Welcome to the last week of the school year!!! We’ve had such a wonderful year with your fantastic children – thank you all so much firstly for entrusting us with your children, it’s been a real privilege to facilitate them in their learning, and secondly thank you for all your ongoing participation and support in that learning, and for all the input you’ve given to us in the school! We’ve never had so many visits from family members (parents, grandparents & siblings), or so much participation in things such as paper making, rugby/football training, musical instruments, Garda & car visit, and last week our morning classes’ sports day – all organised with and by parents! We hope that this will continue to be a growing theme during the coming years in The Children’s House, as it has added hugely to all of our experiences this year.

So onto this short week – the morning classes will be having their pyjama day in aid of the Jack & Jill Foundation on Wednesday 29th, and a party to finish up the year with, while the afternoon classes will be having their sports day, and also partying!!

Please note that the classes this week will be as follows:

9.00 am class: Mon 27th, Wed 29th & Thurs 30th June (last class)

9.30 am class: Mon 27th, Tues 28th & Wed 29th June (last class)

12.45 pm class: Mon 27th & Tues 28th June (last class)

Five Little Ladybirds

Five little ladybirds sitting in a tree –
The first one said ‘I’m glad I’m me’
The second one said ‘I feel great too!’
The third one said ‘How about you?’
The fourth one said ‘It’s time to fly away’
The fifth one said ‘We’ll talk another day!’

Onto the last full week of the classes 2015-16 at The Children’s House, hard to believe…but we’re packing lots into it!! This week both the morning and afternoon classes will be having a teddy bears picnic and a sports day, so we’ll be having a lot of fun! The morning classes will also be making worry dolls – very small and colourful dolls traditionally made in Guatemala, which the child can tell their worries to and put under their pillow before going to sleep, and according to folklore, the doll worries instead of the child who can then sleep well and wake up with their worries gone! While the child is making their worry doll we always emphasise that they should always also tell their parents or teacher if they have any worries.

Teddy Bears Picnic

If you go down to the woods today
You’re sure of a big surprise
If you go down to the woods today
You’d better go in disguise!

For all the bears there ever there was
Will gather there for certain because
Today’s the day the Teddy Bears have their picnic!

This week in The Children’s House the morning classes will be learning about the last part of their Timeline of the Eras project – the Neozoic Era, age of ‘new life’ – the humans! We will be discovering all about the first people that inhabited the earth, and discussing things like how they used stone and bone to make tools, and how their lives changed when they discovered how to make fire. Both morning and afternoon classes will be making crafts for Father’s Day, and will be doing puppet shows!

Giving Thanks

First we give thanks for the food we are given,
Then we give thanks for the houses we live in.
And we give thanks for the sun up above,
But mostly we give thanks for the people we love!

Welcome back after the long weekend, we hope you all enjoyed the beautiful sunshine! We’re going to be all about the fruit in this short week at school!! We’ll be learning a French song about fruit (thanks to Malaika’s mum Valentina for the link – www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ03KjwiIVM), we’ll be making healthy fruit smoothies, and finally we’ll have an activity with fruit and vegetable mystery bags – seeing if the children can identify a fruit/vegetable by using their sense of touch alone. We can then extend this exercise to use blindfolds and encourage the children to use their sense of smell to identify the fruit/vegetables. We’ll also be making playdough, having more grandparent visits and celebrating more birthdays, so another fun week ahead!!

Note: Any parent who would like to come in to spend the morning with us, do an activity, have a parent-teacher meeting – or all of the above! – please let us know as we’re pencilling people in over the next few weeks before we finish up on June 29th.

J’aime les fruits

J’aime les fruits                                I like fruit
J’aime les bananes                      I like bananas
J’aime les fruits                                I like fruit
Et les pommes aussi                          And apples too

J’aime les fruits                                I like fruit
J’aime les oranges                            I like oranges
J’aime les fruits                                I like fruit
Et les poires aussi                             And pears too

J’aime les bananes                           I like bananas
Les jolies bananes                             Lovely bananas
Et j’aime les pommes                       And I like apples
Et les pommes aussi                          And apples too

J’aime les oranges                             I like oranges
Les jolies oranges                               Nice oranges
Et j’aime les poires                            And I like pears
Et les poires aussi                                And pears too