Junior Infants and Ms Walsh Getting Creative for Autumn
We have all settled in really well to life in Junior Infants. We have had a lot of fun learning each other’s names, making new friends and learning all about each other.
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We have all settled in really well to life in Junior Infants. We have had a lot of fun learning each other’s names, making new friends and learning all about each other.
What a busy month we’ve had in Senior Infants! Our monthly theme was ‘The Sea’ and we had great fun exploring this topic.
In English we read the stories, ‘The Snail and the Whale’ and ‘Sharing a Shell’ by Julia Donaldson and discovered that Julia is a big fan of rhyming words just like we are! We love ‘Rhyme Time’ in our class each morning! We found some very interesting words for our word wall and we liked writing our own adventures for the Snail and the Whale. We also wrote about a time when we went to the seaside (real or imaginary!).
In Maths we had great fun learning about capacity. We sorted different sized containers and estimated and measured how much water, sand and different materials could fit into them. We also decided which containers would be best for holding different materials. Ms. Olson played a trick on us in our last capacity lesson – she poured water from a small container into a larger container and asked us if the containers had the same amount of water in them or whether they were different! Ms. Olson managed to trick quite a few of us (hehe!).
We had great fun in S.E.S.E this month. We learned about ‘The Titanic’ and constructed our own Titanic models in Art. We investigated different materials from the seaside including sand, pebbles, stones, sea glass, driftwood and even seaweed. We were able to touch the materials and feel the difference that water had on them. For example, when the seaweed was dry it felt quite crunchy and hard and when wet it was slimey and slippery! We also did a floating and sinking experiment and made predictions about which objects would float and which would sink. We learned about some interesting sea animals too. Did you know that an octopus has blue blood? We were very lucky to receive a Big Grow package from our friends at Innocent. We grew some lovely cress, spinach and peas and made sure to water them everyday.
In Music, we learned the song Apusski Dusky and performed it for the Junior School at assembly. We also listened and resonded to songs from The Little Mermaid – ‘Under the Sea’ and ‘Part of Your World’. In Art, as well as our Titanics, we made jellyfish mobiles and newpaper sharks and in Drama, we helped ‘The Rainbow Fish’ decide what to do with his shimmering scales.
We had great fun in our Aistear stations this month, in particular, we really enjoyed our time in ‘The Pirate Ship’. We also loved our time at the water and sand play station. We love getting messy!
However, perhaps the biggest news we have from Senior Infants this month is: We welcomed four beautiful ducklings into the world! We incubated the eggs for 28 days and on the 25th and 26th April 2018 we welcomed James Pond, Smash, Sir Quacks-a-lot and DJ Tiny into Senior Infants. At two weeks old, they are now too big to come to school anymore and they are off to a lovely new farm home in Enniskerry to be with some other ducks. We’ll miss their little chirps in the classroom!
That’s all from us here in Senior Infants, we hope you’ve enjoyed reading our blog post!
Well what a busy month it has been in Senior Infants! From nativity plays to Aistear, Wildlife Warrior Workshops to Christmas sing-a-longs, December has been a cracker of a month!!
For much of November, Senior Infants had been practising for their production of ‘What a Star!’ and boy did they shine! On the 7th December 2017 all the Mums and Dads, Grannys and Grandads, brothers and sisters came to see our star-filled nativity show and everyone was very impressed. The children put on a fantastic performance!
In between practising for our play we made sun catcher nativity scenes, Christmas elves, Christmas tree decorations, penguin pictures and Christmas cards.
We had so much fun during Aistear this month, as our theme was Christmas all our stations were linked. We were busy elves in Santa’s Workshop designing, making and wrapping toys whilst the postmen and women delivered children’s letters to Santa; we baked chocolate chip cookies for Santa Claus and we made lovely Christmas cards.
We’ve had some special visitors in Senior Infants this month, Jingles – our Elf on the shelf (who we managed to catch on camera!! The footage can be seen on our Twitter page @MsOlsonsClass) and two lovely hedgehogs from Hedgehog Rescue Dublin. We learned a lot about hedgehogs and hibernation during our Wildlife Warrior Workshop. It was lots of fun!
To send us on our merry way, we finished off the term with a lovely sing-a-long, singing carols such as Jingle Bells, Away in a Manger, Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer and Santa Claus is Coming to Town! That’s it from Senior Infants, Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!
This class have been very busy since the start of the year. They have been completing lots of art projects and self-portraits for their class door. They have been learning about Greek Mythology, Comic Strips and Constructing a Norman Castle.
They have designed Dia De los Muentos masks for Halloween. They have been doing creative writing stories and poems for Autumn. Their geography knowledge increased this year as they have been learning all the counties, lakes and rivers in Ireland.
Ms Kelly’s class have been busy making skulls and fireworks but don’t worry they are not real, they are made from crep paper. The class have been very busy writing stories, doing equations, spellings and singing.
All the fourth classes are still doing swimming on a Thursday which includes two more weeks after the midterm. The classes also went to see High School Musical in Cluny.
This is what Mr Donnelly’s 1st Class have been doing for the past few weeks. They have been making chests with foam paint and they also drew their own haunted houses. We also asked two students what their favourite subject was and they said it was Art and Maths. Mr Donnelly’s favourite subject is science.
Senior Infants were excited to answer my six questions. These were their answers:
I asked Ben and Olivia in Ms Hegarty’s class what their favourite subject is and they said phonics and science. They made scary skeletons. They have been learning about spiders and have had a wonderful year so far. They sung their poem about bony skeletons. They are rehearsing songs for their Christmas play. Ms Hegarty thinks her class is fabulous.
In Ms Olson’s class, I asked two children what their favourite subject was. They answered Religion and Art. In Art they made aliens and painted planets with puffy paint. Last month they learned about Space and this month they are learning about Emergency Services. They are learning songs from Bua na Cainte. The teacher and the class are enjoying their year so far!
Ms. Olson’s Puffy Paint Planets
All the Junior Infant Classes this month made scary witches and dingle dangle scarecrows. This week their story is ‘Pizza at Sally’s’. They are making pizza art and crafty art materials. Their play areas are restaurants now too. The sounds they are learning are g and o. Ms Walsh’s class also made Halloween cards. Ms Black’s class had a fancy-dress costume shop. Ms Woods’ class are learning ‘Mary had a Little Lamb’.
By Alex
For the month of October, we learnt about ‘Space’ in Ms. Olson’s Senior Infant Class!
During Aistear, we had so much fun pretending to be astronauts in our Space Centre Role Play Corner! We liked to sit in the Space Rocket, man the control panel and act out our rocket launch by counting down from 10 and shouting ‘BLAST OFF!!’ when the countdown reached zero! Once in Space, we pretended to walk around as if there was very little gravity around us!
In Art, we made puffy paint planets – we created a mixture of shaving foam, glue and paint and painted a thick layer of the mixture on to black card. When dry, the puffy paint had a sponge-like texture and our planets look great hanging outside our classroom!
October was a great month for S.E.S.E! In History, we learned that Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon (alongside Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin) and we watched a video clip of the Apollo 11 moon landing. We found this very interesting! Having learned many fun facts about Neil Armstrong, we were then able to construct a timeline of his life to develop our sequencing skills. In Geography, we learnt about our Solar System and all the planets within it. We pretended to be all the different planets orbiting around the sun! Finally, in Science, we really enjoyed doing rocket launch experiments! For our first experiment, we tried to get balloons to launch across a piece of string and we were very successful! In our second experiment, we used a vitamin C tablet to launch a film canister into the air. It was very exciting!
To take a look at videos of our experiments and Aistear time along with plenty of photographs of our artwork, please visit our twitter page – @MsOlsonsClass