Gallery 2024
December 2024
We were so very pleased that so many parents were able to join us for our first Pre School Christmas Carol concert at All Saints Church. We had shared our special Christmas songs with Rev Peter as they are a little different to his normal hymns! We all left Church feel very much in the Christmas Spirit.
December 2024
We held our first parents arts and craft morning, whereby the parents could join their children to make something to take home with them for Christmas. Adult Community Learning and a local craft group helped us.
Christmas 2024
The Christmas activities begin with the decorating of the trees. Then the elves arrive with surprises for both classes. Plans for Christmas dinner.
Take shape with a lovely food donation from Marks & Spencers. Our super Trustees arrive to cook Chrisrmas dinner for all the chilren, the staff and our guests ( Reverand Peter, Marks & Spencers staff, FoodBank volunteers and fellow Trustees) follwed by Santa arriving to give every child a present, even the staff were treated to a special surprise too.
December 2024
We have been practising our cutting skills using coloured pasta.
Look what we made with our key workers.
December 2024 - Soup Club
The Pre School joined a soup club whereby we were given a soup maker, recipe cards and ingredients for 6 weeks.
The children really enjoyed the peeling, chopping, smell and taste of the vegetables. We really enjoyed tasting new flavours and were often surprised by how much we enjoyed some of the tastes!
We tried
- Carrot and celery soup
- Beetroot soup
- Leek and potato soup
- Tomato soup
- Vegetable soup
- Chicken noodle soup
December 2024 - Frozen Ice
We froze numbers into ice and the children had to explore how to get these out…. Wait for it to melt ?…… try to break the ice?….. what tools to use?……
December 2024 - Marbling
We tried marbling and look at the fantastic patterns we were able to make.
December 2024 - Maths Week
Its Maths week !
We have explored maths in all sorts of different and exciting ways this week.
December 2024
We are so very grateful to our Local Marks & Spencer’s store who have adopted us as their chosen Charity. The store staff have all contributed to buy each of the Pre School children a selection box.
December 2024
We were so very grateful to Penguin Random House UK, who saw from a Facebook post that we had previously purchased new maths books with money raised from a collection tin in a local shop. We were contacted  and were blown away by the amount of fabulous books that arrived.
November 2024
Its Children in Need and guess who came to visit ?
November 2024 - Remembrance Day
This year again the children joined other local community members at the Memorial Gardens in Walton on the Naze to pay their respects to those that had given their lives to protect others. The children waited to be called and walked to the front to lay their wreath with pride.
We also created classroom displays and watched a children’s video to help us understand the meaning of this special day.
November 2024
It’s a bright crisp morning and we have a lot of wood chippings to move. The children enjoyed using their wheelbarrows, buckets and trollies to replenish the chippings in our Forest School Garden.
November 2024
Tendring 4 Growth Business Awards – October 2024
Walton Pre School is very proud to be recognised for its outstanding community work and received a highly commended Business Award at Tendring Town Hall. It was a real red carpet event and we felt very special. Laura and Jackie represented the team and on being announced a  with a full statement about our work being read out to the guests.
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It was a beautiful evening and a lovely accolade to receive which recognises that we are so much more than a Pre school, we support our community too.
October 2024
It’s Halloween and were having a SPOOKY Party
Harvest Festival Oct 2024
The children were excited to bring in their donations for harvest, this year we organised a trip to see our local vicar Reverand Peter at the Church ( All Saints) in Walton on the Naze. We walked with our trusted adults on a nice bright Autumn morning. We looked in the shops as we walked through the town. Peter welcomed us and showed us all around the Church before the special harvest service and songs began.
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We really enjoyed our time at the Church and when we got back to Pre School we took our Harvest collection to the Walton & District Foodbank for re distribution in the local community.
Exploding mud monsters
Fizzing dinosaur eggs
Magnetic objects
Sept 2024
We celebrated MacMillan Coffee morning and helped by making cakes to sell.
We raised £135.40
New Term begins - Sept 2024
Wow what a busy first week and well done to all the children who have settled so well into Pre School.
The children have been keen to explore the Walton Woods garden area and have picked apples, seen our family of pheasants ( mum now have 5 babies) found bugs, picked radishes and tomatoes and so much more.
Looking forward to lots more fun and learning.
Graduation - July 2024
Its both a time to celebrate and a time of sadness as we say farewell to our Butterfly Class who are moving onto ‘big school’ in September.
We are so very proud of each and everyone of you.
Teamwork - July 2024
June 2024
We often undertake baking as part of expanding our children’s life skills, today we chose to make sandwiches instead. We carefully spread the butter on the bread, followed by Jam. We then put the two pieces of bread together and with support cut the bread into triangles so that we could eat the sandwiches at snack time. Yum Yum they were delicious!
June 2024
Do you like our counting hands?
June 2024
Some more amazing tuff trays for the children’s enjoyment whilst following their interests.
June 2024
Check out our balancing skills.
The sun is shining and we are making mud pie!
Intergenerational project - May 2024
We had the most amazing afternoon with our Forget me not Dementia group where we all took part in some flower arranging in china tea cups.
We had beautiful flowers all donated by Marks and Spencer’s and were helped in our design by members of the group. Butterfly Class all made an arrangement which they took home to their parents.
9th May 2024
The joys of sensory play - May 2024
Ever wondered why children come home from Pre School covered in flour?
Well it has great usage when learning to trace around letters, its so easy and soft to run your fingers through and create the letters in the flour with immediate recognition of what has been created.
Duck Hatching Part 3
Our ducklings experiencing  water for the first time.
Learning to swim.
Saying goodbye
On Friday we said our goodbyes to Dingleberry, Quaxley, Chick, Sweetpea, Arsenal and Flopsy. It will strange for everyone not to have these amazing ducklings, who have filled the last 3 weeks with moments of excitement, anticipation, amazement, laughter, awe and wonder. It has been such an amazing educational experience with so many moments witnessed in real time by the children and staff.
We are all going to miss you so much.
Our amazing duckling project - April / May 2024
We were very eggcited! To receive our eggs ready for hatching and followed the instructions impeccably.
We prepared the cage ready for new ducklings to settle into.
We waited with eggcitement for when the eggs began to crack and could hear the ducklings cheaping from within the eggs.
Our first duckings arrived and we were so lucky as we were able to sit and watch this.
The children had chosen names and as each duckling was hatched a name was drawn from the hat.
Our first duckling was Dingleberry, look how I fluffed up and grew into a handsome duck.
Followed by 2 further yellow ducks.
Look at how we changed after a few days.
Welcome to Quaxley and chick
April 2024
We created our own farm and vegetable patch
April 2024
We’re in the local paper (www.gazette-news.co.uk.)
We were lucky to meet a wonderful couple at the recent Nursery World Show in London, who explained to us about how their son had sadly died after choking in a nursery. Through this tragedy they have researched and developed an anti choking device which they kindly donated to us.
Their aim is to get this device into as many nurseries as they can to help to prevent / reduce the risk of choking. So far over 1040 children’s lives have been saved.
We are so very grateful to the Oliver Steeper Foundation for this donation. All staff have now completed their training.
Easter 2024
The Easter bunny has arrived at Pre School!
The children have thoroughly enjoyed searching for Easter treats hidden in the woodland garden.
We all had so much fun.
The children made Easter bonnets which were judged in their age groups by volunteers from the Walton & District Foodbank.
What Fabulous hats!
Spring 2024
Our new topic is growing and we created our own garden centre.
April 2024
A cool way to create flowers in paint.
March 2024
Whilst in our forest school garden we looked for bugs and had a visit from two friendly ducks.
Wiggly Worm Experiment - March 2024
We had fun with a tissue paper wiggly worm experiment.
The children coloured some tissue paper the adults then rolled this round a pencil, squeezed it as small as it could go and pulled it off the pencil.
The children then used large pipets to add water on to the worm and it grew in length.
Amazing!
Working with RHS - March 2024
During March we joined forces with the RHS to share seeds within our community and to plant seeds which would produce food for us to eat.
March 2024
On a nice dry day we were able to re-vamp our mud kitchen for the children to use.
Nature Windows - March 2024
We created our own nature windows to see what mini beasts we could find and what better place to look than our bug house. We hope with continued good weather than we can undertake some repairs to this and to replenish some areas to create a cozy environment for our bugs to live. We also collected twigs and brought these back int the classroom to make shapes.
Forest School Garden - March 2024
We really enjoy being in our Forest School garden and make the most of the better weather days.
Growing - March 2024
Our New Topic for the Spring is growing, we have been busy making grass worms
Tidying Our Garden - March 2024
We have been busy weeding our wildflower garden after the long winter. We are now looking all tidy again and would be grateful if anyone has any plants that they would be happy to donate to make this look less bare. We are hoping with warmer weather that we may begin to see some little seedlings appear
World Book Day - March 2024
Today we celebrated World Book Day in lots of ways, including dressing up, reading our favourite books, learning about authors and illustrators and making our Cat in the hat fruit skewers to eat at snack time. We ended the day by listening to Michael Rosen reading ‘Were going on a bear hunt.’
Still Life Drawing - March 2024
We practiced still life drawing, what do you think?
Happy St Davids Day - 1st March 2024
Fire Service - February 2024
As part of this terms topic we have been learning about roles in the community. We had been learning about the Fire Service and created our own area to spray down with hoses.
We celebrated Chinese New Year - February 2024
Building stars of the future! - February 2024
Last week the children continued the topic ‘People Who Help Us’ with a Builders tuff tray. We had bricks and different tools builders use to build and construct. We used shaving foam for cement to help hold our bricks together and not forgetting our safety hats.
Shrove Tuesday - February 2024
We celebrated Shrove Tuesday and made pancakes in the classroom. We mixed the batter practicing our cracking eggs skills and then we pretended to flip these – Oh what fun
We then cooked these on our portable ovens. We chose healthy fillings of fruit but also had some squirty cream! They were super delicious end enjoyed by all the children and of course the staff too.
Staff Attended the Nursery World Show in London - February 2024
Visit Walton Library - 24 January 2024
As we continue to learn about the community we live in we went to visit Walton Library for a song and rhyme session, which included many of the children’s favourites.
We then were able to have a look around the children’s library area, choosing books to share with our teachers, colouring in the new sheets at the desk as well as exploring the new equipment such as the sensory seating areas.
Thank you so much for a lovely morning.
Creating their own shop - 24 January 2024
The children extended their learning from the visit to Marks and Spencers by creating their own shop when back at Pre school. We used real food items, we had trolleys and baskets as well as working tills. We created our own lists and enjoyed shopping at the Walton Pre School village shop
Trip to local Marks & Spencers shop - 24 January 2024
We are learning about our local community and went on a trip to our local Marks & Spencers shop
We were soon greeted by M&S staff at the front doors. We bought along our own shopping trolleys and baskets. We were given a shopping list and with our adults we went to find the items. We filled our trolleys and baskets high! We even got to use the checkout and scan the items we had brought.
We were invited into the back of the store for a rest break to have a biscuit and some juice/milk.
We had the most wonderful morning in Our Community.
A BIG thank you to all the staff at M&S who made us feel so welcome, smiled throughout our visit with nothing being too much trouble.
