Christmas! It’s such a busy time for everyone! There is always a tonne of things to do during the build-up. From trees and houses to decorate, presents to buy and wrap, Santa letters to send, and not to mention, the cookies to bake for Santa for Christmas Eve.

It’s also a lovely and important time to be in the moment and take time out for yourself as parents and carers. Make yourself a coffee, take a breather, observe and ask your child about his or her day in crèche / preschool. “What did you do today?” Nine times out of ten, they’ll probably tell you “nothing”!

Well, lucky we have proof to show you all that your little ones have been very busy in their class rooms doing lots of things!

We are always very busy baking, playing sensory games, singing songs and learning all about different topics. Space, planets, the artic winter and food groups have been most recent hot topics on our curriculum list. We are also very lucky in Links Childcare to have a great team of Educarers who are so engaging and encouraging with our children when it comes to arts and crafts and getting creative.

While our learning framework is the Aistear programme, our children’s daily experience is influenced greatly by the inspirational and innovative Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood learning. The Reggio Emilia approach centers around children having control over their learning, children learning through experiences of touching, moving, listening, observing, building relationships with other children and children using endless ways to express themselves.

In Links Childcare, we are always so fascinated and amazed by our children. Through observing them from a daily basis, we can clearly see how our children are adopting the Reggio Emilia approach in an organic fashion through what they do in class with their Educarers and the interaction that have with their little friends. This is especially evident when its arts and crafts time.

They listen to their Educarers (by following instructions on where in the room to source the art items), they experience the textures of the paint, card, brushes and they chat with their Educarers and friends about what they are making. Finally, they use their creative masterpieces to express themselves through colours, paint strokes and their opinions of what colour they think their Christmas trees should be according to them.

Our children have been spending a lot of time creating the most amazing pieces of Christmas arts and crafts this season.

Here is a round up of some of our favourite festive arts and crafts, as made by our creative children across our Links Childcare crèches and preschools:

  • Christmas baubles / hanging decorations – Some very impressive scissors work going on (from our Educarers) with some lovely hanging stars and shapes to hang on the tree with some having each child’s photo on them.

 

 

 

  • Christmas cards – All sorts of shapes and glitter were added to the Christmas cards our children made for their loved ones.
  • Christmas countdown calendar – These Christmas countdown calendars were a big hit with our children, as they got to change the days every morning. It also gave them a sense of time and showed them how many days until Santa Claus’ arrival. “Are we there yet, are we there yet?”
  • Snow and Snowmen – Our children, especially our babies loved painting snowmen / women with our Educarers.
  • Angels, Rudolph’s, elves and Christmas trees – Cutting out shapes and faces to create the cutest elves, reindeers and Christmas angels
  • Chimney places for Santa to come down – These fireplaces have really transformed our rooms into a magical and cosy Christmas setting. The chimneys have all been cleaned too, to ensure Santa doesn’t get too sooty as he comes down the chimney.
  • Santa post boxes – Our children have loved sending their letters to Santa during pretend play. Some have even posted “letters” to their elf friends in the North Pole and posted them into the box too.

I’m sure you will all agree that we really have a huge amount of creative talent in Links Childcare. Many thanks to all our children and their Educarers for all the gorgeous art creations.

You might take some inspiration from this and make your own festive arts and crafts with your children at home. As well as our suggestions above, here are a few more from Hands On As We Grow to share with you.

Links Childcare – Learning through discovery and play

Call us on 1890 93 00 82 to discuss your childcare needs.