What a fun month we have had.
In this newsletter, we have shared some insight into the activities from each of our rooms thathas taken place during the month of March. We hope you enjoy browsing through them.
We loved St Patrick’s Day celebrations, making cards for Mother’s Day, reading our books anddressing up for World Book Day and International Women’s Day.
Clara Brennan and Joanne Doyle
Creche Managers
Activities from our Baby Room
March has been a month full of activities for our babies. We has made lots new friends as Cara, Neala and Hugo started. Also, we celebrated some big Birthdays with lot of the babies turning 1 we created a lot of birthday’s decoration in the room.
This month our babies where exploring the animals around the world starting in the ocean, creating a undersea world, with shapes and lights. Also, we were playing with water, something that our babies love! After swimming with our aquatic animals, recreating the beach (with some messy sand play) we were travelling to the deep jungle, to discover the monkeys and gorillas, lions and zebras, crafting them for the jungle corner where they could explore the wild life through leaves and flowers. With the good weather, our babies enjoyed the garden bring outside with them the hole jungle, crawling and walking around, discovering all the secrets that the bright is bring it with the sun! And continuing with animals, we made a ‘short visit’ to our friends in the farm, singing ‘Old McDonald has a farm’ and playing with the puppets that our amazing staff made for them.
Our youngest friends in the creche, love find out the different colours of the world, starting from the green of our trees, leaves, fruits and clothes. So they couldn’t miss (and celebrated) St. Patricks day, painting a big rainbow with different textures (sand, tearing paper, body paint) and creating a mobile with the Irish flag and small shamrocks to play at home with them. Also, they painted a huge colourful bunch of flowers for all the moms and women to show them how much important are them.
Stories from our Wonderful Wobbler Room
In March we have had time to have fun! With the sunshine all the animals have gone out and we have enjoyed their company! Elephants, tigers, rhinos, dolphins and sharks have come to Links in our wobbler’s room, and our children, with a little of imagination, have painted them in their mural, even the fantastic creatures as unicorns and leprechauns with their caldron full of gold coins appeared under the colourful rainbow.
With Spring coming, we have changed our winter clothes for something more spring-like clothes. So we have played with the dolls that wobblers created to put on and our gloves, coats, short trousers and hats. Our wobblers enjoyed to help their friends to put on their shoes and socks!
On March, we have been sharing our favourites stories from the books, dressing up as our favourites characters: Harry Potter, Paddington Bear & Mr Men b, but without a shadow of doubt our favourite book at the moment is ‘The monster of the colours’.
We didn’t miss the opportunity to use the light coming through the window to play with the shadows and the lanterns. Also they decorated the room with garlands which wobblers made and torches to bring more light to our life.
Tales from our Toddler Room
Junior Toddlers
We are living in a technologic world and our toddlers don’t want to be behind the world so they created lots of technologic gadgets to be updated! Computers, mobile phones and laptops to be connected all the time, using recycling material that our children brought from home!
We have had time too, to make some exercise in the garden with our garden competition! Races with the bikes, basketball games and some bowling time. Our toddlers were training very hard with the racquets and tennis ball! We have in our creche the futures Olympic winners!
We understand the importance of our families so toddlers created the connection between all the members of their families with sticks and lot of love. We couldn’t forgot that one the pillars of our families are our mums so we made lots of nice things for them: Cards full of hearts to show them how much we love them.
The good weather is coming, so our children have had some fun during the weekend in the beach playing with the sand and de water! And they always bring lots of stories about their adventures to share with their friends, and we have wanted to try recreated them in the creche: We take our buckets, shovels and our messy sand and water (even we could see some fantastic creatures as mermaids under our sea). But not only sea animals came to visit our friends in the toddler’s room, we could see animals from all the ecosystems: camels from the desert to giraffes from the savanna, going the jungle to see where ‘the lion sleep tonight’…. We created all this fantastic world with some play-doh and slime.
Senior Toddlers
Our senior toddler class were really interested in magic, spells, and potions this month, they made their own witch hats and magic wands, they turned each other into different animals and had great fun acting out the different animals and the different sounds they make. They made animal masks to represent the animals they changed into. They did lots of dancing and sang different songs about animals, witches, and spells.
Coming into spring all the children loved getting involved in making their Spring display they made lots of different art and craft activities, painting sticking and cutting. They made their own rainbows and sang different songs and poems all about Spring and rainbows. They spoke about the different animals we see around Springtime (butterflies, bees and lambs. They made their own butterflies using paint and paper and squashing the paint around the page, they made rainbows with paper plates and colourful crepe paper, and they made their lambs with cotton wool and paper plates.
Celebrating International women’s day, they made lots of different bracelets, cards and arts and crafts, and a banner they painted themselves.
With the run up to St Patricks Day the children really enjoyed making lots of different arts and crafts, they made shamrocks using peppers to make prints for their St Patricks Day cards. They made leprechaun masks with paper plates and crepe paper and had great fun dancing to lots of traditional Irish music.
Pre-School Room News
Pre-school
Seeing lots of new flowers and plants growing in the parks and around their houses our preschool children have really enjoyed making flowers and lots of Spring activities over the month, they made their Spring display with bee’s, bee hives made using bubble wrap and paint, flowers and a lovely apple tree. Some preschool classes have been doing some planting and love watching all their flowers grow in the classroom. They also did some sugar painting flowers; they made the flower shape using glue and sugar and when it was dry, they painted it lots of different colours. Our preschool classes loved talking about all the different bugs and insects we see during Spring so they went on a hunt using magnifine glasses in the garden to see what insects they could find.
After discussing what animals, we see out during Spring it started another discussion about the farm and farm life. They made a big farm display with a pond, a barn, tractors, and all their favourite farm animals (sheep, pigs, cows, ducks, horses). They had lots of fun singing Old McDonald, playing guess the animal, and doing lots of roleplay on the farm. One of our preschool classes really enjoyed learning about the farm that they made a sensory box of material and objects found on a farm.
With lots of birthdays happening in Preschool 1 over the month they decided to have a big celebration in their class, they made invitations for all of their friends, made bunting to put around the class, made party hat, sang songs, had a disco, and even made their own confetti for the big celebration.
Some of our preschool classes had a big interest in space and really enjoyed learning lots of different facts about space, stars, the moon, planets, and astronauts. They made their own astronaut helmets and space rocket for their roleplay to blast off into space. They sang songs about space and learned a great song to help them remember all of the planet names.
We had a great few days in the lead up to St Patricks Day, the children really enjoyed making lots of different arts and crafts, they made shamrock prints using peppers, Irish flags, St Patricks Day hats, Leprechaun masks and lots of different decorations for their classroom. Preschool 2 had great fun getting rid of all the snakes from their class just like the tale of St Patrick.
There was lots of interest about witches, fairies, spells, and magic. The children made their own witch’s hat and magic wands, they discussed what spells they would cast and what rhyme they would say. They talked about what animal they would have as a side kick. They read the story room on a broom and had great fun discussing what they would put in their own cauldrons. They made and decorated their own fairy doors and made their own fairies for their display. They shared stories of different fairies they know and where they might have seen fairy doors.
One of the children went to visit the zoo one weekend and was so excited to tell all their friends about the different animals they had seen and all the stories they had to share from the trip. During the day the children made their classroom into a zoo they made snake enclosures and made snakes using the clicks. They also made their own lion enclosure and some of their friends pretended to be lions and tigers, they also had their zookeepers around to feed all the animals and make sure they were all happy and safe. Speaking about the zoo they were also talking about all the different reptiles and amphibians likely to be found in the zoo. They spoke about the food they eat, where they live, why some like colder climates and why some like warmer climates, they all spoke about their favourite reptile and drew a picture of them.
Naíscoil
Having a jam-packed month full of lots of games and activities we have been kept super busy in Naíscoil. The children have been speaking a lot about the spelling of their name and what letters are in their name. We made a letter matching memory game, they each took a letter and drew a picture underneath to represent the letter, we made 2 copies and had to find the match for it.
Watching all the changes that have happened over the last few weeks the children have been really interested all the different flowers and trees blooming, they made tulips using forks and paint, we made apple trees, flowers, butterflies, and bees. One of our friends went to visit a farm when they were on their holidays and told us all about the animals they saw and what machinery they use on the farms. We made chicks, sheep, and ladybirds and spoke all about where the animals sleep on the farm and what they like to eat.
Moving on from farm animals one of the children was telling his friends that he has family living in Africa which started a discussion about the differences between Ireland and Africa, we spoke about the different language, animals, food and all of the different festivals and celebrations. We made our own Desert in our me and my world centre and made all the different African animals you would see in the desert. We learned how they say hello in Africa and some of the different names for their fruit and vegetables.
Some of the children were talking about the big orange moon they saw in the sky one night which sparked a conversation about the moon, planets, and stars. We’ve been very busy learning all of the different planets and what makes them all so different. We made a space display with rockets, astronauts, planets.
We have been working very hard on lots of new Irish words based on all of our curriculum’s over the month.
After-School Room News
Our Afterschool children love reading so they’ve started their own mini book club where they all discuss books they are reading, have read, or think their friends would enjoy. They have brought some books in to read with their friend and compare their thought on them. They made a list of their favourite one for their class and add to it when they think of a book everyone might like.
They spoke about St Patrick Day, and they all shared some interesting facts about St Patrick and why he became a Saint. They made their own St Patricks Day hats and had a lovely parade to show them all off.
With the weather being so nice lately they have really been enjoying outdoor games, they have all been getting very involved in making different obstacle courses, different races, and lots of different playground games the children enjoy playing in school or at home.
