What a fun few months we have had.
We kick started the new year of 2022 with our New Years Resolutions and enjoyed exploring our 5 senses, the human body and the human skeleton, as well as the circus. Our children also loved National Puzzle Day and creating some very cool inventions during Inventors Day. In February, we celebrated Chinese New Year, St Valentines Day and enjoyed Balance Day and had so much fun for Carnival Day.
Keep an eye out on our Social Media Channels for photos of our daily activities.
In this newsletter, we have shared some insight into the activities from each of our rooms that has taken place during the month of January and February. We hope you enjoy browsing through them.
Sonja Quinn – Crèche Manager
Activities from our Baby Room
Our babies explored their hands and their toes and different textures, they also enjoyed exploring all five of their senses.
They enjoyed playing with different sensory toys, they were made from different materials such as rubber they enjoyed stacking different items such as soft toys and blocks.
The babies explored some sand they enjoyed the feeling of it they were putting their feet into it some of them really enjoyed it and found it ticklish and others found it strange and different. They explored corn flour, wholemeal flour and coconut flakes they enjoyed feeling it in between their fingers and picking it up in their hands and watching it fall, they really enjoyed smelling the coconut flakes. They enjoyed feeling pom poms in between the flour as there was lots of different types of textures. The babies also enjoyed messy play using different coloured paint and splashing the paint on bubble wrap they had so much fun making such a mess. We enjoyed listening to a story called Bing Hide & Seek.
We made sensory bags made of shaving foam and paint in zip lock bags with blue, yellow, purple and red. We enjoyed squeezing the bags and smelling them as part of our senses activities. The babies also played with brown playdough too, some of the babies enjoyed the texture of the playdough but some didn’t enjoy the texture at all. We used our sight senses to look through different coloured blocks and we also enjoyed playing peek a boo with them.
The babies also learned about space and colours this month and really enjoyed creating their own planets with their favourite colours using their hands. The babies also painted with the colour green to create handprint aliens.
The babies also made a birthday card and lovely crown for Seamus as he turned 1 this month. We had a party for Seamus singing lots of songs and dancing. The children really enjoyed garden time this month listening to the birds outside chirping and looking at them flying. They enjoyed watching aeroplanes flying through the sky as well.
For Inventor’s Day we enjoyed creating some sound shakers. The babies put rice, pasta and rice crispies into different tubs to make some lovely sounding instruments. They really enjoyed listening to the sounds that the tubs made.
The children enjoyed playing with some monkey puppets we made and using them when we were singing 5 Little Monkeys Jumping On The Bed, they also enjoyed using frog puppets for the song 5 little Speckled Frogs and they enjoyed using the duck puppets for the song 5 Little Ducks Went Swimming One Day.
Stories from our Wonderful Wobbler Room
Our wobblers learned about traffic lights. They created their own traffic lights using their handprints. They learned about what the traffic lights mean, and they made traffic lights for the garden and used them while driving in the cars in the garden. The wobblers mixed lots of different colours with their feet, they put a big sheet of paper on the ground and the children walked on it mixing the colours with their feet.
The wobblers made sensory bags using shaving foam and gel, they put different colour paint inside and the children mixed it to see the colours change, the children really enjoyed this as it was different texture and different colours for them. The wobbler played games where they had to match the colours and the shapes together, they found this interesting as some of the colours were ones they wouldn’t usually see.
The wobblers learned all about their primary and secondary colours, they missed a lot of different colours together to see what colours they would end up with. The wobblers this month also learned about the circus they created some elephants using their hand and footprints and joining dots together with their hands.
We made a fire flame circle using a hoola hoop and some yellow and orange paper, the children enjoyed trying to jump through it. The wobblers made a clown mask using paper plates and googly eyes.
Tales from our Toddler Room
This month the toddlers learned and explored all about the circus. They created clowns with their handprints.
The toddlers created clown hats for themselves they used different materials to stick on them for example crepe paper and fluffy balls. The toddlers made their own circus in their classroom they rearranged the chairs and some of the children preformed in the circus. The toddlers created circus animal’s elephants, lions and tigers using their hand and footprints. The toddlers also explored different types of music and songs. The toddlers were playing with different musical instruments and singing songs while playing the musical instruments.
The toddlers created a bus with their chairs, they lined them all up and they sang ‘the wheels on the bus’. The toddlers learned all about animals they were singing ‘B.I.N.G.O’. The enjoy making all the different animal sounds and animals that they have at home. They enjoyed role play pretending to be animals their favourite animals were dogs and cats. The toddlers made a farm using Lego and their farm animals in their classroom and making their animal sounds.
They explored lots of messy play for example playdough with cut out shapes, water, and bubbles they enjoyed washing the babies pretending to put them in the bath. The toddlers love story time, they enjoy the book about the bear, rabbit, and the mole.
Pre-School Room News
PRE-SCHOOL 1:
In Pre-school 1 we started talking about our family vacations and how much we missed our friends from crèche. We have made several crafts with paint and coloured paper with which we have created our own family and our friends; we have even made them out of plasticine. While talking about the family we sang numerous songs that led us to create numerous instruments and discover that we can make sounds with any object in the classroom, and we even dared to sing our favourite Disney songs. We ventured into space and learned a lot about the sun and moon, and the solar system. With recycled material we have made a giant sun, a bright moon, and the solar system we belong to. It was the perfect opportunity to learn about day, night, sunset, and sunrise. We didn’t forget to have fun in the garden singing and playing with the bikes and our friends, as well as enjoying the stories that the teachers told us and the messy play that we love so much.
PRE-SCHOOL 2:
In Pre-school 2 has been exciting. We have spent days traveling among thousands of stories that have taken us to magical places: the three little pigs, the greedy caterpillar, hello little egg. From each of them we have made a lot of crafts like the little house of the three little pigs, a giant caterpillar, and a little egg for our scrapbooks. It has helped us to talk about recycling, since the materials we have used were recycled. We have also built spinning tops with the connectors we have in class, watching the movement is almost hypnotic. With the stories we have accompanied the music with which we have been able to move, dance and do some exercise. This month we have worked the five senses through sensory activities: the mastery of textures, rice crispies, coconut, painting, the smells of different objects and foods…. We exercised touch, taste, sight, smell, and hearing. Every day we have not forgotten to play with our friends to create the tallest tower in the world, to play with moms and dads in the play centre and to enjoy in the garden where inside the little house we have taken the opportunity to tell stories and sing a song as loud as we could so that everyone could hear us.
PRE-SCHOOL 3:
In Pre-school 3 has worked on different topics ranging from recycling to logic games. Our environment is very important, so we have learned to recycle both the garbage by separating it in two containers that we have made ourselves, and to recycle toys and create new ones (we took our bowling pins and put numbers on them to learn and play at the same time). We have been thinking about how we take care of our planet and, therefore, we have used a reusable tray to plant lentils using cotton we had in the crèche. A great activity that we linked to the farm and the animals on it. We decided to create our own farm using the Legos from the class, we also recreated one using the animals we have in class, sand, making trees…. It was a lot of fun. We even ventured to paint celery using water and dye. With these activities we have improved our sensory skills, and we really like sensory games. So, taking advantage of the situation, we have also carried out activities with paint using hands and feet! And, not forgetting, our sense of smell that we have tested with the help of the spices we have in the crèche. Although it is true that the activities, we like the most are those in which we test our logic, that is why our teachers have designed activities such as the animal maze (which way should each animal go to get to the food), guess the animal (match the animal with its shadow), what sound does he/she make?
In addition to all these activities we have not forgotten to play with the playdough, bake delicious cookies, have fun in the garden with games of catch the partner, hide and seek and even told stories and danced in class.
After-School Room News
In Afterschool we have focused on recycling and caring for the environment. We have started thinking about how we can take care of our planet.
One of the ideas that has come up is to clean it and make it look nice, and for that we have to start with our classroom, so we have committed to have our room super clean, every Friday we have cleaned all the toys together. it has been fun to play with water and soap while cleaning! We have also created our own bin to separate the trash according to how it is recycled.
But we have not only cleaned, but we also love learning languages: our teacher has taught us Spanish words and phrases and even a typical song ‘La macarena’, which has helped us to exercise.
We enjoyed different sensory activities that have included playdough with which we have made a huge pizza to which we have added different ingredients; and we have even moved on to real food to make cupcakes. In the garden our favourite activity has been ‘zombies’ in which you start out as a zombie and have to turn the rest trying to catch them.
