Happy new year to all our parents and children and welcome to our first newsletter of 2020.
It was lovely to see all the children coming back after their Christmas break all refreshed and happy. Our older children were very excited to tell us all about their lovely festive holiday break with their family and friends, and all the lovely gifts they received.
Our new year has started with a jam packed curriculum, full of learning and fun. We enjoyed lots of activities exploring our five senses, and learned about the impacts of pollution and the importance of recycling.
We also celebrated Chinese New Year too and made some lovely arts and crafts for this festive event.
Here is a breakdown of what we got up it, and some photos too.
Just a note to say that our baby rooms are nearing capacity in all of our creches for 2020 so we would like to advise any parents that might be expecting and if you require any sibling places, please enrol as soon as possible. Application forms are available from us (Creche Managers) or you can also contact Kim from our Admissions Team on kim.jones@linkschildcare.ie.
As of February, our newsletters will be available and distributed to parents every two months. So the next newsletter for Portmarnock will be the February edition, then April, and so on. Thank you and we look forward to continuing to share all our news and stories with you through our newsletters.
In the meantime, we hope you enjoy this read, and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Instagram, (links below).
Many thanks,
Preeta
Preeta Teepoo—Acting Crèche Manager
Baby Room News
Our babies have been having lots of fun exploring their fingers and toes and the soft cosy textures related to winter clothing. Our soft teddy bears have been getting lots of cuddle time with our babies and we enjoyed learning our new songs about our fingers and toes. We especially love “This Little Piggy”.
We also had a teddy bear day where everyone brought in their favourite teddy bear and we got the chance to spend time with them. Our sensory baskets have been played with a lot this month, as our babies enjoyed discovering the various textures of softness.
Messy play really was a right mess, as we played with rice, porridge and sand. But really thoroughly enjoyed it. We also had the chance to paint with fingers and with sponges.
We had a grandparent visit in our room and we all enjoyed the company of Ariannas nanny, who read us a lovely story.
We had a science experiment day and we had observed the power of the gravity of beads in a cup.
Building blocks, exploring our sensory books, playing in the garden, singing songs, playing with our musical instruments and exploring their sounds – all activities that we loved this month. Our babies had a very busy time in the nursery room but also a lot of time to relax, sleep and enjoy the fresh cooked food by our very best chef Conor.
Wobbler Room News
We have carried out different art and craft activities with our wobbler children. They especially loved painting a fruit bowl with different paint brushes.
At the same time, we learnt the names of different fruits and their colours (banana is yellow, apple is red, orange is orange, pear is green). We drew the different fruits and the children stuck pompons and papers on them. When the children finished this activity, they stuck the fruits inside the fruit bowl.
We just love painting, and we painted a garden in the colour green colour and then we painted a red apple with our fingers and toes.
The children loved painting a castle and they used their fingers to explore the various types of paint patterns. Our “Hollywood walk” was created by our footprints and the children printed their hands and when they were dried the children put glitter on the fingertips. We put the hands around our castle and represent all our friends together.
For our Science & Research Day, we explored planets, stars and the moon.
We have carried out different art and craft activities for our Seasons learning and our children painted a tree to show the changes to the seasons. The children stuck pompons in blue to make snow. For Spring, we stuck colour paper inside the flowers to represent the Spring flowers coming out. Different leaves was added for Autumn and when it came to the Summer, we stuck rice krispies in the Sun and painted sunrays with our fingers.
For Grandparent’s Day, the children prepared a card and printed their hands for our visitors.
Toddler Room News
Our toddlers have been busy exploring different textures and have loved playing with pasta, rice, sand or soft balls.
We made different posters and cards for our grandparents with handprints, glitter and paint.
For Research Day we made a lovely poster symbolising the world, the moon, the sun and the seasons. Also, we played with mirrors that change the colour and the shape of our reality.
Most of the days we have been playing with glop, play dough, role play, construction, sand, jigsaws and flash cards. Obviously, we cannot forget our favourite game “hormiguitas” which is a Spanish song mixed with cuddles.
Culture Day was amazing. Eli arrived to crèche dressed up as a typical Spanish dress and we did lots of flamenco dancing and singing with Paula, Cristina and Emma. After that we made a dragon with our handprints, a Paipai with pages that we coloured and African necklaces with paint plates.
Preschool Room News
Preschool Room 1
After Christmas we got back into the routing quick. It was great to see each other again.
The first week we discovered “The skeleton” and we made our handprint and foot print in white colour on a black page and we saw how our bones look like. We read stories about our body and we learnt the difference between bones and muscles.
On Science Day we enjoyed some experiments and making messy games all over our room.
For our 5 senses learning, we used our touch to feel different textures like: pasta and rice and we also mixed flour with porridge and water! It was so much fun! Then we covered our eyes to feel different stuff and guess what it was.
For our sight learning we listened to an amazing story “A taste of the moon”. We shared such a great time during this story. Our taste sense was our favourite. First, we tried a piece of lemon (some of them even took two) and we learnt the differences between sweet, salty and bitter. To conclude we baked wonderful cookies that we took home. We used our sense of sound to listen to different tapes about animals and discovering how different we can sound. To finish this busy week we explored our sense of smell, discovering different food products like coffee, vinegar and spices.
Tara’s grandmother, Margaret, came to visit us on Grandparents Day. She was telling us how hard it was before when they didn’t have lights and tv. And also, we enjoyed the story time “Little Red Riding Hood”. It was lovely to have her visit us, we loved it. Thank you, Margaret, for taking the time out to join us in class.
At the end of the month, we enjoyed our cultural week and had a great party for the Cultural Day. All families were welcomed to bring anything from their culture and country! We learned some new Spanish songs and we love singing them all the time.
Preschool Room 2
In Preschool 2, we started off learning about our five senses, everyday focusing on one. The children loved tasting the different tastes from the lemons to salt.
For Science Day we did loads of fun experiments, showing how salt makes water denser, making a storm in a glass and having some fun outside exploding coke and mentos. We then focused on the body learning all about how it works doing fun art and crafts. We did a puppet show with our own spin on Little Red Riding Hood. Tara dressed up as her granny and visited the children reading them a story, which the children enjoyed. We also looked at our world and the different cultures we have in our class. We also had lots of fun celebrating Sean, Conor and Loic’s birthdays.
