The younger children have been working very hard to carefully count Christmas objects and write their numbers. I was very silly and kept not quite counting the objects carefully. The children helped me by lining up the objects so that they were easier to count! I was amazed by how well the children could recognise numerals to 10 and how all the children had a very good try at writing their numbers.

We have enjoyed reading the Christmas story this week and spotting where the characters that we play in our Christmas play are in the book. Luckily, the Innkeeper in the story is not quite as grumpy as the Innkeeper in our play. Some children had a go at cutting out and ordering pictures to create a storyboard and can independently retell the story.

We have also been learning about Advent and the children are very excited for Sunday to open the first window and officially begin the countdown to Christmas! The children completed a puzzle to find the numbers in order, draw the number and colour in the picture to create their own advent calendars. It was very tricky as we had to also look for numbers beyond 10 but all of the children showed great perseverance and tried their best.

There have also been lots of child- led Christmas activities happening in Transition this week, including making paper chains, decorating baubles and chopping vegetables to make a Santa’s stew! I was delighted to see the children working together to attach their paper chains so that they were one long chain ready to hang up in Transition!

It was our turn to do an assembly this week and the children were very excited to take Pre-Prep with them on a journey to space! We got into our rocket with our jetpacks on and counted down from 10 to blast off to space. Once in space, the children spotted some planets and each confidently told Pre-Prep which planet they had made and an interesting fact about it. There were also some cheeky aliens hiding amongst the Pre-Prep children. We thought of interesting questions that we would ask an alien if we really saw one. It was then time to land back down to Earth with a bump.

To finish the week, we had a wonderful time decorating our class Christmas tree together. Each of the children chose a special bauble to add to the tree and there were lots of ideas and teamwork to transform the classroom so that it is now full of festive cheer! The Christmas tree is certainly looking very full… I just hope it doesn’t topple over! The children loved dancing to Christmas songs as we worked together and we are now fully Christmas-ified to start December next week!