lots of different ways to learn all about it and as you can see, we have some very eggcited children! We have made our own chocolate cornflake cakes, designed some of our own eggs as well as being lucky enough to have our very own visit from the Easter Bunny! We have learnt about the Christian story of Easter and have learnt some makaton signs to help us communicate about Easter! We finished the week off with a lovely visit to the park! We hope all of our families have an amazing half term and Easter break! 🐣🥚🐰

World Book Day 2023! 📚

What fun we have had celebrating World Book Day! We LOVE stories at St Marks Preschool and so World Book Day is one of our favourite celebrations where we get to bring so many stories to life! This year all the team dressed up in a Toy Story theme and the children loved playing in our Toy Story Tuff Tray! Our water area turned into a Mr. Jelly tray where the children loved playing and feeling the jelly in the tray! Our sand area transformed into a scene from the Ugly Duckling! The children loved acting out the story “The Three Billy Goats Gruff” at our Playdough station and we all had the best time making our rockets just like in the story “Whatever Next!” in our creative area! We all had the best time exploring the Gruffalo sensory trays…. From Gruffalo crumble… Owl ice cream…. Roasted fox and even Scrambled Snake - you name it we explored it! And we brought the story “The Hungry Caterpillar” to life too and enjoyed feeding our own caterpillar! We all had great fun - to hear so many phrases from so many stories coming from the children and seeing the stories being acted out was just amazing! Thank you to all our parents & families for sending your child’s favourite book into preschool and also for all the amazing costumes! It really was a great day!

Pancake Day!

We had a great time celebrating pancake day earlier this week! The children enjoyed playing and exploring pretending to make their own pancakes and then they got to make their own real pancakes for snack! Yummy! 🥞

British Heart Foundation

This months stay and play had a “hearty” theme! We loved sharing some Valentine and heart themed activities and experiences with all of our families…. Thank you so much to everyone who came! Today we have been raising money for the amazing cause that is the British Heart Foundation! We have had a red/ pink themed day and enjoyed making and decorating our own love hearts, exploring our calming love heart petal water tray, matching the correct number of red objects to the right number and we also shared the most amazing story about a “Little Panda and her Super Heart!” A massive thank you to our real life super hero Ivy and her Mummy and Daddy Chloe and Stu for allowing us to share your story and raise awareness and funds for a great cause! Today we have raised a total of £70!! A massive thank you to everyone for your donations! We hope everyone had a lovely morning!

Chinese New Year!

Happy Chinese New Year! “Gong hey fat choy!” What fun we’ve had today starting the Chinese New Year celebrations! We have loved enhancing our areas of provision to trigger the children to play and explore with the things we’re learning about! We’ve started to learn about the country China - looking at where on the globe China is and thinking about how we would get there! Today we have enjoyed thinking… and learning… and tasting some Chinese food! We have cooked our own noodles and tasted some traditional Chinese foods such as curries! We all enjoyed sharing a fortune cookie and reading our fortune messages! We can’t wait for the fun to continue all week! 🐇🇨🇳

Christmas has arrived!

Christmas 2022 has arrived at St Marks Preschool and our elves are busy busy busy as they help prepare for the big day! The children are having lots of festive fun in our Elf Workshop! They are working hard to design the perfect gift as they draw their plans on our clipboards, i pads and blue print! This is all before they get busy working hard to build that special gift! We’ve got lots of different resources to help the elves… blocks, bricks, tools… you name it! Finally it’s off to our gift wrapping station for the presents to be wrapped up before being placed in Santas sack ready for Christmas Eve! Santas just a phone call away as the Elves check to see who’s on the good list! We can’t wait for all the festive fun we’ll be having for the next few weeks!

Halloween Party!

We had a lovely day on Monday celebrating Halloween! Thank you to all our families who came to our stay and play session! We enjoyed lots of spooky themed activities and experiences and we had lots of amazing fancy dress costumes too!

Today we are remembering and celebrating the life of Queen Elizabeth ll.

Start of term!

We had the most amazing week last week as we started a brand new term! We welcomed all our families back who we missed lots over summer and have also been enjoying welcoming lots of new families to our preschool family! Our children never fail to amaze us and last week has been no exception… we couldn’t have asked for our children to settle in any better than what they have! It is such a pleasure to see the children playing and making friends and having so much fun! To say we’ve missed preschool is an understatement… and we don’t think we’re the only ones judging by the smiles on everyone’s faces.. (not to mention the smiles on our parents faces 😁)!

Graduation 2023

We are thinking of and sending lots of love, hugs and good luck to all our children who left us in July to start their adventures in big school! We know you are all more than ready to “rock big school” and will treasure the time and memories you made at preschool with us! We absolutely loved spending our last day celebrating with our Graduation ceremony and a day at the Safari Park!

First Aid

This week we have been so lucky to run a first aid session for our parents and carers. The session was ran by Amy and covered emergency first aid in both adults and children - focussing on CPR and choking. The information that was delivered to our parents was simply invaluable. We obviously hope that no one will ever have to use the skills they learnt, but in the event that anyone is ever faced with such an awful situation, our parents and carers are now equipped with the knowledge and skills they need to potentially save a life!

St.George's Day Celebrations!
Happy St.George's day! Today we have had lots of fun celebrating St.Georges day. To find out what is it and why we celebrate we used the internet to watch a video. Then we enjoyed lots of fun activities such as deigning our own coats of arms shields, painting the English flag, using knights and dragons to enhance our play dough station and we even enjoyed some role play where we acted out own own interpretation of what happened to the dragon, the princess and St.George.

A world without words!

This morning we shared a very special book in preschool called 'can you image a world without words?'. It's a book about a little boy who lives in St.Helens and the author is his mummy, Natalie Musker. The book helped us to step into the life of the little boy with non-verbal autism and we tried to imagine a world with out words. the children very quickly responded with "I'd feel sad" "I'd feel lonely". It was a great book to share to encourage the children to always be kind and friendly.

Celebrating Holi!

Today we have celebrated the Hindu festival of colour "Holi", as you can see, we had so much fun! We watched a video explaining what Holi is and how it is celebrated before letting the fun begin. We used water balloons filled with coloured water, coloured chalks, powder paint and filled eggs with paint for some 'smashing fun'. We enjoyed some traditional dancing as we enjoyed spreading these colours. T told everyone - "it looks like a massive rainbow".

St Patricks Day!

We have had a great day celebrating St. Patrick's Day in preschool! We started the day by using a book and the computer to find out why we celebrate St. Patricks Day and learning about St Patrick himself! Then we found some iconic features of St. Patrick's day such as shamrocks and leprechauns! We have enjoyed painting with potatoes, making our own shamrocks in our play dough station and making a big rainbow. We shared a story about how the Irish fairy visits rainbows and leaves a pot of gold at the end. To our amazement in the afternoon, we noticed something at the end of our rainbow... our very own envelope filled with cold coins - the children was amazed! We finished off the day listening to a variety of Irish music as well as learning a small Irish dance.

Growing of our Chicks!

Its been such a lovely experience that we have been able to share with the children this week. As of today, we have seen 5 eggs hatch. The children and their families have also chose the names of each chick so thank you for your amazing suggestions! The children have watched in awe all week! We have had the privilege of watching a couple actually hatch from the egg. The children have cared for the eggs and chicks so well and their knowledge and understanding of the life cycle of a chick and also the importance of looking after and caring for them has developed invaluably. Well done to each and everyone of our children .. we can't wait for Monday so we can continue our experiences and see if any more eggs have hatched.

Chick's Arrival

Today was a very egg-citing day in preschool!

It saw the arrival of some very special chick eggs!

We are very excited to be able to share the experiences of looking after and caring for the eggs and observing the changes as the chicks get to hatch. The children have been so excited but they have already done an amazing job at looking after the eggs.

World Book Day - 2021

Welcome Back!

We have had a fun filled first week back at preschool! This morning, we have had lots of fun making our very own bird feeders for in our garden area. We used some bread, butter and bird seeds before treading a pipe cleaner though and hanging them on our tree in the garden. We are so excited to see if the birds come for a bite to eat. We have also been busy baking in preschool this week, we made two cheesecakes this week. the first week we encouraged the children to add ingredients that they think goes into a cheese cake. We allowed the children to freely add the ingredients of their choice and estimate the amount of each ingredient needed. We then put it in to the fridge to set. Later on it was taste time, we think everyone would agree it didn't taste like cheese cake so we decided to make it again but this time we decided to use the internet this time. We used the internet to find a recipe, we followed the recipe and weighed out all our ingredients following the information we seen. After putting it in to the fridge to set, we tasted the finish product and it was save to say this one tasted so much nicer! the children enjoyed tasting the yummy cake that they worked hard to prefect. Great job guys!

if you would like to make a no bake cheesecake at home click below for a simple but yummy cheesecake recipe...

Pancake Day!

Pancake day falling in the half term was never going to stop us celebrating .. so today pancake day came early to St Marks Preschool! This morning we shared a story called 'Mr Woolfs pancakes' We loved this story! As we got ready to make our own pancakes 'E' told their friend "if you ask for help to make these, i will help you!". We enjoyed playing and pretending to make pancakes in our tuff tray and in our dough station before getting to make the real thing for snack time. We talked about the ingredients we needed and about keeping safe.. and then the fun began! With some help we even got to flip our own pancake. We chose our own toppings and enjoyed the yummiest of pancakes. We can't wait for pancake day next week even more now!

Online Safety Awareness!

Today we have celebrated 'safer internet day'. At story time this morning we shared a new story in preschool. The children really enjoyed the story 'Troll Stinks' and once again amazed us with their understanding and appreciation of the meaning of the story. We spoke about the importance of keeping safe online and discussed the ways which we do so both at home and at preschool. We also talked about the importance of being kind every where including online. We promote internet and devices safety in preschool everyday and the children are actively involved in making sure the devices and websites they are using are safe and they know when to ask for help or advice. If you would like to read this story at home please click on the link button below...

Valentines Day Celebrations

Today we have shared some lovely stories which have talked about the meaning of love, and who and why you might love someone. We have slow danced to some Valentine themed music, made love potions and we have been busy writing some messages for those we love! Our play dough table is enhanced with making our own roses using coloured play dough and pipe cleaners and we have also enjoyed a special valentines themed candle lit snack today with love heart crumpets and treats. We have had such a lovely day to finish off our half term. We'll see you all when we return on Monday 22nd February - when the fun and learning can resume! Happy Valentines Day everyone!

Chinese New Year Celebrations!

Today we have started our Chinese New Year celebrations! We have had so much fun! We started the day off by reading a story and watching a video which told us lots about Chinese New Year, how we prepare for it and how it is celebrated. We then put what we have learnt into practice. We had so much fun pretending to make our own noodles and rice in the tuff tray and delivering the food to our Chinese restaurant. The children enjoyed dressing up and even enjoyed writing their names in Chinese and using the play dough to make our own Chinese dumplings. you can't celebrate Chinese New Year without tasting some yummy Chinese food! The children cooked their own noodles and tasted them along with rice, two different types of Chinese curries and some prawn crackers and dips! The children have also took a Chinese New Year envelope with a chocolate coin home. Press the buttons below to learn all about Chinese New Year at home ..

Mental Health Awareness Week

This week we have been busy promoting Mental Health. We have been so busy taking part in a variety of activities that has gave us the confidence to explore and express our feelings, talk about other peoples feelings and building on our own confidence to love ourselves. On Monday, we introduced our 'calming corner' where we have enjoyed listening to relaxing music while sharing books and colouring. We have also enjoyed a 'positive friendship' sessions where in pairs we shared something nice about each-other and took part in pair co-ordinations to different rhymes. We also started a positivity jar, where each child has chosen to add something positive to say. We fill up the jar and keep looking back at these positive vibes when we need them most. Of course as its children's mental health, it's really important to us at St.Mark's Preschool to make sure the people who are shaping those little minds are looked after so we treated our staff members to some flowers, a candle and a face mask so they know how important they are to us! On Tuesday and Wednesday the children worked hard to make their very own candle holders to take home and share with their families. We enhanced our dough station with some relaxing herbs, 'A' told us they didn't like the smells but 'N' told us that he did - this was a great talking point for how different people feels and think but neither are right or wrong! On Wednesday we dressed to impress! We invited the children to chose what they wore at preschool that day that best's expresses themselves. It was great to see a variety of outfits... we had pyjamas, casual comfy clothes, fancy dress costumes and some very expressive hairstyles. Thursday we took part in some calming yoga and enhanced our dough station and water with some lemons and lavender. On Friday we ended the week by inviting the children to come dressed as a superhero! We thought this was a perfect way for our children to think about and understand unique and special each of of them really are! We started off the day with the question "What's your superhero power?" Each child told us the superpower of the superhero they was dressed as. the day went on and we helped the children to realise and appreciate that everyone has their own special super power and they should be so proud of that power! We have had a wonderful week celebrating Mental health Week and knowing our children had lots of fun while recognising, learning about and understanding the importance of looking after our mental health.

Even though this week's focus has been promoting children's mental health, we don't and shouldn't forget ourselves, the adults, families and carers that care for the children. It is important that we look after ourselves to ensure we can care for the children the best we can. If you need any support please don't hesitate to contact us and will help you the best way we can!

Please see some helpful links below ....

Last Day of Term - Snow Man Theme Day!

The children loved our snow man themed day all based on the Christmas film 'Snowman and the snow dog'. We have had the most magical day with snowman theme activities, games and a snowman theme lunch! Is there any other way to end the day with a snow! Something truly magical happened at preschool...

During story time, we read a Christmas story called 'William's Wish'. In the story William wished for snow. All the children decided they wanted to wish for snow just like William, so after chanting our wish came true 0 it snowed in preschool!! We couldn't believe it! The children was amazed that their wish came true and they loved dancing and playing in the snow. We waved the children off at home time and the snow appeared outside too. We hope our families and children loved the snow surprise at home time. we hope the magic continues and everyone has a truly magical Christmas!

Christmas Party!

What a wonderful Christmas party we have had! There was festive fun and laughter throughout the day. We enjoyed singing, dancing, and good old fashion party games. We had to pin the nose on the Rudolph and had lots of fun bashing the reindeer piñata! Everyone enjoyed a Christmas themed lunch and we quickly noticed signs that a visitor must have been into preschool last night while we was all sleeping. When we checked the video footage.. we couldn't believe our eyes. Santa himself had sneaked into preschool and left us a very special message and even a gift each - seeing the children's faces was just magical!

Tinsel the Elf!

Tinsel the elf brought all the children a special Christmas treat! We all come to preschool wearing our pyjamas ready to watch a virtual pantomime. Tinsel left us some yummy hot chocolates to enjoy, marshmallows that we could toast and a gingerbread man house to build in teams. What a magical day!

Christmas Nativity

This week we have been busy recording our nativity for 2020! As with everything this year - our nativity is very different to how we normally put on a show but we think all our families will definitely enjoy the show when they come to watch the DVD's with their little ones! We would also like to thank all our families for your support and cooperation as we have prepared for this years nativity.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in preschool! The children have absolutely LOVED our 'Festive fun Factory'. We know Santa's mail room will already be bursting - just with the amount of letters our children in preschool. The children have put so much effort into making their own letters - some have cut out things they want from catalogues and stuck them to their letters, some have amazed us and wrote exactly what they want. We have loved making lots of different crafts to take home and we even created our very own bells to participate in the 'Doorbell Jingle' with the community. The children was also very excited when we got a visit from Tinsel the elf. She brought us special advert calendar and many different surprises on the run up to Christmas!

Bonfire Night Celebrations

We hope all our families have a lovely night celebrating bonfire night whatever you are doing! The week in preschool we have had so much fun learning all about bonfire night and d fireworks! We've discussed the importance of keeping safe and we keep save. We have been very creative with crafts, painting, chalks and glitter making our very own fireworks. We even used our bodies to represent being a fireworks in our music and movement session and today we enjoyed making our very edible sparklers for snack.

Remembrance Day!

Lest we forget! This week we have talked about Remembrance Sunday and how it marks the end of the war. We have watched a video from CBeebies titled 'Poppies' and talked about the importances of remembering and being thankful for what the armed services have done and continued to do for us. As we can't make our annual visit to the cenotaph this year, each child made their own poppy wreath and took them home. We hope the talks about the importance of remembering continued at home.

St Helen's Scarecrow festival!

Along with the St Helen's community, St Mark's preschool have been working hard to create our very own scarecrows in aid of Willowbrook hospice. The children have been learning the importance of this charity and have loved getting creative for a great cause! The children was so proud of themselves and give each other a big clap.

We are very pleased to introduce you to ...

Sally the scarecrow!

Home learning - Autumn Hunt!

Following our Autumn topic in preschool, we have LOVED seeing our children and families enjoying their autumn walks and finding lots of things to fill their Autumn treasure hunt bags. Thank you for all our families who are extending our children's learning about the changing season at home! Please keep the photographs coming and don't forget to send your bags back to preschool so we can all take part in creating our very own Autumn exploration tray.

Autumn

This term we have also been very busy learning all about the season 'Autumn.' We just love this season and love learning / talking about the changes in our environment and exploring Autumn leaves, conkers, acorns and much more! As you can see from some of the pictures below, we have took part in several fun and engaging activities that everyone has enjoyed. We don't even know we are learning when we are having this much fun!

Occupations!

This week we have been extending the children's interest of different occupations.We firstly, looked close at the role of a police officer. We read information books, researched information using the internet and of course dressed up and role played being a police officer. We then looked at the role of a firefighter. The children learnt lots of fun facts and information, they now have bigger insight into what the role consists off - not just putting out a fire! We did have to give our trainee fire fighters a call as there was a fire in preschool's garden. They had great team work and communication as they battled the fire! To top of the week we looked closely at the job role 'palaeontologists'. This was one our of our children's current interest and we ran with it to provide lots of learning opportunities!

The Gingerbread Man story!

This term, our story focus is 'The Gingerbread Man'. The children are loving reading this story book at story and register and independently during free play. It's great to see the children recalling the story and repeating the repeated phrases in their play. The children have been busy making their very own gingerbread men. They was scared though that their gingerbread men would run away just like he did in the story but luckily, he stayed on the baking tray so we could decorate them and take them home!

All about me!

It has been so lovely to see old friendships reunite as well as seeing new friendships form. We have took part in a variety of all about me activities to learn all about each other. We talked about similarities, differences and what makes us unique. After making our autumn family tree, the children loved making their own very family members on our craft area. The children have also enjoyed recreating their friends faces with the play dough. Our community tray was also a great way to get the children to talk about their home life with their peers.

Welcome back!

We have had an amazing start back to the term! We have welcomed back many familiar faces and have welcomed lots of new children children to! We have been very busy having lots of fun and making sure our children are happy and settled back in. Well done to everyone of our children and our families for helping us get back to a "new normal" so easily. We couldn't be prouder - heres to a new term!

Graduates 2020!

On Friday 24th of July was a very emotional day for everyone at St.Mark's preschool! We had an amazing day celebrating our school leavers achievements and final day with us. We started the day with no less than the red carpet treatment for our superstars! They all did us proud and there wasn't a dry eye in the house as we completed our graduation ceremony through live stream for all our families. Then it was time to party!! We cannot put into words what huge impact each and everyone of these children have had on St.Marks preschool, and us personally! We have loved getting to know them all, caring and teaching for them and knowing how truly privileged we have been to be a part of these children's journey. Now it's time for them to take their next steps to big school! Go and show them what superstars you are all are!

A special visit to our garden plot!

Today we visited our garden plot so all the children could show off their hard work. We was amazed when arrived at how beautiful it is looking! This visit was extra special, as it would of been our school leavers children last time visiting the plot with the preschool. We would like to thank a particular family of ours who gave us such a lovely gift today and brought this beautiful tree for us to plant in our plot. What better way to always remember one of our special school leavers (not that we'll every forgot any of them) by planting a tree with them and caring for it and looking after it for many years to come!

Garden plot visits!

We are loving seeing and hearing about some of our families visiting our garden plot in their own time and helping to look after our plot and even planting their own beautiful flowers and plants! Thank you to everyone who has visited or is planning to visit soon. We are such a big team at St Marks Preschool!

Welcome back!

This we have opened our doors for the first time in 11 weeks! We have really had the best week and we would like to thank all of our families who have been so supportive and patient as we delivered all our plans and procedures for reopening! It has been a pleasure to see the children again, its like they have never been away! The children have had a great first week back they are getting more and more used to our "new normal". We could not be prouder of well our children have coped with and managed the changes. Despite all the changes, we are continuing to have so much fun!

Happy Holi !

Today we have had an absolute ball celebrating holi festival of colour!. Thank you to all our families for providing old clothes for your children to get messy in, as you can see from the photographs we've had a great day! From popping balloons filled with powder paint, throwing coloured water balloons and filled paint eggs at the tuff tray. What fun we had!

Happy World Book Day!

We have had a wonderful day celebrating how much we love books and bringing some of our stories to life. We do our very best to inspire the children at St Mark's to have a love of reading and all things to do with reading right from the very start of their journey with us! Not only have we had a great tine dressing up and sharing our favourite stoties, this afternoon we had a very special visitor for a special story time. We were joined by author Rebecca McDowall who read her own book "cheeky dragons". It was lovely session and thank you to all our families for joining us! We hope we have made some wonderful memories for your children to remember World Book Day 2020.

Visit to the Polish Shop!

Today we visited a polish shop! Kasia taught us some Polish words before we went and told us the Polish names for each item in the shop. We also learned how to say "hello" and "thank you" in Polish so we could speak to the shop keeper. We bought some Polish food and we took it back to Pre-school to taste it with our friends.

Stay and Play

Thank you so much to everyone who came to our stay and play session today! We love having our families come in and spend some time seeing what we get up to and having a catch up with the staff . We make sure we alternate the days and times we offer our stay and play sessions each month to try and give everyone an opportunity to attend when they can. Keep an eye out for our mothers day themed stay and pay session in April.

Makaton!

The children are loving learning Makaton during our 'its time to sign'. Each day the children have been learning how to sign a whole sentence . We are enjoying learning sentence that we may use during the day. The children are picking this us so fast and are really eager to learn new words. It has been great to see the children using Makaton to communicate during the session. We can't wait to learn more!

Happy Pancake Day!

We have had so much fun celebrating Pancake Day today! The children loved making their own pancakes and eating them for snack! They chose their personal toppings and had a giggle as we even tried to flip them! We continued the pancake day theme in our Spanish lesson with Sarah. We learnt how to say some toppings in Spanish and talked about our likes and dislikes. P said " Me gusta Nutella!" which means " I like Nutella!".

Happy Valentines Day!

Today we have had such a lovely day, sharing compliments, telling each other what we love about each other and also talking about who we love in our families. We have been busy making our own valentines day cards which we hope all our families love. We started the day by a good old fashion sing song and slow dance to Ed Sheeran and that set the tone for the day. We shared a Valentines snack all together, with heart shaped crumpets. We also enjoyed talking part in some great valentines day themed games. We hope all our children enjoyed today as much as we did! We are also breaking up for half term today so we would like to say a huge thank you to all our amazing families for a wonderful half term. We hope everyone has a super week off and we can't wait to kick start the fun again when we open as usual on Monday 24th February.

Age UK - Mansion House

Thursday 13th February, we thoroughly enjoyed another one of our regular visits to the elderly people over at the Mansion house! The children get so excited when we tell them we are visiting, as do the staff! Today we took some crafts over and made some 'love bugs' and some valentines day flowers. The children took it in turns to make their very own flower. Once, they made their flower the children chosen who they would like to give their flower to. The children delivered their flower to the elderly resident of their choice and they said "Happy Valentine's day!". As you can see from the photographs below everyone involved values these visits so much! Thank you to Age UK and The Mansion House for another magical visit.

Jiggy Wrigglers

As always we loves our Jiggy Wriggler session with Lorna today! We had so much fun listening to music, jiggling away and even having a great sing song. Today we has to put our listening skills to the test as we danced to the "Hokey Cokey". We also had such a lovely time lifting the parachute up and down as we sang about flying a kite together.

Early Years Curriculum Roadshow

Sarah attended the Early Years Curriculum Roadshow with Ofsted on Tuesday 11th of Febuary.

Spanish Lesson!

Today we enjoyed our regular Spanish lesson. We started our valentines's Day celebrations in our lesson today with Sarah from Kidlingo! We enjoyed sharing a story 'Guess how much I love you' in English and Spanish. We practised counting in Spanish and learnt a teddy bear song. We loved using the parachute with our love themed balloons. We really do love our Spanish lessons and we can't wait for our Valentine celebrations to continue!

Our trip to Asda!

This morning some of our children visited the recycling bins at Asda to drop off some of the things from our recycling area which we have organised into the right categories. We then popped into Asda to do a bit of shopping. We used the scanners to 'scan as you shop' and had great fun looking for numbers - we didn't have to look far! We used our scanner to scan the bar codes and got the items on our shopping list! We also used the scales to weigh how many bananas we wanted to buy. Then we went to the till to pay. We scanned our scanner and it told us how much to pay. We got back to Pre-school and enjoyed eating the fruit we had just bought for snack. We had a great morning, with lots of learning opportunities!

Our litter picking challenge!

We are SO proud of our children and would like to say a massive thank you to all of our families who supported us aw we completed our Litter Pick in Victoria Park today! The children have recently been very interested in their environment and regularly comment on how much litter there is when we take trips out in the community. So with the help of the park rangers we planned to take action and help our local park free of litter. Everyone worked together to pick up litter across the entire park and we couldn't be prouder!

Chinese New Year celebrations

This week the children have loved taking part in Chinese New Year celebrations! We tasted a variety of Chinese food for snack. We even attempted to use the chopsticks to eat the rice and curry. The children's favourite was definitely the prawn crackers! We then cooked our own noodles outside! The children did super jobs and loved tasting them once they were cooked. P told her friends 'These are the best noodles ever!".

Making home made bread!

We have been encouraging the children to think about where their food comes from and they asked us where bread comes from. Instead of just telling the children how bread is made, today we made our very own bread. We talked about the ingredients we needed and followed a recipe while working as a team. We couldn’t believe how big the dough got before we baked it. We then enjoyed our bread for snack, it was tasty!

Library visit!

Today we have loved visiting the library! It was so exciting.. we even got to go on a bus! We had an amazing time. We sang 'The wheels on the bus' as we sat down and got our tickets from the bus driver. We loved looking our of the window and talking about what we could see. When we arrived at the library we got to look at all the books - we couldn't believe how many books there actually were! We chose one for Helen to read and then we got to chose some books to take back to Pre-School with us. The lady helped us by stamping the books for us. We then got another bus back to Pre-school, we couldn't wait to share our experience with all our friends once we got back.

Spanish Lessons!

Today we LOVED our first Spanish lesson with Sarah from Kidslingo! We had so much fun and didn't even realise we were learning another language. Sarah taught us how to say hello and my name is.. we sang some songs and today we learnt some colours. We cant wait for our next lesson!

Another busy week!

We have been very busy this week taking part activities. We have been exploring different vegetables finding out what they feel like, what they smell like and where they come from. We also compared one of the plants inside Pre-school to a bunch of real flowers. We found that there were lots of differences and used amazing words like "smooth" and "spiky". We put our real flowers in the water and made our own predictions of what we think might happen over the next few days. We used the iPad to take photographs to help us remember. We also created our recycling centre in our role play area. We cant wait to start recycling in Pre-school. Some of our children have been really enjoying their phonic group times. We are now becoming aware of rhyme and some letter sounds.

Welcome back!

We are back and couldn't be happier! Seeing our little ones faces as we opened the door was just what we needed after a lovely break! We kicked off the day with a vote for snack, fruit or pancakes and fruit won! We also introduced the story "The Enormous Turnip!" we got to have a look a real turnip and even got the opportunity to plant our own turnip seeds. We cant wait to have more fun bringing the story to life!

Last day of term - Polar Express Day!

What a great way to spend our last day in Pre-school before the Christmas break. Today we all enjoyed our Polar Express day. We got all cosy in our pyjamas while we watched some parts of the film 'Polar Express'. The Polar Express train arrived at Pre-school,we gave the conductor our tickets and she hole punched a letter in each ticket just like the film! We then enjoyed a yummy hot chocolate with cream and marshmallows. The children also got to take home their very own 'we believe' bell which they have to shake on Christmas eve. We have had such a magical last day, all our children have been so excited. We wish all our children and families a Merry Christmas! We cant wait to see you in the new year.

Our Christmas Party

We have all enjoyed the build up to the Christmas events. The children have enjoyed taking part in Christmas activities and crafts.Today was our Christmas party and what an amazing Christmas party we have had! Thank you to all our children for coming and making this afternoon magical! We have danced, played party games and had not 1, not 2 but 3 special party guests. We had a lovely sing song with Elsa, then Santa and Tinsle the Elf came! We hope all our children had a wonderful party!

Our Christmas Nativity

So today was the day of our magical nativity! We are the proudest nursery teachers in the world right now... each and every child did an amazing job of coming into a beautiful church in front of so many people! thank you to everyone who supported us and made today happen! We cant wait for the DVDs to arrive so we can re-watch our amazing superstars!

The Pre-school election

In Pre-school we enjoyed having votes for lots of different things. Today, we have discussed that a very important vote is happening today! We talked about how important our votes are and that we should really think about what we're voting for and why/ A very important vote took place in Pre-scool today .. what shall we have for snack? The choice was crumpets or poppadoms! With a vote of 19 votes to 7, poppadoms won!

Last day of the term!

What a busy last day we have had today! This morning some of the children visited the elderly residents at the Mansion House for another one of our inter generational visits. The children made us so proud with how well they behaved. We love how much everyone benefits from these visits... the children, the elderly residents and all the staff involved. The children also learnt all about Diwali and that its the festival of light. We enjoyed playing and exploring brightly coloured rice. In the afternoon, the children got changed into their Halloween costumes and enjoyed a Halloween party. We read the story 'the room on the broom'. We then enjoyed making our own magic potions. The children made their own n spell and they was amazed at what happened next. We carved more pumpkins, joined in with some party games and eat some yummy Halloween treats. We hope everyone has a great half term and we will see you all next week!

Pumpkin Fun!

The pumpkins haven given us some great learning opportunities this week! We have enjoyed pumpkin picking in our outdoor area, we used mathematical language to describe the size and weight of our pumpkins. We even had to pay for our pumpkins using our pennies! We drawn different shapes on our pumpkins to create some great faces! We then took our pumpkins inside and enjoyed opening up the pumpkin. The children used their senses to explore the inside of the pumpkin, we could hear lots of descriptive language.We also loved making some yummy pumpkin soup. We followed a recipe step by step listening to each instruction. We all had a turn at cutting and steering the ingredients, the children was so sensible around the equipment. The children all tasted the soup and it went down very well, that well the children asked for more!

Vegetable/Fruit printing

We have lots of real food in the home corner and in vegetables our market, we feel like it will be such a waste just to put it in the bin at the end of the week. So instead, each Friday the children love exploring all the different type of food and herbs. The children enjoy cutting up all the fruit and vegetables! We talk about the texture, colour and smell. We talk about the changes we can see in the fruit and vegetables from the beginning of the week until now.We use a variety of colours to make lots of colourful prints.

World Mental Health Day

What a truly relaxing day we have had today! We have loved celebrating world mental health day! We have done our best to show all our children, parents and staff how important they are to us and that our mind, body and soul are so IMPORTANT! The children haven enjoyed peer massage, yoga, made their own lavender scented candles and enjoyed talked about how each and everyone of them are special while making their own mirrors. The staff enjoyed the well-being basket in the staff room and their flowers and cards this morning. We also provided our parents with a snack in our welcome area and the opportunity for a chat when Preschool had closed. All the staff and the children enjoyed coming to preschool 'dressed down' to ensure a truly comfy and relaxing day.

Macmillan Coffee morning

Thank you, thank you , thank you to each and every one of our families who have donated food, drink and cash donations to male our Macmillan coffee morning as great as it was today! Thank you for all your amazing support and giving up your time to come along. We have raised £120 for an amazing cause! It was also so lovely to see so many of our families today. Don't forge we hold stay and play sessions each month so keep an eye out for the next one.

The three little pigs

The children haven took a real interest into the story 'the three little pigs' so we decided to bring the story to life outside to! We developed our understanding of the story whilst getting hands on building our own houses, acting out the story. We had so much fun the children asked to do it all over again!

Food Tasting

Today we enjoyed tasting a variety of food while talking about what nutrients each food has. A said "Potatoes has carbohydrates in". We tasted some fruit with has vitamins in, "They fight away the germs" N told us. We also tasted some yummy brown bread, we learnt that brown bread which has fibre in and ham which has protein "that makes us strong" the adult said while all the children shown us their muscles .

The life cycle of a caterpillar!

Today was the day we said farewell to our butterflies as we released them! After watching and learning all about the life cycle of our butterflies we all became to love all four of our butterflies, that much we named each one. One of our butterflies 'bounce' was a little bit reluctant to leave us so we was lucky enough to hold him and given him a closer goodbye. When we went back inside we took the opportunity to sing the 'tiny caterpillar' song and we relived the cycle by acting it out.

Welcome back!

We was some happy to welcome back all our families and children after a great summer break. We also welcomed some new children and their families into St Marks. This week we have been working hard to make sure our relationships in preschool are effective right from the start. We are finding our group times are invaluable opportunity to get to know each other, learn to respect each other and most importantly, have fun learning together!

Parents Evening

On 18th of July we held parents evening. We would like to thank you to all our parents for attending. We love sharing your child's development with you, parent partnership is so important to us! Take a look at some of the feedback that we have received ...

"Pre-school has been the best thing for M, thank you for all your hard work"

I am so happy how well T is doing at nursery. I couldn't be prouder of him. Thanks to his teachers for helping him to be the best!

" L has learned so much since attending Pre-school, I am so proud of him! I can't thank the staff enough, they have been amazing!"

"We are so happy with P progress, she adores school and all of her friends. Thank you so much girls, we couldn't be happier!"

" Thank you for everything! You don't just look after the children you care for us all as a family!"

Makaton

We have introduced makaton into preschool in the past couple of weeks.We have been learning a sign of the week, where the children choose a word they would like to find out how they 'use their hands to say it'. We have spoken about different ways of communicating and the children have responded so well! Check out our Facebook page to see some of the signs we have learnt!

Race for life!

Today we completed our 'race for life'! A huge thank you to all our children and families who took part! It was a lovely experience and everyone did a great job! Every child who participated got a race for life medal. We are proud to announce that we raised £445 in sponsor money for such a great cause. A huge thank you to the park rangers at Victoria Park for helping us out and supporting us at the finish line!

Visit from the road safety team

Today we was visited by Mel and Elaine from the road safety team! They told us some stories and talked to us about the importance of keeping safe when crossing the roads and also in the car. We learnt to always listen for the "click" when we fasten our seat belts and to "stop, look , listen and think before you cross the road".An invaluable session that we will be sure to keep reminding the children of!