Welcome to the November edition of our newsletter from Links Childcare Clonee.
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 Clonee is Ursula Salazar Berrueco 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. 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,
Elaine
Elaine Dunne — Acting Crèche Manager
Wobbler & Toddler Room News
During November we have made a lot of interesting things. We had a lot of fun learning about professions, winter, pets and Christmas.
The first week we worked on professions, and we talked in circle time about our favourite profession and what we want to be. Finally we took special attention to the firefighters. We had role play and art activities about firemen and their jobs. We painted a plate like a face and then drew a fireman hat. And we painted our hands red to draw a group of 5 firemen extinguishing a fire with water.
We also made a police car and a policeman with our feet. And at the end of the week we made a doctor suitcase and used it for role play.
The second week we worked on the winter season because the children were so interested in why it is cold and why their hands are red when they are outside. We transformed our autumn tree into a winter tree and we made snowflakes to put on it. We also made a tree with our hands and arms and then drew snow around it. We talked about snowmen and we made one each with our feet. And we drew a typical forest in winter with our fingers.
It is so important to be warm in winter, so we made gloves and a scarf where they stick different materials. This week was Amanda´s birthday and she brought some ice cream and we sang her Happy Birthday. Then we made a big poster for her birthday.
The third week we worked the topic all about pets. We talked in circle time about pets we have at home and about what pets we would like to have. We made messy painting in the table, where each one had to draw with fingers all the animals that she or he wanted. We made a lot of decoration for the Spanish day; flowers, Spanish fans, plates, a poster and the door decoration. On Spanish day we enjoyed singing Spanish songs together, making free painting and learning how to say “hola” and “olé”. This week we also started on some of our Christmas decorations, and we made Christmas trees with sticks. The children painted them green and put some glitter on them.
The last week in November we talked about Christmas and about all the various traditions. We made a Santa´s sleigh with two reindeers with our feet and hands. We also painted a big poster for the door and a big reindeer singing. With egg cups we made snowmen painting it white and the decorating it.
Preschool & Afterschool Room News
Some events we enjoyed in Preschool included:
National STEM day
Hibernation Day
Welcoming Winter
Thanksgiving
Preschool 1:
We started this month talking about different animals that lived on a farm. The children like to play with the animal’s toys and using the building blocks to built homes for them to keep warm.
We would like to welcome Leo and Ava who joined our room this month, they came up from the toddler room ad are settling in very well.
For this topic we read stories on farm animals during our story time and made lots of animal noises. We also had done some animal crafts such as ducks, pigs and chickens using our handprints. These animals where the most popular within our class. We also made animal mask, when the masks where dried the children had loads of fun role playing the different animals.
The children also learned about the farmers and how they look after the animals, by feeding them and making sure the animal’s barn was cleaned out every day. We also learned about the vet who comes out to help if the animals get sick. The children found that to be amazing that they have their own type of “doctors”.
We finished our farm topic by building a farm out of cardboard and using toilet holders to make animals. The children love to play with this; they were having races with the animals in their farm. The children also learned the Spanish names for the animals as part of their Spanish curriculum.
As we are now into winter the children pointed out that it was getting colder and darker quicker We started this month talking about different animals that lived on a farm. The children like to play with the animal’s toys and using the building blocks to built homes for them to keep warm.
We would like to welcome Leo and Ava who joined our room this month, they came up from the
toddler room ad are settling in very well.
For this topic we read stories on farm animals during our story time and made lots of animal noises. We also did some animal crafts such as ducks, pigs and chickens using our handprints. These animals were the most popular within our class. We also made animal masks, and when the masks were dried the children had loads of fun role playing the different animals.
The children also learned about the farmers and how they look after the animals, by feeding them and making sure the animal’s barn was cleaned out every day. We also learned about the vet who comes out to help if the animals get sick. The children found that to be amazing that they have their own type of “doctors”.
We finished our farm topic by building a farm out of cardboard and using toilet holders to make animals. The children love to play with this; they were having races with the animals in their farm. The children also learned the Spanish names for the animals as part of their Spanish curriculum.
As we are now into winter the children pointed out that it was getting colder and darker quicker outside now.
So we talked about now that it’s colder we should be wearing our hats, scarf and gloves. I explained to the children about the clock going back an hour and that’s why it’s getting darker earlier now.
The children also learned about hibernation, they loved to hear about the bears so we decided to build a cave and some bears and put them into the cave for hibernation time. The children were mad to play with them so we decided to make more bears for the children to play with so the others could hibernate in piece.
The last two weeks we have being getting our class ready for Santa’s visit. We made loads of Christmas decorations and hung them around our classroom. We made crafts such as snowflakes, angels, stars and a Christmas tree using our handprints. We have also being very busy getting ready for our Christmas concert so we have being practicing our songs and poems every day.
We had a Spanish Day in crèche; the children decorated a Spanish flag learned about Spanish dishes such as Paella and Tapas. The children also learned a Spanish dance “Sevillanas”, this was the favourite thing the children learned about on our Spanish Day.
Preschool 2 & Afterschool:
This month we celebrated Alexia’s and Darragh’s birthdays, who both turned four.
The children have being practicing their new songs for the Christmas concert and they have being getting on great with them. We can’t wait for all you parents to hear them.
The children have enjoyed baking a lot. They enjoyed baking birthday cakes for their friends and some yummy healthy cookies.
They have also enjoyed learning about winter, such as the weather changing, what happens with the trees and the animals and what sort of clothing we should be wearing during winter time. The children learned about animals and which ones go into hibernation and we even made a cave for the bears and the hedgehogs. We made these out of toilet rolls.
The children showed a huge interest in people who help us but more specifically in policemen and firemen. The children enjoyed making activities in relation to this topic and doing roll playing also.
We also made a start on our Christmas crafts because we wanted to be ready for Santa when he came to visit. We made Christmas wreaths, reindeers, Rudolf the red nose reindeer and lovely snowmen.
We also had a “Spanish day” we enjoyed taken part in this day. Julia our lovely Educarer told us some interesting things about Spain and we even made a Spanish flag for our door and learned a Spanish song and dance.
For National Stem Day the children did activities such as maths and science. The children taped tubes to a press put a bucket underneath them and watched the water fill it up as the other children poured the water into the tubes.
For our Thanksgiving Day the children made a poster and talked about what it was they were thankful for in their lives.
Another interest the children shared was transport, especially “ships” which was a common topic of conversation during table top activities.
I got a book about boats and ships and what the big ships can be used for from the library and read it to the children. They were really amazed especially because they could look photos. During their free play the children were using the stickle bricks and lego to make their own ships and were comparing them to each others.
