Our First Month in Big School!

Welcome to Ms. Olson’s Junior Infant Blog. Wow, we had a very busy September but we are settling in so well to big school and we have been having so much fun! Our first day was a bit different to other years but our parents and our teacher were so proud of us walking into school all by ourselves! We had lots of fun meeting our new friends and playing with all the toys in our classroom. Take a look at these photos of our first day in Junior Infants!

In September, we were learning all about ourselves and the doctor. Every morning we do Aistear, which is structured playtime. There are four stations per week and we play at one station each day. We love playing in the home corner. This month, we enjoyed playing in ‘The Doctors’ Surgery’, ‘The Toys’ Hospital’ and ‘The Opticians’. We were given a role to play and had to act out the part that we were given. We also enjoyed playing in small world. In small world, we had to set up a town and act out different scenarios using wooden people. Some of the scenarios included going to the doctors and the opticians. Another station that we enjoy doing is playdough. We were given themed playdough mats and had to add playdough details to them. We had to make doctor’s instruments like a stethoscope and we had to add glasses to people’s faces! We usually have a cut and stick station too to practise our cutting skills. We like sequencing the nursery rhymes that we are learning. Sometimes we have a construction station. We made hospitals out of Lego and Duplo this month. On Fridays, we have freeplay. This means we can play with any of the toys in the classroom. We just love playtime in Junior Infants!

In English, we started learning our Jolly Phonics! We love listening and singing along to the Jolly Songs as well as listening to the sound story and answering questions about it. Sometimes our teacher hides the sounds around the classroom and we have to find them and think of some words that contain that sound. We also love playing ‘I Spy’ when we are learning our sounds. We have started to learn how to write these sounds too. We learn the formation through different stations including writing the sounds in sand, on whiteboards, doing rainbow letters and covering the sound with counters! When we finished the first group of Jolly Phonics, we started blending little words! We are also doing lots of activities to develop our fine motor skills. Building up our hand muscles will make us excellent writers! We do fun activities each day such as cutting, writing our names, threading beads, playing with polydrons, pegboards, links, connecting cubes, straws, jigsaws and playdough. We also love story time at the end of the day, some of the stories we read were, ‘The Gruffalo’, ‘The Gruffalo’s Child’ and ‘Owl Babies’.

We love our interactive Gaeilge programme, Bua na Cainte. We explored two themes in September – Mé Féin (Myself) and Lá Bréithe (Birthday). We learn songs as Gaeilge (in Irish) and listen to the conversations. We like learning little phrases that we can say to our friends and our teacher. Sometimes we play with little picture cards and ask our partners some questions as Gaeilge. We also love the games on Bua na Cainte as they develop our listening skills!

In Maths, we have been doing lots of counting games and we learnt how to sort objects into sets according to colour, shape, size, number and type of object. We learnt how to make patterns with two colours (ABAB) and we’ve been learning how to write some of our numbers. We enjoyed playing maths games including ‘Happy Faces’ and ‘Sweetie Jar’ as they help us to develop one-to-one correspondence! We made sets of two and three items and we learnt the names of the 2D shapes – circle, square, rectangle, triangle, oval and hexagon. We played a fun feely bag game with the shapes and we went on a shape hunt around the school. We also made 2D shapes with pegboards and lollipop sticks as well as making 2D shape pictures.

In S.E.S.E. (Geography, History and Science), we learnt about our families and our school. We had lots of fun learning about our school as we got to go for a tour of the school and then we worked together to build an aerial view map of it! We learnt about the work of a doctor and an optician and we learnt the names of all of our body parts. Finally we learnt about the stages of the human life cycle and how we grow from a baby to a child to a teenager to an adult!

In Music, we were learning lots of lovely nursery rhymes. We particularly like ‘The Grand Old Duke of York’ as we get to march around the classroom! In Art, we made lots of lovely things including, self portraits, x-ray hands and Owl Babies pictures. In P.E., we have been playing lots of playground games and working on our throwing and catching skills with beanbags. We are very lucky to have Coach Steve from Shankill GAA coming in to us each Friday to do Ball Skills with us too! In S.P.H.E., we have been learning all about being a good friend and using our ‘Kind Hands, Kind Words and Kind Feet’ in school.

We hope you enjoyed our blog, we know it was very long but we did so much in September and we wanted to tell you all about it! Tune in next month to hear about what we got up to in October!

Category: Junior Infants, Literacy, Numeracy, Aistear, S.E.S.E, Art, S.P.H.E, Physical Education | Comments Off

June 15 2020

Junior Infants’ Wall of Fame!

Hello and welcome back to our blog!

Unfortunately, due to Covid-19, we have not been able to return to school so I asked all the boys and girls in my class to help me once again with this blog! A big thank you to the parents for making this happen!

A positive, that I have taken from this whole experience of lockdown, is the time that I have been able to spend with my family. It is also a time when I have tried new things, learnt new skills or gotten back into something that I previously enjoyed. I hope that the children in my class and their families feel the same!

This month, I asked the children to write about something that they are proud of doing or learning during lockdown. Take a look at our ‘Wall of Fame’ to read these lovely messages from the children. I am particularly proud of the children and how well they have adapted to distance learning and it was amazing to read about all the things that they have done with their families during these times. It just goes to show that not all learning happens inside a classroom, learning happens all around us!

“During lockdown I have spent a lot of time in the Park. I am very proud because I have learnt how to climb trees.” – Louis

“I am very proud of many things that I’ve achieved during the last three months but I am most proud of learning how to ride a bike without stabilisers. I was practising very hard and now I can ride on my own. I also got a new bike recently and I love it!” – Julia

“I am really proud of improving my handwriting, all the books I have read and planting my first strawberry plant. I love strawberries and hope I can grow loads in my back garden!” – Lauryn

“I have loved learning to bake cakes I am not allergic to with my Mummy and Daddy! I also like that I can eat the spare cake mixture left over at the end, it is yummy!” – Lucy

“I am proud of mastering my reading skills by reading many books by myself.” – Nikodem

“I am proud of doing lots of drawing with my Dad.” – Séamus

“I am proud of my handwriting, tree climbing, jumping and cycling.” – Robyn

“I am proud of my family, riding my bike, my reading and my writing. I can’t wait to go back to school.” – Molly

“I learned to make scones this month and the best part was getting to eat them. I’m proud of the ice-cream I made.” – Naoise

Well that’s it everyone, I hope you enjoyed reading our blog! Thanks again to the children and their parents for sharing their ‘proud’ moments. Here’s a quote to finish off, which I think sums up this post: ‘We didn’t realize we were making memories, we just knew we were having fun.” – Winnie the Pooh

Category: Junior Infants, Literacy, Art, Physical Education | Comments Off

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

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!

Category: Junior Infants, Literacy, Numeracy, Gaeilge, Aistear, Art | Comments Off

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

January 22 2020

December News from Ms. Olson’s Class!

Our theme for December was Christmas of course and we were delighted to be joined by our Elf on the Shelf – Snowflake and we loved opening our Advent calendar each day!

In Aistear, we absolutely loved playing in the home corner as it was the Post Office and Santa’s Workshop! First we had to write our Santa letters and post them in our very own post box! Then Santa himself read the letters and told the elves what they had to make in the workshop. The toys went through some serious quality control too before they were wrapped and put into Santa’s sack to be delivered to all the children. The Head Elf even had her clipboard out at one stage and sent some toys back as she wasn’t happy with the wrapping!! We also enjoyed playing small world as Santa had to deliver all the presents to the children with help from the reindeer on his sleigh. Those elves were getting quite hungry from all their hard work too so we made some playdough cookies for them to munch on in another Aistear station. Towards the end of December we actually made real chocolate chip cookies for Santa, however, we thought they might get a bit stale before he came so we had to eat them ourselves. Oops!! Finally we made 2D and 3D shapes out of marshmallows and cocktail sticks.

In English we continued to learn our phonics and practise our letter formation. We are also beginning to read short words using our tap and stroke blending method. Soon we will be ready to start reading short books! We enjoyed engaging with the stories ‘One Snowy Night’ by Nick Buttersworth and ‘Bear Snores On’ by Karma Wilson. We also wrote our own Santa letters as our handwriting is improving so much! In Gaeilge we were of course learning about ‘An Nollaig’ (Christmas). We especially loved singing the song ‘Tá Daidí na Nollaig ag Teacht Anois’. In Maths we continued to learn all about number – doing counting games, number games and writing our numerals, however, we also started learning about time. We loved learning ‘The Days of the Week Song’ and recording the time it took us to do an activity by counting the number of claps it took!

In S.E.S.E, we learnt about the signs of Winter. As it was Christmas we explored the theme of toys. We spoke about play spaces and keeping them clean and tidy, we discussed our favourite toys and we learnt about the differences between toys now and toys from the past. We sequenced the story of Christmas and spoke about Christmas traditions and we also explored and experimented with our five senses. We tasted different foods, we smelled different items, we played the feely bag game, we investigated sound with a tin and a rubber band and we played games to realise how important our eyes are and how we need to look after them. As a final little activity we made fake snow using the non-toxic substance from nappies – poly sodium acrylate.

We were very busy making Christmas in December. We made elves, Christmas wreaths, Christmas tree decorations, stain glass effect Nativity scenes, winter robins, angels and Christmas cards. Take a look!

In Music we sang some lovely songs including ‘Jog along Little Donkey’; ‘Féach ar an Mainséar’ and ‘Santa Claus is coming to Town’. We also listening to some pieces of music and responded to them through discussion and movement. We loved doing Dance with Ms. Casey in December – some of our dances can be found on our twitter feed @MsOlsonsClass and we got to perform on stage at assembly in front of Junior Infants, Senior Infants and First Class! We said a poem – ‘A Chubby Little Snowman’ and sang the songs ‘When Santa Got Stuck up the Chimney’; ‘Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer’ and ‘Jingle Bells / Bualadh Bos’. It was a lot of fun! Finally, probably the biggest thing that happened in December was we performed our Nativity play – Our First Nativity, for our parents. It was a roaring success and everyone was so proud of us because we had been practising so hard since midterm to put on a great show! We can’t believe that we are now in our second term of Junior Infants already but stay tuned as there is so much more to come in 2020!

Category: Junior Infants, Literacy, Numeracy, Aistear, S.E.S.E, Art, Music, Drama | Comments Off

December 19 2019

Food Glorious Food…and Pizza of Course!

Welcome back to Ms. Olson’s Junior Infants Blog! In November we explored the theme of food. In Aistear, we had great fun playing the Pizzeria, the Bakery and the Supermarket. In the Pizzeria, we pretended to be customers, waiters and chefs. The waiters showed us to our table, gave us our menu and took our orders. Then the chefs cooked the delicious pizzas and once we had finished we had to pay the bill. In the Bakery, we pretended to be bakers, shop assistants and customers. There were plenty of yummy treats to buy in the bakery. Finally in the Supermarket, we filled our baskets with food and brought them to the till where we placed them on the conveyor belt to be scanned. Unfortunately there were a few spillages and lost children at our supermarket so we had to announce these events over the intercom! We also enjoyed playing small world whereby we acted out going to a restaurant or we constructed furniture to go into our restaurants. We liked playing with playdough making pizzas and cakes. We also did a lot of cut and stick sequencing activities to practise our fine motor skills including ‘How to Make a Pizza’ and ‘The Story of the Little Red Hen’.

In English we continued to learn our Jolly Phonics and we wrote about our favourite food in our copies. We read the stories ‘Pizza at Sally’s’ and ‘The Little Red Hen’ to learn more about pizza making and bread making. In Gaeilge we learned some simple songs and phrases relating to the theme Éadaí (Clothes) and Bia (Food). We loved singing all the ‘cotá’ songs such as ‘Cuir ort do Cóta’; ‘Bain díot do Cóta’ and ‘Croch Suas do Cóta’. In Maths we continued learning about number – playing number games, counting games and writing our numbers. We also started learning about length. Some of the activities we did included making different lengths of objects such as threading beads, unifix cubes, playdough snakes and interlocking links within a given time. We then compared these lengths to see who built the longest / shortest length etc. We also went on a length hunt to find objects taller / smaller than a certain object. We continued to learn about pattern extending our knowledge to three step patterns such as ABCABC and AABBCCAABBCC.

In S.E.S.E, we had so much fun learning all about pizza. We were so lucky to make our own pizza. We were invited to Ms. Woods’ class to learn how to make pizza dough from scratch. We then watched it prove in our classroom, we had to put it in a warm place to ensure it worked properly. The next day we rolled out the dough and added toppings to the pizza before cooking it in the oven. It was so delicious! We were also so lucky and grateful to have a fantastic visit from Aoife who made soap with us. We learnt how important it is to look after our environment and one way to do that is to ditch the plastic soap containers and make our own soap! We added our own scents to the soap mould before setting them in the freezer.

In Music we enjoyed learning the songs ‘Miss Polly had a Dolly’; ‘Down by the Station’; ‘Mise an Traein’ and of course all of the songs for our Nativity play – ‘Our First Nativity’. In Art we had lots of fun making paper plate pizzas – they looked good enough to eat! Finally in drama – we were very busy preparing for our Nativity Play which we performed for our parents in December!

Category: Junior Infants, Literacy, Numeracy, Aistear, S.E.S.E, Art | Comments Off

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

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

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