Welcome to the October edition of our newsletter from Links Childcare Clontarf.
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. Ray “The Garda” paid us a visit and we did lots of demonstrations in class on best road safety practices.
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.
For Fossil Day, we learned all about the fascination of fossils and how we can learn so much about history in one fossil.
Halloween was a (not so) spooky affair in Clontarf, as we played lots of games, made some arts and crafts and had a disco 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 for Links Clontarf and we look forward to lots more fun learning next month.
Kind regards,
Sarah
Sarah Spencer —Crèche Manager
Baby Room News
October was packed full of exciting and fun events, and our babies loved them all.
Here is a round up below of what we got up to.
– Transport Learning and Beep Beep Day: Our babies did lots of arts and crafts in relation to cars and transport. Our Educarers read them stories about cars and trucks too and we made lots of transport noises. We love the sounds of our own voices!
– Welcome Autumn: Our babies made big tree for our classroom and we collected leaves from the garden to make our own autumn tree. We used our handprints as leaves also and made some falling down from the tree.
– Happy Birthday LINKS: Our babies made some cards for our birthday and stamped their hands and feet on them with colourful paint
– Fossil Day: For fossil Day we read a lovely story about a dinosaur called “Elliot”. We also hid some dinosaurs in the sand and our palaeontologists helped dig and discover them
– Halloween: Our babies made the most amazing Halloween decorations. They made a big Frankenstein head for our door and lots of flying bats for our window. We also made little ghost handprints and witch handprints to hang around the room.
Wobbler & Senior Wobbler Room News
We had a fun month in our Wobbler Room.
We love exploring and painting, so we collected leaves in our garden and then we painted them and made handprints for our autumn tree.
The children enjoy moving around the room, so we had some yoga and exercise to some lovely chill and relaxing music. We enjoyed having messy play by using jelly. The children loved to feel the texture of the jelly but mainly the taste.
For Transport and National Beep Beep Day we were playing with cars, airplanes and trucks in our room. We sang “the wheels on the bus” and learned the sounds of all the different types of transport.
For Halloween we made a giant spider using a cardboard box and also decorated the room with pumpkins, ghosts, spiders, handprints, Dracula’s and ghost foot prints. We also made paper plate pumpkins and witches too.
For next month we will take part in Pyjama Day, where we will wear some cosy pyjamas and read stories, Stem Day where we will introduce science experiments, World Vegan Day, Mickey Mouses birthday and Thanksgiving.
Toddler Room News
This month in our toddler room we learned about the season of autumn.
Our toddlers went outside to make leaf piles to jump in and throw them in the air. We then collected the leaves and made a tree in our classroom. We were chatting about clothes we can wear in autumn and the changes of the weather.
For National Beep Beep Day, our toddlers made some stop signs and a big road. We played a traffic light game and they told us all about their mums and dads driving their cars.
One of our toddlers showed great interest in the sky so we brought our class outside to see what they spot in the sky. One child pointed to a black cloud, another a bird and another to a sun,. We painted everything we saw outside to have in our classroom.
We made our room super spooky with spider webs, flying ghosts and spooky eyes for Halloween. We also made some costumes for our favourite characters like Mickey Mouse and Peppa Pig to get into the Halloween spirit. We loved making our monsters too, especially sticking on lots of eyes, arms and legs on them.
Preschool Room News
Some events we enjoyed in Preschool included:
* Links Birthday Party
* Autumn
* Beep Beep Day
* Fossil Day
* Trick or Treat for Temple Street
Junior Preschool—
We had a very fun month in our preschool room, where we learned about autumn, Beep Beep Day, fossil day and finished it off with lots of Halloween fun!
Autumn:
For Autumn learning, we painted a big tree for our classroom and made leaves using our handprints and also using real leaves. We enjoyed going to the garden to collect the leaves and see what colour leaves we could find as we learned that autumn changed the colours of them.
National Beep Beep Day:
For National Beep Beep Day we loved making our traffic signs (stop sign, traffic lights, turn signs and speed signs) and learning the rules of the road in our garden. As we set up different roads to cycle our bikes through, we also had Garda Ray making sure we didn’t break a red light! We topped off the day by making some delicious fairy cakes with little traffic signs on them.
Fossil Day:
For Fossil Day we made a big dinosaur for our room and made paper plate dinosaurs also. We enjoyed role playing too and we were very loud dinosaurs!
Halloween:
We love Halloween time! So, we created lots of Halloween art to hang on our board (ghosts, skeletons and bats) and we also talked about Halloween and what we will dress up as.
In November we will take part in Pyjama Day, where we will wear some cosy pyjamas and read stories, Stem Day where we will introduce science experiments, World Vegan Day, Mickey Mouses birthday and Thanksgiving.
Senior Preschool—
We had a very fun month in our preschool room, where we learned about autumn, Beep Beep Day, fossil day and finished it off with lots of Halloween fun!
Autumn:
For autumn we made a big tree for the reception area, we collected some branches and made some leaves using our handprints and decorated them. We also couldn’t resist throwing the leaves into the air in our garden and rolling around in them.
National Beep Beep Day:
For National Beep Beep Day we joined together with our friends in Junior Preschool and had our own traffic lights system in our playground outside. Ray, the Garda, made sure we were watching the road and waiting for the green lights at out pedestrian crossings.
Fossil Day:
For Fossil Day we put little dinosaurs in balloons and filled the balloons up and put them in the freezer. After they had frozen, we peeled off the balloon and had fun with our ice balls with the dinosaurs inside them. We also loved making our own dinosaurs by gluing lollipop sticks.
Halloween:
For Halloween we did multiple art activities to decorate our room. We made spiders, bats, ghosts, Frankenstein. We also created pumpkins and a witch for our walls and hung lots of other art around our room and windows. We chatted about Halloween and talked about what our costumes will be. We also talked about safety on this day and to wear bright high vis colours so we are seen. And we spoke about not eating any treats without mammy or daddy checking them first. We carved pumpkins and decorated them for our class also.
