It’s a new month, and the start of the last one of the school year here at The Children’s House, hard to believe!! 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 important 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 such basic facts like 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 type of things. It is an exciting time for your children and we always focus on the positivity of this step in their journey of learning, even though we don’t look forward to them finishing up with us as we will miss them so much!!

Nursery Rhymes

Little Miss Moffet
Humpty Dumpty
Hickory Dickory Dock
Five Little Ducks
Incy Wincy Spider
Etc….

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 tell us all about themselves when they were little – their favourite games, toys, nursery rhymes etc, maybe show us photos of when they were children – or read a story at circle time, or anything they like at all!!

Instead of 1 particular song/poem we will be doing lots of nursery rhymes as they are so good for language skills, and philosophising – to discuss that the school year is coming near an end, & how the children have all grown older & achieved many things, and try to get them to reflect on how they’ve changed or what they’ve achieved. They’ll do self-portraits during the week, & at the end of the week, the compliments game is where we go around the circle & take turns giving a friend compliments e.g. what does everyone think is the best thing about Siobhan? (!) She’s so kind to her friends, is great at singing, really good at sharing etc….it’s a lovely activity!

Nursery Rhymes

Baa baa black sheep
Dingle dangle scarecrow
Row, row, row your boat
Frere Jacques
Ring a ring a Rosie
Etc….

It’s music week this week at The Children’s House – we will be looking at different musical instruments e.g. drums (percussion), guitars (strings), so if anyone has any 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! We will also be listening to different types of music to introduce the idea of how music can cause us to feel different emotions, and playing games like musical statues – it’s going to be a really fun week!!

The Music Man

Verse: I am the music man, I come from far away,
And I can play (what can you play?)

Chorus: I play piano – pia pia piano, piano, piano, pia pia piano, pia piano.

Verse…Chorus: I play the violin – vio vio violin, violin, violin, vio vio violin, vio violin,
Pia pia piano, piano, piano, pia pia piano, pia pian.

Verse…Chorus: I play the saxphone – saxo saxo saxophone…
Vio vio violin…pia pia piano…

Verse…Chorus: I play the big bass drum – big bass big bass big bass drum…
Saxo saxo saxophone…vio vio violin…pia pia piano…

This week at The Children’s House we are learning about the lifecycle of the frog, following on from the children’s interest in amphibians while we were doing our project of the Timeline of the Eras – which will be proudly brought home very soon! The children will be making their own lifecycles, making green frog smoothies, and practising mindfulness exercises – sitting still as a frog!!

Tiny Tim

I had a little frog,
His name was Tiny Tim,
I put him in the bathtub to see if he could swim.

He drank up all the water,
He ate up all the soap,
And then he BURPED from the bubble in his throat!

It’s school tour week this week at The Children’s House! It’ll be a short week but we’ve got a lot packed in – we’ll be going to Lullymore Heritage and Discovery Park on Wednesday with the morning classes and Friday with the afternoon classes, to look at real live animals such as alpacas, wallabies, pygmy goats, sheep, rabbits, pot-bellied pigs and Falabella miniature horses! We’ll also be going on a train trip through the Bog of Allen, and have a guided tour through the wooded area and fairy village, as well as having a picnic and a play in the outdoor/indoor play area! We’ve gone to Lullymore for many years on our school trip and find it a wonderful place to visit, with so many areas of interest to the children, and really lovely staff.

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 – our school trip to Lullymore next week!

As well as this, we will be doing some mindfulness, which is a great skill to practice and a good habit to get into no matter at what age, and we will also be making tasty pizzas later in the week!!

Old MacDonald

Old MacDonald had a farm, E I E I O,
And on that farm he had a cow, E I E I O,
With a moo moo here, a moo moo there,
Here a moo, there a moo, everywhere a moo moo,
Old MacDonald had a farm, E I E I O!

Old MacDonald had a farm, E I E I O,
And on that farm he had a pig/sheep/horse etc…

We will be closing for Easter holidays on Fri 12th April, reopening on Mon 29th April –

Have a wonderful Easter everyone!!

We look forward to seeing you after the break!

This week in The Children’s House the children 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. All the classes will be making crafts for Easter, and we will be doing Easter cooking during the week, as well as an Easter egg hunt on Friday!

5 Little Easter Eggs (fingerplay)

5 little Easter eggs, lovely colours wore,
Mother ate the blue one, then there were 4.
4 little Easter eggs, 2 and 2 you see,
Daddy ate the red one, then there were 3.
3 little Easter eggs, before I knew,
Sister ate the yellow one, then there were 2.
2 little Easter eggs, oh what fun!
Brother ate the purple one, then there was 1.
1 little Easter egg, see me run,
I ate the last one, then there were none!!

This week the 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 learning about mammals (e.g. that they are warm-blooded (unlike the reptiles), they have hair or fur on their bodies, and the females can provide milk to feed their young) and making pictures to represent the era.

We will also be planting seedpots this week, and discussing what plants need to grow – air, sunlight, water, nutrients/soil – as well as practising some mindfulness at the end of the week!

Flower Garden (tune: Farmer in the Dell)

We all plant our seeds
We all plant our seeds
Hi ho and Cherry O
We all plant our seeds

The rain begins to fall…
The sun begins to shine…
The flowers begin to grow…

This week it’s all about dinosaurs!! The classes will be continuing on with our project from the Paleozoic Era last week and learning about the Mesozoic Era (250 – 60 million years ago), 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 using a die cut machine, and we will be unrolling the Timeline of the Eras on the GAA pitch – weather permitting! – as it’s getting too long to contain within the school! We will also be doing some Mother’s Day arts & crafts, so it’s going to be a creative week in The Children’s House!!

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…