We were absolutely delighted to return to school in March! It was so exciting to see all of our friends again and to get back into our school routine. We missed out on some great Aistear themes in January and February so we decided to do them in March instead.

For the first two weeks, we loved learning about the Polar Regions. First, we explored Antarctica and it was such fun playing in our igloo and searching for penguins in the home corner. In small world, we created group pictures of Antarctica sticking on cotton wool for icebergs and pictures of Antarctica animals. We investigated floating and sinking and we labelled the parts of a penguin. Then, we moved to the Arctic! Again, we loved playing in our igloo but this time we were in search of polar bears! We also built snowmobiles out of Lego and Duplo, created igloos with playdough and labelled the parts of a polar bear.

For the last two weeks of March, we explored the theme of ‘Homes and Houses’.  Our home corners we based on stories for this fortnight. We enjoyed acting out the stories of ‘The Three Little Pigs’ and ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’. In small world, we acted out the story of the ‘The Three Little Pigs’ and we did a sequencing the story cut and stick activity. We also made the three houses using straws, sticks and bricks. In the last week of March, we loved acting out ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ using our puppet theatre! We also constructed different sized beds and chairs using Lego and Duplo and did another sequencing activity.

In English, we continued on with our Jolly Phonics sounds – playing games and activities; and we really got to work at learning our Tricky Words by playing games and listening to Tricky Words songs. We also started our reading books. We were reading books online at home but it was so nice to be able to read physical books again! We are getting so good at our reading now. Our blending skills are really improving as we are practising our word boxes in school and at home for homework. Another thing that we have been really working on is our writing! We love to write our news and we are enjoying practising our letter formation and free writing. During free writing, we write about whatever we like totally unaided and then our teacher scribes what we have written underneath. Our blending skills really help with this as we sound out words to write them! We love storytime at the end of the day in Junior Infants and we have been enjoying listening to ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’ by Roald Dahl. We’ve also read ‘The Emperor’s Egg’, ‘Lost and Found’, ‘The Polar Bear and the Snow Cloud’, ‘The Three Little Pigs’, ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ and ‘A Squash and a Squeeze’.

In Irish, we’ve enjoyed learning songs and simple phrases surrounding the themes of ‘An Teilifís’ (The Television); ‘Lá ‘le Pádraig’ (St. Patrick’s Day) and ‘An Cháisc’ (Easter). In Maths, we revised the content that we had been doing online on Seesaw – partitioning and combining for 4 and 5. We liked using the baseboards to sort objects into subsets to make the stories of four and five and we enjoyed playing maths games to reinforce these concepts. We’ve also been learning about data. We collected data in our class about eye colour, hair colour and number of boys and girls and represented it on a pictogram / pictograph.

In S.E.S.E, we learned about the seven continents. We adored listening to and singing along to ‘The Continents Song’ on YouTube! We learned about the Irish explorer – Tom Crean, who went on expeditions to Antarctica as well as identifying lots of facts about penguins and polar bears. We were fascinated to learn that penguins can hold their breath underwater for up to thirty minutes and a polar bear’s fur is actually translucent – it just appears white! We also loved looking at pictures of icebergs and the northern lights! When we explored the theme of ‘Homes and Houses’, it was fun to identify what type of home we lived in and to chat about the different rooms in a house and the items you might find in each room!

In Art, we made some lovely cards including an ‘I Love You to the Moon and Back!’ card for our mums for Mother’s Day and a potato print ‘Eggs in a Nest’ card for Easter. We also made a St. Patrick’s Day headband and an Easter Bunny picture. Each morning, we start our day with a song and there were so many songs we loved singing this month, however, our favourite had to be ‘Boa Constrictor’ because it is so funny! We did a little St. Patrick’s Day concert for our parents singing  ‘An Leipreachán’ (The Leprechaun); ‘Lá ‘le Pádraig’ (St. Patrick’s Day) and ‘Lámha Suas, An Feidir Leat? (Hands Up, Can You?). The videos can be found on our Twitter page – @MsOlsonsClass.

It was great to get back doing our GAA Ball Skills with Coach Steve from Shankill GAA and we’re having great fun learning a dance routine to ‘I Just Can’t Wait to Be King!’ from the Lion King. We will perform this soon and put it on our Twitter page! To finish off a great month back, we had a eggcellent Easter egg hunt on our last day of school! We are back for our last term now after our Easter holidays and are straight back to work! Stay tuned to hear about our April news! Bye for now! 🙂