Halloween has crept up fast, and this week at The Children’s House we will be making everything as Halloweeny as possible!! The children will be doing pumpkin carving, spider web art, learning about the parts of a pumpkin, making pumpkin soup, & at the end of the week having a Halloween party & lots of fun games!!

Don’t forget that your child can come into school dressed up on Friday, & have a great midterm break – Happy Halloween everyone, hope you all have a great & spooky time!!!

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

It’s all things gardening-related this week at The Children’s House! The children will be learning all about the life cycle of plants, as well as looking at our earth & the 3 elements of land, air & water, & classifying pictures under those 3 categories; then at the end of the week they will be planting their own bulbs – bring on the green fingers!!

This week we will be starting our group project, as well as 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 focussing on relaxation techniques like yoga, and deep breathing, expression of emotions through using puppets, and 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.

Speaking of explosions (!!) we will be beginning our group project learning about the universe, so we will be talking about the Big Bang and doing an experiment to demonstrate how it happened almost 14 million years ago – be warned, there will be lots of glitter involved so be prepared for sparkly children!!

If You’re Happy & You Know It (with Lámh signs)

It’s friendship week at The Children’s House!! We’re going to be talking all about what makes a good friend – we even have a recipe!!! A pinch of happiness, 1 handful of kindness, 2 spoonfuls of gentleness, 1 litre of sharing, a tablespoon of helpfulness, 50g of smiles, a sprinkling of cheerfulness, & 100g of love – mix all the ingredients together & then you will have a perfect friend!!

The children will be doing baking with their friends, making stewed apple, and later in the week making a Friendship Tree in the classroom with their handprints. As well as this they will be having great fun playing ‘Duck, duck, goose’ outdoors in the garden – a lovely week ahead for all our little friends!

Hi everyone, this week is Fire Safety week at The Children’s House!! The children are going to learn all about what we would do if there was ever a fire, and we will have the first of our monthly fire drills – this is a really important thing to do in order to try & take as much fear as possible out of the idea of there ever being a fire. When the fire drill is practised regularly then it becames a routine, & the children automatically know when they hear the fire alarm that they stop playing, exit the building & line up to get their names called.

We will be making firefighter hats & doing fun activities like pretending to be firefighters & putting out a pretend fire in the garden!

It’s all about Autumn this week at The Children’s House! The children are settling really well & getting used to their classes & routines, so this week we thought we’d do some fun art & science activities relating to Autumn. There will be an Autumn construction site sensory bin (located where the sand pit normally is!!), we will be doing a dancing corn Autumn science experiment – using dried corn kernels, baking soda & white vinegar, and at the end of the week the children will be doing leaf painting, always a really fun activity! Please encourage your children to bring in things for the nature table in their classrooms, and any leaves collected can be used for their paintings. The children will also be working on their birthday displays in the classroom, so a busy week ahead!!

Autumn Winds

Autumn winds begin to blow,
Coloured leaves fall fast and slow.
Whirling, twirling all around,
Till at last they reach the ground.

A huuuuuuge welcome back to the classes of 2021/22!! We’re so happy to be back with you all, & are settling into the weekly routine already! Last week we focused on introducing the children to their teachers, each other, & their preschool environment – we did activities like carrying a chair, washing our hands & making the classroom rules, as well as just getting used to the daily routine in the classroom. This week, we are talking about our families, & linking them to school by putting the family photos up on the family tree on the wall. The children will also be asked to think about how they are all different from each other, & doing self-portraits of themselves!!

Circle Time Song

Hello everyone and how are you today?
We’ve come to our circle time to sing and laugh and play!
And when we’re up we’re up, and when we’re down we’re down,
And when we’re only halfway up we’re neither up nor down.
So roll your hands so slowly, and roll your hands so fast –
Give your hands a clap clap clap,
And place them on your lap lap lap!

Families

Some families are big                    (arms out wide)
Some families are small                (arms in close)
But I love my family                       (point at self)
Best of all!!                                       (throw arms up in air!)

We are SO delighted that our Big Toddle held on Friday 25th June raised the fantastic amount of €924.70 for Barnardos Ireland!!!

Thank you all for your wonderful generosity, this will really make a difference to some children & their families who are in vulnerable circumstances – it was the perfect way to end our school year