Thanks so much to Garda Dave, who gave up his time on last Friday morning to bring the Garda car down to the GAA pitch where the children had a great time thoroughly investigating his car, his cap, the siren…all the mini Gardai of the future!! This week the morning classes will be continuing on with our Timeline of the Eras project and learning about the Cenozoic Era – the age of the mammals, who replaced reptiles as the most prominent land animals; the children will be making pictures to represent the era. As well as this, we will be talking about how we deal with our worries with the morning classes, in preparation for most of them transitioning to ‘big school’. It’s important that children’s fears are acknowledged, verbalised, and that possible solutions are discussed. We will be making a worry box that we can put our worries into and mentally let go of – some children are more anxious than others, and making an abstract thought into something concrete is very beneficial – these worries can then later be torn up as they are dealt with, which is very satisfying! The afternoon children will be looking at musical instruments and the different noises they make, and both morning and afternoon classes will be doing some yoga this week!

Three Little Birds 

Don’t worry about a thing
Cause every little thing gonna be alright
Singing don’t worry about a thing
Cause every little thing gonna be alright!

Rise up this mornin’
Smiled with the risin’ sun
Three little birds
Pitch by my doorstep
Singin’ sweet songs
Of melodies pure and true
Saying: this is my message to you

Singing don’t worry about a thing
Cause every little thing gonna be alright
Singing don’t worry about a thing
Cause every little thing gonna be alright!

Another wonderful week last week in The Children’s House! The morning classes visited Sallins primary school and we had a great tour with the vice principal where we saw the Junior Infants classrooms, library and aquarium, as well as seeing the children playing outside at snack time, so the children got a real feel for the scale of it all! The afternoon classes had a great time making stop/go signs and loved playing the crossing the road game.

This week it’s all about dinosaurs!! The morning classes will be continuing on with our project from the Big Bang and learning about the Mesozoic Era, when the reptiles ruled the earth and dinosaurs roamed around, the first flying birds evolved and flowering plants grew. The children will be making pictures to represent the era, and we will be doing lots of dinosaur drama with both morning and afternoon classes!

Dinosaurs All Around (tune: If you’re happy & you know it)

There are dinosaurs stomping all around,
There are dinosaurs stomping all around,
They are dinosaurs stomping all around, they are stomping on the ground,
There are dinosaurs stomping all around!

There are dinosaurs flying all around…
There are dinosaurs swimming all around…
They are dinosaurs eating all around…

What a great week we had last week in The Children’s House! After a lovely few days learning about road safety (morning classes) and looking at farm animals (afternoon classes), we had a wonderful trip on Friday with the morning classes to Lullymore Heritage and Discovery Park – we got to play in the outdoors playground, go on a train ride through the bog, see where the fairies live in the forest, and look at all the animals they have there – we even got to pet a very young kid goat! Thanks so much to all the parents who came along to help, it was a really great day, and we couldn’t have asked for better weather!

So this week the morning classes will be studying further the life cycle of the frog (having tadpoles in the school has really intrigued the children as to when they will start growing legs!) while the afternoon children will be learning about road safety. The morning classes will also be inviting their grandparents to visit us in school over the next couple of weeks to spend some time in their class with them, and maybe bring in a photo from when they were children themselves! Also this week we will be bringing the morning classes up to the primary school to visit and do a little tour with the vice principal; following on from this if any questions or worries arise the children can discuss them at school or at home, in order to try and make the transition from preschool to primary school that bit easier.

French Greeting Song

Bonjour mes amis X 3 (hello my friends)
Je m’appelle ____ X 3 (my name is ____ )
Comment t’appelles-tu? X 3 (what is your name?)
Comment allez-vous? X 3 (how are you?)
Ca va bien merci X 3 (fine thank you)

It’s all go this week at The Children’s House! After our short week last week we’ve a lot packed into this week – we’ll be looking at road safety with the morning class in preparation for our school trip to Lullymore Heritage and Discovery Park on Friday, and both morning and afternoon classes will be looking at the animals on the Montessori farm, then doing drama pretending to be those animals by moving like them, and making sounds like them.

Then on Friday we’re off to Lullymore with the 2 morning classes, to look at real live animals such as alpacas, wallabies, pygmy goats, sheep, rabbits, pot-bellied pigs and Falabella miniature horses! We’ll also be going on a train trip through the Bog of Allen, and have a guided tour through the wooded area and fairy village, as well as having a picnic and a play in the outdoor/indoor play area! We’ve gone to Lullymore for several years on our school trip and find it a wonderful place to visit, with so many areas of interest to the children, and really lovely staff.

Old MacDonald

Old MacDonald had a farm, E I E I O,
And on that farm he had a cow, E I E I O,
With a moo moo here, a moo moo there,
Here a moo, there a moo, everywhere a moo moo,
Old MacDonald had a farm, E I E I O!

Old MacDonald had a farm, E I E I O,
And on that farm he had a pig/sheep/horse etc…

It’s hard to believe it’s May already!! At The Children’s House this week we will be welcoming in the month by making our own maypoles from hanging strips of crepe paper from the ceiling, and weaving in and out with them – through this we will also reinforce the concept of left and right.

As well as this, we will be looking at farm animals and what the male, female and young name of that particualr animal is (e.g. bull, cow and calf; ram, ewe and lamb; boar, sow and piglet). At the end of the week we will be doing some drama – a game called ‘The Magic Box’, where we mime passing around a box, one child takes an item out of it and does an action from which the other children can guess what the item is. For example, brushing teeth, putting on shoes, licking an icecream…drama is fantastic for building confidence in young children, and helps develop language and communication skills, among many other benefits as well as being great fun!!

Dance Around The Maypole Song

In and out, in and out,
Weave the ribbons tight,
Round the Maypole we will dance,
To the left and to the right.