No doubt October is one of our favourite months of the year. The Halloween decorations, the crunchy leaves, the beautiful Autumn colours — October has something for everyone, and it also happens to be the one month that encourages us to relax and find your inner child again.
Whether that means indulging in festive sweets while marathoning horror movies or taking a weekend away to enjoy the wonders of nature, October is all about enjoying the beauty of the last waning days before the onslaught of Christmas holiday planning and New Year’s resolution-making sets in.
In Abingdon this month, it was packed full of events activities and fun. It was one incredible month.
We celebrated Links 15th year anniversary in style – thanks parents for dressing your children in red. You are so supportive.
Huge thanks for your generosity to support Temple Street hospital – every help counts for a great cause! It was a massive help Hope you enjoyed the cupcakes.
Another huge thanks to our parents and children who took part in our pumpkin patch exhibition. WOW, you all put in great efforts and you are all very creative. It made it so difficult to pick a winner and so we picked 3 winners. CONGRATULATIONS Cathal, Jack and Evie – you were picked by the children votes!
Our Halloween party was a brilliant atmosphere, with fantastic costumes and so much fun at our party.
We created great memories for our children – thanks again for dressing your child in Halloween costumes. Every single child was so proud in their outfit .
We hope you enjoy our newsletter and we look forward to lots more fun learning next month.
Kind regards,
Eliane
Eliane McMahon —Crèche Manager
Baby Room News
Once again we have had a very enjoyable month. This month we welcomed babies Anna, Jessica and Sonny. They are settling in well.
A HUGE thanks to the parents that always participate in our events. We always tailor activities suitably for babies to be included in our events.
Thanks for dressing your child in red to celebrate Links 15th anniversary. We had a lovely disco party in our class. Also thanks for bringing in your carved pumpkins. We also carved our own pumpkin in class. This was so messy but the babies loved it!!! Huge thanks dressing the babies in Halloween costumes—they looked incredible adorable. There was a great atmosphere in the room.
During the month of October we focused on sensory development and lots of messy play. Some babies love it, some babies aren’t sure yet but we will encourage them. Sensory activities helps build nerve connections in the brain’s pathways, boosting baby’s ability to complete complex learning tasks. It also supports language skills, including fine and gross motor skills, and is proven to help to calm babies too.
This month we had loads of messy play. We played with sand, ice paint, vegetable and paint stamps, hand and foot prints, water play. We used lots of sensory materials and we had a foot sensory exercise with the babies which they loved. We filled 3 boxes with sand, water and coloured spaghetti. It was funny watching the children go from one box to the next. As they can not walk we held each child, allowing them to explore with their feet. We found as we held some children over a box their little feet would not go into the box, they would tuck their feet up to their body, away from the box. We laughed so much doing this activity, we hope the photos show the fun we had.
Hope you have seen the lovely Halloween decorations in our rooms, with our hands and feet stamps that we created. Some Incy Wincy spiders, some scary ghosts, a witch, Frankenstein and a black cat—it look so nice our room.
For Transport Week put lots of cars and trucks into the sand so we can see the tracks they make. We sang the wheels on the bus and babies love this song. It was great fun watching them try to make truck songs and moving the cars back and forward. They really put a lot of concentration on it. We even had a lovely lollipop lady visiting us!
We played a lot of tea time which is still their favourite role play. We used lots of cups, plates and spoons so we can pretend to make a cake, cup of tea or some yummy treats. So enjoyable. Also role play with farm animals and singing along to Old McDonald was fun. They love this song!
As always we love to read stories and sing songs with the babies. Story time allows children to explore with new sounds and words and teaches them to use their imagination as they hear the stories.
As we sing songs daily our babies are learning some actions. We sing ‘If your happy and you know it’ or ‘The wheels on the bus’ or ‘Old McDonald’, we notice how quickly the babies will learn the actions to these songs. We sing the same ones daily so the children will remember and repeat the actions. We have great fun when the children take part and do the actions, children are like a little sponges, they pick up things so quickly.
In the baby room many of our new babies have siblings in our setting. Its great fun to pop out to the activity street to say hi during dinner or tea time. Our babies who don’t have a sibling would still pop out to say hi, its good to mix with other children. Its great for their social development!
October was such a great month. We were so busy with loads of fun activities, thanks again for your support.
Wobbler Room News
In October we have welcomed autumn and we have loved seeing the leaves turn and fall from our trees. This month we have also enjoyed celebrating Halloween and have learned a lot of new things. Throughout the month, we have also worked on the topics of farm animals, trucks and tractors.
To celebrate the arrival of autumn, we have made a craft in which we have glued pieces of paper with the colours of autumn on a leaf, which we have subsequently placed in our tree. Orange, yellow and brown have been the colours that we have learned this month.
October also saw us celebrate Halloween and to decorate our class we painted a spider, glued pompoms and feathers to make our bat, glued paper on our mummy and we also glued orange papers on the pumpkin that we have taken home to decorate. We learned words related to Halloween like bat, spider and pumpkin and we had a great time looking for them around the room.
October has been a month in which we have learned a lot about our favourite topic, farm animals, we have played a lot building our farm. We made crafts in which we created sheep with cotton, pigs painting with our hands and pink sticks and Cows using our fingers to paint the brown spots. We love to sing the song of “old McDonald” and reproduce all the sounds that make the different animals of the farm.
To work on the topic of tractors and trucks, we had cars racing on the soft mats. It was so much fun watching them roll the car down the ramps and we have also used the farm animals to transport them in the trucks around the room.
We celebrated the 15th birthday of Links Childcare, in which we all dressed in red, baked cookies and had a fun Disco party where we danced and had a great time. Happy Birthday Links!
Transport week and Beep Beep Day was where we learned songs and using the stop signs in red, and go in green, we have learned about road safety and what traffic lights mean. We used our high viz vest we looked so grown up and we love wearing it!
HUGE thanks to your collaboration for our pumpkins displays. We had a huge variety of pumpkins decorated to celebrate the arrival of Halloween. Such a successful exhibition and in our room we have made a craft pumpkin for our children to take home so parents can decorate their homes with it.
We celebrated Trick or Treat for Temple Street, in which, thanks to your donations and through the sale of cupcakes, we were able to help Temple Street Children´s Hospital. Thank you very much from the whole Links Abington team too for baking the yummiest cupcakes. Hope you liked them!
Halloween fun & dress up day was brilliant, and we celebrated a super fun party with lots of games. We had a great time celebrating Halloween. Fantastic costumes too – our wobblers were so proud to show them off. Thanks again parents – you are so supportive, and you helped us create great memories for your children – it was a fantastic atmosphere.
In November we will welcome winter, we will do many activities related to people we often meet, such as doctors, hairdressers, shop assistants and we will also work with one of the topics we enjoy most, our pets.
As always, we will take into account the preferences and interests of the wobblers so that we continue to learn and enjoy each day through the play and in a fun way.
Toddler Room News
This month has been a lot of fun in our class and all the Toddlers had a great time while learning.
Our children absolutely loved all the activities. We had events that related to the farm, tractors, trucks, Halloween and Autumn.
The month couldn’t have started better because the first week we had Links’ 15th anniversary! We had great party and made a delicious marshmallow dessert with rice crispies for everyone to take home and enjoy after class. But our favourite was our disco party, as we love dancing. In addition, we had PIZZA at tea time, which was super yummy and delicious. Thanks Charlie, our Chef!
We had Pumpkin Day, where many children brought decorated pumpkins to the creche. Thank you very much for participating. That same morning we went to our Activity Street to see all of them and picked the winner. Our favourite was the PJ mask pumpkin! It was an amazing exhibition. Also the whole class participated in the design of our own pumpkin and we decided to decorate it as Minnie Mouse! This was great sensory development for the children. Some children found it yucky to touch the pumpkins insides!
Toddlers had a great Farm Day and it was great for sensory development. We had grass, compost, vegetable sand, wood chips, farm animals, children really got involved floats of learning in this activities. For that we sang the song ‘Old MacDonald Had A Farm’ every day, it was our main hit.
We also learned what the farm animals eat… toddlers were surprised that animals from farms don’t eat Weetabix or porridge for breakfast like us! Then we showed them what farm animals do eat. They questioned whether hay would be a nice thing for them to eat or not!
For Transport Week, we dedicated ourselves to talk about tractors, cars, trains, trucks. The toddlers love to race with trucks, and we did many races. As we said ‘Ready, steady, go’ they began to run with their favourite means of transport. Our Toddlers love to travel and that’s why during that same week we made a train with all the class chairs, where we travelled to Malahide Castle, the beach, the shopping centre, to the park. Without a doubt, their favourite place was going up to the mountain in our hot air balloon, from there we could have a picnic with our kitchen material and observe our farm. In addition, we built the Toddler tract so that our farm had a tractor. Also, we made our tractor for Beep Beep Day, where we could enjoy around the creche learning about traffic lights colours and we were very lucky to meet a real lollipop lady. This was so exciting as she told us all about how to across the road safely.
For Halloween we made loads of art and crafts, decorated the door and were doing Trick or Treat in class. All the toddlers made their own pumpkin and spider and learned to scare! Booooooo! We learned what different characters we can find during Halloween; scary monsters, spiders, black cats, ghosts…we even made red and green Halloween wriggly worms – so messy and so much fun.
This month has been incredibly fun at Toddlers although we are sure that next month will be even more fun!
Preschool Room News
We welcomed Erik, Jamie Ignacio, Paulo to our Preschool Room. They started with us on this new adventure and all are settling well.
During this month we enjoyed some lovely themed events – Halloween and autumn, animals in the farm, road and transports. We also enjoyed Transport Week, Beep Beep Day, Pumpkin Week, Trick or Treat for Temple Street, Halloween Fun and Dress up Day.
Our children learnt a lot of new songs during this month – “What’s the weather?” “There are seven days in the week” and “Today is..”. We are also getting better with our Spanish lessons. We love the songs and words we are learning, some songs in Spanish, “Buenos días”, “soy una taza”, “una tetera” and learning of to say the numbers until 20.
Every single day we have music and songs so our children can practice playing music instrument and rhythms.
We had Transport Week which was a very important time as it taught the children the importance of road safety. The children took part in many activities outside in the garden to provide them with the opportunity to understand what is meant by stop and go and why it is so important to stop when the light is red. The children had a very exciting visit from the local lollipop lady, were we had the opportunity to practice how we have to cross the road safely on the real road and real lollipop lady great experience. We also received lovely presents and even sang songs together. Another fun part of this learning was the arts and crafts activities. We created cars, road signs, traffic lights, buses and even little people to walk on the road we created too!
In the middle of this busy month, we learnt about autumn and different seasons, Preschool collected leaves to decorate our nature box. We learnt about the weather, clothes and different games which we can play inside during raining days. Sensory materials were an important paper, cotton, features, leaves… were used to improve sensory skills during our games.
Children in Preschool love playing with animals, we created a game like bingo with different type of animals. We learnt what animals are living in the farm in contract to animals who are living in the jungle, mountains or other places. With Lego pieces children built different animals’ houses. We make a big puzzle were our children could discover a farm, cow, horses, and much more. We had a role play farm set up in our activity street we had farm animals real vegetable, grass, hay, compost wood chips and we really enjoyed playing great activity.
Pumpkin week was a perfect way to get the children into the Halloween spirit! The children brought in their impressive masterpieces and displayed them alongside of each other! The pumpkin patch exhibition was a great success. Once again, thank you to all our parents for your collaboration. It really reflects on your child confidence when parents take part in our events and it is much appreciated by the Links Abington team. They were al so good! But in the end we Congratulations Evie, Cathal and Jack – your pumpkin was a masterpiece indeed!
For Halloween arts and crafts for our classrooms, the children were so excited and busy. They love Halloween. We made spooky monsters, scary spiders, ghosts and skeletons, mummies, witches, Frankenstein and our classroom looks very scary. All these events brought us the opportunity to learn about Halloween and different types of celebrations, cultures and songs (such as “Trick or treat, smell my feet”!)
We also supported Trick or treat for Temple Street. All the staff collaborated in this event along with our parents too. During this day staff decorated scary but delicious cupcakes. Our Families brought some cakes too. Massive thanks for your donations for Temple Street Children’s Hospital – it’s such a great cause to support!
And of course, we can’t forget the main event! Halloween dress up! The children came in dressed up in their Halloween costumes and we had a disco party in the classroom with various Halloween tradition games. It was a fantastic day. Thanks parents for dressing your children in their favourites costumes – they were so excited showing it off at their Halloween party!
We really enjoyed the extra curricular activities this month! We have learned some new dance moves from Kim and even started to learn some Spanish words! PE is very enjoyable with loads of physical exercises.
This month the children baked their own cupcakes and rice crispy buns cookies shapes based on the month theme. We discussed the ingredients, hygiene and measurements. This activity encourages skills relating to counting, order, weight, time, turn taking and fine motor skills.
Pre-schoolers love playing with constructions, cars, animals, messy play, dress-up, dance and of course outside games with ball, bikes and circuits, we spent a lot of time playing these types of games where our children improve social and emotional skills, motor skills and coordination.
Afterschool Room News
October was a great month in our afterschool class. All the children have settled well into their schools and it has made it easier for us to help them with homework, and their routines in Afterschool Club too.
The month started with Transport Week and Beep Beep Day, where we learned about the importance of safety in the roads. For our after schoolers, this it’s a huge topic because we travel between the creche and the school every day and we have to learn the rules that we have to follow for our safety! We had a great group discussion with our lollipop lady in the school and information about road safety great interaction and our after-schoolers seem to understand road safety very well.
We also had Pumpkin Week, where some of our after schoolers brought their pumpkins from home and we created our scary pumpkins in class.
The children came with costumes from the school and we had a disco party with the costumes. We have some great dancers in afterschool!
We also started our extracurricular activities where we learned Spanish and we had dance and movement class with Kim, PE and baking. We are learning dances and a theatre story for our Christmas party and the kids are really good at dancing and acting. Loads of physical exercises and delicious cupcakes and cookies – such a lovely combination!
For our Halloween camp, it was a great week full of funny activities.
We started the week doing monster masks in Halloween art and craft and we did a scary quiz where we showed our knowledge about Halloween and monsters. We also did some scary and yummy baking and made zombie cookies and we did a competition of Halloween art.
Spooky story writing was really fun, where our campers created scary stories and told them to their friends and Educarers. We also created vampire bookmarks for our scariest books .
Our Links Got Talent competition and finale was where we got to showcase our talented skills. We choose the most talented monster in our class and we did a treasure hunt where we searched for sweets around our rooms.
We went to the garden and played a lot of games and sports. We played basketball, football, rugby, ping-pong, hockey and rode the bikes and scooters. We also played a lot of games that our after schoolers enjoyed.
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