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 Drumcondra will be the February edition, then April, 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,

Claire

Claire McCann —Crèche Manager

Baby Room News

Our babies have loved exploring their sensory play with their fingers and toes. We introduced different textures, such as feathers, paint and soft toys and they loved exploring the different feelings of the items.

We loved stamping our feet in jelly and our sensory play with rice and lentils gave us a different level of experimenting with textures through our fingers.

As it has been cold, we painted polar bears and penguins for our Winter theme. Using our hand prints, we made them come to light.

Wobbler Room News

We had such a wonderful month of sensory exploring with our wobblers. We used our sensory gloves to feel the different textures and played with messy sand and pasta shapes.

During our arts and crafts, we cut various pieces of fruit and dipped them in paint to make stamps. We also painted our feet and created our little foot prints on our masterpieces too.

For our Five Senses learning, we got the chance to taste different flavours and spices, some we enjoyed, some we didn’t as much. Role play occupies a huge amount of our day, as we love it. For our restaurant play, we drew our dinner onto our dinner plates and pretended to eat it.

Measuring ingredients for our baking is great for our children to learn numbers and the concept of sharing and taking turns. We baked some tasty muffins to bring home. They were yummy.

Toddler Room News

Our toddlers learned about the weather this month, and they loved talking about rainbows, rain, the sun and the different types of clothing that we wear for the various forms of weather.

We learned about the New year and painted a big poster to go along with our 2020 mural.

We also learned about Chinese New Year and made dragons and lanterns with lots of different arts and crafts. We learned that red is a lucky colour. Baking is a big hit with our toddlers, and we baked cookies and made rice krispie treats with our friends.

We learned about our body and painted our faces, did food painting and lots of hand and finger prints.

Preschool Room 1

In Preschool 1 we learned about building our family, the different types of families we have and we used special toys to develop their knowledge on this topic using role play.

We sang lots of songs through English and Spanish and are broadening our new vocabulary all the time.

We coloured shapes and learned the language for them as well as exploring them with our hands and tracing them with our fingers.

We were being chefs and did baking – we have learned the procedures to make our delicious goodies every Friday!

We learned about our own bodies, what makes us different from each other and understanding about the different parts of our bodies. We practised moving our bodies and doing Yoga.

We discovered our senses and learning through our senses using different materials and sensory play and we have been developing our psychomotor skills in the garden by playing different games.

Preschool Room 2 & Afterschool

This month we have learned lots of new and fun things.

We wrote the numbers 2020 to welcome us to the new year. We have learned that we have 5 senses through playing games and doing a texture craft which you will see in our scrapbook. We learned about our bones and made our own skeletons with cotton buds and even one for our classroom.

To end the month, we did a project on the world and the continents. We painted our own world map, learned where the animals from which continent go and made labels for them. It was wonderful to hear the children comment on the continents and get familiar with the countries.

We learned about recycling and pollution and did different games to help us learn.

On the 24th January we celebrated Chinese New Year and made a big dragon and did lots of dancing. We learned where China was located on a map.

Thanks to our families for your supplies and recycled material that you have brought in to support our learning!