🌍🐾 Welcome Back, Playful Pups! 🇿🇦 

And just like that… we’re back! After a little hiatus, our Playful Pups have returned for the first week of our third term, and what a lovely week it has been. We have jumped straight into our new theme of Countries and Cultures — admittedly, not the easiest concept to explain to a room full of two-year-olds! 😄 

So, rather than attempting to explain the entire world just yet, we decided to start a little closer to home. We have been learning that we live in Africa, and more specifically, that our home is South Africa. 🇿🇦 

We explored the beautiful colours of our South African flag, which, as our Pups quickly discovered, is also a wonderful opportunity to revise our colours! We have also been learning some of the many different languages spoken in our country by greeting one another in the mornings with Goeie môre, Sawubona and Dumela. We have listened to our National Anthem a couple of times too, giving our Pups a little introduction to the sounds and traditions that make our country special. 

And then came the fun part… the South African Pups photo shoot! 📸🇿🇦 

Today we headed outdoors for an impromptu photo session, with each of our Pups sporting a South African scarf, a fabulous backdrop featuring the map of Africa and, of course, a rather large toy elephant to complete the African theme. Our Pups are always keen to explore something new outdoors, and it seems that some of them are already pretty well versed in the art of posing for the camera. Others were perhaps more interested in investigating the elephant! 🐘😂 

During free play this week, we brought out all our toy wild animals, which was a huge hit. Our classroom has been filled with lion roars, elephant trumpets and attempts at hippo grunts, with varying degrees of success! 🦁🐘🦛 There is certainly no shortage of imagination when our Pups get involved. 

🧘‍♀️ A Yummy Yoga Welcome Back! 

Our Monday morning started with a wonderful yoga session with Teacher Nicole, whom we hadn’t seen for a while thanks to the August school holidays. It took our Pups a little while to warm up and remember exactly what we were supposed to be doing, but they soon got back into the swing of things. There may have been a few more curious looks than perfectly executed poses, but we were very happy to have Teacher Nicole back! 🧘‍♀️💕 

🏃‍♂️ Coach Trevor Is Back! 

And, of course, our favourite Coach Trevor was back too! He had the Pups practising their ball skills, catching balls and then batting them using lengths of pool noodle. 

This turned out to be a rather enthusiastic activity! Some of our Pups clearly have a future in competitive batting, and those pool noodles were getting some serious air time. Anyone unfortunate enough to be standing within swinging distance was advised to keep their eyes open — including Coach Trevor, who had to perform a few impressive ducks to avoid becoming part of the lesson! 😂 

Fortunately, the pool noodles were soft, so everyone survived our return to sporting action with smiles intact. 

🎨 Creative Little Pups 

Our creative adventures continued this week as we completed our Spring flowers, which we started last week. 🌸 

Today we also went on the hunt for some recycled baby formula tins, which we will be transforming into African drums as part of our creative explorations. The Pups were already rather excited about the tins and immediately discovered that the plastic lids make perfectly good drumming surfaces! 

Something tells us that our African drum-making sessions in the weeks ahead may be slightly noisy… but definitely lots of fun! 🥁😄 

❤️ And So, We’re Off Again! 

It is lovely to have our Playful Pups back and to be starting our final term of the year. This is always an incredibly busy term, with so much still to look forward to — not least our upcoming Art Expo, which we are all working very hard towards making a fabulous celebration of our little artists and their creativity. 

There is certainly plenty still to do, plenty still to discover and, judging by this week’s pool-noodle swinging and wild-animal noises, plenty of fun to be had along the way! 

Welcome back, our wonderful Pups. We are so happy to have you back with us! 🐾❤️🌍🇿🇦 

Our Pups!