Activities from our Baby Room
The children in our Baby Room loved exploring the Zoo this month. Our Educarers sang animal songs and they all listened to the sounds of different animals. They read the
story ‘Little Lion’ and made a paper plate lion king. The children played with jungle animals exploring them through all their senses.
We explored our sense of touch through messy play of flour in gloves. They loved to squish and squeeze to flour and enjoyed the different experiencing the different textures.
Our babies explored fluffy pom poms in ice cubes, to feel different temperatures and textures. As the ice melted, it revealed fluffy wet pom poms.
Together with our Educarers, the children made paper plate snakes. They sang ‘Old MacDonald’ and explored the book “My First Animals.
Facial expressions are hugely important part of a babies development. So, together with our Educarers, our babies made faces with different emotions. For messy play they
made happy and sad faces in rice and pasta.
To continue on our Emotions theme, in partnership with our Educarers, the children will make different masks and explored their faces in the mirror, listened to different types
of music and beats.
We also painted with flowers of different colours, each colour representing a different emotion.
Stories from our Wonderful Wobbler Room
Our Wobblers certainly have been very busy and engaged throughout the month of March.
The month started off with the children discovering farm animals through messy play. This consisted of washing the animals with soap and water, by creating a cartoon cow and
sharing the story ‘Cow says Moo’. Other stories we enjoyed included ‘Spot in the Supermarket’. During Free Play Time, in the garden, we explored ball play and getting in and out
of boxes. To compliment this theme, our Educarers introduced ‘Old MacDonald’ to our Wobblers.
To enhance our Me and My World learning, our Educarers created a farm with grass, land, and animals. The children painted the farm stable and a chicken.
For the second week of March the children explored vegetables. The children experimented in messy play making their own vegetable soup. They read ‘Jungle Party’
and sang ‘Five little Monkeys’. Following on from this the children explored birdseeds and flour, the children also painted with vegetables including corn and sang ‘Baby
shark.
For a Science experiment we mixed beetroot, water and flour and painted with the resulting mix.
For Mother’s Day preparation, our children made a salt dough handprint and sang the body parts song. Over the following days the children made Mother’s Day cards and
our Educarers introduced the game “The Floor is Lava” game to them.
We also had fun exploring our Transport theme. Our children had the opportunity to look, touch and explore a real bicycle and to discover how it works. We were also
introduced to the pre-school tricycles. To compliment exploring bicycles, the children created bicycles silhouettes with sponges and paint.
Next the children made a Luas and when it was completed, the children had an opportunity to play with their own Luas, taking tickets and going on a trip. During this week the
children sang ‘row, row, row your boat’ and explored cars through a sensory activity.
They had races in the garden and read ‘Mary had a little lamb’ and a firm favourite, ‘the taste of the moon.’
To round up the month of March, our Wobblers engaged in a sports themed week. They explored yoga, played hurling with a stick, and painted their own hurl.
The children practised some swimming movements – moving their upper bodies, arms, and legs. They took turns with basketballs in the garden. They played tennis using
their arms and hands as rackets and painted silhouette rackets with sponges. We also made Olympic medals to celebrate.
Tales from our Toddler Room
The toddlers started off March by exploring and identifying items of their clothing. They separated their spring clothes from their winter ones and drew pictures of their favourite
piece of clothing.
To celebrate St. Patrick’s Day the children created handprint shamrock cards to share with their families and created funny, mischief little leprechaun painting using forks to
spread the paint.
The zoo was another successful theme in Toddlers this month. Our Educarers and children created their own zoo, complete with wild animals, safari plains and a lake just like
Dublin Zoo. The children painted monkeys to decorate their notice board.
To celebrate World Book Day the children explored a large selection of books and shared lots of stories. Each child made a bookmark to celebrate the occasion.
For Mother’s Day the children shared what they appreciated and loved most about their mommy. Our Educarers added these messages to the children’s cards to take home to
their moms.
The children worked on strengthening their balance and explored getting in and out of boxes to support and develop their sense of balance.
Our toddlers are often fascinated when they see our Educarer cleaning the room and washing toys, and the children are always keen to join in and help. We reminded
them about the importance of washing their hands and faces after dinner. They washed a tray of toys with soap and water, they explored soap and water inside a bag to see it
getting bubbling and flat again and again.
As the days are getting a bit brighter and sunnier the children sang the very popular ‘Oh! Mr Sun’ song. The shared ideas about day and night, what we do doing the day and the different activities we do at night.
Preschool Room News
Springtime is hugely popular theme in preschool every year and this year is no exception. The children are full of wonder and awe exploring the natural environment from creepy
crawlies appearing out of the compost when planting up our pots and window boxes and so our theme continues this month.
After reading the classic fairy tale ‘Jack and the Bean Stalk’ we decided to sow our own magic beans which we put in the window waiting for them to sprout and grow. The children
played in the garden with natural materials including sticks and rocks and painted stones to start a magic garden.
We celebrated World Book Day on 4th March. To be honest, every day is world book day in Preschool. The children just cannot get enough of our books and we always ensure we
offer our children a large variety of books. It is definitely a favourite part to the children’s day. We made their own class book filled with memories and drawings to share with future
preschool children.
This month we expanded our practical life centre, which was received with huge interest, as the children investigated with some new equipment. Some of the new skills introduced
included flower arranging, water transfer, whisking and tweezing.
With thanks to our fantastic Chef Eamon providing us with recipe suggestions, we made oats and seeds biscuits which were immensely tasty to anyone who was lucky enough to
get a bite!
The second week of March was a double celebration for all the moms as we prepared arts and crafts to celebrate International Women’s Day and Mother’s Day. Chatting with
the children about what they loved most about their mom’s resulted in some super stories including ‘my mommy smells super good’ and ‘mommy gives me super squishes.’
For St. Patrick’s Day our theme turned to all things green. Lucky shamrock printing cards were great fun to make and collaging a shamrock in our national colours was also included.
We studied shamrock plants through the magnifying glass to see if it really has three leaves, which we discovered to be true. Baking day arrived a day early with patriotic fairy
cakes flying the Irish flag.
The children hand painted an Irish flag to hang on the wall, painted rainbows to see if a leprechaun lived at the bottom of it with his pot of gold! We even tried speaking a little
Irish! “Lá Fhéile Pádraig sona dhuit!” (Happy St. Patrick’s Day).
The children made robots using recycling materials, and a robot puppet and the origins and history of the robot through time.
On the 8th March we were delighted to welcome returning and new children to our classes in preschool. Welcome Arham, Ibrahim, Evie, Mariia, Louis and Hashaam.
Here in Leopardstown, we are continuing to enhance our fantastic outdoor space.
So far during the month of March the children have planted up window boxes and pots with primulas and daffodils, created homemade bird feeders to attract more wildlife and
some hanging pots too.
The children are learning about different flowers and plants and created drawing of our own garden plans.
