Welcome to the November edition of our newsletter from Links Childcare Citywest .
November has been a busy month in all our rooms, as we prepare for our Christmas concert and our festive winter celebrations. We have been concentrating very hard on learning all the lines to our Christmas songs and we cannot wait to give you all a festive performance to remember. We hope you like our Christmas decorations! Our children and our afterschool children worked very hard to help us decorate it.
We had a month of learning all about the winter season and the changing of the weather. Our Educarers taught us all about winter hibernation and the different types of animals who hibernate in the winter in order to keep themselves and their little ones safe during the cold months.
Our STEM learning was a great way for our children to learn about this important topic. It opened up conversations about counting, coding, science and more.
And thank you to all our parents who voted in the Links Childcare Employee of the Year for 2019. Your voice and your vote matters. Thank you for your time in doing this. Our winner in Citywest is Nina Jukic and I am sure you all agree, she is a worthy winner!
Last but not least, we would like to send you all a massive THANK YOU for all your gorgeous shoe boxes for the Team Hope Shoe Box Appeal. We collected close to 70 shoe boxes in Citywest, and collectively you helped Links Childcare collect almost 300 shoe boxes. These will all be going to a great home this Christmas and will make a child very happy.
We hope you enjoy our newsletter and we look forward to lots more fun & festive learning next month.
Kind regards,
Sonja
Sonja Quinn—Crèche Manager
Baby Room News
Our babies have been enjoying our winter theme and they have been enjoying exploring different sensory items in relation to winter. They really enjoyed seeing and playing with the new materials Marta & Antoinette brought in. We made sensory trays using flour and animal toys and the children were having great fun making a mess.
For our weather learning, we looked out the window at the rain and enjoyed learning about the different types of winter weather. We made snowflakes for our art activities. We were all getting very excited with Santa coming to our creche and we made lots of decorations for his arrival.
Wobbler Room News
Our wobblers have had some lovely exploratory learning during the course of the month. We looked out the windows for the birds in the sky and did some bird watching. We also made our own bird arts and crafts with crayons and coloured them in. The loved sticking feathers on them too. We spoke about different animals, cats’, dogs, sheep, cows. Where they Live? What they eat and the noises they make.
For our pets theme, we made our own pet corner. Some of the children and staff brought in pictures of their animals from home and they are very cute pets. We did animal footprints, dogs, cats and our own handprints. We looked at some flash cards and also did lots of arts and crafts, rabbits with cotton wool, fishes with our fingerprints and origami. We made delicious cookies that looked like cats and also a crazy science experiment with fake snow.
With Christmas around the corner, we did lots of arts and crafts including Santa paintings, reindeer footprints with our fingerprints and a snowman covered in cotton wool. We dressed up for Universal Children’s Day and started to make our Christmas cards and Christmas song books for our Christmas concert.
Toddler Room News
For our Winter and STEM theme, we followed on some interests of the children. They showed great interests in learning and enjoying STEM activities. We experimented with flour and water and how the textures changed. We added some paint to brighten the mixture up. Our toddlers really enjoyed using recycled boxes and tape to make some construction creations. They are right little construction engineers! We followed safety precautions by wearing our high vis vests and hard hats. We also enjoyed taking part in making posters for the staff voting for our annual Links Childcare Employee of the Year Awards. The trees in our gardens are becoming bare, so we talked about how the trees lose the leaves throughout winter. We then made a snow tree from cotton and paint to present winter and the changes of nature during this season.
The children really enjoyed showing off the aquamarines they made, as we learned about the different types of sea animals and fish. We also looked into what else may be in the sea, like coral, seaweed and boats.
For our STEM learning, the children got really involved and excited by some of the experiments we did. Carolina helped the children made lava lamps from oil, water and food colouring. They found it very interesting seeing the bubbles moving around. We went off topic by following a child’s interest in birds so we decided to make parrots & owl art. Nicole helped the children make number flash cards too, and they have been getting great at them.
During our Pets and winter clothes theme, one of our toddlers was explaining to us about his blue umbrella and when he uses it in the rain. Itxaso helped the children make and decorate their own rain gear. We talked about the different pets we have and there colours and what sounds they make. We also talked about what they eat and where they sleep.
As Santa was due to arrive to visit us in Links Citywest, we were keeping very busy with art and craft to help decorate the centre. We have made Christmas stockings, candy canes, snow men and penguins.
Preschool Room 1, 2, 3 News
Some events we enjoyed in Preschool included:
– Adventure and Friendship
– Community and People work
– Winter and Hibernation, Water & Ice
– Santa Clause, Universal Children’s Day
– STEM,
Pre school 1:
For our adventures theme, we talked about where we would like to go on our adventures. We created art to represent where we wish to go. We made the three pyramids, a treasure chest, outer space with rockets and planets. Finally, we made a compass to direct us where to go.
The theme friendship came about as children were expressing their emotions about their new and old friendships. We brought back old friendships by asking the children if they would like to create a friendship bracelet to give to their chosen friend.
Community and people and professions was a theme that the children really took an interest in; what they can do in their community and what mammy and daddy work as. Together as a class the children made a Links community and made many different buildings from sports centre, homes and shopping centres.
For winter and hibernation, the children made 3-D snowflakes, and experienced with ice painting. The children also celebrated Universal Children’s Day by wearing blue clothes and seeing what their teachers looked like as babies.
We continued the winter theme and made a cosy “fireplace” to sit by and keep warm. We began to decorate the classroom for Santa Clause’s arrival. We learned that other children have different Santa clause’s to others. It was very interesting learning about them all.
Pre school 2:
The children created different animals by using their art and craft skills. For people who help us the children updated their community board with new people and professions.
For our winter theme the children learned all about animals that live in the cold. They created penguins with crayons, polar bears with salt and glue and made an igloo with recyclable materials. For their winter experiment the children learned about defrosting the water. For puzzle’s, the children were introduced to many different puzzle’s and used their fine motor and concentrations skills to complete them.
We celebrated Universal Children’s Day by wearing blue and baked cookies. Our pre-school also began to decorate their room with festive activities, by making elves, a giant gingerbread man, shocks, Christmas trees and baubles. They made a dance routine for their Christmas concert.
The children made many different types of Christmas and winter artwork. Some of which were Christmas trees, 3-D snowmen, created winter trees, decorated their classroom door and painted their classroom window.
Pre school 3:
We had lots of talk about our community, who is around us, who can help us. So we picked a few occupations that are very important. Every day of the week was a new dramatic play area. We had a hairdressing salon set up in class, a post office was created where all the letters were stamped and sent away.
They experience painting with coloured ice cubes too, which was lots of fun. The children really enjoyed this experience. The children also experienced how to defrost ice and learned that salt doesn’t melt the ice very well.
We talked about winter and changes in nature. They children made snow and learned a new winter song. The children began to decorate the room.
The children got ready for Santa’s visit. They made a gingerbread house. They also introduced new songs and more practice for our Christmas concert.
Parents—please feel free to bring empty boxes and clean bottles. We love playing with “real life materials” and we can recycle them for making new decorations and arts and crafts!
Thanks very much!
