Author Archives: Little Stars

…we’re all feeling the changes of spring here at Little Stars. The tadpoles are growing fast, and the blossom on the trees floats down on us on our time outside. This week we have been out and about, with storytelling at the local library. Adventure Ted has been to the coast guard and to visit a fairy house, and all of us enjoyed a family day to celebrate Easter at Moville Garden Centre, where we had art with local artist Sinead Smyth, music and entertainment from local superstar Patrick McCartney, games and songs with our music teacher Siobhan Shiels, face painting by Ruth McCartney and planting seedlings with John, owner of Moville garden centre and one of our Little Stars parents. A big thank you to all involved!

We have engaged in large construction of periscopes and wind socks. Following the children’s lead, we are extending our vocabulary, understanding of height and capacity concepts and learning about the natural world.
We enjoyed eating round and crescent food and spinning at the Space disco! Welcome to Laura and Niamh who have joined us on work experience. We used papier mache to make planets:

There has been a whole lot of activity since we returned to pre-school. Some of the highlights include one of our fisherman dads bringing in a big lobster for us to see, along with astronomy work using telescopes made from paper. Our artist in residence (age 4) has been experimenting with painting techniques, with some wonderful results…

The big Christmas tree is up in the Square. We found some fallen branches we used as paint brushes to make a snow forest.

We have been leaning Irish with Alannah, who had such a good time with us she is going to come back 🙂

Just to remind everyone Little Stars will close for Christmas on Thursday 22nd December at 11am and will re-open on Monday 9th January 2017!

Our new theme is Landmarks, inspired by our trips away and search for treasure. We are exploring Moville and each choosing a place special to us to go to. So far; our town’s features were studied on the map, the secret tree den and farm shop have had an interactive visit and we choose signs to follow.

We identified, compared and created flags to put on our community map.

‘‘We go here with my Granny.”

In other news, our fancy dress Halloween fundraiser raised €581.50 for our garden project. A big thank you to everyone!

A group of us went to the mechanic this week, and got up close to a real car engine. The group were able to see the workings of the mechanic’s garage, and to ask lots of questions about engines and cars.

The children have also noticed this street light, which has dressed itself up as a tree! on our walks we also met Paddy, who showed us the remote control for his wheelchair –  it’s electronic and you can use the remote to make the chair do different things.

Doesn’t this homemade paint look great? It does the job as well, having been tried and tested by the pre-schoolers – we won’t be buying paint any longer… If you want to have a go yourself, here’s what you need:

1 cup flour

1 cup salt

1 cup water

Food colouring: mix it all together and put in an empty squeezy bottle, we used an old ketchup bottle.

A big congratulations to Little Stars Early Years Practitioner Kate, who graduated this month form NUI Galway in Early Childhood Studies and Practice. Katie has been travelling up and down to Galway, fitting her studies and assignments in and around working full time, and we are very proud of her achievement. Fantastic Katie, well done!