November 15 2020

October News from Ms. Olson’s Junior Infants Class!

Welcome back to Ms. Olson’s Junior Infants Class blog! We were so busy in October and had such fun exploring our themes – Space and Halloween!

In Aistear, we loved launching our rocket into Space in the home corner. The mission control manager would countdown from 10 and we would all shout ‘BLAST OFF’ as our rocket hurtled into Space. We loved shaking the rocket and banging the tin foil to replicate a noisy rocket! Once we had landed on the moon, it was time for the astronauts to put on their space suits, helmets and jetpacks and see what they could find! We also enjoyed creating a space scene on a big piece of paper and using the small world people to explore it! We were very creative when it came to the playdough station – we made aliens and rockets and finally in construction we made rockets out of Lego and Duplo. 

In the last two weeks of October, we had so much fun in the Halloween Fancy Dress Shop. The shop assistants had to answer the phones and help the customers find a good costume. The customers tried on the costumes in the fitting room and paid for them at the till. Sometimes they had to return their costume so they had to make sure they kept the receipt! We enjoyed playing small world too as we set up all the houses in the town and played trick or treating! We did some nice cut and stick activities too including sequencing ‘The Life Cycle of a Pumpkin’.

In English, we continued to learn our Jolly Phonics and we started to learn some tricky words! We love playing different phonics games each day like Bingo and matching. We are getting very good at blending little words too and we use our ‘tap and stroke’ method to do this. We tap out the sounds on our hand and stroke them together to blend! We are continuing to practise our fine motor skills each day and we are enjoying learning how to write the letters with our sand, whiteboard, counters and rainbow letters stations. We are also getting very proficient at writing our names! This month we read and explored the stories – ‘Whatever Next!’ by Jill Murphy, ‘Aliens Love Underpants’ by Claire Freedman, ‘Winnie the Witch’ by Valerie Thomas and ‘Room on the Broom’ by Julia Donaldson.

In Gaeilge, we explored the themes ‘An Scoil’ (School) and ‘Oíche Shamhna’ (Halloween). We love singing the songs, listening to the stories and conversations and playing the games on our interactive programme – Bua na Cainte.

In Maths, we have been doing lots of work on our counting and practising the concept before and after. This month, we were learning how to compare sets of objects and identify which sets had more / fewer or the same number of objects. We also continued to develop our one-to-one correspondence by matching numbers to the correct set of objects and enjoyed playing animal hunt and snail trail to practise this skill. We learnt a new pattern – ABC and had fun making those. We continued to practise our number formation and we also learnt about the 3D shapes – cube, cuboid, sphere, cone and cylinder. We went on shape hunts around the school, did feely bag games with the shapes, constructed 3D shapes out of marshmallows and cocktail sticks and had fun programming our little robot, BeeBot, to go to our selected 3D shape. 

In S.E.S.E, we learnt about our solar system and the names of all of the planets. We explored the life of Neil Armstrong and watched cool videos of the moon landing in 1969 as well as current videos of life in space as an astronaut. We did some rocket experiments too – we used a balloon, a straw, some sellotape and a piece of string to explore how the force of air can propel the rocket along the string and we used a fizzy vitamin tablet to create a film canister rocket. You can watch the videos of our experiments on our Twitter page – @MsOlsonsClass. In the second part of the month, we learnt about the story of Halloween and its traditions. We enjoyed learning about the signs of Autumn and we went on a nature walk in search of these signs. We also learnt about pumpkins and the life cycle of a pumpkin. We even had a pumpkin in our class – it had a minion carved into it!

We did lots of Art this month. We made alien spaceships, rocket ships, Autumn trees, leave prints, clay hedgehogs, silly pumpkins, wicked witches and hanging bats! Take a look at all of our lovely artwork! 

In Music, we enjoyed learning nursery rhymes and songs. We particularly liked ‘Zoom Zoom Zoom – We’re Going to the Moon’ on YouTube. We also learned plenty of spooky Halloween songs about witches! In P.E., we’ve been working hard at our ball skills and playing playground games both with our teacher and Coach Steve from Shankill GAA. In S.P.H.E, we’ve been learning all about growing and changing. We looked at how we started off as a baby and how we have already grown so much!

 

On our last day before the midterm break, we had a brilliant day as we knew this Halloween would be a bit different to others! We started our day with a little Halloween sing-a-long. After playtime and ball skills, we had a ‘Room on the Broom’ themed treasure hunt and we located the treasure chest full of treats in Mr. Fingleton’s office! Then we went trick or treating around the other Junior Infants classes and Maria’s office! Finally we made some Halloween green slime and watched the film, ‘Room on the Broom’ and ate some of our treats. What a month in Junior Infants, we hope you enjoyed reading our blog!

Category: Junior Infants, Literacy, Numeracy, Gaeilge, Aistear, S.E.S.E, Art, S.P.H.E, Physical Education | Comments Off on October News from Ms. Olson’s Junior Infants Class!
October 22 2020

News from Ms. Woods’ Junior Infant Class!

The children in Ms Woods’ class have settled in to school very well and have done great work in their first half term in Junior Infants.
The Aistear theme for September was the doctor’s surgery and the toy’s hospital and for October we were off to the moon in our rocket and then on to the Halloween Fancy Dress shop. The children had great fun getting into roles for each theme while simultaneously expanding their vocabulary and developing their receptive and oral language skills.
Apart from role play there are three other stations in Aistear with each group doing a different activity including sequencing stories by cutting and sticking, construction of lego, duplo or stickle bricks and art and craft. We also do small world which means the children use small figures and houses etc to act out different scenarios relating to our theme.
At the end of Aistear, each child reports back to the class about their activity and they also ask each other questions.
The children love learning their Jolly Phonic sounds and are beginning to blend them together to make words. The class often sing, say or even dance to our nursery rhymes.
In maths they are counting, sorting and learning about pattern and sets while having great fun as they play games every day.
The class are working hard to make their hands stronger by cutting, using play dough, pegs and peg boards and making trees with clothes pegs.
 
The children are learning about myself, school and Halloween in Irish and already know lots of songs and poems.
P.E is always outside and the children are developing co ordination while throwing, catching and balancing. Steve from Shankill GAA comes on a Friday.
Despite Covid 19 the children of Junior Infants 2020 have had a wonderful start to Big School and are progressing well. We are dressing up for Halloween on Friday. It is going to be a fun filled day of baking, playing treasure hunting, trick or treating, singing, dancing, story telling and generally having a great time.
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April 6 2020

March News from Ms. Olson’s Class!

March was unfortunately a short month for us in Junior Infants as our school was closed for the second half of the month, due to Covid-19, however, we had lots of fun and did lots of work in the first two weeks!

In Aistear we were learning about ‘The Vet’. We had lots of fun playing in the veterinary surgery – we had to pretend to be receptionists, vets, veterinary nurses and we brought our pets to the vets. We used teddies as pets or sometimes we liked to pretend to be the animals ourselves! We also played ‘The Vet’ using small world toys. We practised our cutting and sticking skills too as we learned about the life cycle of a frog. We watched a cool video about it first and then cut out pictures of the life cycle and stuck them in the right order.

In English, we continued to practise our Jolly Phonics, tricky words and silly sentences. We read the story, ‘Farmer Duck’ by Martin Waddell. We really liked this story because it was quite funny. It was about a lazy farmer who makes the duck do all the work. We also did lots of writing in March, we are getting really good at writing our news. We use a ‘Who?’ and a ‘What?’ template to help us. March was a special month because we had book week. Each day we had a fun activity to celebrate it. We were very lucky to have a storyteller come in to visit us. She told us a story about a snail and another story about a little girl called Lucy who went to visit her Granny. Another day, Mr. Fingleton, our principal, came to read us a story. He read us the story, ‘Stuck’ by Oliver Jeffers. It was so funny and we had to try and remember all the things that the little boy got stuck up in the tree! One day, we brought in our favourite books to show the class and third class came down to read them to us! We also had a drawing competition where we had to draw our favourite character from a story and there was an Easter egg as a prize! The best day of the week was Friday, as we dressed up as our favourite book characters and again there were Easter eggs as prizes for the best costumes!

In Gaeilge, we were learning all about ‘An Aimsir’ (The Weather) and ‘Lá ‘le Pádraig’ (St. Patrick’s Day). It was Seachtain na Gaeilge (Irish Week) and we had such as treat as Aimee from the Bergin Academy of Irish Dancing came in to teach us some Irish dancing! It was a lot of fun! We were also practising songs for the St. Patrick’s concert that was planned for the Friday before St. Patrick’s Day but unfortunately it didn’t go ahead as we were closed. We were learning the songs ‘An Leipreachán’ (The Leprechaun),‘Tá Mé i mo Shuigh ar mo Chathaoir’ (I am sitting on my chair) and ‘Lá ‘le Pádraig’ (St. Patrick’s Day).

In Maths we continued on with our partitioning and combining within 5 and 4 and we really enjoyed playing games where we had to add on one. In Art, we made lovely St. Patrick’s Day headbands. We used a cork to print shamrocks on to the band and we attached a rainbow with a pot of gold on to the top. We added shiny green shamrocks on to them too. We also made lovely Mother’s Day cards – they had a Mother’s Day poem written inside a flower pot on them and we used our handprints to create the flowers. We were also very lucky as the Sam Maguire Cup came to visit the school and we got to take a photo with it, have a look!

Covid-19 might have stopped us from going to school but it hasn’t stopped us from learning! We have now moved to using distance learning and are using the app, Seesaw, to do this! Stay tuned to see what we get up to next month and fingers crossed we’ll be back in school soon. Thanks for reading, stay home and stay safe!

Category: Junior Infants, Literacy, Numeracy, Gaeilge, Aistear, Art | Comments Off on March News from Ms. Olson’s Class!
March 8 2020

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!

 

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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 on The Polar Regions in Ms. Olson’s Junior Infants!
December 1 2019

October News from Junior Infants – Better Late than Never!

October was another busy month for the Junior Bunnies! Our theme for the month was ‘Clothes’ and of course ‘Halloween’.

In Aistear, we loved playing in the role play corner. For the first two weeks of October, we explored the story of ‘The Scarecrows’ Wedding’ by Julia Donaldson. We acted out the story whilst wearing costumes and at the end we had a party in the farmyard to celebrate the wedding. For the last two weeks we LOVED playing in the Halloween Fancy Dress Shop. We pretended to be customers and shop assistants buying, selling and even trying on costumes! It was so much fun (I think our best role play corner yet!) During Aistear we also did activities such as small world; constructing farms with stickle bricks, Lego and Kapla; threading beads to make jewellery for Betty O’Barley from the story; playdough and cut and stick sequencing activities such as ‘The Life Cycle of the Pumpkin’.

In English, we continued to learn our Jolly Phonics focusing on ‘h, r, m, d, g, o’. As well as doing our phonics activities as mentioned in our previous blog post, we started learning how to blend simple CVC (consonant vowel consonant) words using our tap and stroke method. We tap out each sound as we say them on our hands and then we stroke them together to blend them. We enjoyed reading the stories ‘The Smartest Giant in Town’ and ‘Room on the Broom’ by Julia Donaldson as they have a particular focus on clothes and Halloween respectively. We also enjoyed reading stories about ‘Winnie the Witch’ by Valerie Thomas as we found Winnie and Wilbur’s adventures very entertaining. We also began writing simple sentences in our copy books and accompanied them with a lovely picture.

In Gaeilge we explored the theme of Éadaí (clothes) and Oíche Shamhna (Halloween). We enjoyed learning songs, poems and simple phrases relating to these themes especially ones that involved ‘an Púca agus an Cailleach’ (the ghost and the witch). In Maths this month we continued to practise our counting games and writing our numerals. We have also been developing our understanding of one-to-one correspondence (the ability to match an object to its corresponding number) through playing maths games such as animal hunt and snail trail. We also learnt about 2D and 3D shapes through activities such as sorting, pattern boards, constructing shapes using peg boards, lollipop sticks and polydrons, feel the shape games, threading 3D shapes onto string, going on shape hunts and navigating BeeBot to different shapes. Finally we had a maths trail and ran a ‘Have you got Maths Eyes?’ competition in our class for Maths Week 2019 with some fabulous entries. It was very tricky to pick a winner!

 

In S.E.S.E, we learned about autumn and went on a nature walk to search for signs of autumn such as fallen leaves; colour changes; seeds, nuts and berries and animals. We collected some items for our nature table. We also learned about hedgehogs and squirrels and spoke about hibernation and migration. We learned about the life cycle of a pumpkin and about Halloween – its origins and traditions. We also did some colourful leaf printing.

  

In Art we made Betty and Harry from ‘The Scarecrows’ Wedding’ using paper, paper plates, fabric and straw. We decorated their wedding cake using patterns of shapes. We made autumn ‘handprint’ trees by drawing around our arms, filling the trunk with brown paper and printing the leaves using a peg and pom pom.  We used clay to make hedgehogs and we made witches, bats and silly pumpkins for Halloween! Take a look!

 

In Music we learned the song ‘The Farmer has an Orchard’ but we loved the spooky songs ‘The Witch Rides’, ‘There was an Old Witch’, ‘Witch Song’ and ‘One Two Three Four Five Little Witches’ that we learnt for Halloween. We continued with our gymnastics and had our last class with Steve for Ball Skills as we are moving to a new module of Dance with Ms Casey. Finally, in S.P.H.E (Social Personal Health Education) we continued to learn about ourselves – our identity and self-awareness; growing and caring for new life and the important people in our lives.

We hope you enjoyed our blog, tune in next time for our November news!

 

 

Category: Junior Infants, Literacy, Numeracy, Gaeilge, Aistear, S.E.S.E, Art, Music, S.P.H.E | Comments Off on October News from Junior Infants – Better Late than Never!
October 14 2019

September News from Ms. Olson’s New Junior Infant Class!

Welcome to our first blog post as Ms. Olson’s New Junior Infant Class! We are so happy to have started big school in St. Anne’s and we have all settled in well to school life. We had a fantastic first day of school meeting our new friends and our teacher – take a look!

For our first month in Junior Infants we learned about Homes and Houses. In Aistear we had great fun doing lots of different activities each week. In the socio-dramatic play corner, we enjoyed playing in the kitchen making dinner; acting out the different parts in ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ and pretending to be the Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf! We did lots of construction activities such as playing with Lego, Duplo, Stickle Bricks and Straws – we made things like houses for the Three Little Pigs and different sized furniture for Goldilocks and the Three Bears. We enjoyed playing with playdough – we made furniture for houses; bricks, sticks and straws for the Three Little Pigs’ houses and different sized bowls of porridge for Goldilocks. We also practised our cutting and sticking skills whilst sequencing the stories of Goldilocks and the Three Little Pigs and we enjoyed playing with the farm animals in small world.

 

In English we have been learning our Jolly Phonics. We have enjoyed learning the songs and actions which we practise everyday. We have finished the first set of phonics and are now on to our second set. We like playing games to learn our sounds such as ‘I spy’ and ‘Hide and Seek’ with flashcards – our teacher hides sounds around the classroom which we have to find and when we find them we have to say a word that contains the sound. After we have learned a sound we colour in our Jolly Phonics book and we have stations to practise letter formation. These stations include drawing the sound in sand, making it using playdough / counters / pegboards and writing it on mini whiteboards. Once we have mastered this, we practise writing the sound in our Jolly Phonics book. We learnt lots of poems and nursery rhymes which have helped us to understand rhyming and we have read lots of stories – we especially love all the Julia Donaldson books!

In Maths we have been doing lots of counting games – forwards and backwards to ten. We like making human number lines, counting with our counting stick, listening to objects being dropped into a tin and counting the sounds and we love when the naughty fairy comes and messes up our number line for us to fix! We have learnt how to sort objects by colour, shape, size and type. We have been practising writing our numbers, making sets of specific numbers and learning about patterns.

In Gaeilge we have learned lots of songs and phrases relating to the themes Mé Féin (Myself) and Sa Bhaile (Home). We particularly like the songs ‘Tá Teidí ag siúl’ and ‘Rólaí Pólaí’. In S.E.S.E (Science, Geography and History), we learnt about ourselves, our families, our school, homes and electricity. We went on a tour of the school and mapped out our journey using shapes and bricks. In the picture below – the yellow hexagons depict classrooms, the bricks depict the corridors and the green Lego pieces depict the three yards. We learnt about the different rooms in homes, things you might find in those rooms and activities that happen there. We looked at homes in the past and we did a class poll to see what type of home everyone lived in. We learned about electricity and we investigated making static electricity. We managed to make our hair stand up, we attached a balloon to a wall, we picked up pieces of paper using a balloon and we bent water in the tap using a balloon!

In Art, we drew and painted our self portraits, we made 2D shape houses and we made the The Three Little Pigs’ houses of straw, sticks and bricks. We have learned lots of songs in Music – our personal favourites are ‘Stepping Over Stepping Stones’ and ‘The Grand Old Duke of York’ as they are both marching songs. We love to start our day with a song! In Drama we explored and dramatised the story ‘A Squash and a Squeeze’ – we thought it was so funny when Ms. Olson pretended to be the Old Woman and we had to help her!

To finish off, we love doing Gymnastics on a Wednesday with Ms. Tighe and Ball Skills with Steve on a Friday. We also enjoy doing our fine motor stations every afternoon where we practise our cutting skills, writing our names and developing our hand muscles to help us when we begin writing. We hope you enjoyed reading our blog – we know its very long but we have packed so much into one short month that we had to share it all with you! Check back in with us next month to find out what we got up to in October!

 

Category: Junior Infants, Literacy, Numeracy, Gaeilge, Aistear, S.E.S.E, Art, Drama, Physical Education | Comments Off on September News from Ms. Olson’s New Junior Infant Class!
June 28 2019

Farewell from Senior Infants!

Wow what a last month in Senior Infants! This year has flown by! We are so ready for First Class now.

In Aistear, we had lots of fun playing in the Travel Agents booking our holidays for the summer. We also enjoyed sand play and we did a little treasure hunt whereby we had to find magnetic letters in the sand which made words relating to summer. We played with small world, Lego, magnets and best of all we got to play with the BeeBots and the BeeBot maze!

In English, we read the story ‘Winnie and Wilbur at the Seaside’. We did some fun sequencing jigsaws and sentence reconstruction relating to the text. We also wrote a book review on the story. We learned about postcards this month. We looked at different postcards that some children had brought in and then we worked on writing our own. In Gaeilge we finished off ‘Siopadóireacht’ (Shopping) and did ‘An Trá’ (The Seaside). We also learned a well-known song ‘Can’t Stop the Feeling’ as Gaeilge and added dance moves. In Maths, we continued learning about subtraction and we learned about spatial awareness – left, right and all the prepositions. In the last week we got to work the BeeBots you can check out our twitter @MsOlsonsClass to see videos of how they work!

    

In S.E.S.E, we had a great month because we incubated hen eggs and hatched three chicks. They are called Michael D. Chickens, Charles Chickens and Chick Chock! It took 21 days for the chicks to hatch and we had to keep them under an infrared light to keep them warm afterwards. We also looked at different sea materials, we learned about floating and sinking, magnets, sound, the Titanic and different sea creatures. Did you know that an Octopus has three hearts and blue blood?

    

In Music we learned some songs including ‘Jackie the Sailor’, ‘Chuaigh mé go dtí an Trá’ and we listened to different pieces of music. We also learned some well-known songs including ‘A Million Dreams’ (which we performed at assembly) and ‘How Far We’ll Go’ from Moana. In Art we made some lovely multi-sensory crab pictures using sand and bun cases. We also copied Van Gogh’s Sunflowers! They turned out really well. In Drama we read the story ‘The Rainbow Fish’ and did some activities based on the story. We also went on our school tour to Greenane Maze we had so much fun exploring the mazes, playing games, looking at farm animals and going on a nature walk. On our last few days we had a pizza party and an ice-cream party! We are so lucky!

  

   

We have had a great year but we are ready for our Summer Holidays! We hope you have enjoyed reading our blogs this year. We will be back again in September!

 

Category: Senior Infants, Literacy, Maths, Gaeilge, Aistear, S.E.S.E, Art, Music, Drama | Comments Off on Farewell from Senior Infants!
April 16 2019

February News from Ms. Olson’s Class!

In February we learnt all about animals. We had great fun playing in our Veterinary Surgery role play corner during Aistear time. In English, we read the story, Farmer Duck, written by Martin Waddell and we practised our summarising and sequencing skills. We loved reading this story as it was very funny!

In Maths, we learnt about weight. We had lots of fun sorting different objects according to weight and playing and measuring with balances. We even got to bake some tasty buns!

   

   

In Gaeilge we learnt lots of phrases and songs relating to the themes of  Éadaí  (Clothes) and ‘Sa Bhaile’ (Home). In S.E.S.E we learnt about farmers and vets, animals and their young and how to care for our pets. We also did some report writing on ‘Our Pets’.

In Drama, we read the story ‘Cleopatra Silverwing’ by Adria Meserve. This story follows the life of a beautiful butterfly who loves doing cherry dip flips and loop-the-loops! One day she decides to go on an adventure instead of doing what she’s told – a storm is brewing and she is told it’s time to head home. We pretended to be Cleopatra doing her stunts and we came up with solutions to her problems that she faced on her adventure. In Music, we sang some lovely songs related to our animal theme – ‘Who Built the Ark?’ and ‘Please Mr. Noah’. In Art we made some cute little piggies out of cardboard tubes to celebrate Chinese New Year and we made animals out of clay!

   

Finally in P.E we learnt a dance to the Lion King’s ‘I just can’t wait to be King’. We did dance lessons with Ms. Casey for six weeks and at the end, we performed this dance for all the children at Junior Assembly. You can check out our dance on Twitter @MsOlsonsClass.

 

Category: Senior Infants, Literacy, Maths, Gaeilge, Aistear, S.E.S.E, Art, Music, Drama, Physical Education | Comments Off on February News from Ms. Olson’s Class!
March 11 2019

Back to School with a Bang in Senior Infants!

January was an interesting month in Senior Infants because we learnt all about Egypt! We had lots of fun during Aistear time. We enjoyed playing in the Airport Role Play corner where we pretended to be going on our holidays to Egypt. We liked building pyramids out of Lego. We pretended to be archaeologists digging for buried treasure during sand play and we worked as a team to create cool mummies and sarcophaguses.

 

In English, we spent a lot of time on narrative writing as we entered the Write a Book Project. Our book was about a little boy and a little girl called John and Jojo. They went on a school tour to an Egyptian museum and managed to travel back in time to have a scary encounter with a mummy! It all turned out ok in the end though!

In Gaeilge, we learned many songs and phrases around the topics of Bia (food) and Éadaí (Clothes). We loved playing little language games using picture cards in pairs because we were able to talk to our friends using the simple phrases that we’d learnt. In Maths we revised pattern and data. We made lots of different patterns using shapes, camels, pegboards and unifi cubes. We did a survey of our class to investigate what everyone’s favourite toy was and then we recorded the data by making bar charts.

  

  

In S.E.S.E we learnt all about Egypt. We learned about Egypt’s landscape, rivers, mountains and cities. We learnt about Egyptian food and animals that you might find in Egypt such as camels, cheetahs, crocodiles, hyenas and cobras. Then we learnt about Egyptian pharaohs such as Tutankhamun and Cleopatra and about pyramids and mummies. We found it all very fascinating!

In Art, we wrote our names in Egyptian hieroglyphs and we made pharaoh pictures using our photographs. We also made Egyptian golden necklaces using dyed pasta! They all turned out really well!

  

In Music we’ve been learning lots of songs as we always start our day with a song. We particularly enjoyed learning the song ‘Over in the Meadow’ and we loved performing it for our Grandparents on Grandparent’s Day. In Drama, we read the story ‘The Girl with the Red Slippers’ which is an Egyptian version of Cinderella. We had great fun pretending to be ballerinas and acting out the different parts in the story. Finally, we have been doing dance in P.E with Catherine Casey and we learnt a dance from the Lion King. You can check it out on our twitter page – @MsOlsonsClass

Category: Senior Infants, Literacy, Numeracy, Gaeilge, Aistear, S.E.S.E, Art, Drama, Physical Education | Comments Off on Back to School with a Bang in Senior Infants!