We’re starting to get ready for Hallowe’en this week at The Children’s House! The children will be decorating the classrooms with lots of spooky stuff, & we’ll have Hallowe’en themed activities on the shelves, e.g. spooning spiders, transferring bats with tongs!! During the week there will be plenty of seasonal arts & crafts such as making spider webs using marbles dipped in white paint on black paper, pipe cleaner spiders, pumpkin art & using bat stencils for spray painting!!

I’m A Little Pumpkin (tune: I’m a Little Teapot)

It’s all about emotions this week at The Children’s House, so we will be focussing on our emotional well-being. At the start of the year, we talk about emotions, how they make us feel, and start to use various props in the classroom such as an emotions wheel (children can turn the arrow on the wheel to point to the image of the emotion that they’re feeling). We will be focussing on relaxation techniques like yoga, and deep breathing, and expression of emotions through using puppets. At the pre-school age, children are usually learning a lot about emotional self-regulation, often needing support to handle their emotions; we as adults can help by doing things such as naming their emotions for them e.g. ‘I can see that you’re feeling upset/ angry/ frustrated by what’s happened’, and coming up with possible solutions e.g. ‘maybe taking some deep breaths would help you to feel better’ / ‘do you think you’d like a hug?’; then at a later stage when the child is familiar with using strategies to calm themselves, ask them to choose their own self-regulation strategy, e.g. ‘what do you think would make you feel better?’

To this end, during the week we will be making some tools to help with emotional regulation – an ocean bottle (a mixture of oil, water, food colouring & glitter) which the children shake gently to mix the liquids, then it is very soothing to watch them settling & separating again. We talk about how our insides feel when we feel sad or upset or angry, & how we can help soothe those feelings; we also encourage children to talk to trusted adults when negative feelings. We will also 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 (using LÁMH)

If you’re happy & you know it clap your hands,
If you’re happy & you know it clap your hands,
If you’re happy & you know it & you really want to show it –
If you’re happy & you know it clap your hands!

If you’re sad & you know it wipe your tears…
If you’re angry & you know it stamp your feet…
If you’re scared & you know it say ‘oh no’…
If you’re happy & you know it shout ‘hooray’!!…

We’ll be talking all about the change of month this week, & the change in weather which brings the leaves falling down & causes some animals to migrate before the winter comes – we’ll be doing beautiful leaf rubbings with the children as well as leaf handprint art, & will be learning all about the long journeys that swallows make from Ireland at this time of year to fly to Africa for the winter!

Thanks to everyone who’s been coming been doing the Zoom observations of the children, we will be organising follow up parent teacher meetings over the next few weeks – we really appreciate you taking the time to do it!

Duilleoga Deasa

Duilleoga deasa deasa (nice nice leaves),
Duilleoga deasa buí (nice yellow leaves),
Duilleoga deasa deasa (nice nice leaves),
Ag damhsa leis an ngaoth (dancing with the wind).