Westminster School Highlights - 10th July, 2025
Baby Dragons Newsletter
Adventures with Animals, Chocolate & Clouds
This week, our little learners journeyed through sensory-rich adventures, discovering new sounds, textures, and tastes as we explored African animals, sweet celebrations, and a sprinkle of science!
Come experience how our nurturing baby room supports early development through language, sensory play, and discovery
Modern Languages and Communication
Our week began with a gentle introduction to animal names and textures through the tactile story That’s Not My Giraffe. During bucket time, we extended the experience with toy animals from the African jungle. The babies loved making animal sounds—roars, trumpets, and growls—which supports early speech and sound recognition.
Regional Education
As part of our ongoing Safari and River Nile theme, we explored water play with toy animals. The babies were fascinated by the different textures—rubbery, soft, and smooth—and delighted in making the animals splash and hide. These moments helped foster vocabulary development and sensory awareness.
Amazing Excursions
A highlight of the week was our visit to St George’s Park. From running across open spaces to kicking balls, peeking behind trees, and listening to birds, the children explored nature using all their senses. Activities like balancing and climbing supported gross motor skills and built confidence outdoors.
Festival of the Week – World Chocolate Day
To celebrate World Chocolate Day, we had fun with sensory chocolate-themed play! Using brown playdough and flour, we mimicked dark and white chocolate, shaping and squishing to explore textures and smells. These playful, imaginative activities helped strengthen fine motor skills and build sensory vocabulary.
STEAM Activities
Our science discovery this week was a “cloud-in-a-jar” activity. The children watched in awe as coloured water seeped through shaving foam clouds, mimicking rainfall. This hands-on experiment supported their understanding of cause and effect and encouraged observation skills in a safe and gentle way.
Specialist Teacher
Molly’s Mindful Movement offered calm and coordination through gentle stretches, rolling, and balancing.
Lucy Sparkles sparked joy through rhythm and music as the children sang, tapped, and played along to lively tunes—supporting musicality and listening.
Dragons Flight Newsletter
Learning Through Language, Culture, and Creativity
This week in Preschool, our children have been immersed in a variety of hands-on learning experiences that blended language, culture, literacy, mathematics, and creativity. Here’s a snapshot of all the fun and discovery.
Modern Languages
Circle time was filled with collaboration as the children voted on which story to read—demonstrating their growing confidence in expressing preferences and listening to one another. We also began rehearsing our graduation songs, focusing on rhythm, group participation, and clear pronunciation.
In phonics, we explored initial sounds through a tactile "mystery box" activity. Children picked objects, identified the starting sound, and matched it to a letter chart—strengthening their auditory discrimination and letter recognition through multi-sensory play.
We also introduced the Chinese pictographic character 山 (shān), meaning “mountain.” The children enjoyed learning how this character visually represents three peaks, and they linked it to real-life African mountains such as Kilimanjaro and the Drakensberg. Their mountain-themed watercolour paintings were expressive, textured, and full of imaginative energy.
Creative Arts & Sensory Learning
Children practised letter formation in their writing books by tracing foam letters, with a focus on pencil control and grip. We encouraged them to think of words starting with the traced letters—prompting lovely conversations around names, animals, and everyday words. These writing activities are helping to lay the foundation for early reading and spelling.
Mathematics
Our maths focus was on quantity and number recognition. Using plastic spools, children created colourful caterpillars by matching the number on a card to the correct number of spools. This fun and creative task supported 1–10 counting, sequencing, and visual representation of quantities—alongside fine motor skill development.
Creative Arts & Sensory Learning
This week, we explored traditional African pottery. The children observed patterns, shapes, and colours in clay vessels before sculpting their own pots from clay. Once dry, they painted them in vibrant colours inspired by African designs—connecting artistic expression with cultural appreciation.
Amazing Excursions
Outdoors, we took a musical journey through Africa. Teacher Cathrine led rhythmic clapping, call-and-response singing, and drumming with traditional instruments. The children loved exploring beat, tempo, and movement while gaining an understanding of cultural music traditions.
Specialist Teachers
Mindful Molly
Miss Molly’s movement class turned into a joyful dance party! Children followed guided routines with jumps, spins, and expressive actions. The session supported balance, coordination, and body confidence—and ended with big smiles all around.
Blue Dragon Newsletter
From Ducks to Drums: Exploring Sounds, Cultures & Self
This week, our Blue Dragons have been busy exploring, discovering, and growing through play-based learning across all areas of development. Here’s what we’ve been up to
Phonics Focus
The letter of the week was D, and we brought it to life through a playful duck-themed water activity. As ducks floated, splashed, and swam, children practiced the /d/ sound and began identifying other words starting with “D”. Learning through movement made phonics both fun and memorable!
STEM Activities
Our little engineers explored the wonders of magnetism by building colourful towers with magnetic cubes. As they counted and connected each piece, we discussed how magnets attract and stick. It was a brilliant way to combine early maths with hands-on science exploration!
Regional Learning – Celebrating African Culture
We continued our exploration of Africa with hands-on activities inspired by African culture. The children painted vibrant African patterns, created colourful paper-bead necklaces, and took part in a joyful outdoor drumming and dance session.
We also learned about the Big Five safari animals and enjoyed a fun animal feeding role-play game. These experiences nurtured curiosity, creativity, and understanding of global cultures and wildlife.
Hygiene & Self-Care – Washing Up!
After messy play, children washed their hands using brushes and soapy water, learning the importance of staying clean and healthy. These everyday routines are helping them build confidence and independence in self-care.
Sporty Minis
Our children loved this energetic session, filled with tennis ball games, dart throwing, and tunnel crawling. These gross motor activities encouraged coordination, spatial awareness, and physical confidence.
Specialist Teachers
Miss Molly
Mindful Molly Mindfulness time included rhythmic tambourines, stick tapping, and the soothing fun of bubble popping. These calming exercises helped children focus on sound, rhythm, and sensory awareness in a peaceful, joyful way.
Thank you for another week of laughter, learning, and fun—see you next time!
Supporting a Cause Close to Our Hearts
Hatching Dragons is proud to support our founder Cenn John, running the Cardiff Marathon this October to raise funds for Great Ormond Street Hospital. Inspired by the loss of a sibling to congenital heart disease and Down’s syndrome, this fundraiser aims to help children facing life-threatening illnesses.
We would love for our Hatching Dragons community to join us in supporting this cause. Every donation, no matter how small, can help change a child's future
In case you missed!
our update last week regarding important changes—including the new fee structure starting 1st September 2025—we kindly ask you to review the details.
Please take a moment to catch up and see how this may affect your family. Read the Nursery Fee Update →
Extended Learning: Holiday Clubs
Our Holiday Clubs offer STEAM fun, language learning, and field trips for school-aged children.
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