Happy New Year to all our parents, guardians and children.
I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas together and I hope the new year brings health and happiness.
As we face into our 3rd lockdown in Ireland, it may appear to be difficult to see a bright new year ahead, but I believe that,
if we all work together, we can do this. We look forward to days in the future when we can welcome our parents and
guardians back into our crèches, where you can physically witness all the amazing works of art that your children are doing
to adorn our walls. And where we can welcome you to special events like concerts again.
In this newsletter, we have shared some insight into the activities from each of our rooms, that all took place this month. It
was really lovely to see our children and colleagues again, and to engage in so much fun and learning.
As we welcomed back some children to our crèches, we are missing our children who have not returned to us this month.
Since the start of January, we have been adding daily videos on our Social Media Channels for our children at home to
enjoy. We hope our children have enjoyed them so far.
Activities from our Baby Room
For our Senses learning, our babies our exploring soft items. They love to cuddle their teddies, and ones that have different textures are the ones our babies have been really
interested in.
Our Educarers made some sensory boxes for them to enjoy, adding feathers, cotton wool and sponges for additional textures. They made cloud dough too, which they
loved.
For Messy Play, we painted collages of artwork together and explored with porridge oats. Some found the texture of the oats strange to them; their little faces were very funny
watching them.
We used our little fingers and toes in our actions when reading out books about our body and we used our finger tips to paint with.
News from our Wobbler Room
Welcome back to all our Wobblers. We also gave a warm welcome to Sibeal, Joseph and Jamie, who joined our Wobbler Room.
Congratulation to James and Darragh, who became big brothers too. We just know they will be the best big brother ever.
There was such excitement when embarked on our Circus theme in the Wobbler Room this month. We made colourful tents out of felt and paper. And of courses, clowns and
animals were required too for our Circus, so we got busy creating these too with our Educarers. For our Circus acrobats, we learned how to master the Hoola Hoop, which was a bit tricky at first, but we soon got the hang of it, with lots of practice. Our wobblers are determined little dotes, who don’t like to give up on things! We got familiar with parts of the human body by pointing to our ears, eyes, elbows and sang songs to sow us where they are. Lots of finger and toes painting was also enjoyed, and our children just love the feeling of squishy paint all over their hands and feet. This was seen also during our painting sessions when we were learning all about our senses too.
Other things we enjoyed this month included music, puzzles and traffic lights. For our music learning, we made our own guitars artwork and had a concert with Gemma.
One of our Educarers brought in her guitar and we played some songs and sang. Our wobblers were very fascinated with the real life guitar.
Puzzles are a lovely way to engage our brains and improve our problem-solving skills. We did lots of puzzles, and made our own too, using cut up paper, and piecing them back up
again.
Learning how to cross the road is such an important thing to teach our children, and so, we had a theme dedicated to the Traffic Light system. We created a collage, which we
made into a City, and added vehicles and traffic lights and people to play with.
What Have Our Toddlers Been Up To?
Lots of things!
Learning about our fingers and toes was fun. We created sensory bags, which were filled with paint and soft touch items to show our children the different between the textures.
Our toddlers also enjoyed a Circus theme, making clowns, tents and enjoying balancing games on ropes to pretend we were engaging in our Circus acts.
Preschool & Naíscoil Room Adventures
We had a busy start to the new year, exploring the themes of Five Senses, the Human Body and Recycling as part of our monthly curriculum.
Five Senses:
We went into our garden in our separate Pods and listened to different sounds in the outdoors, and we spoke about what we could hear.
Some children heard birds flying in the sky, some heard people talking from a distance, and some could hear children in the Wobbler Room singing.
We also enjoyed a taste test to familiarise ourselves with sour, sweet and bitter tastes.
Human Body:
Making skeleton art was fun, as well as great learning at the same time. We learned about the different bones in our bodies and who they are all joined together to allow us to create movement in our joints.
Recycling:
We learnt new words, such as Compost, Pollution and Recycling, during our recycling theme and we talked about the importance of recycling for our planet.
The children loved making their own recycling bins and disposing correct items into them. They really enjoyed sorting out their items of dispose after snack time, and
putting them in the right bins. And we reminded them to try and actively do the same thing while at home too.
Our Naíscoil children enjoyed balancing and Hide and Seek games, and they loved talking about different jobs. That sparked their interest in talking about what they wanted to be when they are grownups. It was a fun discussion.
Afterschool Room News
Our afterschool children made skeleton art and learned some Spanish words about the human body. We also did a recycling project and painted trees using recycled materials.
We like to keep active and for PE we made obstacle courses that had different levels of difficulty, which was fun and challenging at the same time.
We missed some friends from our Afterschool and Preschool Rooms this month, but we hope to see them all again very soon and play together.
