It’s been a pleasure to have had your children in our school over the last year; we’ll hugely miss those who are heading onto primary school, but we’re also excited for them as we know they’re really ready to move on, and are going to have a wonderful time journeying on in their education! And for those who are returning in September, we can’t wait to see you again!! Thank you for all your support and participation in your children’s pre-school year, we’ve loved every minute of having them, and you, in The Children’s House.

We will be re-opening on Thursday 1st September, watch this space for information about our open day at the end of August, and in the meantime have a fantastic summer everyone!!

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

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)