Into the New Year at Crawford Childcare
13 Jan, 2014
With Christmas well and truly over we find ourselves well into the New Year. Most of our mums and dads are back to work and so are our little learners at Crawford Childcare. The babies have been learning about farm animals. Staff and babies have been heard quacking, mooing and bleating to tunes like Old MacDonald. Activities have included farm story time, farm jigsaws, small world play and the making of animal masks. The babies and staff have also been jumping around to music to dance off the Christmas chocolate eaten over the holidays. Helicopters seem to have been a popular Santa gift this year.…
With the start of a New Year upon us it is a good time to reflect on the past year and things we would like to improve upon for 2014. New Year’s resolutions are a way of setting ourselves goals and help to motivate us to improve our lives. At Crawford Childcare we like to involve our pre schoolers in this too. We sit down with the children and talk about their accomplishments and goals made over the time they have spent with us. We look back at photographs and learning stories to help us remember some of these. It is a time for us…
September saw the beginning of a new a term at Crawford Childcare. This was an exciting time for both children and parents with mixed emotions involved. For some parents this was the start of their children’s school life. For some children it may have been the first time they were separated from their parents for a significant length of time. Now we are a little over three months into this new term and all children have settled very well and are enjoying their time at Crawford Childcare. These early years are very important. As a parent it is natural to wonder if they are enjoying…
In this week’s blog we are shifting our focus to a piece of Montessori equipment – knobless cylinders. We hope this will help give you an insight to the use of this equipment which is part of our sensory range of Montessori materials. Knobless cylinders are a set of four colours. Each colour is kept in a colour coded box containing 10 cylinders. These correspond to the cylinder blocks 1 to 4, which is another set from our range of sensorial material. The cylinders are handled with the pincer grip and the control of error is visual. The cylinders are used to learn about grading…
There have been some spooky additions to the crèche this week. Windows have been painted with giggling ghouls, wizened witches, plump pumpkins and barmy bats. Boney our resident skeleton is camped out in reception along with his friend Winnie the Witch. Press her hand to hear her spell and cackle. The hallways have been decorated for the build up to Halloween and the babies have been busy making pumpkin masks. Beware -arrivals and collections are taking a little longer than usual as children are stopping, looking, pointing and talking about all they see! In the Montessori room the children have been learning about zoo animals.…
It’s that time of year again when thoughts turn to school. The shops are awash with uniforms, bags, lunchboxes and back to school offers. For those of you with a child due to start with us in Montessori for the first time we wanted to give you a few helpful hints to ease the transition from home to Montessori. Every year thousands of children start pre-school or montessori. Many children find starting in the Montessori exciting and have little trouble with the changes that it brings, while others can find this time stressful. It’s a time of great excitement and new beginnings for the child…
