Links Childcare St Olaves – Childcare Provider
Happy new year to all our parents and children and welcome to our first newsletter of 2020.
It was lovely to see all the children coming back after their Christmas break all refreshed and happy. Our older children were very excited to tell us all about their lovely festive holiday break with their family and friends, and all the lovely gifts they received.
Our new year has started with a jam packed curriculum, full of learning and fun. We enjoyed lots of activities exploring our five senses, and learned about the impacts of pollution and the importance of recycling.
We also celebrated Chinese New Year too and made some lovely arts and crafts for this festive event.
Here is a breakdown of what we got up it, and some photos too.
As of February, our newsletters will be available and distributed to parents every two months. So the next newsletter for St Olaves will be the February edition, then April, and so on. Thank you and we look forward to continuing to share all our news and stories with you through our newsletters.
In the meantime, we hope you enjoy this read, and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Instagram, (links below).
Many thanks,
Sarah
Sarah Bell —Crèche Manager
Baby Room News
Our babies have loved exploring their sensory play with their fingers and toes. We introduced different textures, such as feathers, paint and soft toys and they loved exploring the different feelings of the items.
We love hugs, and we love hugging our teddy bears and playing with them. Although January was cold, it was also crisp, fresh and sunny, so we wrapped up warm and enjoyed lots of outdoor fun in the fresh air.
We may be small, but we still enjoy our art and crafts attempts. For all of our events that we celebrated this month, including Chinese New Year and Crazy Hat Day, we did some arts and crafts to mark these days.
Wobbler Room News
Our wobbler’s had fun learning all about the three wise men, as we marked the day of the Three Kings. We made crowns and special decorations for our room. We also made our craziest hats for Crazy Hat Day. During Chinese New Year we marked this by making Chinese arts and crafts and learned how to say hello in Chinese. For Astronaut Day, we loved making a planet and stars and dressed like spacemen.
This month we also learned all about our fingers and toes and did lots of finger and foot painting because we love getting messy.
We learned a little about the circus and made clowns and we also talked about traffic lights and made some for our room to play with.
Toddler Room News
Our toddlers had a busy month of fun and learning. Some events we enjoyed included Three Kings, Astronaut Day, Chinese New Year and Crazy Hat Day. We learned new nursery rhymes and did some arts and crafts related to these songs to help us remember them too. For “Incy Wincy Spider”, we made our own spider pictures and enjoyed colouring them with paint.
The traditional Spanish celebration of the Three Kings was marked at the start of the month, as some of our Educarers are from Spain and they helped us make hats to mark this day.
We also learned about our pets, siblings and home life.
Preschool Room News
Some events we enjoyed in Preschool included:
* Three Kings Day
* Crazy Hat Day
* Chinese New Year
* Astronaut Day
January has been a month super busy.
All our pre-school children were very busy learning about different things such as recycling, pollution, the human body, the human skeleton, and our five senses. Exploring these topics provided the children with the opportunity to explore and develop personal skills such as counting, identifying, problem solving skills and decision-making skills. Also, we had some great events where parents were given the opportunities to participate too.
Our 5 Senses curriculum for this month provoked on us a lot of curiosity in different senses. We have enjoyed spending time in exploring with children, to see all around us, appreciating all the small details. From listening carefully in the garden to the different sounds around us by closing our eyes, tasting different foods with blindfolded eyes, to smelling different kinds of things and also touching a huge variety of materials. All of these activities resulted in lots of fun learning. Our 5 senses board helps us a lot to get to know what we can feel with the different senses.
Recycling Week was so informative and interesting, and we learned how to recycle and separate the rubbish in the right bin containers. We made loads of art and crafts with recycling materials and we learned about the effects that pollution has on our environment. We painted containers to make special bins for the room and glued pictures of items of food / rubbish into the correct bins.
We also celebrated the festival of the Three Kings and Chinese New Year, where we did lots of arts and crafts to mark the year of the Rat. For Astronauts Day we made a big moon and did some role play, pretending to be in outer space.
To mark the start of the year, we spoke about our wishes for the year ahead. Each child drew a picture of what they wishes to have happen in 2020. Each was unique and special to each child, with some wishing for a play date with their friend, a trip to the zoo with dad, or a new school bag for them they start school in September.
Afterschool Room News
Our after school children settled in well after the festive break. They enjoyed seeing their friends again in crèche. The routine of getting back into the swing of things really suit some children, with some even enjoying getting homework again!
After homework club, they also enjoyed lots of fun learning too through play. They also talked about their wishes for 2020 and enjoyed learning all about their five senses.
For recycling and pollution, they made their own recycling bins and talked about the correct items to put into which bins. We hope they have been practicing a lot at home too.
