And we’ve been busy learning all about it
Our Aistear Curriculum
We have had another great term here at Ardfinnan Playschool and are delighted the
weather is getting better each day, and we are outside more and more. We had our first picnic a few weeks ago, the first of many as we watch our seasons change from winter to spring. Our garden is looking great we have been out weeding and setting new flowers. We learnt all about how plants grow, did you know that it takes 4 conditions for plants to grow
1) seeds
2) soil
3) water
4) sunshine,
We hope all our mammies liked their sunflower and cards for Mother’s Day.
We are looking at the farm and learning all about what happens on a farm during spring time, the baby animals are born, the farmer is setting crops for our food and lots more. Learning about the farm will help us expand our awareness of the world around us and get familiar with the other living creatures on the planet. Thanks to Fiadh’s mam Marian for bringing in some new baby calves for us to play with. We also made some great animals in arts & crafts; you’ll see them in our special books.
Emotional Learning
This term we focused our learning on our emotions, reading books that help us understand why we feel the way we do, we explored different emotions using puppets and made our own puppet theatre. Did you know developing strong social and emotional skills can help children feel confident with building relationships, taking initiative to get their needs met, expressing how they feel in safe ways and asking for help when they need it. It also promotes positive social and emotional development and provides an important foundation for lifelong learning and development, including mental health. We’ve also been looking after our bodies by getting some exercise, practicing yoga helps us develop muscles which aid our posture, balance and promotes emotional regulation and wellbeing.
Edwina from Ready Steady Jump is calling to our morning class for a few sessions we are really enjoying her visit, the last time we visited the jungle with her, playing drums, dancing and singing.
Space Travellers
We had a wonderful time exploring outer space, looking at the planets that make up
our galaxy, what it’s like to be an astronaut and what it’s like on the moon. Learning about and creating our own moon, stars and planets helped build our fine motor skills, literacy, math, science, gross motor skills, and more but really, we were just having fun
Seachtain na Gaeilge
With one-on-one conversation, dramatic play, and engaging read aloud books, playschool helps promote children's language and literacy development.
We are always learning and the children teach us so much, we have learnt some Lámh signs, some Swedish some Russian, some Polish and some Irish.
Thanks to Alexandra’s mam Vira for calling to read us some stories in Russian and to chat with us about her country Ukraine.
Every year we participate in Seachtain na Gaeilge, the children really embraced the theme of ‘Ireland’ and engaged in some great activities on the run up to our St Patricks Day parade. We discussed the Irish flag and created our own flags. We also made shamrock hats for the parade. On Thursday and Friday, we all dressed in green and had fun taking part in our St. Patrick's Day parades. Everyone walked, sang, and smiled as we waved our flags and sang Ireland's Call and our national anthem
Celebrations
We had lots of celebrations this term, for pancake Tuesday Edel made us some delicious pancakes and we choose what toppings we wanted on them, we wish it was pancake Tuesday everyday.
On St Valentine's Day we celebrated Love and the importance of being loving, and kind to people, it teaches us how to be caring to others and a good friend. We also had great fun decorating cards for our families and making potions in the tuff tray, rolling and cutting love hearts in play dough, cutting and gluing and lots more.
Easter is lots of fun, we are making lots of fun easter arts and crafts. Jenn made cupcakes with us and we got to decorate them, we’re looking forward to our Easter party on Thursday and Friday. We read stories of bunnies and we especially love dancing to “Hop little bunny hop hop hop” “make a circle”, “the silly song” “the floor is lava” to name but a few.
A big thank you to Eve’s dad Michael who called to sing some songs with us and play the guitar. What a great time we had singing “old MacDonald had a farm” “baby shark” and even some Thin Lizzy. Some of our children loved strumming the guitar and hopefully we inspired some future musicians to take up the guitar.
Oral Health
Wow the children were so good at brushing their teeth every day at playschool, we
hope they’re as good at home.
Our oral health theme concentrates our learning on the benefits of why we look after our teeth, it emphasises the essential role of brushing our teeth every morning and every night while also eating healthy food and drink to keep our teeth shining. As part of our learning, we looked at how teeth grow and how we will lose our baby teeth to grow bigger teeth, the role of the different teeth and how to keep our gums healthy. We read books sang a great tooth brushing song and made lots of arts and crafts based on teeth.
Don’t forget to check out our Síolta book on the window to see what we’ve been up to; it has some great pictures of our curriculum in action.
Our website, ardfinnanplayschool.com has lots of information about our playschool
Our graduation for our morning children is on 7th June. Our open night for children starting September 2024 is on 18th April, please contact the office if you need any information regarding enrolment
Enrolment is now taking place for September 2025 & 2026
Wellbeing, Identity & Belonging, Communications, Exploring & Thinking
= Competent & Confident Learners