Welcome to the October edition of our newsletter from Links Childcare Seabrook Manor.
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 Seabrook Manor, 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.
We hope you enjoy our newsletter and we look forward to lots more fun learning next month.
Jolita
Jolita Vascenkatie —Crèche Manager
Baby Room News
It’s lovely to welcome our new babies Connor and Ryan. Sadly, we said goodbye to our staff member Laura, we are going to miss her a lot!
We have celebrated different events this month, but the most special day/ week was Halloween, our babies came dress up and they enjoyed so much looking themselves at the mirror and playing. We decorated our classroom with pumpkins. To do this they painted plates with their hands with orange colour, a very funny thing since they put their hands in their mouths and it was an adventure, but they seem so happy when they watch their creations as a decoration. Also, we made footprints with white paint as a ghost, then we glue the ayes and ghost ready!
We were also enjoying farm activities and showing our babies the animals in their picture books. We did lots of reading and made new sounds and words helping them to develop their minds. We did lots of funny animal sounds and tractor noises. We sang a lot too—they love songs and it helps to distract them.
Another event was autumn, so we had messy play with leaves, and pictures of different animals, like spiders, mosquitoes, worms, ladybugs and butterflies.
Another event was about trucks and trains, so we made a train, painting it in different colours that the babies chose to paint them in. They are used to hearing the train every day due to the proximity of the train station.
It has been a really interesting month and one that our babies have proved their improvements in each activity they took part in.
Wobbler Room News
Wobblers 1:
Our wobblers had a lovely and busy month. They loved stamping autumn animals for our autumn tree. We made hedgehogs and we were playing with sand and leaves.
We enjoyed singing songs about the animals and we were reading stories all about the farm.
We made pigs and sheep from the paper plates and we did messy play with porridge. They loved learning about the birds and we did lots of singing and reading books.
We were learning about big and small cars and all kinds of transport. We had a dress up party as well for Halloween and decorated our rooms. To support Temple Street, we had a bake sale and made special Halloween dough too.
Wobblers 2:
Children have shown a big interest in singing and songs actions. So we learned lots of new songs and we learned lots of different actions to go with our songs too.
We were talking about the farm animals, where they live and what sounds they were making. We made lots of art also. Messy play was very messy but very fun too. We made sticky sand and played with it and explored gloop, sticky playdough, glitter and magic sand.
Toddler Room News
Our toddlers had a really fun month, learning lots of things. The loved in particular, our themed events of learning, which included Farm Animals, Autumn, Transport and Halloween.
All About the Farm:
There was vast fascination when we told the children that we would be learning all about milking a cow. We mixed paint and water in a plastic glove and it was so much fun. We made farm animals out of toilet roll holders and decorated them with coloured paper.
Autumn:
We collected leaves out of the garden and painted them into autumn colours. We event created our own hedgehogs with coloured paper and painted some squirrels and bears too.
Transport:
Our children had fun learning all about different types of transport. From cars to trains, planes to hot air balloons! We went on an adventure on our own hot air balloon with our friend and did lots of arts and crafts too. In particular, we loved painting boats and bikes and dipping paint onto the wheels of our cars so we make a patterned effect on our artwork.
Halloween:
What a spooky and fun time we had during our Halloween celebrations in Seabrook Manor with all of our children. We made lots of decorations for our rooms and painted spiders, ghosts and bats. We also had a lovely bake sale and fancy dress day in aid of Temple Street too.
Preschool Room News
This month was a great month in all of our preschool rooms, where we celebrated Halloween, Autumn, Transport and safety, the Farm and Harvest time.
Preschool 1:
With Autumn in full swing the children loved learning about the season and watching the leaves change colour and fall off the trees. We did some lovely leaf paintings and printings in the class. We also made a squirrel mural as the children were very interested in squirrels. One of our grandmothers visited us and read us a story—we loved her version of “The squirrels who squabbled”. Thank you to this grandmother, who came to visit us. We loved it.
In October we celebrated ‘Beep Beep Day’ where the children learnt the safe cross road song’ and learnt all about crossing the road safely. We even made some road signs and practiced walking across the road safely with oncoming cars in the garden of the crèche.
During the last two weeks of October we spent our time making Halloween crafts and decorations. We turned our princess castle that we made before into a haunted castle for the children to play with. We also made a haunted house craft, and the children had lots of fun getting their hands and feet painted as part of more crafts for Halloween. The children also made a pumpkin and a spider craft .The children learnt all about Halloween and why we celebrate it every year and how ‘Trick or Treating’ came about .
For the last week of October the children had a Halloween party on the 31st. They enjoyed lots of games and activities such as ducking for apples, guessing what is inside the box sensory activity and much more!! The children were also able to dress up for their Halloween party which they loved. As part of our Halloween party we raised money for Temple Street Children’s Hospital.
Preschool 2:
To celebrate Links 15th anniversary, we baked cookies with our children and decorated the classroom with lots of lovely homemade birthday posters. We had a lovely day singing and dancing, and face painting too. And we were very excited that Mr Links Bear visited out creche. He brought with him our own preschool classroom bears, who will be sharing some adventures with each of our children throughout the coming months.
For Autumn we did different arts and crafts, which we all loved. We made a nature box and a collage of autumnal art. We also made some Japanese flags and using the bottom of a bottle we made Japanese flowers.
We learned two new songs to go with our Autumn theme – “Five Little Acorns” and “Leaves are Falling”.
For our transport and road safety week, we had a visit from a lovely local lollipop lady who taught us how to cross the road safely. We also spoke about asking our local lollipop ladies for help if we get lost or our parents are not there yet.
We did various arts and crafts for air, land and water transportation and painted traffic lights and learned the traffic lights song.
We made a road, car park and traffic signs from a cardboard box and our children played with them with their toy cars.
For Hibernation we learned about different animals who hibernate, and we did some arts and crafts about it.
Naiscoil Room News
The children in Naiscoil have spent time learning about farm animals after a few children told us they visited the farm and the zoo recently. We spent time categorizing our animals into their groups and each group created a surrounding made out materials in the room for their animals. We had the ocean animals in the water, we created the sea effect by adding blue food colouring and bubbles to create waves for the dolphins and whales to jump over!
Our farm animals enjoyed nibbling on some coloured in shredded paper and walking around the mucky farmyard which we created using brown paint and shaving foam!!
We made pumpkins to go into our farm alongside a nice bed of fallen leaves and twigs for our animals and to ease us into the following topic of Halloween. We made lots of art for decorations including spiders, ghosts, witches but the highlight was when we made gooey slime to feel and play with. We did some monster stomping moves during PE and made delicious cookies to sell for our bake sale.
We loved spending time with our friends all dressed up and with the help of our friends, mammies and daddies. Together we raised money for temple street children’s hospital and learnt how important it is to help those in need.
Afterschool Room News
In the afterschool room the children have been experimenting with meditation and mindfulness. We had a meditation session and whilst there were a few giggles at the start the children really got into it. We are practicing mindfulness by colouring in pictures, listening to gentle music and bringing in books from home to enjoy on a chair or being read to with our friends.
Halloween came upon and we were busy decorating our room.
The children made cool witches from cutting out shapes and piecing them together, they are hanging up in our room for you to see!
We had loads of fun dressing up and partying with our friends, we particularly enjoyed making chocolate apples with sprinkles for our bake sale. They sold fast!!! Halloween camp was lots of fun, as we had our own Olympic games, Masterchef and did lots of Halloween arts and crafts.
