February News from Ms. Olson’s Junior Infants!

We’ve had a very busy month in Junior Infants as we had many sick patients in our Doctor’s Surgery Home Corner! We enjoyed signing in at reception and reading books in the waiting room whilst we waited for our appointment with the Doctor and the nurse. We even brought our babies to the doctors for their check-ups and injections. We enjoyed constructing hospitals using Lego, Kapla Sticks and Sticklebricks. We did some cut and stick activities where we had to label the parts of our bodies and create a skeleton as part of a group. Aistear is definitely our favourite part of the day!

In English we continued on with our Jolly Phonics, tricky words and silly sentences however, we have progressed so well that we have started getting class readers each night for homework! Our buddies from Fifth Class come down to us every morning to do paired reading with us. We read our reader to our buddy and they ask us comprehension questions about the books and pictures. We really enjoy it! We completed our ‘Write a Book’ entitled ‘Cheeko the Cheeky Penguin’ and sent it off to be judged by another school!

In Gaeilge we continued on with ‘Caitheamh Aimsire’ (Hobbies) and we started a new topic ‘An Aimsir’ (The Weather). An Aimsir was very apt this month with all the storms we experienced so we had loads to talk about ‘as Gaeilge’. We are getting very good at chatting and answering simple questions ‘as Gaeilge’ especially ‘Cén saghas lae é atá an inniú?’ (What kind of day is it today?) In Maths, we continued on with our partitioning and combining of five and we moved on to the story of four – 0 and 4; 4 and 0; 1 and 3; 3 and 1; 2 and 2.

In S.E.S.E, we learned about the work of people in the doctor’s surgery and about our bodies. In Art we printed some lovely owl pictures in response to the story ‘Owl Babies’ by Martin Waddell. We used a clothes peg and a pom pom to print them with paint so they looked nice and fluffy. We also made lovely ‘I love you to the Moon and Back’ Valentine’s Day cards for our parents. Finally we made lovely x-ray hand pictures – we drew around our arms, coloured them in using chalk and stuck cotton buds to them to make them look like bones.

It was our turn to perform at Assembly again this month. We performed a poem and two songs, one ‘as Gaeilge’. We performed an extract from ‘Sick’ by Shel Silverstein; we sang ‘Miss Polly had a Dolly’ and ‘Teidí Beag Aláinn’. Everyone enjoyed our performance and were very impressed with our poem as it was very long! Finally we had a very special treat this month as we had pancakes in school on Shrove Tuesday. We learned how to make pancakes and sequenced the recipe.

Thanks for reading our blog, we hope you enjoyed it!

Category: Junior Infants, Literacy, Numeracy, Gaeilge, Aistear, Art | Comments Off

March 8 2020

The Polar Regions in Ms. Olson’s Junior Infants!

In January, we learned all about the Polar Regions in Junior Infants. In Aistear we had lots of fun playing in both the Arctic and Antarctica home corner. We were polar explorers searching for different animals, we had to set up camp in the freezing climates and build igloos. It was lots of fun. We had fun playing with small world based in the Polar Regions and we did lots of cut and stick activities to learn about penguins and polar bears. We learned about floating and sinking and tested out different objects to see whether they floated or sank. We also worked as a group to create an Antarctica poster. We used twistables, pencils and cotton wool to create our posters and stuck pictures of different animals native to Antarctica on them.

In English we continued to learn our Jolly Phonics and we enjoyed playing phonics games. We have also been learning our tricky words and making silly sentences with them, which we read each day. We enjoyed engaging with the books – ‘The Emperor’s Egg’ by Martin Jenkins and ‘Lost and Found’ by Oliver Jeffers, both books being about penguins. We found ‘The Emperor’s Egg’ to be very informative and we learned many facts about penguins. We also started writing a book for the ‘Write a Book’ competition. We decided to write our story about a lost penguin. We all contributed a sentence to the story and then wrote it out in our neatest handwriting and drew a lovely picture to go with it.

In Gaeilge we enjoyed learning about ‘An Scoil’ (School) and ‘Caitheamh Aimsire’ (Hobbies). We liked learning about ‘Caitheamh Aimsire’ as we learned new vocabulary and sang songs and rhymes relating to toys! Toys were definitely on our minds in January straight after Christmas! In Maths we took a giant leap forward as we started learning how to partition and combine within five! We have been learning our number stories for all the ways we can make five: 0 and 5; 5 and 0; 1 and 4; 4 and 1; 2 and 3; 3; and 2. We also enjoyed learning about time and weight. We learned the days of the week; we did lots of sequencing activities, timed games, sorting items according to weight and did some heavier / lighter hunts and challenges.

In S.E.S.E, we revisited the theme of toys and we worked together in groups to design and make a toy which we then presented to the class. We learned all about Antarctica and the Arctic – we especially liked learning about penguins and polar bears. We learned about the Irish explorer, Tom Crean, who almost made it to the South Pole. We learned the names of the seven continents and we had such fun singing the continents song on YouTube.

In Art we made beautiful penguin and polar bear collage pictures. In Music, we sang some lovely songs – our favourite being ‘Boa Constrictor’ which we sang for our grandparents on Grandparents’ Day. All of our grandparents thought the song was so funny as it is about being eaten by a boa constrictor! We also learned how to use body percussion to create music and using this we performed the rain song using just our hands to make the sounds!

We hoped you enjoyed our blog this month – stay tuned for February’s news!

Category: Junior Infants, Literacy, Numeracy, Gaeilge, Aistear, S.E.S.E, Art, Music | Comments Off