Swann Lane Pre-School

02/11/2026

🌟 Learning through play 🌟

Welcome back to pre-school after the half term break. This week we are learning all about bonfire night 🔥

After lots of discussions at group time and through watching a cbeebies ‘celebrating bonfire night’ clip, the children used this to develop their own play. Together we found lots of bricks and placed them in a circle… they selected plant pots/wood from our open ended resources and the children chose orange paper to create the fire. I sat back to observe what happened next…

The children found our sorting teddy bears and whilst chatting to each other they placed them around the fire- first in any order… then they decided the small baby bears needed their grown up as the fire was ‘too hot’ and ‘dangerous’. Together the children created bear famillies talking about how families are different.

They kept their play going through engaging in discussions, sharing ideas and bringing in their own personal experiences too.

Sometimes as a teacher it’s fantastic to create a little opportunity then watch the magic happen in how children develop this further 🌟

23/10/2026

🌟 Scarecrow hunt 🌟

This morning we went for a walk around Cheadle Hulme to look for scarecrows! We talked about the different characters and spotted them in all different places in our community. The children spoke about places they had visited and had great fun counting how many we could see!

At the end we all chose our favourite scarecrow!

There are lots of posters around advertising the scarecrow trail- it looks great fun!

21/10/2026

👀 👃 👄 Fun with NUMBERS 👄👃👀

The children have shown lots of interest in Mr Potato head from Toy Story recently and enjoy making different faces, talking about what they need and what we use our senses for.

To develop this further we created a fun maths challenge using a dice, a balloon and some facial feature print outs. Each child rolled the dice and the number they got they could choose what they wanted to add to their face. Number 1 was eyes, number 2 glasses, 3 a nose, 4 a mouth etc.

The children had great fun making different funny faces some with 3 noses and 2 pairs of glasses! We focused on numbers through the recognition of a dice and counting the spots. By the end of the game the children knew which number without counting the dice spots!

A simple but very fun activity to support our learning!

09/10/2026

🌟 Another wonderful week 🌟

This week we have been busy at pre-school engaging in lots of different activities including:
🍂 collecting different shape, colour and size leaves in our forest school area
🌳 using our ‘spotter’ guide to help us recognise which tree the leaves have come from
🐦‍⬛listening for sounds in the outdoor area and looking for where they are coming from. We then used a book all about birds to see which birds we could spot in our forest school area
🛝 challenging our gross motor skills to balance, climb and use the bikes/scooters
🎃 making play-doh and using Autumn shape cutters/tools to strengthen our fine motor skills
🍋 using tools such as nuts and bolts, lemon squeezers and different size scoops to support the development of the muscles in our hands
🧑‍🍳 baking scones whilst using different equipment and looking at the measurements on the giant scales
⚽️ heading to dinosaur land in our weekly Footytotz Stockport session
📚 sharing story sacks together to support the development of our listening and focus skills
🦔 learning all about animals that hibernate over winter and creating our own hedgehog house outdoors

A very busy week full of lots of fun and learning opportunities!

08/10/2026

⚽️⚽️⚽️⚽️⚽️⚽️⚽️

⚽💙 BRAND NEW FOOTYTOTZ CLASSES — HAZEL GROVE! 💛⚽

Join the fun as we launch our Saturday morning classes on 28th November! 🎉

Our playful Educational football sessions help little ones build confidence, develop motor skills and learn through exciting games and themed adventures! 🌟

📍 Hazel Grove High School
🕙 10am: 18 months – 2.5 years
🕚 11am: 2.5 – 4.5 years

🙌 30 places available!
Book your child’s FREE taster session and come along to see what Footytotz is all about!

Contact Chris or Ryan to book:
📧 [email protected]
📱 07921557344

📧 [email protected]
📱 07906035463

Tag a parent who’d love to join us! 👇

LearningThroughPlay

04/10/2026

🎒 Starting School in September 2027? 🎒

If your child was born between 1st September 2022 and 31st August 2023, it's time to start thinking about their Reception place for September 2027.

📅 Application deadline: 15 January 2027
📅 National Offer Day: 16 April 2027

Parents living in Stockport must submit their application through Stockport Council, even if applying for schools in other local authority areas.

✅ You can list up to 6 school preferences.
✅ Applying for your catchment school may improve your chances of securing a place.

Don't leave it until the last minute. Start researching schools and planning your application now!

Use our online form to apply for a nursery school place.

02/10/2026

A huge thank you to all our families for their kind donations towards our Harvest collection.

🌽🍎🌽🍎🌽🍎🌽🍎🌽🍎🌽🍎🌽🍎🌽

25/09/2026

🎈 Swann Lane Pre-School is TEN 🎈

Today we celebrated 10 years of Swann Lane Pre-school with a Bluey themed tea party. A very special guest came to see us- the children were SO excited to meet Bluey!! Together we planned the party, made bluey cakes and chose what party games to play. The children had the best time!

A HUGE thank you to everyone who has been part of our 10 year journey at Swann Lane Pre-school including all our fantastic staff members, our Footytotz Stockport coach Chris, our amazing families and all the wonderful children who have shaped us into who we are today. We often talk about the special times we have had and It’s lovely to see so many of our past children coming by to say hello and staying in contact.

We have grown from strength to strength continually looking for new opportunities that can give our children the very best early years experience that we can. We are excited to see where another 10 years takes us!

🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

22/09/2026

🛝 🍁 📚 Our community 📚 🍁 🛝

Being part of our community is an important part of our early years curriculum at Swann Lane Preschool. We love getting out and exploring the world around us by finding out new things, talking and sharing ideas alongside visiting places nearby.

This week we had a visit to our local park where we found signs of Autumn. We introduced new words and talked about what we could see. We saw lots of squirrels collecting conkers, visited the herb garden in the park and listened to the sounds we could hear whilst outdoors.

Our older preschool group visited our local library where we looked at different books, shared stories together and created our own stories. On the way back we retold the story of ‘Goldilocks and the 3 bears’. We love our library visits which support the children’s literacy development and encourage a love of reading from an early age.

Where will our outdoor adventures take us next? 🌲 🐿️ 🌰 🚂 🚌 🐭 🦢 ⛅️