Kingdom Pre-School

Jack and the Beanstalk 🌱
Lion Leaders have been bringing Jack and the Beanstalk to life this week through a range of rich, child-led activities — and the learning woven through every moment has been wonderful to witness.
Children used their hands to paint towering beanstalks, and in doing so, discovered colour mixing first-hand as blue and yellow became green before their eyes. This is a genuinely magical moment of scientific enquiry through art: children forming and testing a hypothesis, observing an unexpected result, and making sense of it in real time. It is exactly the kind of concrete, sensory experience that makes abstract concepts — in this case, the properties of colour — genuinely meaningful and memorable. Crayon stick drawings extended this creative exploration further, supporting fine motor development and mark-making with a different tool and a different quality of line.
A tuff tray filled with gold coins, beans, and story objects then invited children to revisit and retell the narrative in their own way. Story retelling is a deeply important early literacy behaviour: when children reconstruct a narrative using objects and play, they are developing their understanding of sequence, character, and story structure — the very foundations of reading comprehension and written composition. Crucially, they are doing so on their own terms, at their own pace, following their own curiosity. That is when the learning goes deepest.

Join the Kingdom Pre-School team! We're currently recruiting for a number of exciting roles, including Room Leader, Early Years Practitioner and Forest School Practitioner. If you're passionate about giving children the very best start in life, we'd love to hear from you. 📧 Find out more and apply today: https://kingdompreschool.org.uk/vacancies/

Outdoor Play 🚲
Lambs have been making the most of our outdoor play area this week, and what unfolded was a beautiful illustration of how rich, self-directed outdoor play can be.
Children took to bikes and ride-on vehicles with enthusiasm, developing gross motor skills, balance, and spatial awareness as they navigated the space. But what was particularly wonderful to observe was the way independent exploration quickly evolved into something far richer and more complex — a spontaneous ice cream shop emerged entirely from the children's own imagination, transforming the outdoor area into a stage for collaborative role play, early language development, and social negotiation. This kind of unscripted, child-initiated imaginative play is amongst the most cognitively and socially demanding things young children do: it requires them to agree on a shared narrative, allocate roles, sustain a scenario, and communicate with one another in real time.
The three-seater circle bikes added another dimension entirely, requiring children to coordinate their movements, read each other's cues, and work together towards a shared physical goal. Outdoor play like this develops the whole child in ways that simply cannot be replicated indoors — and moments like these are a reminder of why outdoor provision is not a supplement to learning, but central to it.

🍓 **A berry special day out at Felderland Farm!** 🚜

What an adventure our pre-reception children had! 🌟 Off they went to Felderland Farm for a wonderful day of strawberry picking, tractor rides and so much outdoor fun.

The children searched along the rows for the ripest, reddest strawberries, carefully picking their own and filling their little baskets to the brim. 🍓 There were juicy taste-tests aplenty (and a few very red smiles!), tractor adventures, swing rides with friends, and even a stroll through the countryside hand-in-hand. 🌳

Days like these are bursting with learning:

🌍 **Understanding the World** — discovering where our food comes from, exploring the farm, and connecting with nature and the seasons.

✋ **Physical Development** — careful picking with little fingers, clambering, balancing and lots of fresh-air adventuring.

💬 **Communication and Language** — sharing the excitement, describing the sweet, juicy strawberries and chattering away about every new discovery.

💚 **Personal, Social and Emotional Development** — walking safely together, taking turns, trying new things and building beautiful memories with friends.

🍓 **Expressive Arts and Design** & the simple joy of the senses — the smell, the colour, the taste of summer!

Thank you, Felderland Farm, for the berry best day! 🍓☀️

🌊 A seaside adventure for our Lion Cubs! 🐚

What a wonderful day! Our Lion Cubs headed off to St. Margaret's Beach with Dawn and Danika for a proper outdoor adventure — and what a treat it was! ☀️

As they wandered along the shoreline, the children became little treasure hunters, searching amongst the pebbles for hidden gems and discovering all sorts of interesting shapes, colours and textures. 🪨✨ They drank in the beautiful sights, listened to the gentle crash of the waves and the call of the seabirds, and explored the great outdoors with all of their senses.

There was so much rich learning in every step:

🌍 Understanding the World — investigating the natural environment, noticing the textures of pebbles, the sound of the sea, and the wonders of the world beyond our gates.

💬 Communication and Language — describing what they found and sharing their discoveries, building vocabulary through real, first-hand experiences.

✋ Physical Development — clambering over pebbles, walking the shoreline and strengthening growing bodies in the fresh sea air.

💚 Personal, Social and Emotional Development — exploring together, building confidence and a deep love of the outdoors.

There's nothing quite like learning out in the real world. 🐚🌊

A huge thank you to Dawn and Danika for such an enriching adventure!

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X-Ray Role Play 🩺
Fawns stepped into the world of medicine this week in a brilliantly imaginative and multisensory way. Children printed their hands in shaving foam on the table to recreate the look of an X-ray — engaging their sense of touch whilst also building early awareness of the human body and the idea that we can represent the world through image and mark. This kind of representational thinking, where a print becomes a body, is a significant cognitive milestone and a precursor to both early literacy and scientific understanding.
Stethoscopes and medical equipment flashcards extended the play, giving children the vocabulary and tools to lead their own imaginative scenarios. The introduction of real or realistic objects into role play is a well-evidenced way to deepen engagement and build domain-specific language — children who play in rich, resourced environments like this develop a broader and more flexible vocabulary than those exposed to direct instruction alone. Role play of this kind also builds empathy and perspective-taking, as children inhabit roles beyond their own experience, and supports the development of narrative thinking — the ability to construct, sequence, and communicate a story.