In The Full Swing Of Spring
Over the past four weeks, we have had such a busy, fun filled time, learning and playing together.
From themed events for Carnival Day, enjoying lots of dancing, singing and all things colourful, to diving into the different fantastic worlds in our story books for World Book Day. It has been most fun.
Pancake Tuesday was enjoyed with lots of tasty homemade pancakes made by our amazing Chefs. We also helped support Mental Health Ireland by taking part in their Smiley Pancake Day. Thank you to all who donated and supported.
We are delighted to welcome back some of our ECCE children. It is so great to be together again.
We are still missing some of our friends who have yet to return back to crèche with us, but we look forward to seeing them soon. In the meantime, we hope our children at home have been enjoying the videos we have posted on our Social Media Channels.
And we hope they are enjoying some of our curriculum learning at home too. Feel free to share any activities you have been enjoying at home with us.
In this newsletter, we have shared some insight into the activities from each of our rooms that has taken place over the last four weeks .
Just a additional note to say that our Baby Rooms are nearing capacity in all of our crèches for 2021 so we would like to advise any parents that might be expecting and if you require any sibling places, please enroll as soon as possible. Application forms are available from us or you can also contact Kim from our Admissions Team on kim.jones@linkschildcare.ie.
Our next newsletter for you will be in four weeks time, in the middle of April, where we will share more news with you on what our children have been doing.
Take Care.
Elaine
Activities from our Baby Room
On a sunny and warm week at the end of February, we learned all about the Spring season. The children like seeing the street through the window, so we were looking at how the weather was, and we spent more time in the garden playing under the sun.
We were also listening and dancing with songs about this topic, so they were hearing key vocabulary like butterfly, ladybug, bee, spring and becoming more familiar with what Spring is.
We used our senses to explore touch and smell, using natural materials like soil, flowers and grass in our Spring box and they played in it with animal toys.
And finally, our babies expressed their knowledge about Spring through art, using their handprints and footprints for creating animals like butterflies, ladybugs and bees; and making a bouquet of flowers for bringing to home.
Our focus on daily objects was a great way for our babies to explore day to day objects, such as keys and doors, CDs and a music player, kitchen utensils, school supplies.
They love exploring new objects, and they used these objects for new purposes like playing music with cutlery and pots, or painting with CDs, toothbrush.
The first week of March we were working on motor skills, such as crawling, walking, rolling, dragging and a little jumping.
Using a cardboard box we made a tunnel for the children to crawl under then to make it more fun for the children using the cushions placed them on the outside so the children had to climb over them. The babies really enjoyed this activity.
We also using paint and paper took the babies shoes and socks off and done some sensory painting with their feet. The end result we made animals from this activity.
This week we will work more on the babies hand eye coordination skills, we will come up with game songs to help the babies and make our activities more fun for them. We will do activities such as placing different objects/materials into a box the babies will have to put their hand inside and feel around and try take the object/materials from the box. Opening and closing container lids is another activity I will be doing with the babies.
Stories from our Wonderful Wobbler & Toddler Room
The third week of February we learned about flowers and leaves. We learned each day a different flower, sunflowers, marigold, poppy and daisy. We learned their characteristics and did it hang it on the wall. The kids also learned lots of things about flowers.
The fourth week we learned about blocks and puzzles. The kids discovered new ways to build towers with blocks. They also did their own drawing stars to do a puzzle with it. This week we did a new door decoration for the spring season with lot of flowers and bees.
The first week of March we learned about colours. We did a cloud with colourful rain and lots of flowers.
To learn the difference between the colours we did a game where the kids had to put cotton balls of different colours in the bowl of the same colour. They paint a colour wheel and clothes peg of different colours, so them they had to put the peg in the part of the wheel with the same colour.
The children enjoyed doing free painting and then we made some insects with the paper they painted.
The second week of March we will see the animal books. We will make a book with different textures and their favourite animals.
Preschool Room News
Our preschool children had fun a fun packed four weeks of learning through play!
Preschool 1
Our the last few weeks, our children were interested in their names, butterflies and birds and flowers.
The children were very interesting in identify and write their names. We made a salt tray. The children loved to use it for made pictures and letters. Also, the children practice with scissors and colouring and it help them to improve their fine motor skills. This week we celebrate the carnival day decorating butterflies and cat’s mask. They loved to wear them and pretend that they fly like butterflies and move themselves as kitties.
We learned about butterflies and birds. They love butterflies’ colours and like to colour butterflies. The children made a lot of art and craft. Also, they made a butterfly’s box, decorating the butterflies. They also made puzzles about butterflies and they made role play about them. Also, they learn more about birds. We were looking for them through the window and, they made our birds and nest for decorate our class with plates, painted and pom poms.
The children learned about the lifecycle of butterflies. They made a handprint lifecycle of butterflies This week they celebrated the balance day, and we made a lot of games to develop their balance like the shovelboard, the game “floor is lava” and a circuit with blocks. This week we celebrate the beast day. The children made a caterpillar, ladybirds and bees’ fingerprint into the butterfly’s box.
Our children enjoyed learning about the flowers. They made handprint flowers and a vase to decorate our class. They painted flowers to decorate a draw of a spring garden. The children are going to learn about the importance of the water and the sun for the flowers and they are going to know more about how they grow.
We loved World Book Day and read a lot of books and decorated bookmarks.
The children are interested in play with the little dinosaurs that we have in class. They like to learn about how they were and why they became extinct. We did lots of crafts on the subject and books about them.
Preschool 2
For the last two weeks of February, we saw the planets and the letters, we talked about their names, how big or small they are and painted them and hanged them on the ceiling.
For the letters, we practiced writing our own names and worked on our fine motor skills by doing pre-writing sheets and making the letters in a sand box with our pre-school material.
For Flower Week, we planted some bean seeds and made a greenhouse to see them grow, made paper flowers and we made a little garden and learned the needs of the plants by watering them and talking about them.
Exploring Mini Beasts was fun, as we got to learn about how caterpillars can transform themselves into butterflies. We read “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” and made our own paper caterpillar and painted a beautiful butterfly. We talked about different types of insects and decided to make a ladybird, using apples to stamp out our prints.
