We have had such fun over the past three months, as we enjoyed the rest of the summer and the nice sunshine in July and August.
We took advantage of the nice weather outdoors and played lots of games and had fun with our friends in the fresh air.
In September, we welcomed lots of new children to our rooms and we have formed some lovely new friendships together.
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
September. We have also shared some photos with you from our July & August activities. We hope you enjoying browsing through them.
Sonja Quinn – Crèche Manager
July Activities
August Activities
Activities from our Baby Room
This month the babies were exploring different textures by doing playdough, gloop, waterplay, pasta, rice, paint, and
flour.
They really enjoyed learning about different textures some of the babies enjoyed different textures more than others as
they didn’t like the feel of some. The babies explored the garden by playing with the leaves, they enjoyed playing with the
leaves as it was something different for them, they crunched them up in their hands. The babies really enjoy bubbles
especially in the garden when they can see them go up to the sky. We enjoyed playing all the musical instruments in our
classroom such as the drums, shakers, piano, and xylophone. The babies love the musical instruments and different
sounds they like to dance along to the musical instruments. The babies love to dance with their educarers and friends to
the music that is played in the classroom, they really enjoy trying to sing along to all the songs and doing the actions too.
We made our own musical instruments using an empty bottle and some rice to create shakers and we used a box and
some sticks to create drums.
The babies learned about their emotions and the different types of emotions, they learned their emotion by singing
songs such as ‘if your happy and you know it’. The babies sat in the cosy corner and sat in the mirror and made different
faces such as happy faces, sad faces, and excited faces. We talked a lot about our families in the family corner and
looked at all our family pictures, we spoke about our grandparents, aunty, and uncles. We sang the song ‘mammy finger,
daddy finger’. We also talked about our pets that we have at home. We spent a lot of time in the cosy corner reading our
favourite book ‘Emotion’s monster’.
Stories from our Wonderful Wobbler Room
This month the wobblers learned all about numbers and the alphabet. They learned how to count from one to ten using their
fingers. They made flashcards for a display in their room of the alphabet. They learned a new song – 1,2,3,4,5 once I caught a
fish alive. We counted all our steps in the garden and the classroom. They celebrated grandparents’ day and made cards and
gifts for their grandparents.
The wobblers talked about where their grandparents are from and their names. They learned all about the sea, they really
enjoyed learning about the sea as they were able to explore the feeling of the water when doing water play. We learned all
about the sea creatures and what you find in the sea. We made some different coloured fish using our handprints and some
starfish using the shape of our feet. We done lots of sand play and water play. The wobblers also learned all about the season
Autumn. They collected leaves in the creche garden to create some trees in the classroom they created trees by using their
handprints and half of their arm and then they stuck the leaves onto the top of the tree. We spent a lot of time in the garden
trying to find different things such as insects, leaves, sticks and some acorns.
They made some acorn prints using acorns and paint they really enjoyed this activity as it was a different way of painting for
them. We also learned about how important friendship is and how to be nice to each other. We painted our hands and joined
all our handprints together. We learned all about sharing and learned a new song ‘share your stuff’. We also talked about our
feelings/emotions and made emotions display in the room so the children can tell us how they are feeling. We practiced our
greetings a lot by saying hello when someone enters the room and goodbye when someone leaves, we also learned
goodnight, good morning and I love you.
Tales from our Toddler Room
This month the Toddlers were exploring their families and all about me by playing a memory game using the flashcards of
the family including mammy, daddy, brother, sister, and the baby.
The Toddlers learned a new song called “family finger” and drew the family members on their fingers to sing the song. To
build on the song the Toddler painted their hands and made handprints to draw the members of the family on their fingers
on their handprints. The Toddlers also painted large cut out of the family members and displayed them beside their own
family photo wall.
The Toddlers also enjoyed spending time in the garden, experiencing different types of messy play such as playdough, rice
play, pasta play and water play. This month the Toddlers also explored the different parts of the body and sports. We
listened to the song “head, shoulders, knees and toes” and the “one little finger song”. To explore the body, we coloured a
child with crayons and pencils and cut it up to create a puzzle to learn where the different parts of the body belong. We also
gathered foam balls in different sizes and used paint to create different types of balls used in sport, for example a
basketball. The toddlers enjoyed time in the garden doing running races and using footballs to score goals and shoot
baskets. The Toddlers learned all about food and letters. We painted paper plates to join to make a colourful caterpillar as
we wanted to create our own hungry caterpillar for our classroom after we read the book “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”.
The toddlers also love the “A,B,C song” and enjoy singing it together so we decided to make a colourful alphabet for the wall
by sticking down different coloured paper to the individual letters of the alphabet. We made playdough for the children to
make their own food or dishes with and offered it to the teachers to eat.
The Toddlers also explored sea animals and the season Autumn. The Toddlers made jellyfish by sticking long colourful
pieces of paper and coloured and stuck eyes on fish to stick onto our deep blue sea poster which we painted together. We
also made an Autumn tree for our classroom and the Toddlers enjoyed sticking real leaves from the garden onto the tree.
The toddlers celebrated Grandparent’s Day and helped colour in the poster of the Grandfather, Grandmother,
Granddaughter and Grandson. The Toddler’s made cards for their Grandparents by printing their hands.
We explored jungle animals and the different part of the face. They used their hand prints to create the different animals
you would expect to find in a jungle such as tigers, monkeys, birds and parrots. We painted our own idea of the face and
learned the names of the different parts through the song “head, shoulders, knees and toes”. The toddlers enjoy spending
time in the house in the garden sharing the seats with their friends.
Pre-School Room News
We welcomed all the new children to preschool and had a great fun week, getting to know each other. We spent time talking
about our family and friends. We made love hearts arts and crafts with our handprints and on the inside we wrote down our
friends, we made a 3d version of our family home with lollipop sticks and lots of sensory play with sand and water.
We made a class friendship tree and using each child’s handprint with the colour of their choice this was based on inclusion for
the class. We also spoke about all about me, our families, who is in our families, we made our family walls in the class room. We
spoke about our pets, aunties uncles, grandparents and family we have a broad. We enjoyed dancing and listening to music, we
sand the songs head shoulders, knees and toes. We learned the new song “wash our hands” We played the game Simon says and
lots of fun in the garden.
We also spoke about our emotions and made an emotions chart for the classroom and read the book the colour monster, in this
book it explains all about our emotions, which the children really enjoyed. During this week, we had lots of pretend play with the
dinosaurs as our children love to pretend to be dinosaurs, we roamed around the garden pretending to be dinosaurs of their
choice.
Music and colours was another favourite for the children in preschool, as we enjoyed lots of music in the first week, we carried it
through the children made their own musical shakers with empty bottles (Thanks you to all the parents who sent them in, lots of
parental involvement) We sang different songs like walking in the jungle, to go with the story “Were going on a bear hunt” “our
emotions song” “baby Shark” always a favourite and a mixture of Disney and frozen songs. They completed an activity involved
with mixing colours to see what colour they can make- and painted their own Xylophones. Movement and animals were also
another curriculum for the month of September, we spoke about the different types of animals, from animals in the zoo, the farm
and the wild.
Where we can find them, the noises they make, what they eat. We set up a pretend play area with all the animals and farmland in
our small world area. They also used playdough and made their own animal figures, they hand printed pictures of pigs and
painted a cheetah of how they see this animal, what their interpretation of it is.
We had a great time for Grandparent’s day and we would like to thank all the grandparents who sent in videos. You were all
amazing!
After-School Adventures
This month the Afterschool room started the month with an animal party. We were introduced to a new story book called
“Magnificent Creatures”. The children were amazed by the different animals in the story and decided to recreate and drawing
and colouring in the animals they loved the most such as crocodiles, pigs, and cows. We enjoyed completing some of the jigsaw
puzzles as a group especially the glow in the dark Dino’s puzzle.
We coloured and cut out flowers to create a garden for our magnificent creatures to stay like the ones we saw in the storybook.
Using the blocks and construction area we built tall trees and mountains where the animals could live. The afterschool children
enjoy time outside in the garden after school to run races, play football and basketball. We really enjoyed yoga when we
recreated different poses by pretending to be different types of animals. We used playdough to make an animal of our choice
and used the construction area to make a zoo. We really enjoyed a game of Jenga seeing who would be the first to knock the
tower.
The Afterschool room explored the different seasons in the year to introduce the season of Autumn. We spoke about what
happens in this season and talked about the different colours of the leaves this time of year and how it can rain and be sunny
which creates a rainbow and decided on yellow, brown, red, and orange as the Autumn colours. We decided to make our own
rainbows and searched for Autumn leaves in the garden. We used the wooden blocks in our construction area to spell out the
word Autumn and used the Autumn colours to paint the Autumn letters. We love art so we made our own art gallery and
displayed the paintings and colouring scenes we created and added explanations to them providing details of Autumn. The
Afterschool children used colours and pencils to draw their emotions and all about me, some of the children decided to draw
their families and their big school.
The Afterschool children enjoy science experiments so the children were asked what would happen if they mixed oil, soap, salt,
water, and sand so together they found out by doing the experiment.
The children made cards for their Grandparents to celebrate Grandparents Day and wrote what their grandparents do to make
them happy.
We also made their own restaurant by creating their own recipes, menu, food, and money. We made our own chef uniforms
and hats and learned how to take an order and made the food using playdough. We enjoyed being chefs for the day!
