THERE’S A SPRING IN OUR STEP THIS TERM AND WE’VE BEEN BUSY LEARNING ALL ABOUT IT

Meet Our Road Safety Friends

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.

We planted some lovely sunflowers for our mammies and learned all about how plants grow, 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 Aoife and Coras dad, Richard for bringing in some new baby calves for us to see.   We also made some great animals in arts & crafts; you’ll see them in our special books.

SEACHTAIN NA GAEILGE

With one-on-one conversation, dramatic play, and engaging read aloud books, playschool helps promote children's language and literacy development.  

Every year we participate in Seachtain na Gaeilge, it’s a wonderful fun way of connecting with our heritage, learning some Irish words, practicing our Irish dancing and learning about our flag.   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 also made shamrock hats for the parade.    On Thursday and Friday, we all dressed in green and had fun taking part in our St. Patricks Day parades. Everyone walked, sang, and smiled as we waved our flags and sang Irelands Call and our national anthem.

Some of our Irish words you can practice at home are Dia Duit (Hello), Slán (Goodbye), le do thoil (Please) Oscail le do thoil (Open please), Nigh do lámha (Wash your hands).  We sang Rolai Polai suas suas, and Lámh Lámh eile a haon a dó, which has lots of benefits including learning about our cultural heritage, promotes language diversity and fosters our sense of community.

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, table top games and teddy bears.  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 and learning how getting some exercise can help us feel happy, it also helps us develop muscles which aid our posture, balance and promotes emotional regulation and wellbeing. Thank you to all our parents for their contribution, reading our emotion books and talking about their child’s emotions with them. 

CELEBRATIONS

We had lots of celebrations this term, for pancake Tuesday, we made so delicious pancakes, decorating them with lots of healthy fruit and some not so healthy chocolate spread. 

On St Valentines 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 building our fine motor muscles and developing our pre writing skills.

Easter is lots of fun, we are making lots of fun easter arts and crafts. fostering creativity, learning different shapes, developing fine motor skills, and promoting social-emotional growth, all while celebrating the holiday and spring.

we’re looking forward to our Easter party on Thursday and Friday.

SONGS AND STORIES

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.  We love to read stories like “the lazy ladybird”, Dinosaur stories, “a squash and a squeeze”, “the munching caterpillar”, “scary Sid” and lots more.

Singing and reading stories builds our imagination and thinking abilities, develops our vocabulary, oral language, listening and literacy skills. Dancing helps us improve our gross motor skills building stronger muscles and improving overall balance.

WIBBLE WOBBLE BALANCE BIKE PROGRAMME 

We are again lucky to be able to participate in Tipperary Sports Partnerships Wibble Wobble bike programme, this is a great starting point for children’s cycling, learning about road safety and an excellent opportunity to promote active lifestyles at an early age but really, it’s so much fun, we are building our gross muscles, developing balance and thinking skills as we cycle. We are also learning about safety, wearing our helmets and looking out for our friends as we cycle.

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 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.

ROAD SAFETY

Meet Simon, Josie, Charlie, Sara and Sophia, they teach us all about road safety, Simon tells us to hold hands with a grown up, josie teaches us to stop, Sara & Sophia show us how to look and listen and Charlie sets a good example and teaches us to think before we cross the road. Road safety learning in preschool is important for children's development and safety, as it lays the foundation for understanding road rules and behaviours as they grow. We have been out walking in the beautiful spring sunshine, practicing our road safety crossing the road at the zebra crossings.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT, HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE  

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. Enrolment is now open for 2026 preschool year please contact the office 052 7464488