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 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

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

May 28 2019

The End of Year Show!

For the last few weeks we have been doing dance. We are doing it with Ms. Casey. We are practising for the End-of-Year Show. This year we are performing ‘Cinderella Rockerfella’. Sixth class are acting in the show. Here is the cast list for some of the main parts;

Cinderella – Jennifer

Rockerfella – Saibh

Buttons – Meghan

Dan – Ella

Ugly Sisters – Oisin and Charlie

Fairy Godmother – Lauren

I interviewed Ms.Aivalikli and she said her class have been working very hard on the play and have started practising it on stage. Every class from 2^nd to 5^th are doing the dances. I am doing a dance which includes a lot of different moves such as freeze frames and the box step. Part of our routine even includes cowboy hats.

Cool Fact – Ms.Casey used to teach me ballet!

Why not come and see the show for yourself, It’ll be a lot of fun!

By Pearl Fitzpatrick

Category: Media Team, Music, Drama | Comments Off

May 28 2019

The National Children’s Choir!

The National Children’s Choir had lots of rehearsals to learn and prepare for the big show in the basketball arena on the 27^th of March. We had 3 rehearsals before the big night. One here in our school and two in another school. We had 15 songs to perform and some were Latin, Ancient Latin, Swahili and more. It was great fun at the rehearsals since there were other schools there too and we made lots of new friends. When we were at the rehearsals the principal gave out 8 homework passes which were given to 8 lucky students. The students had to try really hard to smile and sing loudly. It is really important for singers to look happy on stage. It brings a positive energy and the audience seem to enjoy it more. The principal found it really hard to pick someone because we all tried so hard. The concert itself was great then and the children could be heard from miles away!

The whole experience was amazing and we made so many new memories. It was a great opportunity to be part of a choir of new and old friends. It is something we will never forget and something that we are really proud about!

By Kyla

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April 16 2019

March News from Ms. Olson’s Class

What a busy month March was in Senior Infants! We learned about homes this month. In Aistear we enjoyed playing in our home corner, doing different cut and stick activities and playing small world.

As it was book week in early March, we had a very special treat. Mr Fingleton came into our class to read one of our big books of the month – The Pig in the Pond, written by Martin Waddell. We thought this book was absolutely hilarious. We also read ‘A Squash and a Squeeze’ by Julia Donaldson and Ms. Olson began reading ‘The Twits’ by Roald Dahl to us at lunch times. During book week, Sixth Class very kindly came to read us our favourite books and we got to dress up as our favourite character on World Book Day. It was a very difficult decision for the judges of the dress-up competition to make but the well-deserving winner was the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland. We even had a bookmark and character design drawing competition and we had some well deserving winners of that too!

In Maths, we learnt all about money and we had great fun playing different money games including our coin exchange game. We can now exchange coins up to 10c and we can ‘pay’ for things in our pretend shop up to 20c! In Gaeilge we continued our lessons on ‘Sa Bhaile’ (Home) and we loved doing the topic – Lá le Pádraig (St. Patrick’s Day). In S.E.S.E we learnt about the different types of homes that people live in and we made a bar chart depicting what type of homes the children in our class live in. We learnt about the rooms in our homes and what activities might occur in these rooms, e.g. cooking in the kitchen! We also learnt about electricity and what appliances use electricity in the home and we went on a Spring walk and found some newts in our school pond!

In Music, we learnt some nice songs surrounding our theme – ‘Gotta Build a House’ and ‘The Wise Man and the Foolish Man’. We also learnt some songs as Gaeilge and performed them with the rest of Senior Infants for our St. Patrick’s Day Concert.

In Art we made our dream homes out of cardboard cereal boxes. You can have a look at a video of our houses on our Twitter – @MsOlsonsClass. Finally, we were so lucky this month as we got to go to the new science activity centre – Explorium! We had so much fun climbing, playing in the supermarket, dressing up, building things and trying out all the cool experiments. We’ll definitely be back!

Category: Senior Infants, Literacy, Maths, Aistear, S.E.S.E, Art, Music | Comments Off

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

March 27 2019

The Choir’s Big Night!

On Wednesday the 12^th December the school choir went to a carol service in St. Anne’s Church. It was on quite late, so it was very dark outside, but the church was bright with lights and candles. The choir sang two songs. The first one was “Night Of Silence” and the second song was “In A Stable”. Third and Forth class were singing in the choir. Mr Dunne, Ms Maguire and Ms Elmes were the leaders of the choir. Father John led us in prayer. I am part of the choir and I love it. We really enjoy choir practice. We have to work really hard to learn all the songs but it is worth it. Scoil Mhuire and the church choir sang there too. We also recorded these songs. With Mr Dunne’s guitar playing, Ms Maguire’s piano playing, Ms Elmes’ beautiful conducting and of course the choir, the night was a great success.

Written by Mairead and Pearl.

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March 27 2019

Ukulele in Third Class!

In 3^rd class we have started ukulele lessons. The ukulele is a 4 stringed instrument. It has 12 frets. We are learning Shotgun by George Ezra. It is one of our favourite songs. The beat of the song goes like cat-kit cat-kit. We are also learning how to tune our ukuleles. You can compare your ukulele to a fully tuned one and try to match the notes, or you can use a tuner or a tuning app. I asked our teacher Aidan about teaching ukulele and he said he has always loved music and teaching music to other people. We have been learning beat-boxing and the C cord. We will soon learn the A Minor cord. We all like learning ukulele as it is fun and not too hard. We all also like to practice on air-guitars. It is great!

By Pearl Rose in 3^rd class

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