Happy new year to all our parents and children and welcome to our first newsletter of 2020.
It was lovely to see all the children coming back after their Christmas break all refreshed and happy. Our older children were very excited to tell us all about their lovely festive holiday break with their family and friends, and all the lovely gifts they received.
Our new year has started with a jam packed curriculum, full of learning and fun. We enjoyed lots of activities exploring our five senses, and learned about the impacts of pollution and the importance of recycling.
We also celebrated Chinese New Year too and made some lovely arts and crafts for this festive event.
Here is a breakdown of what we got up it, and some photos too.
As of February, our newsletters will be available and distributed to parents every two months. So the next newsletter for Clonee will be the March edition, then May, and so on. Thank you and we look forward to continuing to share all our news and stories with you through our newsletters.
In the meantime, we hope you enjoy this read, and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Instagram, (links below).
Many thanks,
Elaine
Elaine Dunne — Acting Crèche Manager
Wobbler & Toddler Room News
In January we have learned a lot of new things together.
We started the year with a short week of 2 days, and we spoke about our holidays and what we did during our Christmas break. We did a world map and coloured it all together. Then we chose three cool activities that all would like to do: travel, skiing and diving. We created some lovely skiing artwith our feet and some sticks. We drew a plane and pasted some crepe paper onto it. And we made a man diving and we made a fish with our fingerprints. We also talked about Christmas and what presents and toys we received from Santa Claus.
The second week we learned about space. We made astronauts with our feet and drew a rocket and then with our hands we painted the rocket´s fire. We cut some planets out to stick onto our poster and spoke about the solar system and the sun. 3D planets were created with sponges and paint, and we cut out glittery stars to hang on our window.
For our circus theme, we made clowns with our hand prints and then painted their noses with our fingers. We also painted a big clown to hang from the ceiling of our class. We made horses jumping with paper, paint and plastic cups. We practiced some balancing exercises and we made balancing elephants with our hands, paper and different crayons. Finally we talked about magicians and their tricks and we drew a rabbit going out of a magician´s hat.
Learning all about road safety and traffic lights as fun, as we made our own traffic lights system out of circle, triangle and square shapes. During circle time, we talked about traffic lights and the colours of them. We painted plastic plates and stuck red, yellow and green paper on them to make our lights.
We also enjoyed our time in the garden playing our new favourite outdoor game “ready, steady, go” where we learned different types of jumps and ways of running and walking. Some of our children still have soothers, so we learned about trying to sooth ourselves a few hours during the day without our soothers.
Preschool Room 1
We started the month talking about food and nutrition.
During their Christmas holidays the children have been eating a lot of different types of food and also a lot of sweets and some children were conscious about the importance of eating healthy food and brushing their teeth in order to preserve their health. For that reason they had a little chat about healthy and unhealthy food and the importance to have a balance diet. The children had the opportunity to try different food samples such as vanilla, sugar, salt, etc. They also made a lot of crafts stamping fruit on paper. We spoke about the important role of the dentist and what they do to help us with our healthy teeth and gums. As we are an active bunch, we love to be outdoors and we enjoyed lots of running, jumping, races during PE class. For our Spanish class we learnt some fruit names and how to say them in Spanish.
Our curious children were very interested in tasting different types of foods and playing with the messy play so was the perfect combination to learning more about our five senses. We made a little book all about our Five Senses: the boat that we can see, the flower that we can smell, the ice-cream that we can eat and taste, and the jingle bell that we can hear. Also, they loved playing with play dough, sand and animals during our messy play session. the name of some fruits.
With the weather being so cold, we have been talking about colds and sneezes and chills. With that came our doctors and patients’ theme. The children were very interested in doctors and nurse’s role play and the people who cure others. They made a lot of craft such as a doctor suit and x ray photos of their hands, ambulances and nurses with their footprints. After it they like to imitate the sound of the ambulances and pretend that they were inside them. Furthermore they made role play with real life materials such as bandages and strips, and took turns being patients and doctors.
Preschool Room 2 & Afterschool
This month we have explored our five senses, recycling and pollution and our human body.
We celebrated Lucian’s 5th birthday and Avanthika’s 4th birthdays and we also welcomed Delia into our class. She has settled in so well and all the children are delighted to have a new friend.
During the first week we looked at our five senses; taste, touch, smell, hear and sight. The children explored different sounds by listening to noises and guessing what the sounds were. They loved doing this and got very competitive in guessing the sounds. We also explored our sense of smell of smelling different herbs and spices and discussed the different smells that some of the children liked compared to others. With this they also explored the textures of the spices and herbs so this also incorporated the sense of touch. The children made a flower craft using tissue paper and vanilla essence sp the children could have a lovely smelling flower on display. We also explored our sense of taste this month. The children had the opportunity to taste; carrots, watermelon, bananas, apples, tomatoes, orange and they even got to try some dragon fruit which they found very interesting. This was a fun and interesting experiment as the children learnt all about taste buds and that we all like different things.
In January we also looked at pollution and recycling. We made our very own recycling bin using a cardboard box and we learnt all about the different bins that we use at home and in crèche. We talked about pollution and how it effects the environment that we live in and global warming. We learnt how the fish and ducks in the ponds and lakes need clean water to live and that dirty water makes them very sick.
In January we also explored our own human bodies and all about the different bones that we have. We looked at and read books which explains and shows pictures of the bones in our bodies and the functions of our organs.
The children have been very focused on the home corner area in the classroom. We decided to make beds for our dolls out of cardboard boxes and we even used a large cardboard box to make a washing machine. The children were very eager to wash the dolls clothes.
