We had lots of fun exploring our theme ‘Animals and the Farm’ in March.

In Aistear, we finished off learning about Homes and Houses before starting our new theme. We enjoyed playing in the kitchen home corner, sorting furniture into the rooms of the doll’s house, making our own house pictures and constructing our dream homes with Lego.

In week two, we started 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 and we sorted the animals by type e.g. farm animals, zoo animals, pets etc. 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. We also liked doing jigsaws! We had a short week of free play, followed by a week of the vet visiting the farm home corner where we enjoyed pretending to be farm animals on the farm! We also constructed fields for the farm animals and sorted the animals into the correct fields. We constructed farm vehicles such as tractors and combine harvesters as well. We also learned about the life cycle of a chicken in preparation for our own hatching chicks! Finally, in week five, we loved buying fresh produce from the Farm Shop! We also enjoyed doing small world with the farm set, did a cut and stick activity where we matched the animal to their home and finally we made farm animals out of playdough!

In English, we have really taken off with our reading and we have nearly finished our Jolly Phonics! We practise our tricky words and blending each day which is helping to improve our reading skills too. We love taking books now when we have finished our work and we read them to our friends as well as to our teacher. Our writing is coming along great too! We love Fridays as we do free-writing when we can write about whatever we like unaided. Monday to Thursday we do literacy stations – we do one station each day. Usually our stations are: two phonics games, sentence writing (we build the sentences with flashcards and then write them into our copies) and a CVC worksheet (consonant-vowel-consonant three letter words e.g. cat).  At the end of the day we love story time – this month we read the stories ‘Farmer Duck’ and ‘The Pig in the Pond’ by Martin Waddell. World Book Day occurred in March as well and we brought in our favourite books to show our friends.

In Gaeilge, we were learning all about ‘Lá ‘le Pádraig’ (St. Patrick’s Day). It was Seachtain na Gaeilge (Irish Week) and we had such fun performing the ‘Haka as Gaeilge’ with the whole school! It was a lot of fun! We also learnt some other Gaeilge songs including  ‘An Leipreachán’ (The Leprechaun),‘Lámha Suas an Féidir Leat’ (Hands Up) and ‘Lá ‘le Pádraig’ (St. Patrick’s Day). In Maths, we continued on with our partitioning and combining within 3 and 2 and we really enjoyed playing games where we had to add on one and two. We also enjoyed sorting shapes by one, two and three properties using the Venn, Tree and Carroll diagrams.

In S.E.S.E we enjoyed learning about the signs of Spring and singing our four seasons song. We learned about farmers, animals and their young, animal homes, vets and identified what pets we had. We learned about the lifecycle of a frog and a hen in preparation for our own hatching chicks. We also enjoyed learning about the story of St. Patrick and sequencing his life.

In Art, we made mixed media spring daffodil pictures using egg boxes, card, tissue paper and bubble wrap for clouds. We also 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 using cupcake liners to create a flower. We started our Easter art by finger painting a silhouette bunny picture too.

In Music we enjoyed learning the songs ‘Five Little Ducks’ and ‘See See See’. We also learnt how to identify high and low sounds through listening to different pieces of music. We were very lucky to have our external P.E. teachers back! We loved our dance sessions with Catherine Casey’s School of Dance and we enjoyed learning lots of fundamental skills with Coach Ed! Finally we had some lovely sunny weather and we got out for a picnic with Ms. Aivalikli’s class and a nice Spring walk!

We packed a lot in to Junior Infants in March, tune back in soon for our April news!

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 acting out winter sports 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 Antarctica and Arctic posters. We used twistables, pencils and cotton wool to create our posters and stuck pictures of different animals native to the polar regions on them. We also constructed snowmobiles with Lego and igloos and polar animals with playdough.

In English we continued to learn our Jolly Phonics, Tricky Words and we enjoyed playing phonics games. We enjoyed engaging with the books – ‘The Emperor’s Egg’ by Martin Jenkins, ‘Lost and Found’ by Oliver Jeffers and ‘The Polar Bear and the Snow Cloud’ by Jane Cabrera. We found ‘The Emperor’s Egg’ to be very informative and we learned many facts about penguins. We also enjoyed our letter writing stations – we wrote the letters in sand, with playdough, on whiteboards and as rainbow letters.

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 sorting and learning about weight. We sorted items according to weight and did some heavier / lighter hunts and challenges. We also enjoyed playing maths games on the iPads.

In S.E.S.E, 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 P.E. we focused on the Games strand of the curriculum. We love playing warm up games such as stuck in the mud, flush the toilet and duck duck goose. We practised lots of skills this month including rolling, stopping and trapping balls, kicking and shooting, dribbling, bouncing, catching, tossing and striking. We used footballs and  rackets and bean bags a to practise these skills. We loved doing little relay races too whilst we practised these skills.

In Art we made beautiful penguin and polar bear collage pictures. We also decorated a handprint poem for Grandparents’ Day.  In Music, we sang some lovely songs – our favourite being ‘Boa Constrictor’. The song is so funny as it is about being eaten by a boa constrictor!

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