What a fun month we have had.
In this newsletter, we have shared some insight into the activities from each of our rooms that has taken place during the month of March. We hope you enjoy browsing through them.
We loved St Patrick’s Day celebrations, making cards for Mother’s Day, reading our books and dressing up for World Book Day and International Women’s Day.
Antoinette Hannigan
Creche Manager
Activities from our Baby Room
Our babies this month were special interest in their body parts. They say foot, head, nose, and other parts when we are singing song, so we were using the mirrors to see our face and all the parts and we made our own face using paper plates and stuck ears, eyes, mouth.
In the week of colours, we focused on the rainbow, every day we painted rice in different colours, and we took the opportunity to make sensory bottles with recycled bottles. We also made a beautiful rainbow where the children painted with their fingers, and to finish we made a mural to decorate the room.
We celebrated St Patrick Day making a very nice mural. Our babies were painting with paint brush and stamping their hands with the colours of the flag of Ireland. We also made a leprechaun, and we were learning green, orange and white colour.
To finish off the month, our baby room turned their room into a jungle. Our children are very interested on the animals and the children made an elephant with paper balls. Ducks in a river with paper plates, birds gluing feathers. We stuck all animals on the wall, and we created a jungle, we sing different songs like the tiger in the jungle song, and we could enjoy in the garden seeing all the animal outside.
Stories from our Wonderful Wobbler Room
This month wobbler room has been very busy. Our children were learning about numbers. We choose this theme because some of our wobblers can count numbers from 1 to 5 so we made a counting game, they were matching numbers 1 with 1, 2 with 2… we played basketball in the garden counting the points and some art and craft with the shape of the numbers.
Also, our wobblers are starting to say the colour of their clothes and the colour of the toys, so one of our activities this week was painting rice. Then we mix all the rice with different colours and our children said what colour they had on their hands. For the red colour we made a lovely ladybug. Another activity that our children really enjoyed was painting paper plates with different colours and once they were dry, they had to put block with same colour in them. To finish this colourful week, we were mixing colours and getting new ones, it was amazing!
The emotions are very important in our relationships, for this reason we think is very important to learn about them at these ages. Our wobblers like pretending to be angry, sad, happy and look at their self on the mirror. We used our traditional St Patrick’s Day to take part in celebrations and the culture of our country.
For our last week of March, we decided to give a special care to our babies and toys. Some of our children were feeding the babbies and putting their clothes on. One day we set the table for our babies, and we were feeding them with real rice and spoons. We had a bath time and we pretended that our baskets were baths, we had so much fun! we not only take care of ourselves if not we take care of the people around us as well!
Tales from our Toddler Room
We welcomed March by saying hello to spring. We made spring flowers, trees, and colourful rainbows using our hands and different material as paper, sponges, glue.
We had a treat day on Pancake Tuesday and tucked inti pancakes for tea with jam and custard.
World book week was great fun, our kids enjoyed story time and we read different stories every day. We had a dress up day and our Toddler room was Cinderella. We laughed seeing Victor in a dress. Learning and expanding Knowledge though stories id beneficial for kids at an early age.
We had bird and bug week, we created different bird’s owl, parrot with crayons and feathers. We made small birds and made nests where they live. We learned they eat bugs and berries, and the babies hatch from eggs.
We also celebrated International Women’s Day, we made a banner to hang outside and cards for all the special and inspirational women at home.
St Patrick’s Day week was very fun, we learned he banned snakes and we made cool artwork, we made a leprechaun with our handprint, a shamrock, an Ireland flag and we were dancing and listening to traditional Irish Music. We had green day on Wednesday.
We also celebrated Mother’s Day and we made a card for our mothers/grandmothers.
Pre-School Room News
Welcome Spring to preschool we’ve been expecting and preparing for your arrival this month.
To welcome spring our preschool children mentioned many insects they see and what they found in their day. For insect week, we read a book named The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle then the children made caterpillar craft with green colour paper pasting and pom-pom ball. To develop our preschool children’s sensory-motor skills, we created a caterpillar using playdough and googly eye. Then, we created a butterfly craft with a lollipop stick and crepe paper sticking also we sing fly-fly-fly the butterfly song. Our preschool children painted paper plates in yellow colour to made bee crafts then we listened to the busy bee song. Also, we sing the ants go marching song then we created ants craft with cotton ball pasting.
For dinosaur week, we painted dinosaur land posters to decorate the classroom. The educarer read a book named silly dizzy dinosaur storybook to the children then the children make dinosaur crafts with free drawing and pasting. Our preschool children love colouring and pasting so they created their dinosaur egg craft followed by their interest. To enhance our preschool children’s imagination and creativity skills they created their Jurassic world craft with painting and pasting.
For St Patrick’s Day week, to welcome our St. Patrick day celebration we made a big St. Patrick’s Day rainbow poster with a handprint. Then, we painted cardboard rolls in green paint to make windsocks. Also, we used crepe paper to make an Irish flag collage. We created a fingerprint rainbow & pot of gold craft using colour and coin paper. Our preschool children also made four leaves clovers cards for their mummy and daddy. St. Patricks day celebrations were definitely fun filled and busy including a funny shamrock character and shamrock stamping cards, a leprechaun hunt and a rainbow experiment to demonstrate the transfer of water molecules and it wouldn’t be a party in preschool without green iced muffins. We introduced the children to some basic Irish dancing steps and traditional Irish music and had our very own ceilí.
Our preschool children like to run, jump, hop, skip, throw also ball kicking so we decided to give them sports activities. For sports week, our preschool children did the bunny hop with bean bag and hula hoop to fulfil their hopping movement and balancing skills. To improve our preschool children throwing skills, the children painted cardboard rolls and paper plates to make paper plate ring toss game. Our preschool children love balls, so we created a football craft with a paper plate and colour paper pasting. Our preschool children were showing interest in becoming a football player then they created their player t-shirt with colour paper and number sticker also free choice drawing player is kicking the ball. Then, our children did a jumping ball activity by clipping a ball in the middle of the feet then jumping across a zig z shape. To enhance the children’s gross motor skills, we played the walking-walking song then the children danced followed by the music. Also, to focus on children’s mental & health and well-being body coordination our children did yoga sessions such as spider crawl, crab walk, butterfly stretch, and child pose.
Other emerging interests observed and planned for this month included books, stories, printed words and identifying their own name and their friends too.
For world book day event, the educarer read the little red riding hood story to the children then we made a wolf mask craft as a pretend wolf from the book. We also explored lots of books in our library and some children created their own story books to tell their own stories, using arts and crafts materials to support and express their ideas which the educarer’s then recorded for them.
We haven’t forgot about our wonderful harvest story which one of the children shared with us back in autumn where he collected tomatoes and sunflowers from his garden. The sunflower heads have dried out beautifully on our nature table and we are ready to continue our sunflower life cycle by sowing these seeds in little pots, which we will care for and nurture until they are ready to take home.
Pancake Tuesday is always greeted with great appetite and enthusiasm. Lots of conversation takes place about different toppings and how they like to eat their pancake and the traditions from home.
For Mother’s Day event, we created Mother’s Day cards with ribbon pasta and brown paper also our preschool children created sunflower crafts with paper plates and lollipop sticks. We show our appreciation and love for our mothers we talked about why they are so special to us and what we love most about them. We got some super responses.
During Spanish time this month the Educarer shared a lovely poem announcing the arrival of spring in Spain with the almond blossom and chirping of the crickets. A beautiful wall display was created by the children with images the children conjured up using art materials and paint.
