Welcome to the October edition of our newsletter from Links Childcare Clonee.
We love this time of year. The children are all well settled into their new rooms and routines after the summer holidays and we are well under way with all our fun and active Autumnal curriculum learning each week.
There were lots of celebrations this month. At the start of October, we had a lovely party in crèche to mark 15 years of Links Childcare. It was a super fun day of celebrations, where we made our own fairy buns and got to meet our new preschool class bears. Mr Links, the big bear also arrived in style to visit us too. It was great to see him and most importantly, the children loved it!
We also learned lots about the importance of road safety during National Road Safety Week and we had some lovely activities to go with this theme.
Our Autumn theme was great for learning all about the changes in the weather and what various animals did during Autumn to prepare for the Winter.
Halloween was a (not so) spooky affair in Clonee, as we played lots of games, made some arts and crafts and a Bake Sale in aid of Temple Street children’s hospital for their Trick or Treat fundraising campaign. Many thanks for everyone’s support, and indeed, for all our events.
We hope you enjoy our newsletter and we look forward to lots more fun learning next month.
Kind regards,
Elaine
Elaine Dunne —Acting Crèche Manager
Baby Room News
This month we celebrated Links fifteenth birthday.
We celebrated it all together; it was a lot of fun. We decorated the class and the whole creche. There was cake and even a prize. We played a lot and did a lot of different activities.
We have also welcomed the month of October and autumn, the falling of leaves and the cold weather. We decorated the class with fallen leaves of different colours, yellow, red, brown … and what we like most, Halloween! To be able to do activities and crafts like painting ghosts, bats, spiders … we really love this holiday.
It has been a month with many celebrations, and we made great progress in our autonomy, some of us have already taken our first steps, and we really want to see what awaits us in the coming days … and with hope because Christmas is coming.
This month we also spent some time in the wobbler/toddler room with our friends and it really helped our babies develop and come out of themselves a lot more.
Wobbler & Toddler Room News
October is the month of the autumn, when our children are very curious about the colours of the leaves, why they fall and the changing weather. So the first week of the month we decided to organize some activities around autumn. We start mixing some typical autumn colours like orange, yellow, red and brown. Then we painted their hands with these colours, to make a lot of leaves of different shades. We drew a big tree and then stuck all the leaves, to make our autumn tree. To finish this topic the children drew with their favourite autumn things, such as leaves, acorns, sticks.
We also loved learning about the farm. We learned all about farm animals with the famous song “Old Mc Donald had a farm” and also the sounds that they make. We drew some pigs by painting paper all pink, and then drawing on their eyes, nose and mouth. The children also made some cows by painting their hands black and white and making handprint cows. We also made a big pumpkin by painting one box all orange. And we got together in teams and made a big farm and a scarecrow, and then we decorated it a little bit scary to start working on Halloween topic.
Finally we started our Halloween topic with lots of activities. By painting their hands and letting them putting onto the paper, we made witches, vampires, ghosts, skeletons and spiders. We made bats by painting a spoon, and then colouring the wings and sticking them on. With plates, we made Frankenstein, painting it green and black, and ghosts, painting a face and sticking some tissues. We also paint the windows in teams, making spiders, Mexican skeletons (“Catrina”) pumpkins and a tree. We also drew a cemetery and we drew their arms to simulate zombies trying to escape.
Finally we made some spiders and little bats to put hanging from the ceiling.
We also started PE classes on Thursdays, and there we have learned new games, like “ready, steady, go” and how to do yoga. We also started baking on Thursdays and we made some healthy and delicious Halloween cookies.
Preschool Room 1 News
We started the month talking about dinosaurs. The children were very interesting in the way they look, their sound and how tall they are. They made a lot of craft about dinosaurs to learn their names and the way they were. They made a tyrannosaurus rex with the print of their food, a diplodocus with the hand print and also a triceratops mask that they use in their role play. To develop their motor skills they made a role play about dinosaurs, making their sound and walking like them. They had lots of fun.
We also learned about road safety. They played a lot of games involving traffic lights and cars and enjoyed singing songs about the safe cross code. They drew with chalk a town in the garden such as buildings and crossroad and the children done role play about how we should play in the street. Some of them were in the cars and others were pedestrians who need to cross the road in a safe way, looking one side and the other. Also we made with a cupboard a crossroad and some traffic signals and we done role play in the class. They really enjoyed this experience.
The next week we focused on houses. They were very interesting in the doll house that we have in our class and they spend lot of time playing there doing family role-play. This week spoke about the people who live in our homes, we role played about families and we built as well a haunted house.
During the month the children did a lot of exercise with active week, where the children enjoyed their firsts P. E class. They did a lot of games outside: They did races; also they practice running, jumping and even crawling. It was so fun. Also they started Spanish and Irish class. They learn the numbers and the colors name as well as lot a song. They really like it and participated really well.
The last week of October we were learning about Halloween. Halloween has been the topic in our room all month. Together we done loads of Halloween crafts. They stamp bat in a black cardboard, also they make pumpkins stamps apples, witches with their hand print as well as ghost with white plates.
Preschool Room 2 News
This month was a great month in preschool 2.
With Autumn in full swing the children loved learning about the season and watching the leaves change colour and fall off the trees. We did some lovely leaf paintings and printings in the class.
In October we celebrated ‘Beep Beep Day’ where the children learnt the safe cross road song’ and learnt all about crossing the road safely. We even made some road signs and practiced walking across the road safely with oncoming cars in the garden of the crèche.
This month we also had a pyjama day where the children got to come in, in their pyjamas and have a cosy day, they loved doing this and getting all cosied up in the quiet corner with blankets with the cold weather setting in .
During the last two weeks of October we spent our time making Halloween crafts and decorations. We turned our princess castle that we made before into a haunted castle for the children to play with. We also made a haunted house craft, and the children had lots of fun getting their hands and feet painted as part of more crafts for Halloween. The children also made a pumpkin and a spider craft .The children learnt all about Halloween and why we celebrate it every year and how ‘Trick or Treating’ came about .
For the last week of October the children had a Halloween party on the 31st. They enjoyed lots of games and activities such as ducking for apples, guessing what is inside the box sensory activity and much more!! The children were also able to dress up for their Halloween party which they loved. As part of our Halloween party we raised money for Temple Street Children’s Hospital.
