Welcome to the October edition of our newsletter from Links Childcare Portmarnock.
We love this time of year. The children are all well settled into their new rooms and routines after the summer holidays and we are well under way with all our fun and active Autumnal curriculum learning each week.
There were lots of celebrations this month. At the start of October, we had a lovely party in crèche to mark 15 years of Links Childcare. It was a super fun day of celebrations, where we made our own fairy buns and got to meet our new preschool class bears. Mr Links, the big bear also arrived in style to visit us too. It was great to see him and most importantly, the children loved it!
We also learned lots about the importance of road safety during National Road Safety Week and we had some lovely activities to go with this theme.
Our Autumn theme was great for learning all about the changes in the weather and what various animals did during Autumn to prepare for the Winter.
Halloween was a (not so) spooky affair in Portmarnock, as we played lots of games, made some arts and crafts and a Bake Sale in aid of Temple Street children’s hospital for their Trick or Treat fundraising campaign. Many thanks for everyone’s support, and indeed, for all our events.
I would also like to say thank you to all the parents, staff and children, who have given me such a warm welcome since I joined the Links Portmarnock Management Team in October as Acting Crèche Manager while Karen goes on maternity leave. We wish Karen all the very best for now on her maternity leave.
We hope you enjoy our newsletter and we look forward to lots more fun learning next month.
Kind regards,
Preeta
Preeta Teepoo — Acting Crèche Manager
Baby Room News
We explored new textures this month in our baby room. We loved messy play with spaghetti and gloop. The babies really enjoyed it, but a few enjoyed the spaghetti a bit too much! We made scary Halloween footprints, ghosts and monsters with our hands and we also decorated our room with leaves from the garden for our autumn theme.
There was lots of art this month in our room and our babies really enjoyed it . We learned new songs about the weather too, like “Rain rain go away” and “Insie Wincie Spider”.
Wobbler Room News
For Transport Week, our wobblers made road signs for their classrooms, and had traffic games outside. We also explored different transport toys and really enjoyed playing with them on our homemade street scenes.
For Autumn the children sang season songs, collected leaves from the garden and made a big Autumn tree. For instruments, our children had dance time and we played instruments and had a concert for our Educarers. We are learning our number, one to five too, and we are enjoying this through stories and music.
For Halloween we had a Halloween dress up party, made crafts and painted a big orange pumpkin. We also had a lovely bake sale for Temple Street.
Toddler Room News
The toddlers loved Links 15th birthday celebrations. They sang the happy birthday song and learned that everyone had a birthday.
The toddlers learned about colours – red, yellow white green and blue. They mixed these colours with paint and did lots of colourful art pieces.
We took part in beep beep day and learning about road safety was lots of fun. We made our own road signs and role played with our high vis jackets and toy cars. Our toddlers showed a real interest in space, so we made a rocket space and went on an adventure to the moon and back.
The children learned a lot about autumn, the colours of the leaves and the cold weather. We decorated our room with autumn leaves and did lots of Halloween crafts.
Preschool Room News
We started this month with our Links 15th birthday party, where we got a visit from Mr Links and got to meet our brand new class bears, Molly. For Transport and Beep Beep Day, the children enjoyed discovering all the types of transport, such as trains, planes, taxis, buses. We made stop signs and traffic lights and enjoyed playing the traffic lights game. Our local lollipop lady also came and paid us a visit too.
We made lots of arts and crafts and made a rocket, a car and Oscar, our Educarer has been teaching us Spanish songs .
Other activities were based around Autumn. We built on our nature box and gathered more leaves. We made a tree and each put our own handprint onto it. We used the colours we see in Autumn like yellow, brown, red and orange to decorate it.
Our Halloween party was fun, as we got to dress up and wear costumes and making decorations for our room. Their were lots of ghosts, spiders, monsters and bats flying around the place!
Afterschool Room News
During October we took part in transport week and Beep Beep Day, doing arts and crafts and puzzles to learn the different parts of a car. We learned that transport can take us to places very far away and also which modes of transport are the fastest.
During Autumn Day we were decorating the door with brown leaves that fell from the trees and painted some leaves too. We also did some leaf printing. We are also making a nature box.
Finally for Halloween we will paint our faces and baked some cakes for our bake sale for Temple Street hospital as well as making Halloween decorations.
