October 29 2018

Ms Livingston’s Senior Infants

Welcome to Ms. Livingston’s Senior infants. This month, our Aistear theme was The Vet. We learned all about how the Vet is very important in our community and what they do to help our pets. Each day we play at a different station which is based on our theme.

We made our own bread. We measured how much of each ingredient we would need. We put it in the oven to bake. It tasted delicious! We even got to take home a slice for someone at home to try.

We went on an Autumn Nature walk around the school grounds. We used a checklist and clipboards to record what exactly we saw. Some of the items we collected were conkers, leaves and pinecones. We brought some of them back into our class to put on our nature table. Then we wrote about what we saw, what we heard, what we smelled and how we felt when we were on out Autumn walk!

We also had a exciting last day before midterm, we dressed up in our Halloween costumes and bought lots of cakes in the cake sale!

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October 23 2018

News from Ms. Dawson’s Second Class.

Welcome to Ms. Dawson’s second class. We’ve had a very busy first half term. In the last two weeks we made telephones out of tin cans and string. We decorated them and tried them out and we were so surprised when we  could hear each other down the lines. They worked the best when we pulled the string very tight.
We had a project to design and make a kite and all kinds of shape and designs arrived in school last Friday just in time for the end of the hurricane. We had great fun flying them in the yard and trying to hold on to them. A few unfortunately needed surgery afterwards!
This week we are looking at Halloween traditions and games and interviewing our parents and grandparents about Halloween when they were young. We are also drawing maps of Halloween Villages. They are scary places to live in!!
We played conkers this week too, an old fashioned game where you try and hit and break your opponent’s conker. It was harder than it looked!
This week is Maths Week and we started our online maths programme, Mathletics. It is a lot of fun and we can even have maths challenges with children from around the world. We also went on a maths walk and looked for maths around our school. Shape jumped out at us everywhere!
If you’d like to enjoy a Disney cartoon from 1929, check out the skeleton dance on you tube. We danced and moved to it and are very impressed with technology from almost 100 years ago! It was a lot of fun!
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October 17 2018

Ms Aivalikli’s Sixth Class

September saw us focus on North America. We looked at American History through the ages and analysed how colonisation tactics changed from the Native American’s to the American Civil War. We also challenged ourselves by learning the names and location of each American State, we loved playing the states quiz!  Our STEM project centred on Native American’s as we created 3D totem poles in groups. Our designs went from individual, paired to finally group plans. We were delighted to see our plans come to life.
As we progressed from Native American History to the Civil Rights Movement our novel Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry has been very moving. We decided to base our September Assembly on the impact of civil rights activities. We sang ‘A Million Dreams’ to inspire others to believe in change.
In P.E we enjoyed joining in with Joe Wicks, aka ‘The Body Coach’ and his initiative to get schools moving. We especially enjoyed when he gave our class a ‘shout out’ live on his YouTube channel.
Lastly our Gaeilge topic in September was Mé Féin, we put together conversations and created short Scratch clips, in which we made our characters have a comhrá as Gaeilge!
In October we’re looking at Georgian Dublin, we are especially looking forward to our tour of 14 Henrietta Street! We will be sure to write about it soon!
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October 14 2018

News from Ms. Wood’s Junior Infants

September has been a busy month in Ms Woods’s Junior Infant’s class. We are all getting used to school, making new friends and learning lots of new things.

We are learning our Jolly Phonics sounds and nursery rhymes old and new. Our theme for Aistear was ‘Homes’ so we have had a week based on Goldilocks and the Three Bears  and The Three Little Pigs and two weeks based on ‘The Scarecrow’s Wedding’. Activities include role play while using new words, construction, art and craft, sequencing activities and much more. In Maths we are exploring number and doing pattern.

  

 

We are learning to write new letters in sand, on whiteboards, in marla as well as on paper.

We love gymnastics and ball skills and we are always having fun while learning lots.

 

 

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October 14 2018

News from Mr. Dunne’s Third Class!

It’s been an absolutely wonderful start to the year in Room 13, with plenty of interesting and exciting things just one month in. Recently, we’ve been doing plenty of discussion on the changing autumnal weather. We went out on a nature walk to have a search for as many beautiful colours we could find, and took some souvenirs back in with us! We then did some observational drawings which can be seen decorating the hallway just outside our room.

  

We also worked on creating self-portraits and the results are just amazing! There are some very talented artists up here in Room 13…

We’ve been doing the daily mile each day (depending on the weather!), and we recently carried out an investigation into how exercise affects our pulse rate. In other science-y news, we created some old-fashioned cup telephones to investigate how sound travels! We had great fun doing this, and we were all surprised at how well the sound travels through the string. Amazing!

  

That’s not all, each week we have been debating RTÉ News2Day’s question of the week. Each week, the children’s news show poses a ‘Question of the Week’ and we have a whole-class discussion and debate, write our opinions and send them in! So far, two of the children in our class (Isabelle Forde and Alan Morley) have actually had their answers read out on the news.

Lastly, we have been working really hard on our family projects. Have a look at a few of them below, and see the fantastic imagination and creativity brought to these projects!

 

  

We will update again soon, and thanks for reading our blog post!

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October 14 2018

News from Ms. Black’s Junior Infants

We have settled into school and made lots of new friends. We work and play really well together. We are learning letters and enjoy singing the jolly phonics songs. We have been making repeating patterns in maths and learning our numbers and counting sets.

We learned lots about Autumn and made lovely colourful autumn trees . We have collected lots of leaves, acorns and conkers. We learned a poem about a squirrel called Whisky Frisky!

We have enjoyed the story about The Scarecrow’s Wedding and did role play, construction and art activities based on it. We made fabulous scarecrows and  they even have repeating patterns on their clothes.

  

We are doing really well at GAA football skills, our coach Steve is very impressed. We are looking forward to Halloween and will make some scary Witches and funny pumpkins.

  

 

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October 5 2018

There’s a Starman waiting in the sky – 5th Class in September

 

Mrs Lennon’s fifth class have had a busy September.
We are delighted to be together in a new class with many new friends.
In Gaeilge we have been practicing our Mé Féin comhrás and we enjoy chatting about ourselves ‘as Gaeilge’.
We have also learned to draw ourselves, and were quite surprised to discover the true proportions of our faces!
In science we did a fun experiment called ‘Hanger Clanger’ where we learned about how sound travels.

Hanger Clanger
We have been rehearsing for our National Children’s Choir Concert which will take place in the National Basketball Arena in March. Our favourite song so far is Starman by David Bowie.
We have learned about the Beaufort Wind Scale and were able to calculate wind speeds during Storm Ali.
In History we learned about the Aztecs and we designed holiday brochures for Irish Counties in Geography.
Our County Tourist Information Brochures

 

We enjoy our gymnastics with Jay every Tuesday and have also been learning how to play cricket with Diarmuid from Cricket Ireland. Ms Basquille has been coaching us in running techniques on Fridays.
Check back next month for some more fifth class news!
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October 3 2018

September News from Ms. Olson’s Class!

What a start to a fantastic new year in Senior Infants! Our monthly theme for September was ‘All About Me’ and we thoroughly enjoyed learning about families, our bodies, our school and of course recognising how special and unique we all are!

During Aistear time, we had great fun playing in the Doctor’s Surgery role play corner. We had to sign patients in at reception and instruct them to wait in our waiting room, before being seen by the doctor in the treatment room. We were also very excited to play ‘Teach your Monster to Read’ on the class computers and we’re definitely getting the hang of using the mouse and the keyboard now.

  

In English, we have been working really hard to learn all our Jolly Phonics and to develop our blending skills. We read ‘Owl Babies’ by Martin Waddell and ‘The Smartest Giant in Town’ by Julia Donaldson and learnt how to predict, question, summarise and make connections! In Maths, we have been super busy sorting collections of objects into sets, making patterns and partitioning for three, four and five. We also carried out some data investigations and recorded them both on paper and using our interactive board. In Gaeilge, we learnt many phrases in relation to ‘Mé Féin’ and ‘Lá Bréithe’ and sang some new songs and rhymes.

  

In S.E.S.E, we made family trees, identified the names of our body parts and went on a tour of our school before creating a big map on the classroom floor of our journey. In Drama, we played some fun games and read ‘Elmer’ by David McKee. Poor Elmer was sad that he was different from all the other elephants but we helped him to feel better by finding a solution to his problem! We like to start our day with a song, so we have been singing some lovely songs in Music. We are currently learning a song in preparation for Halloween – it is called ‘There was an old witch..’ And last but not least, we have made some beautiful artwork in Senior Infants. We drew and painted our self portraits and made some lovely Wassily Kandinsky inspired autumn trees!

  

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October 3 2018

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.

In maths we have been sorting sets, making patterns, learning all about 2d and 3D shapes and playing some fun maths games like “sweetie jar”.
We are enjoying learning our jolly phonics sounds every day.  Our Aistear theme for September was homes and houses.  We explored this theme through junk art, role play, construction, sequencing and through márla.
We have also been learning so much about Autumn.  We liked making these clay hedgehogs and Autumn
trees.
            Making Autumn Trees                               Happy Hedgehogs
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May 9 2018

April was an Eggciting Month in Senior Infants!

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!

 

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