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.
Alba Gutierrez – Crèche Manager
Activities from our Baby Room
It is so lovely watching our little babies grow each day they are here with us in Links Childcare.
They are so interested in everything that we do with them and it is nice to see how engaging they are when they are
going their daily activities.
They have bee really enjoying reading story books and their most recent favourite is The Little Red Hen.
We also celebrated Space Day! What an amazing topic; we got to paint a beautiful galaxy that we displayed it on our
window for everyone to see! We had so much fun that we decided to make our next week topic: the moon, which we
introduced through another fairy-tale “The Taste of the Moon”.
We made a huge moon to decorate our classroom. We also got the chance to take a deeper insight into the different
kind of animals that appear in the tale, which we appreciated as we could never get tired of learning about animals!
Through this topic we also had the chance to learn about different sizes, shapes, weights and heights; so many new
aspects to explore!
Our babies love playing with the balls, be it rolling them between their hands, throwing them away or trying to catch
them. They also love chasing them too.
Through this topic we also worked on the universe, given the ball-like shape of the different planets, it was so
interesting!
Our babies loved discovering the planets to the Solar System. Now we know Mercury, Venus and Earth.
We had so much fun painting all the planets with our recycled materials, and we climbed the moon on our gross
motor skills day. We crawled through tunnels with starry ceilings and we poured space dust from smaller to bigger
containers (we know it was coloured rice Krispies but imagination is key!)
As we were working with balls last week we realized that there were so many more interesting shapes, we’re really
keen on them! We wanted to discover this amazing world, linking it to this month curriculum topic: the sun!
As it is round, we started with this shape: we painted circles, we rumpled paper and we did an amazing circuit where
balls just rolled over and over.
We also learned that the sun is a star, so we also learned all about this interesting shape, we had so much fun
classifying our toys in terms of their shapes, tracing our star-shaped cushion and learning The Shapes Song!
Our Wobbler Room News
Our Wobblers have been enjoying lots of Fairy Tales. We painted a fairy tale poster, made some butterflies with wooden sticks and glitter and talked about how fairies can
fly with their beautiful wings!
We made magic wands like fairies have and used them to make magic.
We listened to tales and songs about fairies – we even saw Peppa pig dressed as a Fairy!
For Space Day we designed some rockets with our handprints.
For our clothes themes, we created a boy and a girl, painted them, and made some clothes and accessories to put on them. We demonstrated how we put on and take off our
clothes, hats, gloves, and coats.
We painted cardboard using lots of different colours to make clothes for our dolls and practised putting them on and taking them off.
Reading Peppa pig stories and looking at Peppa’s clothes and accessories.
We played with our kitchen garden using all our new kitchen utensils.
We chose a Picnic topic of learning, because Wobblers are enjoying playing outdoors with the kitchen cutlery and the Mud Kitchen.
We made some “food” for our picnic: we made sandwiches, fruits, cakes. We also made some ants with our fingerprint that we placed climbing our tablecloth,
it was so funny!
Picnic day outdoors with all the food and the cutlery that we have in our class was fun. We organize a picnic in the garden and really enjoyed eating outdoors.
To start with this topic, we made other food themed arts & crafts such as corn, watermelon. Our tablecloth was made from bubble paper!
Our Wobblers had such fun creating a Weather poster to check the weather every day. We used colourful materials to decorate our board.
To represent the Sun, we used transparent bubble wrap. We painted the paper and we cut it out and put it on the mural. We used cotton wool to create clouds and
coloured paper for a rainbow.
Tales from our Toddler Room
Our toddlers have been learning about the Moon & all things space!
We coloured Astronauts, stars and planets using some different textures like flour, sand and crepe paper.
We baked biscuits, shaped like moon which was super fun! And we painted stars like the stars up in the sky at night!
FAIRYTALES:
For our Fairytales theme, we read Goldilocks and the Three Little Pigs, The Dragon and the Rose & Xana.
We made the three bears houses with different materials, flour, sticks & grass, and painted Goldilocks hair using
straws to blow the paint.
We used silhouette Dragons and light to have a puppet show and loved sticking and gluing crepe paper to dragons to make them breath fire!
MONSTERS:
Toddlers coloured different monsters and we also made a monster out of rice, they really enjoyed the messy play.
The children have been learning different shapes and they have made circle monsters and sticking papers. Our story of the week was Monstersaurius, which we loved.
We did arts and crafts, creating the children’s favourite foods such as sandwiches, cake, and ice cream.
Pre-school Room News
Preschool One
Following the interest that arose between learning more about countries, we learned about continents and the planet
earth.
CONTINENTS:
·We learned about the different continents, what tourist
attractions they have (Big Ben, Eiffel Tower) etc.
·We made cameras to explore these tourist attractions and
see how they look through the camera lens.
·We listened, and danced to music from all around the world.
·We played with playdough, making the shapes of all of the
different countries and continents.
SPACE:
·We celebrated Space Day by painting our hands to make
space rockets.
·We turned our cubby into a huge space rocket and launched
into space together!
We made galaxy coloured play dough with glitter as stars.
·We made a box that contained ‘Moon Rocks’ and we were so
careful as they were very fragile, we used special gloves to
touch them.
·We played the ‘Flying Saucer’ game during garden time, we
really like this new game!
·
CAMPING:
·We learned about camping trips, what to take with us for our
trip, how we can find water and how to cook.
·We made our own sunglasses for our trip, it’s very important
to wear sunglasses when the sun is shining!
·We celebrated ‘Picnic Day’ by having a huge class picnic
together on a beautiful picnic blanket. We talked about all the
food we were going to eat.
·We played ‘what time is it Mr Wolf’ during garden time,
wolves live in the wild where people camp!
·We learned how to go fishing and what the different fish are
called.
·Sensory morning where we played with playdough, moon
dough (flour & baby oil), sand and water.
OCEAN/ OCEAN ANIMALS:
·We are learning about the ocean and all of the animals who
live in the ocean.
·We made Shark hats to wear home and painted our faces
like sharks!
·We celebrated ‘Firefighters Day’ by painted our hands red
and turning them into fire trucks!
·We made an ocean and some sea animals to put into the
ocean (Octopus, Starfish) etc.
Preschool Two
For our Space theme, we learned about all of the different stars, planets and constellations. We were talking about Aliens
and how they live in space and have lots of eyes.
We made a telescope to look up to the stars and see if we could spot a spaceship!
We made our own constellations using chalk and star stickers and we celebrated Earth Day by painting our hands the colour
of earth and decorating it.
After learning about Space and the planets, we focused on where we live., the Earth. We learned how we live in Ireland,
which is on the earth.
We have learned how to take care of our planet by recycling, protecting animals and ensuring we turn the taps off after we
use them.
We learned which animals are native to which continents too.
EUROPE:
Our Europe theme sparked conversations about different countries in Europe and the languages they speak and the foods
they eat. We learned more about the countries where some of our fathers, mothers and teachers come from. For example:
Ireland, United Kingdom, Spain, France, Poland and Italy. But we could not start this fantastic journey without learning to say
“Hello” and “Goodbye” in different languages.
We went looking for Leprechauns in Dublin, Big Ben in London, visited ‘Castilla-La Mancha’ in Spain, the Eifel Tower in Paris,
the Wawel Dragon in Poland and had some pizza by the Colosseum in Italy.
We made a travel diary to document all of our travels.
BUGS/INSECTS:
For our Bugs and Insects theme, we have been learning names of lots of different bugs and insects, such as ants, butterflies,
caterpillars, ladybugs and spiders.
We went for a ‘bug hunt’ during garden time, we found some snails, spiders and ladybugs!
We learned that Bee’s make Honey – so we tried some honey to see if we like it and we painted stones as bugs and glued
some pipe cleaner for their legs.
After-school Room News
SPACE:
·We are learning about Space & all the planets. We learned a new song about planets and had a quiz to see if we could
remember all the different names of the planets.
·We painted paper plates to make our very own Solar system – we added gold stars and pointed out the different
constellations and the milky way.
·We practised ‘moon walking’ as there is no gravity in space so things and people float!
THE JUNGLE:
We picked this theme as the children were talking about the Zoo opening again after the pandemic.
·We had a freestyle painting session to create our own ideas and views on how the Zoo looks.
·We discussed our favourite animals and practised drawing them.
·We played musical chairs, dancing around like Jungle animals.
·We listened to animal sounds to see how different they all sounded.
SCIENCE & MUSIC:
·We did science experiments using baking soda, vinegar and a balloon to watch the balloon inflate.
·We played with ‘moon dough’ which consists of flour & baby oil. It’s mouldable and we used our senses whilst touching and
smelling it.
·We listened to music from all genres and played musical chairs which is one of our favourites.
·We did lots of arts & crafts, drawing, colouring etc.
YOUNG EXPLORERS:
·We will explore the different tourist attractions from all different countries around Europe and the world.
·We will use our senses to explore the rainforests, listening out for different animal sounds and see their habitats.
·We will have a freestyle art session to draw/ paints some different areas of the world.
We will learn about different currencies, religions, cultures from around the world.
