What a fun few months we have had.
We kick started the new year of 2022 with our New Years Resolutions and enjoyed exploring our 5 senses, the human body and the human skeleton, as well as the circus. Our children also loved National Puzzle Day and creating some very cool inventions during Inventors Day. In February, we celebrated Chinese New Year, St Valentines Day and enjoyed Balance Day and had so much fun for Carnival Day.
Keep an eye out on our Social Media Channels for photos of our daily activities.
In this newsletter, we have shared some insight into the activities from each of our rooms that has taken place during the month of January and February. We hope you enjoy browsing through them.
Antoinette Hannigan – Crèche Manager
Activities from our Baby Room
Our babies are exploring their bodies now, they are learning all about their hands, feet, toes, head, and eyes.
They made a sensory box using sand and used kitchen utensils to encourage their hand-eye coordination and develop
their fine and gross motor skills. We painted our toes and feet to make them into a foot flower, they then went to the
garden and trying to encourage the children to develop their feet and leg muscles by trying to kick the balls. We made
some love hearts by finger painting, the children seemed quite intrigued by the texture of the paint on their hands and
fingers. The educarer’s made a sensory box with lots of different colours and materials and they seem to enjoy exploring
the box and seeing all the different things; sticks, shredded and coloured paper, pipe cleaners, sensory bottles with
glitter, water, oil, and hand soap. We painted our hands the different colours of the rainbow and stamped our hands
onto paper.
When the babies see our chef Eamonn coming to us with the fruit snack they get really excited and crawl towards him
giving him a big smile and wave, from this we decided to base our curriculum on fruits.
We peeled some oranges and allowed the children to explore the texture, smell, and taste of the peels. We then painted
a pineapple using yellow, green, and brown paint on our fingers and painted them to a shape of a pineapple. The
children were helping us to clean all the fruits, we put them into a box with soapy water and gave the children some
cloths and showed them how to give them a clean. We made our own watermelon using some paper plates, black and
pink paint.
We helped the babies to make their own hats and wear them on their heads, they were so happy to have something on
their head. We coloured some gloves and the babies were pointing to their hands.
We love to play hide and seek; we hide behind the shelves and the educarer’s come to find us. We have really enjoyed
doing lots of singing and dancing in particular to; Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.
The baby room was as bright and colourful as ever! Full of fun, games, art, music. Our babies continue growing and
developing, and our educators strive to nurture all through play, art and music.
We have celebrated Valentine’s day and we have created lovely cards to bring home and celebrate this day with people
that we love.
Also, we have been working on their emotions, we have puppets in our room, and we used them to express different
feelings like happiness, sadness… and we used our big mirror to see our faces in different moods, happy, silly, angry…
One of our neighbours has a cat and it always come to visit us. This is something that our children love, and they get very
excited when it comes. For this reason, our educarer designed an animal week. We used animal books and learning
through the book about plenty of animals, we were painting with the animals, we made a lion using our handprint and
we were guessing the noises that some animals make, we had so much fun!
Stories from our Wonderful Wobbler Room
We were very interested in construction and every time we went to the garden we were looking at cranes and trucks, we
painted our own trucks using our feet, the children were so ticklish when they got their feet painted although they really
enjoyed it they were squirming so much The children painted their own version of a crane, we went to the garden with our
paper and paint and looked at the crane and made our own version. We used our lego blocks and the colour wooden blocks
and made some towers with them, the children had the most fun when they were knocking down the towers. We borrowed
hoola hoops from the preschool rooms and made an obstacle course for the children by using the chairs to hold them up,
they seemed to really enjoy going through the hoops, they were laughing and giggling so much while going through them.
We discovered the children were beginning to become very interested in their chairs and trying to clean them so we done our
curriculum around home furniture, we painted lollipop sticks a range of colours and stuck them onto paper to create a house.
We gave the children crayons and paper and asked them to create their own house, they came up with so many beautiful
creations. We used brown playdough to mould into their own houses and the colour brown to create an illusion of wooden
furniture, we used some cotton buds, and the children were sticking them into the playdough to create legs for their
furniture. We built a bed, sofa, and chairs. When the educarer showed the children how to make the bed they all said, ‘night
night’.
We noticed that the children were getting their pretend food and trying to feed each other so we based our curriculum
around food, we painted pasta and then glued it onto paper plates so create a plate of pasta. we used lemons, lime, apples
and bananas to paint, the children tried to eat it a lot and found it very funny.
We got all the fruit and veg from the kitchen area and got some soapy water, we gave the children some cloths and they were
cleaning the food.
Tales from our Toddler Room
To see a cat in our garden gave us the idea to learn more about the animal in general. Some of our Toddler have pets at
home and they are an important part of their live. This is why we created our own circus in Toddler room. We made this
week a clown using the fingers, a fish using our hands and we asked to our Toddler to draw their own circus (free drawing)
and we got amazing pictures after this.
To continue this fantastic month, we learned more about cars and traffic. We can see the second ones on our way to the
creche, beside our house, basically in every road and all of them are sets red, amber, and green. So, we wanted to have a
big one in our room and learn the colours through this. We learnt a new song and we invented a new game called traffic
light where they were walking when we said green and stop when we said red. After this we made the biggest circuit and
the fastest car, and we were driving on it! it was very cool!!
This month we could see that the garden was lighter in the afternoon and one day we even could see the moon, but we
couldn’t rich it, so this is why we decided to have our own one. We made clouds sticking cotton on them, we made a sun
using a fork and a colourful rainbow sticking different stripes. And we made a big moon painting with a sponge. It looked
very real!
In our room we have a lovely kitchen full of food and kitchen stuff where the children play and pretend, they are in a
restaurant and our educarer used this interest to promote healthy eating. We had an activity where our children painted
using green colour healthy food and red unhealthy food. Also we made a big collage painting with food and we glued small
papers on food pictures and they were very real!
During the traffic light week, we did an activity where we could practise our fine motor skills driving a car on a road full of
curves, zigzags and dots.
We had water play where we could have fun with the water and improve our steady hand passing the water from one
container to another one or use spoons to do it. We added different painting styles like sponge and forks, food and they
really enjoyed them. They love when we introduce new activities and they can’t wait to do them.
The children were interested in some objects of different sports, so we have chosen this topic to promote the practice of
sports and healthy habits. We used a baseball puzzle that we have in our room to practise our fine motor skills. We had a
very busy week making medals, a football pitch, our own basketball and we used balls for painting. Also, we have plenty of
activities in the garden pretending we were in Olympic Games.
Several children have shown a recognition of their own and their peers’ emotions and expressions, so we have chosen this
topic to reinforce basic emotions and to work on empathy. We worked on in love feeling for St Valentine’s Day, and we used
the colour monster to speak and learn about other feelings like happiness sadness… they choose a monster, and they
made it. After that, we were telling stories using them.
They were learning about professions; they were a real fire fighter trying to save their room from the fire. they made the
fire using stripes orange, yellow and red and they were sticking on a paper. Also, they made a helmet they decided if they
wanted fireman one, police one… They were painting a police station, a hospital or a shop depending on what they wanted
to do.
We have chosen the theme of carnival since it is a designated date this month. We have also observed that children are
very interested in class costumes. We made a carnival facemask with glitter and feathers, a Jester hat and we made a funny
clown. Our week was full of colour, costumes and laughs.
Pre-School Room News
To welcome new year, our preschool children make a lovely firework poster and new year revolution craft. The
children and educarer were discussed about what they want to aim for this new year. The children were very
happy throughout the activity. We introduced the children to the new year calendar which we will mark off the
months as we progress through the year and we put this in our scrapbooks for safe keeping. We created a fantastic
colorful and sparkly noticeboard for our rooms to celebrate the beginning of a new year too.
For boat week, we did boat painting based on the children creativity and imagination. We also did water play with
boat floating using people toys pretend sitting on the boat. Also, we sing row, row, row your boat song in the
garden with doing the music movement. The children were enjoying and participating in the activity.
Preschool children always love music, singing and dancing. For music week, we painted drum painting the children
used two lollipops stick to do hitting drum action with listening to drum sound. To prepare for our small singing
concert, our children painted toilet roll in black colour to make a microphone craft. The children hold a microphone
and make a big circle then starts to sing song. The children were enjoying and participating throughout the activity.
Our preschool children love colouring, so we decided to colour a piano template.
For airplane week, our children use lollipop stick and cotton ball to create a airplane craft. The children and
educarer sing 10 little airplane song with using finger puppets to sing together. Also, the children painted an
airplane with paint and paint brush based on their creativity and imagination skills. To expand our preschool
children airplane idea, we used constructions blocks to build a big aircraft. In the activity, the children were giving
effort and focus on the activity.
For big and small week, our children mentioned about size comparing so we made a poster for the children to do
size sorting activity. To let the children, recognize and differentiate more about the sizes we did shoes and hand
tracing on a paper to let the children observe the sizes differences. Our children were also doing free painting to
draw big and small pictures. Also, we have size jumping activity in the garden with different sizes of hula hoop.
We explored our 5 senses through games – Jack and the Beanstalk, guess the shape sensory bag game which was a
huge hit with the children supporting their turn taking skills. The children made textured touch and feel collages,
and experimented with playdo and flour sensorial play.
Some other emerging interests explored this month included winter clothing, and vehicles particularly cars and
carparks.
We introduced a small-scale recycling center to our classroom which includes a mini green, black and brown bin.
The children are learning to separate their rubbish after their snack time, art and crafts and clean up routines to
support looking after our environment.
We also celebrated several birthdays during January with some occurring during the holidays, but we still enjoyed a
birthday celebration with our friends in creche to mark the special day. Happy birthday to Oscar, Charlie, Leo, Diva,
Evangeline, Nathan, and Olivia.
Jig saw puzzles continue to be hugely popular in preschool and this year for puzzle day was no exception, the
children just can get enough of them, we continually add new and challenging puzzles to our collection. Children
acquire a huge number of skills through puzzle play some of which include, trial and error, sorting, comparing,
classifying, and grouping as well as asking for help! And working in pairs but to name but a few!
