News

…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!

…Look closer, it’s a frog! We had such a great Adventure Day at the hub in Moville. A big thank you to our hosts Claire, Brian and Seamus for all their help. we had a camp fire, a treasure hunt and loads of fun in the very beautiful setting of the hub, and learned about plants and animals along the way.Of course we weren’t there alone – over 50 people came to Adventure Day and had a wonderful time. This week we also had our end of year presentation.with our end of year DVD and our children receiving their learning portfolios for the year. We want to thank all our families for a wonderful year. If you are leaving us, all the best, and if you are staying with us we look forward to seeing you in September. Have a great summer folks!

New for September:

Little Stars After School Club.

Monday – Friday,

2pm – 6pm

€10 per day

Includes pick up from school and healthy snack (cereal/toast/fruit).

email Aideen to book your place today:

movillepreschool@live.com

On our way back from the park today we met a group who had come all the way from Moville, Iowa to visit our Moville, here in Donegal! Their Moville is named after ours, and we found out more when we came back to pre-school on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moville,_Iowa

We hope that the visitors enjoy their time here 🙂

The big tree has been serving as a lemonade stand, and a very well decorated one at that!

There is a lot going on this week: parents and children, grandparents and aunties and uncles took part in a mindfulness workshop, hosted by the fantastic Breda Friel in St. Eugene’s Hall. We learned from the children to slow down and to be in the moment: to pay attention on purpose.

We are also preparing for Adventure Day in the hub in Moville, where we will have a treasure hunt, a camp fire and sing song, as well as finding out about the plants and animals in the garden – don’t forget to bring wellies!

The cherry tree at the pre-school is showing signs of spring:  our children have been collecting shells and some have been appropriated as jewellery: and a group of children who were out on the shore spotted a pod of dolphins playing in the water. About 8 dolphins were having a fantastic time in Moville on Wednesday afternoon, it was truly beautiful to see.

Little Stars got into the French spirit with a picnic under the trees this week, kindly hosted by one of our parents who helped us to learn some French.  Then we rolled up our sleeves and washed Katie and Donna’s cars – after we had been shopping for sponges, and of course baguettes! The afternoon group visited their new classroom at the national school, and we met one of our busy dads who is the postal worker in Moville. We also have been keeping an eye on the construction happening in the town – very interesting. Adventure Ted even got up the hill to foot turf and to Buncrana on a trip out.  C’est la vie!

We’ve been desiging our garden for next year: we want something to climb on, a place for snails, a lawn mower and a scooter. Meanwhile, a group went to visit their classroom at Scoil Eoghain, where they will be going in September. We went to the shop when we ran out of bananas, where we found 2 sizes of broccoli,  and the whole group used up leftover oranges to see what we could squeeze out of them -not for human consumption ;).  Also we made some lovely cupcakes…

We are very proud to have passed the inspection stage of the Healthy Ireland Award, wish us luck as we submit the rest of our work!

…our escapades continue with:  splashing, afternoon tea, watching our peas shoot up, den building, messing with water, using feathers and chalk, and of course the creation of the AWESOME robot dinosaur. This week we were also visiting by Catriona from Scoil Eoaghain, as part of our preparations for transitioning to national school, and Avril McMonagle, the Donegal County Childcare Committee manager came to visit to see how we are doing. We also went up the town to wave off the cyclists who are going all the way to Cork, along with our families and wider community.

We’ve been running wild and free in the pre-school, what a lot of beauty we have on our doorstep!

We’ve been making paper aeroplanes, and experimenting with them to see if they fly…….and playing with sticks and mud under the tree at our back door… and we had a visitor – Haribo the lamb with a spring in his step!  Families have been at the beach with us, and of course the lamb was brought in by one of our lovely farming families.

We’ve been having plenty of outdoor adventures, getting stuck in!