Dear Parents & Guardians ,
We would like to give a warm welcome to you all, as we returned back to crèche this month.
It has been so wonderful seeing all our Links children again, and it has been great to see that they have settled back so well after being apart from us for the past few months.
We understand that it must be difficult for you as parents to now be restricted when it comes to entering the crèches during drop off and collections, due to the current HSE Covid 19 guidelines. But we hope that, through the photos we share here in our monthly newsletter, the weekly updates and through our social media pages, that you can see what fun the children are all having together in their Pods. They are very engaged in the daily activities we set out for them, and equally we are guided by them when it comes to interests and learning.
Our Educarers listen to the children and with any emerging interests, we will build on a theme based on the children’s interests. For example, during our Summer theme this month, we spoke about summer holidays, beach days and various items of clothing that one might wear on a hot sunny day. One child then told us that he went camping during his time at home with his family in his back garden. Within an hour, a tent was created, a pretend fire pit “lit”, and camping songs were sung, as we enjoyed a lovely role play all about going camping.
We continue to practice all our safety measures to help keep viruses at bay. Regular hand washing is done, with our children singing their hand washing song whilst doing it. We have included our Hand Washing Song here too, if you wish to practice it at home to with your child.
All our chefs are so happy to see our children back too and they are delighted to be back cooking healthy, homemade and super tasty food for all our children.
Charlie, our Head Chef has shared a recipe in this newsletter with you all for his Chicken Broccoli Pasta dish, which is a big hit with all our children, and which is on our Summer / Autumn dinner menu. As the children love it so much, we thought it would be nice for you to make it at home too for your little ones. We hope you all enjoy.
Best Wishes,
Sonja
Sonja Quinn—Creche Manager
Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, Instagram & our Links Childcare YouTube Channel
Extra safety measures have been put in place throughout the creche to help keep the spread of Covid 19 at bay.
Toys & all surfaces and items are cleaned regularly and we have hand
sanitisers and wash basins for children, at their height levels, that they can access easily. All our rooms are organised into Pods & our children are settling in nicely into them.
Baby Room News
This month we welcomed all our new babies; Tomas, Fiorella, Annie, Kirill, Alexander, Dylan, Liam, Orla.
We also welcomed back our returning children Conall and Maeva. We will miss our children who have moved on to the Wobbler Room but we will say hello out the window when they are playing in the garden.
We are sure they do not miss us as they are enjoying their new room.
We took the time to get to know the new children and settle them in. Sensory play, with leaves and twigs from the garden was really enjoyed, and we made them their own sensory bags, as we cannot share at the moment. We did lots of finger painting. We sang songs to the children, ABC, Old Mc Donald, Hickory Dickory Dock and more. We used our musical instruments, shakers and noisy toys for musical movement. We had lots of tummy time and played the “Peek a Boo” game.
Using the mirror to look at our facial expressions, we had lots of giggles with this. For Rainbow Day, we painted a number of colourful rainbows. We used the tunnel to explore and the tent to make sense of the dark and to do Peek a boo, hide and seek.
Wobbler Room News
Welcome Back and it is all about me!
We got to know the new children moving over from babies to our Wobbler class. We sang lots of songs, we did some flashcards with the children, learning about colours/ numbers/ ABC. We went to the mirror and looked at ourselves and spoke about our eyes hair and features. We then drew a picture of ourselves. We made a family picture and a family frame and decorated these.
Outdoor games and tree’s
The wobblers love the outdoors, as do all the children, so we try to maximise the time in the garden.
They played racing in the garden with the cars and push along toys. They also enjoyed bringing the tunnel and the tent outdoors and playing hide and seek with each other and the staff.
In the classroom we loved using our musical instruments and making our own music and dancing to it. We made Maracas with Pasta inside. We played a ball activity, passed the ball to our friends and we used their names so the children can learn each other’s names.
Toddler Room News
Welcome Back:
We made a joint sign with lots of colours and drawing for our class door to welcome all our friends back. We made friendship bracelets, and a new birthday wall and we all made our own crabs. Our birthday wall will be all about the seaside and beach life. The children really enjoy painting in this class so we got a few different coloured paints and let them experiment with different colours, mixing to see what colours they can make themselves.
We had some mixed nice weather in July, so we made the most of it and tried to stay in the garden for most of the day. We have lots of activities outdoors, like pretend play, dinosaurs, the zoo.
We also love chasing and catching, P.E fun and playing on the bikes. We love to bring our Lego out to the garden and build on the mats, build high towers. We enjoyed knocking them down as it gives us a good giggle!
Camping and sea animals was lots of fun! We made our very own campsite and used the beds as the roof and the presses as the walls and made our own forts. We coloured and painted lots of different animals, the puffer fish, whale, sea turtles and many more! We had a picnic in the garden while the weather was nice.
Insects and transport: We spoke to the children about insects, and their curious minds gave us lots questions; Where can we find them? What colours are they? What do they eat? We then went on a bug hunt in the garden. We caught a dragon fly…He was HUGE! We also caught spiders and a butterfly. Don’t worry, we let them go after we had a good long look at them! Just for fun we decided to throw in a Christmas fun day as a fun and different day to bring some happiness and fun to the crèche.
Construction and the sky- (Rainbow day) We spoke with the children while in the garden and asked them what they see in the sky. There were lots of answers. Birds, Planes, Insects, Helicopter, Clouds the sun and the SKY! LOL!
We decided to draw our own pictures of what we see, we have some great artists in the class room.
Preschool Room News
The preschool children loved being back at creche they missed their friends so much! We also welcomed new friends Umut & Kaique.
We did a welcome back week, we sat and told stories about lock down and what we did with our families during Quarantine.
We made lots of pictures and drew our experiences. We spoke about different animals and what is their favourite animals. We painted octopus, fishes, sharks . We created a world map and a safari desert and made animal Origami and constructed animals out of lego.
We put on a Links Got Talent show and the children put on a great show, with our X’s and O’s. We made our own Links restaurant and lots of dancing and fun and fitness in the garden.
Afterschool Room News
After school children have been so excited to come back. They really enjoy the garden and out of everything this is what they want to do most! Summer camp is in full swing and it is based on what the children decide they want to do.
During the week of the 20th, we had a Young Scientists/ Creative Minds Day. It was great and they really enjoy arts and crafts and creating their own things. We did lots of different experiments from tornado in a bottle to dancing rice, freezing and defrosting water, erupting Volcano.
Imaginarium/ Art Attack: the children decided to turn the classroom into a kitchen. Hannah was our chef Polina and they made their own buns. They also decided to make a shop to sell them and then thought they needed to make visa cards for pretend play to purchase the buns.
For our Soccer theme, the children made their own cardboard stadium and they designed their own players on sticks. They also made 3D animals out in the garden which they drew with chalk onto the ground, and we all went on an Insects hunt and enjoyed scientist imagination play. The children took the scientific microscope and decided to investigate with a closer look at fruit and insects.
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