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Miss G sings a bedtime melody..... who's snoring?!!!
Good Night, Sleep tight, God Bless, Sweet dreams....

All the children at Busy Bee's came along to our bed time story event. Children were encouraged to wear their PJS and brought along a blanket, pillow and cuddly toy to share in the event. The children enjoyed a selection of activities, especially the threading activity with chocolate cheerio's, we made necklaces and the children enjoyed eating them before they relaxed for a story session with hot chocolate and marshmallows.

We celebrated World Book day at Busy Bee's.
The children joined in as we celebrated World Book Day... Each child took home a £1 book token we registered online to receive support material including the World Book Day £1 Book Tokens. A main aim of World Book Day is to encourage children to explore the pleasures of books and reading by providing them with the opportunity to have a book of their own. Here 'B' shows off his token with dad....

Lucy returned to Busy Bee's and we enjoyed lunch as we discussed our involvement in the ERC and staffs viewpoints, suggestions and idea's. We evaluated our time on the project and had a relaxed meeting to gather important information as we near the end of our project and look forward to continuing our forward planning and place our continued ideas into practice.... A big thank-you to Lucy for joining us at Busy Bees over the past two days and sharing our views and evaluation of the ERC project and the enjoyment and enhancement it has brought to our setting... :)

Thursday 11th February : Parental/Carer, Children’s Voice, setting survey focus session.
We welcomed Lucy to our setting to deliver a focus meeting with a selection of parents. We invited parent's and guardians to join the focus group and was very pleased with the interest shown. Following the parental consultation Lucy enjoyed a colouring activity with a selection of the children as they chatted in a relaxed manner and enjoyed the activity..

The children enjoyed icing biscuits as one of our activities planned following the children's interests as we enjoyed learning and exploring about the different animals in the book months activities....

February 2010 : Book Month, the children will have the opportunity to chose their favourite story from a selection of books we have been enjoying at the setting. The most popular books will be centred through all areas of planning and activities on a weekly theme during this month. The children selected a group of stories which we enjoyed sharing during key group sessions. The children then placed stickers on a photocopy of the book choices and the most popular books were chosen to enjoy during our book month.
Here we have been enjoying the Children's Book Choice : "Here Comes The Crocodile"

Following distribution of our Active Dudley bags the children and families have had the opportunity to enjoy and share the resources at home. The Active Dudley was set up following a great opportunity provided as Dudley was awarded a grant aid of £290,000 by Sport England and The Big Lottery for a three year programme to engage people in physical activity. At Busy Bees we support the programme and we are very lucky to have been given the resources to share and lend at Busy Bees. We have found the resources to be a fun way to introduce and support Communication and Language in song, music and dance through sport and physical activity. Each key group have been enjoying sessions and we welcomed parents/carers and family members into the setting to enjoy a family session to share activities and ideas. Here Green Group is introduced to the activity bags...

We have purchased an Easy Listener at Busy Bee's to give the children the opportunity to access reading books, poetry, music and a variety of literacy and reading resources.The children have free access to the area which has been a firm favourite and they have been following their favourite stories along with CD and book. As we have observed the children at the setting we have been delighted to see the resources being increasingly popular and the opportunities to extend play into other areas within the setting has been fully met. We aim to add our own radio station in the role play area by following the childrens interests. 'E' and 'B' enjoy the Hungry Caterpillar....

Our story cases contain story books, dressing up costumes, jigsaws,toys and resources to enchance the story lines and encourage families to extend the selected story books through all areas of learning to have fun and encourage creativity into the home setting. To enjoy listening to and using spoken and written language, and readily turn it into their play and learning, to explore and experiment with sounds, words and texts and to continue to be interested, excited and motivated to learn through all play opportunities.

With our objective in supporting families we purchased some resources to provide three story boxes with our ERC money. We aim to loan out our linen suitcases which contains visual, tactile and listening aids. With the introduction of a home diary we hope to share experiences and evidence of sharing songs, rhymes and stories outside the setting as we build on positive relationships with our families at Busy Bees. We look forward to sharing our journey with you in the near future....

As we look forward to our activities and events at Busy Bees in the near future we would like to share some of our project plan with you. Please see our dates for diaries and we look forward to sharing our news with you following our events:
February 2010 : Book Month, the children will have the opportunity to chose their favourite story from a selction of books we have been enjoying at the setting. The most popular books will be centred through all areas of planning and activities on a weekly theme during this month.
Thursday 11th February : Parental/Carer, Childrens Voice, setting and staff survey focus session.
4th March 2010 : World Book Day - Bed Time Story Session.
19th March 2010 : Celebration Party - to celebrate our success we shall be holding a Character Fancy Dress Party
French Friday : To continue to support the introduction of 'Fun through French sessions'. A weekly session delivered through song, dance, games and stories.
Rhyme Time Visit : to support the children's language and development through song and rhyme.
As we follow the childrens interests at the setting through our daily planning and observation we hope to share ongoing opportunities with you all the the near future too.

We arranged a visit to Stourbridge Library and invited parents/carers to join us. On arrival we all joined in the Rattle and Rhyme session followed by story time delivered by the Library staff. The children enjoyed refreshments and snack and we thanked the library staff for a lovely session and gave them a treat with a sing-a-long of the childrens favourite nursery rhymes and action songs. We had a great turn out moms, dads, siblings and grandparents joined in the activities too, following a talk the parents had an opportunity to join the library and the children discovered the book areas and joined in by coloring a picture to enter the Library competition, a great morning was had by all. Special thanks to Stourbridge library, we look forward to a 'story teller' from the library joining us at Busy Bees in the near future.

We were all excited when the postman knocked on our door and delivered our prize from Yellow Door. The children gathered around as we unwrapped our Magical World Story Box, their curiosity rose as they were keen to look inside, we talked about what might be inside the box and what we may discover. On opening the box we was suprised to find a simple scene within the box with a selection of small toys, objects and shiny fabric to help motivate the children to tell stories of their own 'R' said "Wow oh my goodness what are these?" "Golden Eggs" replied'W'. 'F' asked "What colour eggs are these?" "they golden and silver". The story box is for over 3 years due to small parts and we found the pieces were too small for our younger children so we have purchased additional mythical creatures from the ELC to extend the opportunities to all the children at our setting. Through our own observation the children have brought their own experiences into their play and we have found the children need little encouragement to use the box effectively, it has created curoisity and discovery as the children have combined both reality and fantasy using the resources, they have also combined their play opportunties with role and imaginative play 'W' tells her friends "I'm closing the show now" and closes the box "Its time for them to sleep" 'E' calls "quick its dark and its raining lets hide" The children took the box and hid under the table covered with a large blanket. 'B' whispers "This is our magical den" 'F' "Quick open the box we can say the magic word" 'S' replies "Cockadoodledoo" "No Abrabcadabra" and then story continues....The box has created opportunties to support PSED and particulary CCL, however with the childrens own interests purely leading the play all areas of learning maybe and is accessed effectively. We look forward to continuing to enjoy our prize and promoting interest, motivation and bringing enjoyment and creativity into our setting:)

The Magical World Storybox from Yellow Door.

We have been very happy with the responce and recieved 72% of our questionaires back providing us with valuable views and suggestions from our parents and carers. We look forward to sharing our findings with our local focus group and to maintain and develop awareness of our project aims and enrich our environment at Busy Bees. Here are a few of our findings and percentages....
90% are members of the Local Library.
80% join in holiday activities offered at the local library.
80% have recieved the Bookstart Pack and Plus
70% are awaiting the Bookstart Treasure Chest.
100% share stories at bedtime, 70% daytime, 75% share stories with Dad, 75% share stories with mom, 30% with grandparents and 30% as a family with siblings. Other ways sharing enjoyment through language, stories and reading at home were converstaion,drawing,games,flashcards,story cd roleplay and acting, puppet shows, TV/Media, music and songs.
The greatest influence for parents were mom 40%, parents 50%, library 10%, Dad 20%, myself 30%, school 20% and authors 10%.
We learnt what events parents and carers would like to see in our setting and have added suggestions to our forward planning, which resources parents/carers would like to have the opportunity to borrow from us and suggestions and comments to ensure we continue to work alongside parents and carers with ideas and thoughts on our aims and evaluation on our setting. Overall we have been very pleased with the responce and look forward to sharing our findings with our families at Busy Bees in their participation in our development with the project.

Welcome back, everyone at Busy Bees Kindergarten would like to wish you a Happy New Year and best wishes for 2010. Its time for an update as we have been away too long!, a busy time for all with Christmas activities and events in the lead up to Christmas and welcoming our new children into the setting during the start of the Spring term however we have lots to Blog about so here goes......

We are really excited to have recieved notification that every few months Early Reading Connects runs a blogging competition for its members. This means settings have a few weeks to add to their blogs and the best one gets a prize. This time Busy Bees has won! We are very excited and look forward to receiving our prize. A Story Box from Yellow Door, which is a small world play resource. As soon as we start using our prize we hope to share our feedback with you. A great bonus for the setting to enjoy, with thanks to all staff and everyone at Busy Bees for your support during the progress in our project. :}

We are very lucky to have recieved a great display donated from a grandparent at our setting, we were very pleased as the Hungry Caterpillar is a firm favourite at story time with the children at Busy Bee's. Our new display fits nicely on our wall leading into our story corner and with bright inviting pictures encourages the children to follow the visual story line. A great new way to enchance the childrens interest in a very popular story. Special thanks to Mrs Brooks.

November 2009.
Following a training opportunity and sharing information with other settings staff discussed how to encourage development of language skills through interactive story telling play and book sharing activities. Our Wizard Word Story Teller was created, we purchased a cape, hat and a ruby magic ring which gives the word wizard special powers to create weird and wonderful fantasy stories for everyone to enjoy, the children huddle together and enjoy story books and interactive story-telling sessions with lots of actions and participation. A firm favourite and very popular with the children.
Great for key group time too when introducing phonics etc. The staff enjoy the challenges too!!....

October 2009
We discussed different ways of creating opportunities for children to access stories, songs and rhymes to increase the children's desire and interest. We purchased a CD Audio Player with multiple headphones and the children love to sit together in small groups and enjoy music and audio books. A great addition to our reading resources...

October 2009.
The children at Busy Bees enjoy sharing books with their families and we have been loaning reading resources over the past three years however the children where encouraged to return their book bags on a weekly basis and staff shared the story with the child and helped change their book. To welcome families into the setting we introduced our Story Tent to invite parents/carers into the setting to share rhymes, songs and stories with their child and to change their book bags for loan on a weekly basis, we offer a selection of days and times to support families and working parents..

Welcome to our reading corner...

September 2009.
Following the summer holidays the children returned to pre-school and enjoyed sharing their holiday experiences with everyone, to combine with our planning we followed the childrens interests and enjoyed activities to support their development, this provided us with a great opportunity to re-vamp our reading area as we designed our book area into a 'Under the sea' theme.

September 2009.
We felt it was important to gain a parental view on aspects we were hoping to focus on during the project and to gain thoughts, ideas and suggestions in support of the project so we designed a parental questionnaire which we are currently evaluating and discussing the outcomes and we would like to share our findings in the near future. Please watch this space...

September 2009.
Following sharing the information with the staff at Busy Bees we created our forward planning sheets and project plan with enthusiasm and a real 'Buzz!'
To launch the project we designed our display board and provided information for our families also requesting a picture of story time at home to encourage interest and participation in support of our project.

Welcome to Busy Bees Kindergarten, we look forward to sharing our information with you and our progress through the Reading Connects Project. We aim to look at strategies and practical ideas we can offer families to raise awareness of the project aims and enrich our environment at Busy Bees. To provide and encourage a love and enjoyment of language, stories and reading among families and children within our setting and to provide a firm foundation and share good practice with others through resources, knowledge and information with the Early Reading Connects Project. Here goes.....