Happy new year to all our parents and children and welcome to our first newsletter of 2020.
And… just like that, Christmas is over and most of us have made a return to whatever our routines were before the festive season. Some people love routine and are delighted to see the back of mince pies, while others absolutely dread the humdrum days of January. But January days get lighter, the weather gets warmer and now is the accepted time to make our regular annual good resolutions.
Our first week back was so exciting. Our children were very happy to see their friends and excited to get back to their routine after all the Christmas holidays and they came full of beautiful stories about their Christmas holidays with family and friends and were super excited to tell us all about Santa’s presents.
January was a month full of activities filled with learning and fun. Hope you enjoy reading the newsletter and please find some pictures attached.
As of February, our newsletters will be available and distributed to parents every two months. So the next newsletter for Abington will be the February edition, then April, and so on. Thank you and we look forward to continuing to share all our news and stories with you through our newsletters.
In the meantime, we hope you enjoy this read, and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Instagram, (links below).
I wish you a happy and healthy 2020 and hope you succeed in reaching all the good things you aspire to – whether new or ongoing.
Many thanks,
Eliane
Eliane McMahon —Crèche Manager
Baby Room News
We kicked off the year with some super fire work art. The babies love sensory play, and they love playing with paint too. We painted their hands and they created their very own fire work art. It was lots of fun.
Messy play is always a big hit, especially when they are playing with rice and sand, paint and glup. It’s great for their sensory skills. Sand is their favourite sensory play activity. Our babies really enjoyed it. Some even climbed into the sand box, they couldn’t get enough of it.
Sensory Lights brought some lovely laughs and excited screams to our room. As soon the room became dark, they explored this lovely sensory environment and was mesmerized by the bright, soothing lights. The curiosity on their faces was so adorable too.
We explored All About Me and talked about our differences and our own unique ways and characteristics. We did some funny faces, child led of course, some of the faces were very funny indeed. Everyone is different and this will be a big topic when your child starts school so its good to start this process early.
Our babies love cuddly teddy bears, so we decided to create our very own soft and cuddly teddy bear. We painted our feet and made a teddy bear from our prints. We even made a teddy bear hat on National Hat Day. Our teddy bears and all our children enjoyed a picnic during role play, it was lovely to see our babies engage with their Educarers and their toys too.
We had so much fun on National Hat Day and we all had a turn trying on different hats and played peek a boo and lots of games.
Each day we place new toys into our sensory basket. Our sensory baskets have strings across the top of basket, so the children must operate hand to eye co-ordination and concentrate on navigating through the strings to get the toys out. Our babies love this activity and they are getting very good at getting the toys that they want from the basket.
The children have been participating in a wide range of activities, all involving lots of play! We had our Fitness Week at the start of the month, where they all chased the ball throughout the class. They also love practice walking, where we focus on their balance and confidence. Walking activities are very popular among our babies, and we have been encouraging them to do lots of this through games and songs. They have been loving the obstacle courses set up by our Educarers to help them find their balance. They get so excited and are so courageous. It is very rewarding to see them so enthusiastic.
Wobbler Room News
After a wonderful Christmas, surrounded by our loved ones, we have returned full of energy and eager to see our friends and Educarers again and have lots of learning through discovery and play.
In January we learned a lot about the circus, traffic lights, fingers and toes.
For our circus topic, we have built a circus tent, we have dressed up, made juggling balls with socks and chickpeas and made clown crafts too. A giant clown was created on our special board, and we glued some colored plugs on the wig with our hands. We decorated our scrap books with circus themed items, and it was so much fun.
Through the topic of the traffic lights we have been able to learn a little more about the colors of traffic lights; green, red and yellow. We also learned the meanings of the colours and what to do when we see them when we are out and about with our family. We have made a giant traffic light, using a flashlight and in the dark, we have played a game of “go, slow and stop”. Now we know a lot about road safety!!!
It was wonderful to see our wobblers exploring their fingers and toes through our games and play. We played with various items, such as wooden blocks and play dough. And we also played with a set of textures using the covers of wipes packages and when we opened them there was a different texture inside. We love to experiment and discover new textures. On our tip toes, we learned that our toes are very strong and we can be very light on our feet, if we put our minds to it.
We also had a great time with our weekly planned events:
Fitness Week: We loved celebrating fitness week because we had the opportunity to continue to improve our motor skills. Throughout this week we have used the song of “walking, walking” to continue improving the way we walk, jump and run and see the differences in movement between them. We also enjoyed performing different movements such as: up and down, even side and the other, turns, and more importantly, dancing together and developing our social skills at the same time as we hold hands and dance together.
National Hat Day: How fun was this day!! We wore our funniest caps and we loved seeing our Educarers with theirs. Looking in the mirror to see how handsome and beautiful we were was fun too.
Television Week Role Play: This week we created a television and the Educarers and made a show of “Baby Shark” and “Peppa Pig” We loved it.
National Puzzle Day: We played with lots of puzzles and we were trying to fit the pieces into their positions. Thanks to this we were able to develop our fine motor skills, coordination and logic. It’s great to learn while playing.
Last but not least, our wobblers love messy play. It gives us the opportunity to manipulate and experiment with new materials. Play doh, slime and sand was all enjoyed!
Toddler Room News
It has been a very special month to some of our children, Happy 2nd Birthday to Robyn, Matthew and Alannah, who turned two years old. Happy Birthday!!!!
January was a very busy month for our toddlers in Abington, even though it was the first month of the year.
To help them to discover their environment and to improve their motor skills, all of our Educarers help our toddlers through various forms of play, storytelling, and songs.
We started the month coming back from the Christmas holidays and that wasn’t easy for everybody. Some of our toddlers also left us and moved to pre-school, and we still miss them. We met our new friend, Kyla, and we have been showing her the classroom and all the toys that we have.
This is the best moment for our toddlers to gain more independence through small tasks. We are working on our ” tidy up” routine, throwing our rubbish into the correct bins and we are assigning a helper every day to distribute the water bottles at snack time. They love this task, and it’s an important one for our children.
Learning all about our body parts was fun and we painted our body and our hands with lots of colours. We sang a lot of songs about our body like “head, shoulders, knees and toes” and “one little finger”. We are aware of the importance of the stimulation at early ages. In order to develop fine and gross motor skills, it is important to enhance these skills through various activities. We have been improving gross skills by doing bike races, dances with our favourite songs and parachute activities, which are so popular amongst our toddlers. Making our funny hats, coloring, painting, manipulating smalls objects and puzzles are all great for hand and eye coordination. But their favourite was making animal finger puppets and putting on our own show.
For Crazy Hat Day, we had so many different styles, like a bear, a warrior, Spiderman, a rabbit, etc. Thanks, parents, for making such efforts throughout our events. It is so important for your child’s development.
One of our toddlers was talking about her mummies new car, so we decided to draw lots of different cars and with help from our Educarers, we made a police car, tractors and buses.
We got some lovely sunny crisp days during the month of January and we had a great time in the garden playing games and football all together as a team. Improving our physical development whilst also getting some fresh air – win win!
Reading books in our relaxing reading nooks is something that our toddlers really enjoy and it is a lovely way for them to unwind after a hectic play session. They love reading books and listening to some stories but it is also nice to read it by themselves too and form a sense of independence. Books promote linguistic development and when they observe pictures it stimulates their imagination and attention span.
Due to the topic of traffic lights we have started to learn a little about the colours and the meaning they have in our day to day. We made a “go” sign in green and another one in red for the “stop” sign. Singing songs like “walking walking hop hop” and “the wheels on the bus” further helped to enhance our learning as they love to dance and sing.
We were learning about the circus and we had our own clown. It was a very funny and colourful one. Our clown made magic games, sang and danced with us and played our favourite, the parachute game.
To finish this great month we did a birthday card for our lovely chef Charlie and together we made some lovely art for him to take home.
Preschool Room News
Some events we enjoyed in Preschool included:
* Fitness Week
* National Hat Day
* Television Role Play Week
* National Puzzle Day
January has been a month super busy.
We had some changes in our rooms, with new friends joining us and with the new year comes new activities and curriculums. We are still setting and working so hard in continuing to develop all our skills, and always having fun!
All our pre-school children were very busy learning about different things such as recycling, pollution, the human body, the human skeleton, and our five senses. Exploring these topics provided the children with the opportunity to explore and develop personal skills such as counting, identifying, problem solving skills and decision-making skills. Also, we had some great events where parents were given the opportunities to participate too.
For National Hat Day, we brought in our lovely hats and made some nice creations too by designing and created our own personal hats. Using glue, paper, feathers, glitter, crayons, we came up with some lovely creations. The event was a great opportunity for us to keep developing our imagination. Thank you to our parents for your support in bringing in hats for your little ones. The huge variety of hats made an imaginary play session possible, and one that was full of wonderful adventures.
We had so much fun TV and film week. For this week we decided to create a TV and open our own Links 5 Channel, where we had children responsible for the news, weather, traffic in our city, kitchen recipes and where we role play our favorites movies and cartoons. Do not be surprised to see some us in the future being famous in the acting industry
The kitchen was so busy, as all of our pre-schoolers making different cookies that they got to take home with them. The children really enjoy identifying the various ingredients in the recipes, taking turns to mix it together and counting down the minutes until we can smell our freshly baked goods. Also this activity gives them the opportunity to socialize with each other, cooperate in groups to get the recipes done and learn how to take turns. The song “We are mixing round and round, count up to 5, then the turn is over, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5”, is our favourite. Everybody has a go and we encourage each other by singing together.
Our Spanish lessons is something that our children love doing with their Educarers, as we get to learn new songs and phrases in a different language. If you hear your child using some Spanish phrases at home and you are unsure what they mean, please feel free to come and ask our Spanish Educarers about the meaning.
For Fitness week, we gathered all our energy and had an active week of fun and exercise. We are always full of energy and we love to do exercise while having fun. We were doing different obstacle courses and improving a lot our gross motor skills, as well as dancing and getting better with our coordination skills while following different movements.
Our 5 Senses curriculum for this month provoked on us a lot of curiosity in different senses. We have enjoyed spending time in exploring with children, to see all around us, appreciating all the small details. From listening carefully in the garden to the different sounds around us by closing our eyes, tasting different foods with blindfolded eyes, to smelling different kinds of things and also touching a huge variety of materials. All of these activities resulted in lots of fun learning. Our 5 senses board helps us a lot to get to know what we can feel with the different senses.
Recycling Week was so informative and interesting, and we learned how to recycle and separate the rubbish in the right bin containers. We made loads of art and crafts with recycling materials – we are very creative.
We picked up some sticks in the garden that we used later to create our own skeleton for our classroom for our Human Body learning. We learnt about our body and identifying our body parts and we learned a couple of songs to accompany this too. We painted our hands and stuck some cotton-buds to symbolise the bones in the hands. We all know that underneath our skin we have muscles and bones and without them we won´t be able to stand straight, instead we will melt down. By feeling them, we have discovered that we have bones everywhere!!
The last week of this month couldn´t be better, as we celebrated National Puzzle Day. As we all know, puzzles and jigsaws are one of our favourite pass times in crèche. We love sitting around a table with our friends and working through the complex challenges of puzzle solving.
Afterschool Room News
As our afterschool students went back to school after the winter break, we tried to make it easier for them and ease them back in. We was hard for some of our children to get back into the routine of homework but our Afterschool School Club team helped them each step of the way. By the end of the month, we could see some great improvements.
During their first week back they were so excited to see their friends and share their stories about Christmas and their gifts from Santa.
January they had a lot of free play as the afterschool room got loads of new toys, including new loads board games and puzzles.
Fitness Week wasn’t all about physical activities. We enjoyed some arts and crafts too and drew some lovely pictures of us enjoying our sports and games. We explained to our classmates what sports we like to do and what we love about our sports. During garden time, we enjoyed lots of sports practice and played games such as football, basketball and Bulldog with our friends.
During National Hat Day, we created cool paper hats, and we also spoke about the human body. We decorated our wall with our recreation of our body and we built some skeletons using different materials.
We had a week dedicated to tv shows and the cinema. We create our own TV and we created loads role play of our favourite TV shows. So much fun and such great imagination.
One of the after-school children’s father, Mark, went on Safari and took loads of pictures. He sent it them into class to share with us and for us to experience it. It was a fantastic idea. All the after schoolers were so interested and curious and wanted to learn more about it. Thank you Mark for your parent involvement and sharing your experience with us.
Our music and moment class always a big hit. Our teacher Kim is fantastic, and our children love when its dance class. PE, Spanish and baking were part of their extra curricular activities and activities which we all enjoyed together.
