In this newsletter, we have shared some insight into the activities from each of our rooms that has taken place during the month of April. We hope you enjoy browsing through them.
Easter, Earth Day, Space Day and Picnics were all enjoyed by our children and they loved the different types of activities.
Sonja Quinn
Creche Manager
Activities from our Baby Room
Drums and our feet:
During this week, we enjoyed lots of messy play and sensory activities, We painted our feet to make drums, we also painted them to make bunnys for our easter cards. We really enjoy this type of play, and the feeling is tickly! We played lots of different types of music in the class, and they enjoyed dancing with the educarers. We used different coloured blocks for the children to learn hand eye co-ordination and balance building skills. We built our towers very high! We enjoy playdough and building different shapes and animals with it! This week we also celebrated space day and made our very own alien / astronaut masks! We loved it!
Books and dance:
This week we focused on books, reading, and talking to all the children in the class to improve their language skills. We read many different books. We enjoyed story time in the cosy corner, we read our shapes book, we read a book about space and the different planets. We enjoyed different types of sensory play all week- sand , gloup, rice and water! We enjoyed time out in the garden with the weather getting nicer playing with the balls, learning how to find our balance and walk, with our Wesco walking frames.
This week, as the children were really enjoying playing with the balls in the garden we have added a ball pool to the baby room, which they are really enjoying! We are also learning about animals this week, the noises they make, where they live and what produce we get from them!?
Stories from our Wonderful Wobbler Room
This week in the wobbler room we are focusing on our ABC’s. We made a full alphabet booklet for each child with their hand prints/ foot prints and sent this home as a keep sake for the parents. The “L” was for lion and the footprint was made into a lion. While doing this the children enjoyed singing animal songs, and talking about the animals. We enjoyed many activities out in the garden but especially hide and seek, but bubbles are our favourite.
The next week we enjoyed music and names.
We made our very own instruments with handprints and footprints as the children enjoy sitting and getting their hands and feet painted! We made guitars, violins and drums, We took our musical equipment to the garden and played outside. We also decided this week to take some vegetables and make vegetable prints.
We used the potatoes to make Easter eggs. Throughout the week we used different types of messy play, pasta and rice which we painted. Sand play, gloupe and water with our animals. We also played games to learn our friends names- where is Adam/ Mary/ James.
Tales from our Toddler Room
Toddlers loved doing activities about musical instruments, they made their very own shakers, drums, and had a little sing song in the classroom. This then turned into a dancing activity and then musical chairs/ Statues. We played a musical statue game in the garden similar to Simon says but with the children and educarers singing a song! We really enjoyed space day and we made black playdough, with some blue and white to represent earth and space, We enjoy to start most of our days with playdough and sitting at the table as the children enjoy this relaxing activity. Our other week we enjoyed our Pirate and stories, this week we spoke about pirates, we made our very own class parrot. We made our very own pirate boat and although it was not big enough we went on an adventure. We made a treasure map for this adventure so we didn’t get lost.
During the week we also read different storied such as 10 little puppies, the old lady who swallowed a fly, the 3 little pigs. We also enjoyed celebrating easter, with a bunny game in the garden we made our easter cards and sent them home to mammy and daddy.
As the toddlers enjoyed the emotions week, we continued this on, we made 3 different coloured rice bottles to represent pour emotions, angry, sad, happy. We used this alongside the “colour monster book” which is all about our feelings and emotions. We choose our own colours to show our feelings on this day! We had a lot of green pages ( happy Monster) We played different sports games out in the garden, chasing, tag, catch the ball, pass the ball and races.
Pre-School Room News
All about me and music.
This week we took a step back to All about me for the children as we wanted to implement this into their “me & my World Area” We made flags for all the children to represent the areas of the world they are from. We spoke about our families and who are in them, what pets we have at home and who lives in our houses! We all stood against a piece of paper and took our measurements to see how tall we are and how tall we will grow over the next few weeks. Our favourite songs this week were: hickory dickory dock. Twinkle twinkle, Lets go swimming, wheels on the bus! We made mirrors for our selves so we could describe what we all looked like we made a big floor piano from paper and pretended to play it. For space day we made rockets and astronauts, we spoke about the moon and all the different planets. We introduced Easter to the children and we sat and chatted about easter what it means and if the easter bunny will be visiting everyone!
We made lots of easter arts and crafts with all of the children and they enjoyed doing little treasure hunts around the class room.
Graphomotor/fine motor skills activities: we started by using a dice with different shapes for the strokes: the aim was to imitate the strokes. After that, we used one with geometrical figures with which we had fun making triangles, circles, spirals… We have created a wordle in which with letters that simulated pieces we created the words that the teachers wrote for us. we love using the stencils with our names to learn to write. we have also been able to improve our ability to use the scissors.
Dinosaurs: This month we have been learning about the history of dinosaurs, their shapes, and sizes: and, about their history. we have also been doing the dinosaur puzzles.
Train: we have learned how trains work. Using tickets going to Wicklow and Galway. So we set up a train station in the garden where we did a treasure hunt collecting the stops to get to our destination.
Easter: we made bunnies, eggs and had fun making a magic bag where we had to use a torch to find the bunny.
