Welcome to the November edition of our newsletter from Links Childcare Abington.
November has been a busy month in all our rooms, as we prepare for our Christmas concert and our festive winter celebrations. We have been concentrating very hard on learning all the lines to our Christmas songs and we cannot wait to give you all a festive performance to remember. We hope you like our Christmas decorations! Our children and our afterschool children worked very hard to help us decorate it.
We had a month of learning all about the winter season and the changing of the weather. Our Educarers taught us all about winter hibernation and the different types of animals who hibernate in the winter in order to keep themselves and their little ones safe during the cold months.
Our STEM learning was a great way for our children to learn about this important topic. It opened up conversations about counting, coding, science and more.
And thank you to all our parents who voted in the Links Childcare Employee of the Year for 2019. Your voice and your vote matters. Thank you for your time in doing this and the winners for Links Abington will be announced very shortly in the coming days.
Last but not least, we would like to send you all a massive THANK YOU for all your gorgeous shoe boxes for the Team Hope Shoe Box Appeal. Collectively you helped Links Childcare collect almost 300 shoe boxes. These will all be going to a great home this Christmas and will make a child very happy.
We hope you enjoy our newsletter and we look forward to lots more fun & festive learning next month.
Kind regards,
Eliane
Eliane McMahon —Crèche Manager
Baby Room News
We welcome our gorgeous Anna to our baby room this month. She is happy and settling in well with us.
Some activities we did this month were from the farm. We created some stunning animals with our hand and footprints.
We have requested a scrape book for each child so we can keep some of these stunning arts of work and we will send home other art pieces soon so keep an eye on your babies bags and take out so they don’t get ruined.
Some of our older babies headed off to the wobbler room. We miss them every day but we still pop in to get a cuddle and to say hi daily. The baby room and wobbler rooms work extremely close together. We keep a close eye to make sure the children are settling in well.
Sofi made some stunning winter sensory bottles. She put some twigs, leaves, berries and acorns. The babies love to look at these. Other sensory bottles we have are glitter in water, some beads in oil, stones in coloured water and some feathers in empty bottle. The babies will watch these bottles all the time when we shake them, they find the colours and the movement of glitter and beads fascinating.
Other sensory toys we have come from our homes. They consist of gloves, boxes to open and close, fluffy fabric, rubber fabric and plastic containers. We try to offer as much sensory play for the babies so they can explore and learn new textures. We explore with textures and colours as much as we can.
We have great activity food stamp we had some vegetables and fruits and made lovely art hope you have seen in our class.
As we are learning about winter, we played with big blocks of ice great for our sensory development and brrrrrrrr it’s cold.
We went camping in our tent we loved it we some special lights and we were so mesmerised about it we want to camp again
We had loads of messy play and our favourite was pretending to make snow with corn flour. Great texture and very messy but so much fun!
Our favourite activity is story time and singing, with actions. We love this activity. If we have an upset baby we sing to help comfort them. When we are happy we sing to create a happy environment. We sing when we are changing nappies, we sing when we are doing painting or washing hands for dinner.
When we do story time and sing with actions our babies copy us. We have actions for Wheels on the Bus, Old McDonald had a Farm, Incy Wincy Spider. Its amazing when the children smile at you and copy your actions, we love it.
Now we are practising for our Christmas sing song. We will sit around and sing and hopefully the babies will perform for you. We are really looking forward to this. We hope you can come along.
Wobbler Room News
Throughout the month of November, the wobblers have had a great time playing, experimenting and learning a lot of new things. This month we have worked on winter topics, people we often meet and pets.
To celebrate the arrival of winter and the cold weather we have decorated some hats with colored papers and pompons, we have print our hands to create gloves, to which we have glued cotton and we have also decorated our class tree with leaves, using the winter colours. This month we had a great time playing role-play games, becoming doctors, veterinarians, cooks and librarians. We have taken care of our babies, becoming doctors and we have built a veterinarian, using different materials, to bring our pets and take care of them too. We have also enjoyed learning about one of our favourite topics, animals, focusing on pets, we have created a fishbowl and painted our fish of different colours and we love to see them in our window.
Month events
This month we also celebrated our weekly events with which we enjoyed playing and learning.
National STEM week
This week we had a great time experimenting, as this month we have welcomed the winter, in the wobblers room we created “snow” it was great to be able to experiment with a new and fun texture.
Book day
On this day we created our library membership cards, “writing” our names and surnames to be able to use them to pick up books and have a great time “reading”, some friends brought books and we had the opportunity to enjoy them all together in our reading corner.
Winter wonderland week
This week we learned a lot about winter, we put our pets into water, which we put in the freezer and the next day we could see the result, experiment with the ice and seen how it fell apart until our pets appeared again. How cold is winter!!! We also created some penguins using our feet prints and we put cotton on them to create our winter wonderland.
Fitness week
This week we had a great time improving our balance obstacle course built with the soft figures and learning new ways of movement thanks to our aerobics classes. We love to move our body!!!
Throughout the month of December, we will continue learning and enjoying a lot with the topics; Food, I like and I don’t like! and Christmas, for which we have already been practicing Christmas songs for our Christmas concert.
Toddler Room News
In November we welcomed Tom he is settling really well.
This month we started to learn all about pets, Every day we read a book related to pets and we imitated their sounds! It was fun! In addition, we fed our pets, took them for a walk in the classroom and we Also named to our pets! We drew our pets, each one drew their own pet and all the Toddlers showed their pets to their classmates, we also made a beautiful fish tank in which the y where different coloured fish!
We were learning different jobs and professions that we can find in our daily life, hairdresser, doctor, firefighter, singer, hairdresser, vet, teachers etc….. we were role-playing the full week and we loved it we have great costumes and imaginations, we learned to cook and serve food, we learned to react with the fire with our fire truck and rehearsed in the yard, when they heard FIRE bell we ran to the farthest and safest place! We had our favourite song” fire truck”
We also were selling ice cream and pizza, and when someone bought it we had to pay with money and say Thank you.
The book week event we made our own library and they had the option to read the books they wanted quietly, and if someone made loud noises, we had to say shhhh.
The last week of this month we dedicate ourselves to prepare for winter! We decorated the class with winter decorations, reindeer, penguins, snowflakes, snowman besides… we made an Olaf! Our winter pet! we love art and crafts.
We had loads of messy sensory development play Sensory play exposes children to many new experiences, textures, and materials. It is calming for many children and presents children with lots of new language that they might not otherwise experience also Sensory play strengthens little hands and builds fine motor skills too, it would be lovely if you can encourage you child at home too
This month we focus on sharing development; Sharing is a vital life skill. It’s something toddlers find hard to learn and it is important so they can make and keep friends and play cooperatively. We had activities where they played in groups or pairs, turn taking, task and cooperation, games with simple instructions, we talked about emotions and some children were great, but we will extend the sharing development skills next month too.
We spent the week rehearsing Christmas songs because… the Christmas concert is in a few weeks hope you can make it we are very excited!!
This month has been a month in which we have not stopped doing things, learning and having fun! It has been great!!
Preschool Room News
During this month we had learning about three important topics, Hibernation, Winter and Our community of course some important events, National Stem Week, Book Day, Winter Wonderland Week and Fitness Week.
Our children carry on improving every single month. Songs are the basic element every day, our children learnt a lot of content related with the topic thought the music. The Spanish lessons every Wednesday where our children learnt simple phrases such as “Te quiero mucho, mama/ Te quiero mucho papa”.
The first event this month was National STEM Week. During this time, we were scientists! We did a lot of experiments. The one we most enjoyed was one with water to discover which objects could float and which ones sinked, it was so much fun! Stem Week brought the opportunity to do experiments related with winter, we created snow, played games with ice, water and different colours. Our children could see how the ice can transform into water when spent some time outside the freezer. With STEM week, it was a fun way to use our counting skills in songs, stories and crafts! We learned about different types of technology and what purpose they have! The children really enjoyed making their own tv’s and discussing their favourite tv shows!
Our children love playing games with animals, but… what’s happen in winter time? Our children learnt about the animals who sleep all winter (hibernation). We prepared a hibernation cave where our animals can sleep up to six months!! See them again in spring season! We spoke about some animals which travel around the world and some never have winter! the children were surprised!
We spent a lot of time speaking about “Our community” we built different places which are near us, such as Malahide Castle, Malahide Beach, Playground etc.
Our children enjoyed learning about people who help us in our community, some knew Spanish vocabulary like comunidad, parque o Castillo. This topic gives the opportunity to play a lot of role play games, we have princess who live in Malahide Castle, doctor with a very big doctor set, fireman with a special hat and fire extinguishers, builders and some teachers yaaayy!!!
Art and craft were very important during this month, our children love painting, colouring and glitters things which were using in every single activity to decorate. Also, messy play!!!
Another of our Events for this month was Book Day! We just loved it. We got our pillows from the room, the carpets and a couch to the Activity Street and we read books in there, children brought a book from their home great to show their favourite book. We read a lot of book this day, Eliane read in Activity Street with loads of action and different voices ( three little pig and wizard of Oz) children absolutely loved it We enjoyed Book Day, The educarers brought their favourite stories too which was exciting as the children got to listen to Spanish stories!
Our children built a Winter Box where we learnt winter vocabulary, we draw scarf, winter hat, gloves, cup, snowman… we used a lot of materials like cotton, sticks… We decorate windows with a big snowman called Peter the snowman or children enjoyed a lot!
Our little girls enjoyed play with princess so we built a winter house where can enjoy during free choice. We decorate with cotton like snow, painted with different colours and decorated with sofa, chimney… They spent a lot of time improving their imagination!
Winter Wonderland Week brought the opportunity to do a lot of winter decoration like snowflakes our children colour with different colours! We recreated snowman, reindeer, snowman, Christmas tree with sensory materials. We sang songs related with winter, in Spanish
Fitness week is a time to get the children outside but also, it’s an amazing way to show the children how they can exercise in the classroom! We incorporated fitness inside the classroom with lots of games and music
We really enjoyed the extra curricular activities this month! We have started practicing for our first Christmas concert! We are so excited to share with the parents what we have been working on! It’s going to be a special show!
Of course, we did some baking this month! This month the children baked their own cupcakes and rice crispy buns. we discussed the ingredients, hygiene and measurements. This month Mr Links went home to many different houses! The children really enjoyed reading what he got up to with their friends at home and loved reading about all the fun and exciting things he got up too.
Afterschool Room News
It has been a lovely rainy month and after schoolers and we have a lot of fun in our class. We said goodbye to Halloween, and we decorated our class with new winter land. We started decorating the wall with the places most important in Malahide and crating a huge map of Malahide.
We also started the month with the national stem week when we explore our love for the science.
Their favourite experience was the lava lamp! This experiment was so interesting!!! kids loved participating mixing the ingredients in a bottle to create it!!!
The book day and in afterschool we love to read for that reason we have a huge library for the smallest and bigger after schoolers. In that day we talk about our favourite book and we explained to the rest of the class why we love that book.
We started to do Christmas decoration for our class, we paint Santa, snowmen, presents and a Christmas tree and we decorate our class with the Christmas spirit, at moment we doing a Christmas surprise for the parents, but you are going to know what it is next month when it is Christmas.
the fitness week was great, we played a lot of sports and game outside. We also talked about what sports we do and explain to our partners what sports we like and we love being active
This month it was raining a lot so we couldn’t spend so many times outside like other months. But we enjoyed all the time that we spend in the garden playing games and doing sports like football and rugby. But when we were inside, we played a lot of indoor games like board games! We also learnt all about Hibernation and was animals do when its cold outside! Some animals go to sleep for winter so they don’t have to go out in the cold! Wish we could do that!! We made a beautiful Hibernation box and put some animals to bed in it! The children absolutely loved learning about this and picking some of their stuffed animals to put into bed!
Afterschool had a great month and we are ready for December and all the important things that happen in Christmas.
