Westminster School Highlight - 30th May 2025

🐣 Baby Dragons Weekly Newsletter

Westminster Nursery

Welcome to another week of smiles, songs, and sensory wonder! Our little ones have been busy exploring communication, culture, and playful movement in a warm, nurturing environment.

👉 Looking for flexible summer childcare options? Check out our Holiday Childcare at Westminster
👉 Curious about our nursery? Book a tour today!

✋ Modern Language & Communication

This week, we introduced the Makaton signs for “happy” and “sad” to help babies begin recognising simple emotions. Some babies watched intently, while others copied the signs with big smiles and curious looks. These small, meaningful interactions are the first steps in communication and social connection.

In the coming weeks, we’ll expand on emotion-based signs and use mirrors and songs to deepen their understanding.

📖 Storytime: That’s Not My Lamb

Our little ones loved exploring the textures in That’s Not My Lamb—touching soft fleece, rough patches, and bumpy feet with both hands and faces! Sensory reading like this sparks early curiosity, builds attention, and supports language development.

Next week, we’ll introduce another touch-and-feel book and start a texture board for babies to explore during quiet playtime.

🍋 Regional Education: A Taste of India

We continued our India cultural theme by exploring Indian fruits—especially mangoes! Babies touched and stacked pretend mangoes, pointed as we counted, and discovered numbers, shapes, and colours through hands-on discovery.

Next week, we’ll add real fruit slices to make colourful stamp prints, bringing even more sensory excitement to our learning.

🍬 Pretend Play: Making “Ladu” Sweets

With soft playdough, babies helped “make” pretend Ladu sweets, using plastic tools to press, cut, and shape. We added parsley for scent and colour, boosting sensory exploration, fine motor skills, and early pretend play.

Next, we’ll offer simple kitchen role-play items like soft spoons and pots to encourage more imitation of daily routines.

🌈 Sensory Play & Movement

The sensory mats were a hit this week! Babies crawled, patted, and poked the colourful mats—some even hopped and jumped, watching the paint inside swirl and move. These activities build body awareness, balance, and sensory development.

We’ll keep introducing new textures and add movement toys like tunnels and soft climbing cushions to keep the fun going!

🧘 Mindful Molly: Yoga, Songs & Calming Play

With Mindful Molly, the babies explored gentle stretches and movements supported by soft music and calming sensory materials like scarves and scented items.

They loved singing “The Fire Truck Song” with helmets for pretend play and acting out “Miss Polly Had a Dolly,” encouraging gentle touching, listening, and focus. These moments foster calm, connection, and curiosity.

Next week, we’ll introduce bubble breathing games and nature-themed sensory activities to support emotional growth and joyful exploration.

🐲 Blue Dragons Newsletter (Toddlers)

This Week’s Highlights: Letters, Dumplings & Dragon Boat Fun!

Our little Blue Dragons have had an action-packed week—tracing letters, cooking sticky rice dumplings, hopping like pros, and learning to be kind friends. Let’s dive into all the joyful learning that’s been happening!

👉 Explore our Specialist Education & Enrichment Programme
👉 Learn more about our International Curriculum

🔠 Phonics – “The Missing R!”

This week, we went on a sensory adventure to discover the letter R! Using sticky dots, the children carefully traced the shape of R on paper. Then we brought it to life by stamping the letter with alphabet blocks into our sand tray—and tracing it again with magic fingers. So much fun and a great way to build early literacy skills!

🔷 Maths – Shape Recognition

With the Dragon Boat Festival as our inspiration, we explored shapes in stories and activities. We imagined sticky rice dumplings as triangles and even spotted rectangles in the door! The children loved spotting shapes and sharing what they saw—what a playful way to learn about geometry!

🐾 Physical Development – Rescuing the Animals

We turned fine motor practice into an exciting game: rescuing tiny animals from colourful balls! Using tweezers, the children carefully picked up each animal, sorted them by colour, and counted their rescues. Their focus and coordination were incredible—well done, Blue Dragons!

🍚 Cultural Learning, Cooking & Mandarin – Making Sticky Rice Dumplings (粽子)

In celebration of the Dragon Boat Festival, we had a delicious hands-on cooking experience! The children scooped sticky rice into real bamboo leaves, folding them into triangular dumplings—just like the shapes we explored in Maths! Through this activity, they also learned the Mandarin word for sticky rice dumpling (粽子 – zòngzi). A tasty way to connect culture, language, and learning!

⚽ Specialist Teachers

🌟 Sports Mini

This week’s sports session was all about balance and movement! The children balanced beanbags on their heads, shoulders, hands, and feet—and hopped through ladder rungs like little athletes. We even raced in sacks, giggling all the way!

🎶 Mindful Molly

Our Mindful Molly session was filled with music and imagination! We learned about different occupations—like a firefighter with a helmet—and sang songs about them. We even pretended to put out bubbles like firefighters putting out fires. What teamwork and creativity!

❤️ Behaviour & Social Learning

We had some lovely conversations about kind and gentle behaviour. We practiced using gentle hands, walking feet, and learned that teeth are for smiling, not biting! Some children even role-played as teachers, modelling positive behaviour for their friends. It’s inspiring to see our little ones growing into kind, respectful, and caring friends.

We’re so proud of our Blue Dragons for all they’ve accomplished this week—exploring language, culture, movement, and kindness every step of the way.

🐉 Dragon Flight Preschool Newsletter

This Week’s Highlights: Sounds, Science, Culture, and Movement!

Our preschoolers had a week filled with phonics fun, nature math, sensory exploration, cultural crafts, and joyful movement. Let’s dive into all the learning that unfolded at Hatching Dragons!

🔤 Phonics: Blending SATPN Sounds

This week, our little readers practiced blending the sounds s, a, t, p, n to create simple words like “sat” and “nap.” Through catchy songs, magnetic letters, and flashcards, they built confidence in identifying and blending sounds.

Listening games helped them pick out beginning sounds, boosting their phonemic awareness and setting the stage for early reading success.

🔢 Math & Science: Sorting and Grouping at the Park

On our park adventure, children collected natural treasures—leaves, sticks, and stones—and sorted them by color, size, and type.

Using words like “more,” “same,” and “biggest,” they practiced comparing and grouping. We even introduced basic graphing using their found objects—making math a fun, hands-on discovery.

Nature truly brought numbers to life!

🌈 Sensory Play: Colorful Water Hands

Our sensory activity turned into a rainbow of exploration!

The children filled water gloves with colored water, creating squishy, playful “hands.” They loved mixing the colors and comparing the sizes to their own hands. This tactile adventure introduced concepts of size, color mixing, and texture—all while sparking giggles and creativity.

Regional Learning: Crafting Diyas (India)

As part of our cultural exploration, the children created Diyas—traditional clay lamps—using bright paints and clay.

They learned that Diyas are used during Diwali to symbolize light and celebration. This hands-on craft beautifully blended art, culture, and creativity, and the children were so proud of their vibrant creations!

🈶 Mandarin: Writing the Character 船 (Boat)

Linking language and culture, our Mandarin session focused on the character 船 (chuán), meaning “boat.”

The children practiced stroke order using brushes, learned the tone through vocabulary songs, and discussed different kinds of boats—connecting it all to the Dragon Boat Festival. A wonderful way to blend cultural learning and language skills!

🥟 Special Festival: Rice Dumplings for Dragon Boat Festival

To celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival, our little chefs made zongzi—sticky rice dumplings—using bamboo leaves and sticky rice.

They practiced folding and filling, and listened to the story of Qu Yuan, discovering the festival’s traditions and meaning. This hands-on experience brought culture and sensory fun together—a definite highlight of the week!

🎓 Creative Art: Graduation Song & Dance

Excitement filled the air as we began practicing our graduation performance!

Children learned to sing in unison and follow the dance moves with smiles and laughter. These practices build teamwork, confidence, and stage presence—it’s going to be a proud moment for everyone!

🌳 Excursion: Park Nature Walk – Math Focus

On our nature walk, everyday objects became math tools.

Leaves, rocks, and sticks were sorted and grouped, sparking discussions about similarities and differences. This playful outdoor learning made math concepts fun and meaningful—and everyone enjoyed the adventure!

🎶 Specialist Teaching: Sports, Music, and Mindful Yoga

Our sports session transformed into a jungle of fun with children moving like animals and playing musical chairs—practicing coordination, balance, and listening skills.

In our music and mindfulness class, we explored feelings through yoga poses, and breathing exercises helped us calm our bodies and minds. A perfect blend of movement, imagination, and emotional learning!

👉 Learn more about our Specialist Education & Enrichment Programme
👉 Explore our Values-Based International Curriculum to see how we nurture every child’s potential.

We’re so proud of our Dragon Flight preschoolers for their curiosity, creativity, and kindness this week. Thank you for sharing in this journey of growth and discovery!

Warm wishes,
The Hatching Dragons Team