We were all very excited to see the Christmas display in the antique shop window with Santa, a reindeer and a polar bear looking very Christmassy. There was no heron this time, although the children did remember him from last time, but there were plenty of ducks who quacked happily as we walked past! At the library, we were treated to an animal scavenger hunt where the children had to find the silhouettes of various animals which the children carefully ticked off their sheets. Their favourite animals were the vulture, the snake and the duck - Marianne was very surprised to see that all the animals had been found as a couple were very tricky to find! The children listened to a princess and a dragon story (just like our story of Lullabyhullaballoo) and a story about choosing a pet rabbit before choosing books of their own to bring back to Nursery. We think we may need to get a bigger rucksack to carry all the books. The children also enjoyed doing some colouring-in sheets of Christmas stars and baubles for the library display.

The children have loved joining in with all the noises in our book this week, especially roaring like dragons, ooooing like the ghosts and howling like wolves! As we have been listening to the sounds of the different characters in our story, we played Musical Detectives and the Listening Box game too. For the game of Musical Detectives, we had to listen to our friend playing two instruments in the tent and we had to guess which ones were being played by playing the same instruments. The children were excellent at listening to the different sounds they heard. For the Listening Box, we sing a rhyme and take it in turns to choose something from the box and listen to the initial sound of the word - lots of good listening to the phonic sounds as well as making sounds for the dinosaur, car and Peppa Pig too!

We have been talking about nighttime this week and what we can see and hear at night and the children made some fantastic nighttime pictures using black paint, glue glitter and sparkling stars!

It was our turn to present Pre-Prep assembly this week, so we went off armed with lots of our work that we had been doing this term to show all the children. The children showed pictures from their Special Books, number buses, story boards and books they have made and collages of animals too. We had a guess the baby quiz with the photos of the children (and myself and Mrs Sayers too). The children in Pre-Prep were absolutely amazing at guessing who was who. It was great fun and everyone enjoyed having a guess!

Our Special Leaf this week was for being a kind friend at the library by helping to find the animals on the sheet. It is always so lovely to see the children showing kindness to their friends.

This week, the children have been super at singing our Christmas songs and we recorded their singing when we were Misss Norford, so we can practice in the classroom! The children were so excited to hear themselves singing the songs on the iPad and now we can sing along to them all too on the interactive board.

Another highlight this week was the arrival of two police officers who came to visit Pre-Prep on Thursday! There was great anticipation and excitement waiting for them to arrive. We welcomed Claire and Tim to the Nursery class, where they told us all about what they do; from arresting people who have done wrong things (luckily we have all been very good this week!) to how they help people who are lost or missing or need their help. They told us all about the different police vehicles they use and about the dogs and horses who help them too. We learnt all about the police radios that they use to talk to each other and the cameras they wear too. We saw police hats and high-vis vests as well as some handcuffs. We then had our fingerprints taken to make a Nursery forensics sheet. The most exciting bit was when we went to see the police car. We listened to the siren which was VERY loud and watched the red and blue flashing lights on top of the car. We were then allowed to go and stand next to the car to look at all the different colours on the car. We all had such a wonderful time and we all learnt so much about everything the police do to help us.

Next week, we are going to go on the stage to practice for our Christmas play and try our costumes on too!