This week in The Children’s House we are celebrating grandparents, and asking if any of the children’s grandparents would like to join us during the week and show us photos of when they were children, or read a story at circle time, or anything they like at all!! We will also be doing some art for Father’s Day, as well as doing the musical instruments and later in the week philosophising about change that is coming for next year – some children are moving to different classrooms within the Montessori, while some children are moving to different schools, so we will be discussing why change happens and how that makes us feel.

Also this week, we are learning some sign language!! We are using Lámh, which is a signing system used in Ireland by people with intellectual disability and communication needs, and one of the children is currently using this system so we thought we’d all learn it together! So we’re signing the song If You’re Happy and You Know It – by the end of the week your children should know how to sign ‘happy’, ‘sad’ or ‘angry’, so just ask them to teach you

If You’re Happy and You Know It

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

If you’re sad and you know it wipe your tears…
(sign for sad: pass hand down over face making sad face)

If you’re angry and you know it stamp your feet…
(sign for angry: draw index finger across forehead making angry face)

If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands…
(sign for happy: 2 thumbs up)

Welcome back from the long weekend, hope you all had a lovely break! It’s only a short week this week but we’re going to pack a lot in – drama, science and cooking! We will be acting out the dramatic poem of the big bad wolf, and making homemade pizzas, and then at the end of the week we’ll be doing an experiment to demonstrate the power of our lungs using straws, cotton balls and marbles – it’s going to be a lot of fun!!

The Big Bad Wolf

I’m a big bad wolf and I look for things to eat –
I don’t like leaves and berries; I only like meat!
I see those little piggies – am I dreaming, or awake?
Those chubby little creatures…
What a dinner they will make!!

Well it’s hard to believe, but this week is the start of June, and our last month of school for this year….how time is flying by!! Thank you so much to all the parents who came with us last week on the school tours to Lullymore – we couldn’t do these trips without you, and it was great to have you there to experience the excitement of it all!!

This week as well as talking about May ending and June starting, we will be discussing what makes us all different as individuals, and the children will be doing self-portraits; they previously did self-portraits in October when we were learning about emotions, so it will be lovely to have the 2 to compare! We will be encouraging the children to think more about others by doing an empathy game – where we describe one of the children by what motivates them or what is important to them, their likes and personality, and the children have to guess who it is – in this way they are seeing each other as more than just another child in the classroom, and looking outside themselves, which is sometimes hard to do at this young age!

1, 2, 3, 4, 5

1, 2, 3, 4, 5 once I caught a fish alive,
6, 7, 8, 9, 10 then I let it go again.
Why did you let it go?
Beacuse it bit my finger so –
Which finger did it bite?
This little finger on my right!

It’s all about the farm this week in The Children’s House! The children will be looking at animals on the Montessori farm, learning the names of baby animals, pretending to be different animals and acting out how they move, sound, etc….and preparing for one of the highlights of the year – the school trip to Lullymore!! During their trip to Lullymore Heritage and Discovery Farm, the children will go on a train trip through the Bog of Allen, visit the pet farm with many different animals, have a guided tour through the wooded area and fairy village, and play in the outdoor/indoor play area as weather dictates, as well as picnicking there, and of course the main event – going on the bus!!! We can guarantee that some children will pass out on the way home from exhaustion brought on by over-excitement from it all!!

Please ensure that your child brings a packed lunch, is wearing weather appropriate clothes…and it looks like you will have to apply sun cream before they go!

We will be discussing all about growing up this week, with the school year moving on swiftly & a lot of the children getting ready to go to primary school next September. With this in mind, we have arranged for the older children to go on a visit to Sallins primary school where we get a little tour of some of the school – we are shown the library, fish tank, the playground full of children at break time, and we get to see one of the junior infants classes and learn vital information such as where the toilets are! Children can often become nervous at the thoughts of transitioning from the safety of preschool, and we find the visit to ‘big school’ really does a lot to reassure the children about this change, and opens up lots of conversations about it. Also, learning seemingly unimportant facts such as the location of the toilets can take the stress away from children about having to ask their teacher in school if they are shy or embarrassed about these sort of things. It is an exciting time for your children and we always focus on the positivity of this step in their journey in learning, even though we are dreading them finishing up with us as we will miss them so much!!

Also this week we will be focussing on being healthy – having just received our Healthy Ireland Smart Start award in recognition of the work we do promoting the children’s health and well-being, physically & emotionally! So we will be talking about how the children are all growing, what makes them special, and we will be making healthy smoothies with spinach and fruit during the week. We will be continuing on with the group project of the children’s own maps, and also their All About Me books.

I Am Special

I am special, I am me (point to self proudly)

I have two hands and (raise hands)

two eyes to see (point to eyes)

A nose to smell (point to nose and sniff)

and my ears hear well. (cup ears)

A mouth to talk (mimic talking)

and two legs to walk. (walk in place)

But that’s not all because you see,

I am SPECIAL, I am ME! (point to self proudly with both thumbs)

I am special as I can be because no one looks or acts like me.

I am one person, myself, me and that’s the way that it should be

This week at The Children’s House we will be studying music; we will start by looking at examples of how music is written, and then listening to different types of music,  introducing the idea of how music can cause us to feel different emotions. During the week we will be trying out different musical instruments e.g. drums (percussion), guitars (strings) – so if anyone has any brass or woodwind instruments please feel free to bring them in to show us!! We are also inviting family members in all this week to play instruments with us, sing songs or nursery rhymes, or anything musical at all!

Later in the week the children can bring in recyclables to make instruments out of e.g. plastic bottles, tubs, Pringles tubes…we’ll be using our imaginations! Finally at the end of the week we’ll be philosophising about why certain pieces of music can make us feel happy, sad, calm etc. It’s going to be a really fun week!!

The Dingle Dangle Scarecrow

When all the cows were sleeping
And the sun had gone to bed,
Up jumped the scarecrow
And this is what he said:

Refrain
I’m a dingle dangle scarecrow
With a flippy floppy hat!
I can shake my arms like this,
I can shake my legs like that!

When the cows were in the meadow
And the pigeons in the loft,
Up jumped the scarecrow
And whispered very soft: Refrain

When all the hens were roosting
And the moon behind a cloud,
Up jumped the scarecrow
And shouted very loud: Refrain

In our short week this week we will be celebrating the start of May and of summer on Wednesday by dancing around a home-made Maypole! Then the children will be planting tomatoes and runner beans, and we will be talking how we can grow and produce our own food!

Five Fat Peas

Five fat peas in a pea pod pressed (hold hand in a fist) 
One grew, two grew, so did all the rest (put thumb and fingers up one by one) 
They grew and grew and they did not stop (raise hands in the air very slowly) , 
Until one day when the pod went POP! ( clap hands together)

We’re so happy to be back after the Easter break with your wonderful children, and hope you all had a great Easter! This week we’ll be settling back into the school routine and learning all about Road Safety – a very relevant topic, as developing road safety skills from an early age is hugely important, and will stand to the children as they progress through life. We have already been building a good foundation in road safety awareness throughout the year with our trips to the GAA field, nature walks and spring cleaning walk where the children all wore their hi vis jackets and walked carefully in pairs, looking each way every time before crossing the street – this is a vital habit to encourage and practice with young children. As part of the Road Safety week the children will be doing some related crafts and drama, as well as learning a road safety song.

Stop, Look and Listen (tune of 3 Blind Mice)

Stop, look and listen, stop, look and listen,
Before you cross the road, before you cross the road.
You use your eyes and you use your ears,
And if no traffic at all appears,
Then you cross the road…
Holding an adult’s hand!