magic #5 dec-apr10
DESCRIPTION
Magic newsletter #5, April 2010TRANSCRIPT
D AY C A R E N U R S E RY
ConnectedDay
CHERUBS
GOOD NEWS FROM
NEVERLANDMUNCHKINS
UNICORNSAND
#5, Dec-April 2010
Texts & PicturesMagic Daycare Nursery
ProducerGarry Irvine
Editor in ChiefTimo Airisto
Art DirectorAnn Marie Irvine
Printed byMagCloud.com
HP Indigo digital press
ConnectedDayMAGAZINE
For
We hope you enjoy this magazine from Magic. It covers a lot of activities that the children have been up over the past few months.
Magic also took a great Nativity Play video and shared it via ConnectedDay service. If you missed it ask Magic to re-share it with you.
The magazine has the usual sections plus others that are guaranteed to bring a smile to your face - particularly the pictures when the children were out enjoying the snow!
The magazine - as usual - illustrates the value behind the ConnectedDay service - that is the power of bringing pictures to parents (where ever they are) and to capture for ever your children’s time in nursery. And don’t forget about the priceless stories your children tell you when they tell you all about their day!
The ConnectedDay Team
PS Remember - we love feedback so please keep it coming!
www.connectedday.com
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Team work in Neverland!
IN THIS ISSUE
4 CHERUBS6 NEVERLAND 8 MUNCHKINS10 UNICORNS12 RABBITS & FUN IN THE SNOW14 PAINTED FACES - TIGERS!
Welcome to you all from Magic...
Well, what a very long, cold and icy winter we had and now at last is Springtime! It is always so uplifting when daylight hours start getting longer and flowers and leaves begin to appear - albeit a bit later this year. Apparently, daffodils came into bloom at least three weeks later than we have come to expect, keeping us all on our toes, wondering when we finally can put our winter clothes away!No late arrival for Rona’s baby though - Cody took her by surprise with his early appearance! Mother and baby are doing very well and we wish the whole family all happiness.There have been a number of changes in the day to day running at Magic. Some staff left and we welcomed new colleagues in their place, as well as staff who have worked with us before. Unicorns and Neverland swapped rooms and we now have a three-room reception in the morning. The changes have worked very well and the children quickly got used to their new routines – so did all the parents and carers!As the weather warms up, the children will be spending more time in the garden making the most of the fresh air and going out for walks to the park and the shops. As well as the trips we will organise later on in the year, we plan to have a “Big Toddle Day” too! We shall, of course, let you know as soon as we can.In the meantime, we wish you all well. I hope that you enjoy this edition of our newsletter – there are some wonderful photos of your children!
See you all soon,
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Christina
CherubsC
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Over the last few months, we have been growing fast! As we get older we become more aware of all the different things around us and know which toys and ac-tivities are our favourites!
December was a busy month with Christmas parties and a special visit from Father Christmas. He was kind and gave us all a pres-ent, which was very nice of him.We had a lovely winter display in our room made up from large snowflakes covered with lots of glitter – it looked really pretty, especially when sunlight made it sparkle.
We like to have lots of sensory play and in January, we got some new toys. We use our sensory basket a lot and love sand and water play but it was exciting to have some different things to play with. We love our sensory disk and the balls and ducks that light up are really good fun.
With the weather warming up, February saw us getting out and about in the garden and going for walks around Whetstone. We are really glad to be getting out into the fresh air – it was SO cold last month!In our room, we made a display for our board using handprints. Our prints were cut out and made into a lovely tree and we think it looks really good.We continued to have our toys and books out and are develop-ing very good fine motor skills as we reach for objects, pick them up and play with them.
In March, we remembered our mummies on Mother’s Day. We love them very much because they do so much for us. We have made some great spotty pictures and for Easter created some special eggs, as well as doing all the other things that we enjoy. We love garden time and have enjoyed going out into the sunshine. Spring is really here and we hope for lots more good weather!
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NeverlandN
Hello from everyone in Neverland. It has been a busy time in our room and we have enjoyed being involved in different activities.In November, we created a wonderful firework display. We did this by flicking our paintbrushes (filled with lots of brightly coloured paint) onto paper and the result was an EXPLOSIVE display of firework effects. We had a lot of fun doing this and got covered in paint whilst being creative!We welcomed the beginning of winter by making a snowman display, using lots of glitter, glue and snowflakes. We made a magical winter wonderland for everyone to see. In fact, it looked so cold and chilly that we decided to wrap our snowman up in a woolly scarf, a hat and gloves.
We think that he was very pleased to have something warm to wear.We enjoyed other activities too, like making butterflies to hang from the ceiling (using our handprints), playing with bubbles, singing and dancing to music.During December, we celebrated Hanukah and Christmas.For Hanukah, we each decorated a Star of David, made cards and read a story about this festival. For Christmas, we made stockings that we hung up ready for Santa to find, as well as cards in the shape of an angel and calendars showing our handprints. This last activity reminded our parents just how small our little hands are.Christmas lunch was exciting – everyone in
the nursery came to join us in our room. It was very busy but we all had lots of fun.On the day of our Christmas tea party, we invited our mums and dads to come and watch us sing Jingle Bells and we had a great time using the shakers, bells and showing off our dancing. After tea, Santa came to visit and he brought a present for each of us!January was a very cold, snowy month but we did enjoy seeing the snow. We took down all our lights, Christmas tree and decorations. The New Year brought other changes as well. We moved things around in our room so our special areas were in different places. We made our role play area into a hairdressing salon, complete with brushes, hairclips and
hair-ties and invited our carers and children to visit ‘Neverland Hair’ for some re-styling! We even had magazines to choose a new hairstyle from!There were other things going on as well, of course, including messy activities such as shaving foam and spaghetti play.During February we were able to get back to the garden after all the snow but it was still pretty cold so we wrapped up warm. We made Valentine’s hearts with shiny materials and had lots of fun sponge painting, sticking and colouring animals and a tractor for our “Farmer Malcolm” display. For our display board, we also created a photo collage of ourselves playing, eating and sleeping. We do like to see photos of everyone.
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December. We love this time of year as it means Christmas is on its way.To get us in the mood we decorated our room, trying (and succeeding!) to make it look like a magical winter wonderland, with snow, icicles and a little robin.Christmas lunch was great fun as the whole nursery went to Neverland’s room for their meal. We had a lovely food cooked by Ling and Hatty. Mmmmmmm yum yum!Before our Christmas party, our mummies and daddies came to listen to us sing lots of Christmas carols. Some of us were a bit shy but that didn’t matter. We had lots of fun ESPECIALLY when Father Christmas came to visit all the children at Magic, bringing with him a sack full of presents. We
each had our photo taken in the grotto.
January arrived, bringing the new year and LOTS of snow so ….. we Munchkins decided to put on our coats, hats and gloves and go outside, braving the cold weather. We are glad that we did because we had so much fun playing in the snow and making a snowman.We welcomed Emily and Ellie to the room and really love having them around.Thinking about ourselves and exploring who we are led us to drawing a map of the world, colouring it in and placing pictures of ourselves on it, showing where each of us comes from. We also had great fun looking into a mirror and then trying to draw our
faces. That was pretty hard to do!
During February, we were involved in lots of messy creations, using different materials. We made some lovely pictures for our display as well as decorating Valentine’s hearts. These we covered with tissue paper and shiny bits and pieces and when they were finished, we gave them to our mummies and daddies. We hope they liked them!
March arrived and with it, the promise of the start of spring.We welcomed Sean to the Munchkins’ team and because of room changes in the nursery, we also welcomed new children to
our group. Another change was the one we made in our role-play corner. We turned it into a paint shop and hopefully, this will contribute to helping us learn our colours.For Mother’s Day, we made cards decorated with finger prints – we got a bit messy putting our fingers in the paint though!Lots of new sensory toys were bought for the nursery and we have really enjoyed exploring all the different materials and textures.Also this month, we had a very special treat. Lucy brought in her pet Lion-haired Rabbit. He is called Snowball and we all got to hold and stroke him. He felt very fluffy!!!!
MunchkinsM
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UnicornsU
Christmas is coming ….We got into the Christmas spirit and decided to put on a nativity play for our mummies and daddies!We read ‘A Christmas story’ and Rona and Hayley gave us each a part to play. We practised really hard, gathered our props and perfected our costumes ….. we’re ready for the spotlight!We were so hungry after our performance and were very pleased to tuck into some delicious party food, whilst we waited for a visit from Father Christmas. We waited for him patiently and when he arrived, Father Christmas told us we had been so good this year that he had brought us all a present1 He was very kind.We were also lucky to have a visit from Arielle’s mummy and grandma. They came to tell us all about Hanukah and how they celebrate it, bringing lots of fun things for us to do. We made a candle hat, lit some candles and read a story about Hanukah. We also played with some dradles. These are like spinning tops and came in lots of shapes and sizes. Some had lights and played music..
We would like to say a big THANK YOU to Arielle’s mummy and grandma for coming in and being so lovely!
So Christmas is over and we’re all back at nursery and ready for more fun! This month we’re going to learn all about people who help us and we are going to start with Opticians. We took a walk to a local Optician. The lady working there was so helpful, letting us all collect some leaflets and donating some glasses and cases for us to use at nursery. We had a good look around the premises and were allowed to take some photos. We made a card to say thank you.We made an Optician’s area in our room and our families donated lots of glasses too. We had a lot of fun trying them all on! We read a story about what Opticians do and why it’s so important to look after our eyes.Next, we learnt all about Doctors. We read lots of books all about what they do and how they make us better. We turned our house into a Doctor’s surgery and used it to make our poorly dollies better. We are very caring Doctors!
Rona’s baby belly is getting bigger! It’s so exciting … sometimes, if her baby is awake she let’s us touch her belly and feel him kick. We have been reading stories about babies and Rona brought in her scan pictures for us to look at. We liked looking at them so much that we decided to make our own scans. We used wax crayons to draw a baby and then we painted over it with black paint. They looked really good!
What’s that smell? ………It’s pancakes!!! Hatty is in the kitchen making us yummy pancakes for our tea. Whilst we were waiting, we painted our own pancakes and sprinkled them with sugar!
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We love rabbits - they are so so soft! Rabbits also like to play in the snow - just like us!
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We love rabbits - they are so so soft! Rabbits also like to play in the snow - just like us!
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Career Options?
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Guess who?
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INVOLVING AND ENGAGINGConnectedDay enables easy communication between parents and childcare providers. The key benefit is private and safe picture & video sharing that allows parents an insight into the day to day activities of their child. This creates a richer child-parent interaction and also a closer childcare centre to parent involvement. All in a fun and very approachable way.
This directly supports both EYFS and Curriculum for Excellence.
SAFE & SECUREThe ConnectedDay service is only available by invitation from your childcare provider.
All pictures are protected and never available on the open Internet. You allow the childcare provider to invite you by giving them your email address & mobile phone number. They can then share a folder of pictures with you. This triggers the service to send you a text to your mobile phone that contains your unique PIN/password that you can
use to access and view the shared pictures. That’s it - just enjoy the view into your child’s day and let your child - in their own words - tell you all about their day; who they played with; their funny moments; what they played; what they had for lunch; who their best friends are...
EASY TO USEConnectedDay is very easy to use: no need to download anything it works with any Internet browser. Just go to www.connectedday.com and sign in!
The child care staff takes pictures & videos of the memorable moments, everyday events or when ever they see the need to capture evidence of a child’s development for their personal diary. Every picture & video clip is saved securely & automatically over the-air to the childcare provider’s private account on the ConnectedDay server. No picture is left on the camera for security reasons.
The pictures are saved using our unique application that works continuously inside the special ConnectedDay enabled digital camera or enhanced camera phone!
Periodically an authorised member of staff accesses the private account to check all the pictures & videos. They can then delete the out of focus and inappropriate pictures, but more importantly he/she has the opportunity to add comments. For example, before sharing Peter’s picture they can add a comment such as “Peter playing in the sandpit”.
Peter’s parents receive a text message alerting them that new pictures or videoscan be seen.
The text also includes a reminder of their unique PIN/password. They can then access the pictures where-ever and when-ever to view & enjoy those memories that could so easily be lost for ever!
Parents can also share the pictures with friends & family (safely) who get a chance to add their own comments such as “He looks good in the sun hat I got him for his birthday.“
Nursery: Peter playing in the sandpit
Dad: He looks good in the sun hat I got him for his birthday!
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The nursery manages the pictures & shares them with parents.