In The Full Swing Of Spring
Over the past four weeks, we have had such a busy, fun filled time, learning and playing together.
From themed events for Carnival Day, enjoying lots of dancing, singing and all things colourful, to diving into the different fantastic worlds in our story books for World Book Day. It has been most fun.
Pancake Tuesday was enjoyed with lots of tasty homemade pancakes made by our amazing Chefs. We also helped support Mental Health Ireland by taking part in their Smiley Pancake Day. Thank you to all who donated and supported.
We are delighted to welcome back some of our ECCE children. It is so great to be together again.
We are still missing some of our friends who have yet to return back to crèche with us, but we look forward to seeing them soon. In the meantime, we hope our children at home have been enjoying the videos we have posted on our Social Media Channels.
And we hope they are enjoying some of our curriculum learning at home too. Feel free to share any activities you have been enjoying at home with us.
In this newsletter, we have shared some insight into the activities from each of our rooms that has taken place over the last four weeks .
Just a additional note to say that our Baby Rooms are nearing capacity in all of our crèches for 2021 so we would like to advise any parents that might be expecting and if you require any sibling places, please enroll as soon as possible. Application forms are available from us or you can also contact Kim from our Admissions Team on kim.jones@linkschildcare.ie.
Our next newsletter for you will be in four weeks time, in the middle of April, where we will share more news with you on what our children have been doing.
Take Care.
Preeta
Activities from our Baby Room
Our babies have been learning all about clothes and the different types of items that we wear. We point to the item and say the word, and they can communication back to us through their eyes and touching the items. They are so clever!
We displayed some clothes on the floor to tried and figure out when they belonged on our bodies. We had loads of fun, although some of us ended up with our pants in our heads.
Not all of us enjoy getting dirty during paint time, so Marta and Julia created special crayons made out of empty recycled roll-on deodorants and filled them with paint and water. Our babies loved this.
To feel the different textures of our clothes, we walked through a sensory path made of wool, synthetic fabric, and cotton. It felt so funny on our feet.
For World Book Day we created some beautiful bookmarks for our families.
For our Exotic Animals theme, we paired it with messy play and used Rice Krispies to create some monkey art pieces.
We also made a lovely parrot with a lot of colourful feathers. They are so soft and tingly.
We got into the wild and we got lost, so we needed to find the way out. But first we had to discover the secret code hidden in the motor circuit, in which there was a ball maze to be solved!!
For Mother’s Day we made lovely arts and crafts for our beloved mums, to thank them for taking such good care of us.
Exploring flowers was lovely, as we got to see them from up close, playing with some real flowers along with a little bit of water. It felt like a rainy meadow! We had loads of fun and splashed water all around!
We also painted some flowers with our handprints so we could decorate our family tree for the incoming season.
On Wednesday we had our traditional gross motor skills session, this time on the playground! We played with balls throwing them up and down.
This week we also threw a carnival parade! We got to play with our beloved cardboard boxes, colourful tissue paper and feathers, we ended up getting our fair share of tickling!
We also tried a new way of painting: with food! We made a big mess with green powder on the table, but really enjoyed ourselves!
Spring is finally here!
According to the Gaelic calendar, spring’s first signs can be seen in February, with the blossom of daffodils all around the place. That is why this week we learnt all about this season, while remembering everything we learnt along February.
We painted and manipulated with flowers, we smelt them, touched them and even tasted them.
We also learnt a new song about spring called “The hungry Caterpillar”, we love dancing and singing all together.
Our gross motor skills’ Wednesday coincided with the Mini beast day, so we hunted all kind of flowers and bugs around the playground.
We also read books about spring and its elements, we always love a good story!
Stories from our Wonderful Wobbler Room
Our wobblers had such fun learning all about Spring. We made ladybugs with plates and paint, putting the polka dots on it with our fingerprint.
We made nests with birds, painting the nest brown, and adding paper to make leaves.
We made flowers by drawing our own versions and adding stems and leaves. We used cotton wool and green paint for our tree to show the transition to Spring, changing the fallen leaves for green leaves.
For World Book Day we created some beautiful bookmarks for our families.
Welcome to our Zoo! We loved making a sign with our finger paints.
We will make zebras out of recyclable materials and we experimented with different textures, putting animals in Rice Krispies, sand & water.
To add to the fun of it all, we made animal masks for our zoo and pretended that we were animals in the zoo.
To explore our senses, we played with sand and other textures such as cotton, textured paper, feathers and Rice Krispies.
On Pancake Tuesday we made smiley pancakes, painting them onto paper plates, and we got to eat some yummy real ones too, made by our Chef Conor.
Homemade play- doh is a lovely thing to make yourself and we made it together and cut out different shapes.
For Carnival Day we enjoyed a Princesses and Princes theme and made crowns and colourful hats for our parade.
Playing with the cars and trucks is one of our favourite things to do. We move them fast and slow and we were making sounds with them.
In the garden, we put some cones out and we were drove our bikes between them.
To explore different textures, we dipped paint onto the wheels of the cars and trucks that we have in our room and made our own roads.
We painted a truck with crayons and glued some papers to the wheels.
For Mini Beast Day we were playing with sand and some leaves and sticks that we found on the garden.
Tales from our Toddler Room
Our toddlers had such fun during their Pirates theme. They made a treasure map and went on the hunt for treasure that was hidden in the garden by the pirates.
They made a Parrot, sticking feathers for effect, and played with sand to find the treasure, gold and coins.
They even made a Pirate’s boat, a flag, treasure baskets and pirate bookmarks for World Book Day.
The Zoo was a big talking point in our room, so we painted animal faces to make masks on paper plates. We discussed about how we take care of animals, who to clean them and what we should feed them too.
We made a snake out of recyclable materials and learned all the sounds that different animals make.
We loved learning all about Spring and flowers that growth in the different seasons. We created our own Spring poster and added green paint for the grass, adding homemade flowers as we went along. Sunflower, tulip, rose & daisy are all new words we learned when we were talking about flowers.
For Pancake Tuesday, we made a colourful card with a smiley pancake on it and made some playdoh and cooked some pancakes for our dolls.
For World Book Day, we created an Pirate Book and we played pirates and found the treasure that Cristina & Andrea hide in the garden for our children.
Preschool Room News
Our preschool children had fun a fun packed four weeks of learning through play!
Preschool 1
Mini Beasts Day was a day exploring all about bugs and insects. We went out to the garden in search for some and also made our own, cutting out shapes.
We made ladybirds with paint and in small sizes to work on fine motor skills and shared stories all about Spring and insects.
As the Spring weather was lovely outside, we spent a lot of time out in the garden collecting leaves and sticks for our bug hotel and enjoying PE outdoors too.
Our children loved the theme of learning all about birds. They made their own birds, sticking feathers on them and sharing stories about them also.
We made our own binoculars to explore in the garden birds and role played with them too.
For Mother’s Day we made lots of art and cards for our lovely mums.
As Spring has sprung, we enjoyed learning about bugs and insects that we have not seen for a while. We have also noticed the flowers are starting to bloom again. We made Butterfly crafts with shapes and painted them.
We also enjoyed frog and butterfly life cycle with flashcards and shared Springtime stories.
For Carnival Day we had a day of singing and dance; it was lots of fun.
Preschool 2
Our Retiles and Spring themes was a great way for us to learning about flowers and different retiles. Using crepe paper and paint, we created a lovely Spring poster and planted some seeds of our own in our classroom.
We have been talking about different reptiles like snakes, alligators, crocodiles, and lizards, and made our very own snakes to take home.
We have also made some turtles using egg cartons which was so much fun!
Such fun was had by all when we started learning all about jungle creatures, big & small! From Monkeys and Lions, to Elephants and Tigers.
We made our own explorer binoculars using towel paper holders to search for animals in the garden. We also made paper plate animals and learned about what each jungle creature eats in the jungle.
Our children love learning about dinosaurs, so we made our very own big, tall dinosaur, who is living in a cave inside our classroom. We had a puppet show to learn the names of all the different dinosaurs and whether they ate meat or plants!
We learned about how dinosaurs used to live on the Earth before people did and how they left some fossils behind them – we made our very own fossils using salt dough.
We had lots of fun and enjoyed learning all about the dinosaurs who roamed the Earth many years ago!
Carnival Day was celebrated by getting dressed up, and doing lots of dancing, arts & crafts.
After the dinosaurs disappeared, pre-historic people started living on The Earth. Our children were so eager to learn about this.
We created a home-made cave inside of one of our cubby’s with a “fire” made out of carboard, stones and sticks from the garden & instruments to hunt wild animals (also made out of recyclable materials). A “lake” is also by the cave to learn how to fish.
We explored about how pre-historic people used to live through arts & crafts and different games, activities, and songs.
Afterschool Adventures
We learned about how dinosaurs used to live on the Earth before people did and how they left some fossils behind them – we made our very own fossils using salt dough.
We had lots of fun and enjoyed learning all about the dinosaurs who roamed the Earth many years ago!
Carnival Day was celebrated by getting dressed up, and doing lots of dancing, arts & crafts.
After the dinosaurs disappeared, pre-historic people started living on The Earth. Our children were so eager to learn about this.
We created a home-made cave inside of one of our cubby’s with a “fire” made out of carboard, stones and sticks from the garden & instruments to hunt wild animals (also made out of recyclable materials). A “lake” is also by the cave to learn how to fish.
We explored about how pre-historic people used to live through arts & crafts and different games, activities, and songs.
