Welcome to our latest newsletter for Links Childcare Blackrock, where we will be sharing our news and photos from February and March. In February, we celebrated St Valentines Day, Recycling Day, our learning all about frogs and butterflies too. World Book Day at the start of March was lovely and we had such fun dressing up and reading with all our friends and Educarers.
Unfortunately, with March being cut short for us all in crèche, we didn’t get the chance to finish up our activities that we had planned for the rest of the month.
We hope our children have been able to do a bit of the curriculum with the children at home through the information we have shared with parents recently?
We have also been working on lots of videos from all of our crèches, put together by our Educarers, Managers and Chefs, and shared with you all via our Links Childcare Facebook and Instagram social pages. If you and your children have been following them, we hope you have enjoyed them all. And if you are trying any of the experiments or recipes out, and would like to share them with us, we would love to see them also. Please tag us using the hashtag #LinksLearningThroughPlay on your posts, or email them to me, and I will share them with the team.
Our social links are below for Facebook and Instagram, if you would like to take a look.
For now, on behalf of the Blackrock team, we wish you well and we would like to say a big hello to all our children. We cannot wait to see all our children again very soon in crèche.
Please keep safe, wash your hands and enjoy this home time with your children as best as we all can.
Best Wishes,
Joanne & Esther
Joanne Doyle —Preschool & Afterschool Manager
Esther Martin —Nursery Manager
Baby Room News
February saw an active start to the month for our babies, where we did lots of moving around our room.
Our Educarers made a tunnel using a cardboard box for our babies to explore in. They painted it and decorated it in various sensory items such as feathers, cotton wool and felt.
We put the walking frame blocks in a row to encourage our babies to crawl or walk through it with help. At the end our babies were able to explore through the tunnel themselves and loved touching the different textures.
They also did massages using different textures of balls – rolling them around their backs, arms and legs, which was very relaxing indeed.
We enjoyed a Disney themed day, where our babies did super messy paint on their favourite Disney characters that our Educarers printed out for them. Adding glitter and sensory items brought it to a brand-new experience for them, as they could visually see and touch the items they stuck on.
For St Valentine’s Day, they made sensory bags with water and small hearts and made a lovely card for mum and dad using their feet to make a heart shape on it.
For our weather theme, we made sensory bottles, putting cotton and blue glitter in them to represent snow and rain. They loved shaking them and watching the glitter move around the bottles.
We also made white play dough to make some snowmen and made umbrellas using their hand prints and blue paint.
It was Carnival time during the month of February too, and each room chose a different country to represent.
Our Baby Room was Hawaii, and we did messy painting to make colourful flowers on their white t-shirts and necklaces too. We also made a surf board which we enjoyed painting and decorating.
At the start of March, we welcomed the season of Spring and experimented with flowers and messy painting. We made more sensory bottles and put flowers in them and colouring glitter. Our display board of flowers and spring time items was made for our room wall.
We welcomed Alannah, Maximilian, Martha, Blaise and Billy to our room too.
Wobbler Room News
Our wobblers love vegetables! Well, that was one of our themes of learning during February and they enjoyed discovering lots of new vegetables to taste.
They touched different vegetables and learned their names and we decorated their own paper plate and glued different colour papers to represent different vegetables.
For Book Week, we made our own textured book, which we glued glitter, papers, feather onto.
The children also brought their favourite book from home and shared with all their friends and they drew their favourite picture from the Peppa Pig book (they love Peppa!!)
For Carnival Day, our Wobblers represented the countries Greece, India and Australia. They made their own Greek crown gluing pieces of paper and brought in white t-shirts and made a Greek costume.
We decorated a grey t-shirt as a Koala and learned about various landmarks and of Australia, such as Ayres Rock and the Whitsunday Islands.
We did face painting and got to wear beautiful Indian costumes for their super party where they listened to some Indian music. They loved this!
Indian costumes for their super party where they listened to some Indian music. They loved this!
For our Spring theme, we painted plastic flowers and our feet to make Mr Sun.
We did a spot of gardening too and planted lentils in small cups and watered them. Inserts are a firm favourite with our children, and we learned new insect names.
They painted a big rainbow and learned its colours.
What a party we had, for our Colour Party with our wobblers. They all wore in the colour yellow and we and we did messy painting and looked around our rooms for yellow coloured toys and items.
For St Valentines Day, we painted a lovely card for mum and dad using ice and pink/red colour and made a big display board for the room.
At the start of March, we prepared for St Patricks Day and decorated our room with shamrocks and Irish flags. We also learned new vocabulary like leprechaun, gold pot, rainbow and its colours, shamrock and the Irish flag.
Our wobblers love water play and we added some fruits and toys to our water play mix. They loved fishing them out with their hands and bowls. We made sensory bags putting water and different material in them, such as pompoms, glitter, paint and these were fun to squash too.
In February, we celebrated Flynn, Rebecca and Adam and in March it was Penny and Joeys birthdays too. Happy Birthday to everyone!
Toddler Room News
For Valentine’s Day, our toddlers painted different size hearts to decorate our room and made their cards with them for mum and dad. For Carnival Day, they represented France and Egypt.
We enjoyed painting the French flag and made chef hats, decorated them and wore them with an apron as a costume so we could be top French chefs in Links.
For Egypt, they used milk bricks to make their pyramid and painted them using yellow colours and glued sand on it. We even painted our own sarcophagus using glitter and lots of colours and learned different Egyptian symbols.They also dressed up and did face painting.
Our toddlers love anything with wheels, and when it comes to transport, they adore learning and playing. We made a taxi using a cardboard box and painted it yellow and black. They also made different transport using their feet – bus, helicopter, car, truck, lorries – and learned some new vocabulary too around it.
We loved making paper planes and played with them in the room.
At the start of March, we learned all about hygiene things we should do to keep us clean and germ free. We created our own “big mouth” and drew in teeth and made a toothbrush and to learned how to brush our teeth properly. We also bathed our dolls and changed their nappies too.
For our Spring theme, we made a big tree using brown and green paper (they painted them by themselves), and made flowers using handprints and fingers and used them to decorate their big tree. They painted their own cactus to decorate their room and made flowers, pulling a painted wool cord between a folded white piece of paper.
We learned new vocabulary around St Patricks Day and painted a big Irish flag to decorate the room. We made leprechaun faces using paper plates and green paper hats to wear them during the party. Decorations such as rainbows and pots of gold we created for our room too.
Happy Birthday to Sam, Ben, Liadin and Thomas, who shared their birthdays with us in February and we welcomed our new friend Damir to our room too.
In Toddler Room 3, we also had lots of fun celebrating St Valentines Day and made hearts and roses to bring home to our mums and dads. We represented Brazil for Carnival Day and we did lots of singing and samba dancing too. For our Spring theme, we made flowers rainbows and trees and enjoyed lots of messy play with play dough and sand.
St Patricks Day decorations included shamrocks and flags and although we didn’t get a chance to do our own parade in the class as we finished up in crèche, we hope our children enjoyed one at home.
It was also Diego, Charlie and Myles birthday too. Happy birthday, from all your friends and Educarers.
Preschool Room 1 News
We had a lovely Flower Power Party to celebrate and welcome the start of Spring. For Carnival Day, we represented Uruguay and had lots of fun with singing and dancing.
St Valentines Day was celebrated with lots of arts and crafts that we brought home to our parents and we made some cards for our friends also.
We love having our Jobs lists and our own little jobs that we do in class. Our children love working together too as a team with their friends and having these jobs together encourage us to expand on our vocabulary too.
Shapes, dinosaurs and musical instruments were all part of our learning for this month of February and the start of March too.
We celebrated International Women’s Day, where we saluted all the amazing women that we know and on World Book Day, we dressed up and shared our own books in class.
Happy Birthday in Jayne, Eabha, Tom, James, Nathan, Lydia and Melania.
Preschool Room 2 News
Our preschool 2 room had a lovely time dressing up as superhero’s and playing role play with their friends.
For Carnival Day, they were Italy and we pretended to make Italian food for our café.
We also celebrated St Valentines day and made cards and love hearts and for St Patricks Day, we started on our decorations.
It was Anteur and Harrys birthdays too. Happy birthday guys!
Preschool Room 3 News
Our pre-schoolers in room 3 love dinosaurs and we loved making our own Jurassic Park with our dinosaur toys. For Carnival Day we represented Mexico and dressed up for the occasion.
For St Valentines Day, we made lollipop hearts and did hearts with “love you” in different languages and included a sentence from each child.
We embraced Spring and planted lentils in our room and painted trees, birds and flowers. We made our own telescopes too so we could bird watch in our garden and say hello to our bird friends. And we even some birds to go onto our trees as decoration.
José Miguel joined our Educarer team and we also celebrated Ethan and Hazels birthdays.
Preschool Room 4, Afterschool & Naiscoil News
Our children in Preschool 4 had an amazing time celebrating Carnival Day, and they were so proud to represent Spain. They made fans and masks and had lots of dancing and song time.
For our Dinosaurs topic, we made diplodocus and Aerodactyl with plates, t-rex with the feet and set up our small world corner with lots of dinosaur play.
It was nice to look after our teddy bears when we set up our Teddy Bear Hospital.
For Book Day, we created our very own silly preschool 4 story. The children decided to create it all together and made bit a silly story about our classroom. Each of them added a paragraph, and drew a picture to go with it. We placed it in our library area for us all to share it and read.
To welcome Spring, we did a changes in nature visual activity and did lots of brainstorming around the season of Spring. We spoke about changes in nature in spring so we brought in branches and observed blossom trees. Our c hildren painted the way they see spring flowers. Everyone’s creations were unique and special.
We made a spring nature table out of nature material from garden we made a sping nature box. Children were making constructions and shelters for their animals out of branches, and practicing their fine motor skills by cutting branches. We made a balancing tree out of pipes and pom pons for fine motor skills development, hand eye coordination and patience practice.
We also enjoyed learning about plants and the planting process and our children got to sow some seeds in class too. We learned about parts of a plant and trees by showing visuals. We explored soil with our hands as sensory material and planted flowers and carrots by ourselves. Helpers of a day were in charge for watering. We learned a song about daffodils and welcomed spring with diy instruments. We spoke about germs and we mastering everyday hand-washing.
For International Women’s Day we explored existing prejudice and worked on tolerance development. We used visuals to aid with our story telling and spoke about what am I good at, can boys/girls be good at ballet/football, can boys wear a dress, etc.
For our social emotional learning, we are always developing on this as it is important for all our children to help solve problems as they arise and to help them with resilience. We had lots of engagement in play skills through storytelling and role play, where the problem was dramatically played by their Educarers, and the children were given creative solutions that were played out and outcome was discussed.
We are also an active group of children, and we love nothing more than getting active and fit through play. We enjoyed, music and movement classes and PE classes too, with lots of games in our We welcomed Cian, Abir, Gustav and John in our room and we celebrated Benjamin’s birthday in February also.
In our Naiscoil Room, we did the lifecycle of a frog and butterfly, spring flowers and animals, the zoo snakes monkeys lions elephants. We celebrated Valentine’s Day, World Book Day and made some St Patricks Day decorations before we finished up in creches.
Happy birthdays and Jack, Noa and Blaise too.
