Happy Halloween everyone!! We’re doing all things spooky this week at The Children’s House!! The children will be enjoying pumpkin carving, learning about parts of the pumpkin & making sensory bags from the pulp – nice & messy!!! Later in the week we will be doing pumpkin hammering, q-tip painting, and at the end of the week we will be having our Halloween party, so the children are welcome to come in dressed up as scary as they like!!

5 Little Pumpkins

Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate,                                       (hold up 5 fingers)
The 1^st one said “Oh my, it’s getting late!”                               (put hands to cheeks)
The 2^nd one said “There are witches in the air,”                     (flutter fingers above head)
The 3^rd one said “but we don’t care!”                                        (shake head)
The 4^th one said “Let’s run and run and run.”                         (mime running with arms)

The 5^th one said “I’m ready for some fun!”                               (thumbs up)
Then ‘Oooo’ went the wind, and out went the lights…           (clap hands)
And the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight!                      (roll arms)

This week at The Children’s House we will be focussing on our emotions for the week! Sometimes young children can find it hard to express how they are feeling, and naming and discussing those feelings, and how it is appropriate to deal with them, can be very helpful to them. For this reason, we will firstly be looking at different emotions (e.g. happy, sad, angry, lonely, loved, jealous), recognising them in ourselves and talking about what we do when we feel like that. We will be practising relaxation techniques like yoga and deep breathing, expressing emotions through making & using emotion masks, and discussing appropriate vs inappropriate ways of expressing emotions – emotional regulation is a huge thing for young children to learn, so we try to support them in this in preschool as much as we can.

During the week we will be making a worry box with each of the classes – this is a box that we decorate together, and if any of the children are worried about something, we write it down on a piece of paper and put it into the box until the child decides that they’re not worried about it anymore, whereupon they can tear it up and put it in the recycling bin! This gives a very real representation to the children that worries are temporary things, which come and go, so it can help to put anxieties they may have to rest.

If You’re Happy & You Know It

The children are going to be doing lots about gardening this week, and we will be discussing what we can grow in our gardens – whether they are enormous, or as small as a window box! – as well as making stewed apple later in the week, and doing a frozen flowers sensory tray, and contact flower designing – a very creative week ahead!!

As well as this, we will be doing our monthly fire drill, so the children get used to it & are nice & calm & know what to do if the alarm goes off at any stage.

The Farmer Plants the Seed

It’s all about road safety this week at The Children’s House, so we will be doing many safety activities during the week, such as practising crossing the road safely (stop look & listen), doing a traffic light game, a car wash, learning about different road signs as well as various associated arts & crafts activities. Teaching children about road safety from a young age is very important – especially living in places with lots of commuting traffic such as Sallins or Naas – so developing habits such as wearing high vis jackets, holding hands crossing the road, and remembering to stop look & listen when crossing are something we can help to reinforce from preschool age.