Welcome to the November edition of our newsletter from Links Childcare Portmarnock .
November has been a busy month in all our rooms, as we prepare for our Christmas concert and our festive winter celebrations. We have been concentrating very hard on learning all the lines to our Christmas songs and we cannot wait to give you all a festive performance to remember. We hope you like our Christmas decorations! Our children and our afterschool children worked very hard to help us decorate it.
We had a month of learning all about the winter season and the changing of the weather. Our Educarers taught us all about winter hibernation and the different types of animals who hibernate in the winter in order to keep themselves and their little ones safe during the cold months.
Our STEM learning was a great way for our children to learn about this important topic. It opened up conversations about counting, coding, science and more.
And thank you to all our parents who voted in the Links Childcare Employee of the Year for 2019. Your voice and your vote matters. Thank you for your time in doing this. Our winner in Portmarnock is Elisabeth Lopez Vazquez and I am sure you all agree, she is a worthy winner!
Last but not least, we would like to send you all a massive THANK YOU for all your gorgeous shoe boxes for the Team Hope Shoe Box Appeal. Collectively you helped Links Childcare collect almost 300 shoe boxes. These will all be going to a great home this Christmas and will make a child very happy.
We hope you enjoy our newsletter and we look forward to lots more fun & festive learning next month.
Kind regards,
Preeta
Preeta Teepoo—Acting Crèche Manager
Baby Room News
In November we welcomed two new babies to our group- Sophie and Nadia. We also talked about pets and the winter.
We have made doggies from foot prints and as it is getting cold we had lots of sensory play and explored warm and cold. We had an activity with bottles filled with warm and cold water, so the children could touch and feel the difference. The children loved that and of course most of them preferred to hold the warm bottle. We had a lot of other sensory play as the babies seem to enjoy it a lot. We had messy play with sand, moon sand, porridge, water, gloop, paper and feathers. We also did lots of painting; Christmas trees & snowflakes from hand prints, decoration for our Christmas tree, painting with fingers and reindeers made from foot prints too.
We enjoyed Book Day and everyone brought there favourite book and we got the chance to read and explore them all. Everyone loves books so we have story time nearly every day.
We learned how to say thank you “Ta-ta” to each other on Thanks giving Day.
The weather was not the best but we still got the chance to play out on fresh air and explore the garden. The garden is great place for practicing walking and standing.
Our Christmas spirit came during November so we have learned new Christmas songs – “Snowman”, “Jingle bells”, “Sant Claus is coming to town” and “We wish you a merry Christmas”. Our babies love the Christmas songs so we have a lot of Christmas music that we listen to during the day.
Our room got a lot of new toys and equipment in this month that the children absolutely adore. Lots of sensory toys, toys supporting gross and motor skills and their problem solving ability and encouraging the children to work in groups.
Wobbler Room News
This month in the wobbler room we had lots of fun. We made a lot of art and crafts and made a snowman to get us in the Christmas spirit. We also made a Christmas tree and ginger bread men which our children thought were real!! The children have been very excited learning their Christmas songs for our upcoming concert which we have all really enjoyed.
Toddler Room News
During the last few weeks, our Toddlers haven’t stopped! We had lots of arts and crafts we have made a computer on Science day, a snowman with cotton because of the weather change and a reindeer with feathers. We’ve also been making letters to invite all our parents to the Christmas concert in where we will sing the songs that we’ve tried to learn in the Crèche with Eli.
Inside our room we have played with the different construction toys, play dough, sand and in the morning time we have made a poster to know who is the responsible of the day.
We also made a weather chart and calendar we have added new games to our selection of many.
We have also read all the books in class related to shapes to know how to distinguish in real life which is a circle, square, triangle, rectangle and star and the new Peppa Pig books, which we love. We were playing role play with our favourites toys and dolls in the kitchen and library area pretending that we were in a Hospital with the costumes and the medical tools.
We can’t forget the game the Hormiguitas with feathers and massages, superman and Al corro de la patata. We love it.
Outside we have been playing with the cars, reinforcing the knowledge about the shapes that we have in the ground and the colours.
Preschool Room News
Some events we enjoyed in Preschool included:
– National STEM day
– Hibernation Day
– Welcoming Winter
– Thanksgiving
Pre school 1:
We started off this month with discussing the change in season so we focused on winter and what this means. Making snowflakes and snowmen and learning new songs about winter was lots of fun.
We learned about the people who help us in our community nurses, police and their roles. It has been fun imagining what they would like to be when they grow up.
We learned about our winter clothes and how they change. We are still practicing how to put our coats on by themselves. We also learned about winter animals and how they collect food and hibernate. We celebrated World Book Day where we not only read great books but discussed more about how books are made. We celebrated Joey and Lenas birthdays. And celebrated World Kindness Day, making cards for our friends and family. All this month we have been busy practicing for our Christmas play that we hope you enjoy!
Pre school 2:
After having a great time for Halloween, November awoke our Christmas spirit. We were working hard on our Christmas play, making arts and crafts and practicing Christmas carols and also dances.
We also welcomed our teachers Rocío and Alba in our room. We had such a good time getting to know each other and playing together. We have learnt new Spanish songs!!! We love “papa dedo”.
During Book Day, teachers picked one book and we represented with puppets. We also played animals sounds to recognize them.
Parents—please feel free to bring empty boxes and clean bottles. We love playing with “real life materials” and we can recycle them for making new decorations and arts and crafts!
Thanks very much!
Afterschool Room News
This month the Aftershcoolers really had fun while discovering new things.
We talked about the 3 R’s. We learnt the colours of the different containers and we did some arts and crafts by recycling & reusing. All of this was to help the children to know how to take care of our planet & nature.
Related with that, we learnt about plants and their different parts. We explored the outdoors by playing some outside games. We also painted some flowers and create beautiful posters, and we even plant our own seeds which we watered every day. We already have some roots…
We celebrated Thanksgiving Day and did a turkey crown and made with thanks cards to our friends and family for Thanksgiving day.
Finally, we did really good Christmas art to decorate our room, because Santa Claus is coming to Town!
