Welcome to the October edition of our newsletter from Links Childcare Blackrock.
We love this time of year. The children are all well settled into their new rooms and routines after the summer holidays and we are well under way with all our fun and active Autumnal curriculum learning each week.
There were lots of celebrations this month. At the start of October, we had a lovely party in crèche to mark 15 years of Links Childcare. It was a super fun day of celebrations, where we made our own fairy buns and got to meet our new preschool class bears. Mr Links, the big bear also arrived in style to visit us too. It was great to see him and most importantly, the children loved it!
We also learned lots about the importance of road safety during National Road Safety Week. Two of our local Lollipop lady friends paid us a visit and we did lots of demonstrations in class on best road safety practices.
Jersey Day was a day where we wore our jerseys with pride. Whether it was GAA, soccer, rugby or cricket—every child had a different favourite sport, and they were delighted to share their favourites with their friends and Educarers. Unfortunately the Irish Rugby team got knocked out of the Rugby World Cup, but we are still very proud of them. Our children enjoyed making all the rugby related arts and crafts to display in our rooms.
We were also delighted to support the Irish Cricket team, as they played against Hong Kong in the ICC World Twenty20 Qualifier. And they won by eight wickets too! Congratulations to Kevin (one of our crèche parents and who is a big part of the Irish Cricket team) and all the team members.
Halloween was a (not so) spooky affair in Blackrock, as we played lots of games, made some arts and crafts and had a disco in aid of Temple Street children’s hospital for their Trick or Treat fundraising campaign. Many thanks for everyone’s support, and indeed, for all our events.
We hope you enjoy our newsletter for Links Childcare Blackrock and we look forward to lots more fun learning next month.
Kind regards,
Joanne & Esther
Joanne Doyle —Preschool & Afterschool Manager
Esther Martin —Nursery Manager
Baby Room News
October was packed full of exciting and fun events, and our babies loved them all.
Here is a round up below of what we got up to:
– Transport Learning and Beep Beep Day: Our babies painted cars and truck wheels and pushed them on paper to see their different prints on it. They also made a big display board making vehicles using their foot prints.
– Welcome Autumn: They paint leaves using their hands and they loved touching the leaves and playing with them. They also decorated a tree for the front of their door, where they painted leaves and stamped their feet in paint to make squirrels.
– Happy Birthday LINKS: Our babies decorated their own flags for cupcakes and we made crowns for each baby in the room so they could celebrate with us.
– We love the sea: Our babies love water so their Educarers decided to make a Sea themed print with them. They painted their sea using hands and blue paint and made crabs using their hands and red paint.
– Recycling Day: They made their own card (‘Save me please’), and painted the Earth and stamped their hands to make prints that symbolised them hugging the world and caring for it.
– We love fruit: They touched and experimented with different fruits in the room. Then they painted some, using paper plates, to decorate the room.
– Halloween: Our babies made sensorial bags putting some orange paint in freezer bags with a pumpkin drawn on it. They were fascinated with the colours and the textures of these sensory bags.
Wobbler Room News
Our wobblers were so excited to learn about baby sharks, as they adore the song about them.
They painted a big shark using their hands and sang the famous song ‘Baby Shark’ with their favourite big shark teddy from the room.
To celebrate Links 15th Birthday, our wobblers made a card and decorated a big cake using glue and feathers.
Autumn is here and to embrace this beautiful autumnal season, we mixed paint with rice to make autumn colours of yellow, red, orange, brow and then glued on paper leaves to decorate our big tree display board in the room. They were playing in the garden with lots of leaves. They love touching them and throwing them up to the sky and watching them fall down.
For some (not so) spooky Halloween fun, we made spiders by stamping their hands on black paint and Ghosts with their feet and white paint. They loved the feeling of the paint on their little toes.
During National Road Safety Week and Beep Beep Day they painted big traffic lights and made a taxi out of a cardboard box and got into it. Our wobblers are brilliant at role play, and they loved getting into character and pretending to be various cars and pedestrians. It’s a great way for them to learn too that being safe on the roads is very important.
Toddler Room News
Our toddlers have been very good at expressing their emotions, as we have been learning all about them in our Toddler Rooms. We made their emoticon faces using paper and paint and sang Spanish and English songs about them. Our Educarers and our children have also been talking about our emotional actions and what that action might mean to someone else around them. For example, if a child is feeling frustrated by something and he or she is upset by it, we spoke about what our friends might do to help them through it, such as give them a hug, or share a toy with them. It was lovely to watch our toddlers getting to grips with this concept.
We love the Autumn season. The colours on the trees outside have changed into a beautiful shade of gold, browns and oranges. We went on a nature trail found lots of lovely leaves which we glued on our homemade tree in our room. During their travels, they children found a worm in the garden and they were looking for leaves so they could make a nice warm bed in a box for the worm. That got us talking all animals and what they do to survive the seasons. We made hand print tigers, parrots and lions too.
For Halloween we had a lovely dress up day, and painted paper plates to represent pumpkins, witches and ghosts.
We made our own Weather charts and talked about different weather patterns and learned some weather songs. There was lots of sports games in the garden too and we made footballs and our own football shirts for our football match.
Musical Instruments is one of our favourite things to play, and made our own musical instruments from various recyclable items and preformed with them for our friends. Our homemade shakers & maracas were a big hit.
Preschool Room News
Some events we enjoyed in Preschool included:
* Links Birthday Party
* Jersey Day
* Beep Beep Day
* Recycling & Hibernation Day
* Trick or Treat for Temple Street
There was lots of excitement at the start of the month when we celebrated Links Childcare’s 15th birthday. Some children were a bit confused by the birthday celebrations, as they didn’t understand that it was the 15th birthday of the company. They were expecting it to be a person’s birthday! But all the confusions were soon forgotten once their was mention of cake! They decorated their own cupcakes and made some lovely banners to decorate their rooms.
There was so much excitement then when Mr Link’s, our big bear came to visit us. He brought in with him our new class bears, which we all got a chance to name. Big welcome to our new bear friends Big Teddy, Blackberry, Nutty, Mommy & Osito. All named by our children! We are delighted to have our new bears as part of our Links family, as they will be a big part of our curriculum learning. Our adventures with our bears have already started, as some of our children have had the opportunity to bring them home for a few days at a time. It’s lovely then when they write
their adventures in our bear diary and they share their experiences with their class mates.
For our Autumn seasonal learning we talked about animals and made handprint hedgehogs & acorns. We also made some paper plate bears, pumpkins and leaf printing too. We made a hibernation cave for our bear out of cardboard boxes and did a collage of a bear hibernating near our Autumn Tree.
For National Road Safety Week and Beep Beep Day we had a lovely visit from two local lollipop sisters. This was brilliant fun and they told us all about the do’s and don’ts of road safety. We also made cars and traffic lights and a large road with cardboard so we could put our cars on and drive them around the roads.
For Halloween we made ghosts, pumpkins bats and had a spooky Halloween treasure hunt around our room. Messy play with slimy jelly was fun too and we drew skeletons, monsters, apple printing and had lots of Halloween games. We had a bake sale in aid of Temple Street Children’s hospital.
As well as all of this fun learning, we also created our own food pyramid and we made our favourite dinner dishes on paper plates. Dancing, PE & Spanish also started back and it was great fun getting active again.
Afterschool Room News
All our extra-curricular activities started back this month and we are loving our dance classes, PE & Spanish lessons. Our afterschool children are learning the letters of the alphabet through playing letter games
We made leaf prints with chalk, and made owls, blossom trees, snail patterns & did some Halloween art.
Halloween Camp was a height of activity, as we enjoyed a Halloween Olympics, arts & crafts, Links got Talent, Spooky story writing, Halloween outdoor games and a spooky treasure hunt.
