We had a lovely week celebrating Thanksgiving last week, and learning about the importance of being grateful for what we have in our lives, as we all have so much to be thankful for! This week we will be welcoming in December, and start to get psyched up for Christmas…..!! We will be decorating the classrooms, making our own wrapping paper, and making reindeer food!

When Santa got stuck in the Chimney

When Santa got stuck in the chimney,
He began to shout:
‘You girls & boys won’t get any toys,
If you don’t pull me out –
There’s soot on my back, my beard is black,
My nose is tickly too!’
When Santa got stuck in the chimney,
ACHOO, ACHOO, ACHOO!!

Happy Thanksgiving!! We will be learning all about Thanksgiving in The Children’s House this week, as it falls this coming Thursday. It is a wonderful opportunity to focus on things that we are thankful for in our lives, and to encourage the children to be aware of the fact that not everyone in the world has food, or a home, or even a family, and to be grateful for all of those things – without getting too bleak about it!! It is a really positive celebration and we will be talking about the story of the first Thanksgiving, and do some related art and mindfulness activities, then some thinking time on why it is important to be thankful for what we have, and finally we will be doing some music and movement at the end of the week.

Thanksgiving Song (sung to Twinkle, twinkle little star)

Let’s be thankful for this day,
For our friends and for our play,
Let’s be thankful; let’s be glad,
For the food and things we have,
Let’s give thanks for you and me,
And our home and family.

Following on from celebrating the beautiful festival of lights, Divali, last week in The Children’s House, this week we will be starting to talk about Christmas! We will be learning about why we celebrate this date, the story behind Christmas, and most of all the important message of showing kindness, respect and love to everyone on this planet of ours.

Way up High on the Christmas Tree

Way up high on the Christmas tree (point up)
Two little candy canes winked at me (wink)
So I shook that tree as hard as I could (pretend to shake tree)
And down dropped those candy canes (squat down)
Mmm they tasted good!! (rub tummy)

What a fantastic week we had last week in The Children’s House! We learned all about the water cycle which the children LOVED, then we had a visit from a librarian from Naas library on Wednesday, and finally at the end of the week the morning classes did a wonderful lesson in window cleaning!!

We have another busy week ahead now, as we will be learning about Diwali, the festival of lights which originated in India, which falls this year on Wednesday 11th November. This is a wonderful happy event which celebrates the triumph of good over evil, and light over darkness; we will be learning about all the different preparations and rituals that are practised at this time. The children will then be making and decorating little candle holders that they can put night lights in and bring home.

Little Lamps (to tune of London Bridge)

Little lamps are burning bright,
Burning bright, burning bright.
Little lamps are burning bright,
It’s Diwali.

See them lighting up the night,
Up the night, up the night.
See them lighting up the night,
It’s Diwali.

Welcome to November at The Children’s House!! We can’t believe October’s gone by so quickly, but we had a really wonderful month, ending with our short week last week celebrating Hallowe’en; we created witches hats in our cooking, decorated ghosts in arts & crafts, & had a fancy dress party to top it all off, with spooky games and face painting – many thanks to the talented Angela (9.30 parent) for that!!

This week we will be talking about the new month November, and the new season winter! We will be talking about the changes that will be happening with the weather, and specifically looking at the water cycle – the process of evaporation, condensation and precipitation – that happens all around us all the time. We will be relating this process to events that the children see all the time in their own environments – evaporation when water is heated like the steam from a kettle, condensation when that steam/gas cools like the droplets in the bathroom when having a shower/bath, and precipitation as the droplets fall as rain, which the children are very familiar with!

On Wednesday we will also be having a visit from Naas library! One of the librarians will be coming in to talk to us all about what exactly libraries are, the resources they have and the importance of using them, and will be hosting a story time with us – we can’t wait!!

Water Cycle Song (Sang to the tune of She’ll Be Coming around the Mountain):

Water travels in a cycle, yes it does (use pointer finger to make a big circle)
Water travels in a cycle, yes it does (repeat finger circle)
It goes up as evaporation (moves hands up to the sky)
Forms clouds as condensation (make a cloud overhead with arms)
Then comes down as precipitation, yes it does! (sprinkle with fingers while bringing arms down in front of you)