Finally, the summer is here! The days are getting brighter and the evenings are getting longer too. With restrictions changing and
people able to meet extended family members outdoors, it feels like a very welcoming change.
Our children had such fun during our monthly events in May. They were so engaging and took a real interest in our curriculum topics.
We loved Firefighter Day, International Nurses Day and World Baking Day and for Rock N Roll Day, we had such fun dancing and
singing! We are delighted now have all our children back together. Each day is different and we make such it is jam packed with lots of
fun. 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
May.
At the end of May, over 70 members from Team Links took part in a Links 10KM Fun Run, were over €2000 was raised for The Jack &
Jill Foundation. Thank you to you all for sponsoring and supporting us in raising these much needed funds for a very worthy cause.
Eliane McMahon – Crèche Manager
Activities from our Baby Room
We had a great month in our baby room! We had lots of messy play, arts and crafts, garden
play and songs.
Messy play: we made a magic box with google eyes hidden in lots of glue and we had a sticky search to
find them all, we hand painted our musical maracas, soap and bubble play with our toys, we
had some cooked potatoes in a box for the children to enjoy the texture of squeezing and
playing with them (also trying to taste them) and we also made tire tracks by rolling our transport
vehicles through some paint to see what trails they left behind.
Arts & Crafts: We created faces with recyclable materials. Gluing and sticking pieces of paper
together to make a big music note, painting lollipop sticks black and white to make a piano,
making a guitar using our footprints, creating potato faces using mouth, nose, and eyes to stick
on the potato and we made kiwis and suns using paper plates.
Garden: We really enjoyed the garden this month with some of the days giving us beautiful weather!
We danced to our favourite Disney songs, played hide and seek, having a hip-hop dance class, yoga class and a lovely fruit picnic too!
Songs: Parts of the body, head shoulders knees and toes, if your happy and you know it, mr sun, Iike to eat apples and banana’s and also multiple Disney and dance songs.
Our Wobbler Room News
Process Art activities are just wonderful for wobblers to explore and investigate supporting their growing curiosity. This
month the children were interested in various shapes, so we decided to explore geometric shapes. The children explored
printing a variety of shapes using bottle for circles, blocks to print rectangles etc. While engaging in these activities the
children sang ’10 popping bottles sitting on a wall, one went pop and the other went bang.’ This printing was so much fun that
the children printed wheel tracks with toy cars. To extend the children’s learning with shape recognition the children played a
game of looking for shapes in the room with their toys.
The second week in May was all about numbers. The children painted caterpillars and sang ‘one, two, three, four, five once I
caught a fish alive.’ The children took turns in a sensory sand activity with block numbers. As summer has begun together
with the support of their educarers the children finger painted flower, counting the pedals as they printed. The children later
in the week painted snakes using their hands to count the snakes body to support this activity the children sang ‘slithery,
slithery snake.’
The third week of May the children were really enjoying the out doors and becoming increasingly aware of the milder
weather. Again exploring a process art activity the children created a sun picture using a fork to spread the paint like the rays
of sunshine. The children sung ‘Mr Sun’ to spread the summer humour. The children explored a sensory activity of rainbow
spaghetti, painted with coloured ice and sang and danced to some music from the ‘Frozen’ soundtrack. To further extend the
children’s growing interest in weather the children created a funny little rainbow character complete with legs.
The final week in May the children were interested in cleaning. To support this interest the educarers offered the children
opportunities to bathe the baby dolls, farm animal and dinosaurs with various cleaning utensils from sponges, clothes, paint
brushes and toothbrushes and cotton wool balls. Children find this messy play very engaging and enjoyable way to make
sense and develop their own theories about how the world works.
This year for International Firefighters Day the children made firefighter hats and sang drive the fire truck song, all the while
role playing the wonderful work of the fire fighters in our community.
For International Nurses Day the children supported by the Educarers created a hospital to add to their ‘Me and My World’
centre. The children took turns exploring this new addition to the centre while singing ‘hurry, hurry drive the ambulance’. This
experience really captured the children’s imagination and several times throughout the week the children were observed say
‘neenaw, neenaw’ and chatting about ambulances. To extend this lovely learning opportunity the educarers provided the
children with plasters to help make each other better!
For International Baking day the children designed their own attractive cakes with paint and chatted about which cakes they
like best such as birthday cakes and muffins.
What child could resist dancing at our wobblers disco to mark ‘Rock n’Roll Day.’ Great fun was had by all. The children shook
and twisted their bodies to the rhythms banging on their homemade drums.
Tales from our Toddler Room
We started the month with loads of summer themed activities we are so excited about summer we learned in importance
of sun cream, to stay hydrated, learned about the clothes we wear at summer time and we can’t forget about sun hat. The
best thing about summer is ice-cream!!!
Our favourite song was Mr sun and what is the weather like today, our favourite book was the tiger who came to tea.
The educarer had loads of sensory development play Sensory play exposes children to many new experiences, textures,
and materials. It is calming for many children and also presents children with lots of new language that they might not
otherwise experience also Sensory play strengthens little hands and builds fine motor skills.
We played with sand where we made castles, mare made, crabs, star fish and we played with seashell so much fun; we
played with water We learned about the sea, we even had goggles, also play pouring and emptying containers and learned
about measurements, play dough is so much fun we made loads of fish shapes, also we hadrice messy play, gloop and
slimes. We learned about blue yellow and green colours this month.
We had fire man event we had a group discussion about fire safety we learned about hot and cold and made some art and
craft. We Also learned a new song “ hurry hurry drive you fire truck”.
We had a nursing day celebration where we role play about nurses important role we used the dolls as our patients great
social development as all the toddlers got involved.
Our baking day we learned about measurements, sensory gloop activity, and we baked delicious scones! We love kitchen
role play we have great imagination.
Our Rocking Roll party was the best we had a Rock party with loud music when we dance until we got exhausted, we love
dancing we dance every day!!!
So much fun in the garden we love racing, ride bikes, play with parachute and our Educarers always play loads of games.
This month we focus on sharing development; Sharing is a vital life skill. It’s something toddlers find hard to learn and it is
important, they can make and keep friends, and play cooperatively. We had activities where they played in groups or pairs,
turn taking, task and cooperation, games with simple instructions, we talking about emotions and some children were
great, we will extend the sharing development skills next month too.
Pre-school Room News
he month of May started off with the children expressing a great interest in our teeth and healthy eating. Together we
discussed what foods are good or bad for our teeth completing a food sorting activity. Over two days we conducted a science
experiment to discover what happens to our teeth if we don’t brush them. Using white hard boiled eggs to represent our teeth
we immersed the eggs in fizzy cola, vinegar, coloured water and plain water. We left them over night to discover if there was
any resulting damage. Using tooth paste and tooth brushes the children took turns to scrub the stains from the eggs. We
counted our teeth and crafted our own mouth full of teeth.
The children in both Preschool One and Two are becoming very familiar with the letters in their own names and are even
starting to recognise some of their friend’s names too. To further develop and support this wonderful interest we explored
letter shapes through colouring and collage, the children looked for different objects with familiar letter sounds in the class,
explored letter shapes with playdo, and created posters of their own name with stickers and glitter to stick up at home. For our
weekly baking activity, we even made cookies in the shape of each child’s own initial of their name.
We explored the farm and farm animals to support our children’s developing language and comprehension skills. Together in a
small group activity the children created a small world farm scape. The children really loved this activity and even some of the
wild jungle animals including the lions and tigers came to explore the farm!
As the days are getting milder and sunnier, we are spending as much of our day outside as possible. We even take a table
outside some days to do our drawing and art, creating beautiful large wall posters for our room. (Reminder: If you have not
provided sun cream for you child please drop one in as soon as possible.)
One of the weeks during May the beach came to visit the classrooms. The children dug for seashells in our golden sand in our
sand box, washed the seashells in bubbly water with small brushes and polished them. Some children made flip flops from
their footprints to take home. In small groups the children created a beach scene complete with real sand and blue paint for the
sea and sky. They created an ocean poster complete with various sea animals to display on their wall. Finally, the children made
their very own jellyfish complete with stinging tentacles. The children really enjoyed this theme and are excited to embrace
what summer has instore for them over the coming months. Some of the children imagined a crocodile living in our classroom and our garden. So, we decided to make their imagination a reality. In small groups the children created a large green scaly crocodile complete with a wide mouthful of sharp pointy teeth.
This was received with many squeals of excitement and delight when it was complete.
For International firefighters Day the children painted and decorated yellow hats with the Dublin fire brigade logo, they made a
red fire engine complete with siren and ladder and took turns driving around the garden. Together with the Educarers through
role play and stories the children discovered the wonderful work of the fire fighters do every day.
For International Nurses Day the children watched a short, animated film about the life of Florence Nightingale. Inspired
by her story the children decorated nurse’s hats like the one she wore, for a small group activity they created their own xray
machine and created x-rays of their hand.
For International Baking Day we looked at some of the various pieces of equipment needed for successful baking.
We looked at a weighing scales, electric mixer, measuring spoons and jugs and weighed out our own muffin mixture to
put it all into practice. We role played our own bakery shop and took turns being the baker, seller, and customer. The
children crafted varieties of cookie to sell in the shop. Rock N’ Roll day wouldn’t be complete without a disco party
with music and disco lights.
After some discussion, the children decided some homemade instruments and costumes would complete the look before the celebrations could begin.
