Eggcellent May News from Ms. Olson’s Class!

We had a very eggciting month in May as our baby chicks were born! We incubated ten chicken eggs for twenty one days and they hatched into ten fluffy chicks called Toast, Big Foot, Eggbert, Pickle, Sunny, Sunshine, Lucky, Snowy, Egg and Potato! Our eggs were incubated at 37.8 degrees celsius inside a manual incubator and we had to ensure there was enough water in the gauge to keep the humidity at the right level. Each day we turned the eggs at least three times and we numbered them on one side and put an ‘x’ on the other to ensure we knew which egg was which! We did all of this to minic what would happen in real life with a hen! Usually a hen sits on the eggs and keeps the eggs at the right temperature as well as turning them several times a day with her feet to ensure that they develop properly. The hen’s feathers are slightly damp underneath which ensures the correct humidity for her eggs too!

After about eight days of incubation we were able to see some veins inside our eggs when we candled them. This involving shining a torch through them in a dark room.

On day fourteen we candled them again to reveal much larger dark shadows that were beginning to move!

We did our final check on day eighteen which showed our chicks having great fun moving around in their little eggs.

For the last three days, we didn’t turn the eggs anymore in order for the chicks to get into the right position for hatching. On day twenty-one our first egg pipped and the rest soon followed. A ‘pip’ is when the chick makes its first crack of the egg with its egg tooth (a little tooth on the top of its beak which breaks off post hatch – specially designed for cracking shells), it does this to give itself more air to breath. Inside the egg, there is an air sac which the chick will breath from before it pips. After the chicks pipped their shells, it took about ten to twelve hours for them to fully hatch. Making the first pip is hard work and they need to have a good rest, absorb the rest of the egg yolk through their belly buttons (their food) and conserve their energy for their big hatch.

The hatch itself doesn’t take too long, maybe an hour at most! The chick has to work its way around the whole shell before using its back, neck, wing and head to push itself out of the shell. Inside the egg, the chick’s head is tucked up underneath its wing to protect it – hence why you might have seen the wing come out of the shell first in our Twitter videos – @MsOlsonsClass.

The chicks did not come out of the shell looking all fluffy! Their feathers were actually soaking wet!

We left them in the incubator until they had dried and fluffed up and then we transported them into a suitable box. We hung an infrared heat lamp over the box to keep them cosy and gave them lots of food and water. A normal lamp wouldn’t work as well as the little chicks would find it too difficult to sleep with the harsh light. The chicks grew so quickly and began to get their wing feathers after only a couple of days.

They could often be seen preening themselves to change the fluff to feathers! After five days our chicks went to a lovely new home with lots of other chicken friends but each class in the school got to visit them before they left and were given a chance to name them!

We were lucky enough to be sent updates too! Look at how much they’ve grown after only a week or two!

Besides all of the chick news, we actually did so many other things in May that we need to tell you about too! In May we were learning all about transport. Each week our Aistear corner changed into a different vehicle! We had lots of fun playing in the bus, train and aeroplane! We constructed different vehicles using a variety of different materials including Lego, Duplo, polydrons and stickle bricks. We enjoyed making a runway for our aeroplanes to land and take off from too. We mapped out journeys in small world using our mats, vehicles and trains to travel around the town and we did some cut and stick activities including labelling a car, sorting vehicles by air, land and sea and creating an aeroplane. Finally we made 2D shape vehicles by drawing around shapes, cutting them out and creating a picture with them!

In English, our reading is steadily improving day by day and we are really enjoying reading our books. We are continuing to revise all our phonics, tricky words, Dolch words and blending words to enhance our reading skills even further. We like doing our stations each week and we are making great strides with our writing too. This month we focused on stories involving journeys. We liked listening to ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ by Michael Rosen and ‘The Snail and the Whale’ by Julia Donaldson.

In Gaeilge we are continuing to learn our songs, poems and phrases about Éadaí (Clothes) and we are about to start Siopadóireacht (Shopping). In Maths we continued to learn about money. This time we used real coins and had great fun investigating what they looked like, what symbols they had on them, how the coins differed on the back and we looked up where all the coins that we had came from! We also played the coin exchange game from our last blog using real coins, did some coin rubbings pictures, played shop with Ms. Olson and Mr. O’Connor using real coins and made towers of unifix cubes to denote each coin value! We also revised sorting and sorted shapes for up to four properties – colour, shape, size and thickness. Sorting for one property at a time was two easy for us so we sorted for two and three properties at the same time! We also did lots of addition sums within 5 and 10, revised before and after, more and less and revised our 2D and 3D shapes.

Most of our S.E.S.E learning this month was learning about our chicks but we also learned about vehicles and transport during Aistear time and we planted sunflowers too. Look at how they’ve grown – unfortunately they got a little bit dry over the bank holiday but we’re hopeful they’ll spring back to life (fingers crossed!!)

In Art we made egg box Dublin Buses and paper plate sunflowers as well as the couple of pieces we made in Aistear up above. Take a look!

In Music we learnt songs surrounding the theme of horse and ponies. The songs were lots of fun and we liked pretending to be horses whilst singing! In S.P.H.E. we completed our Stay Safe Programme and in P.E. we were so lucky to have Catherine Casey back in with us to do a few dance sessions as well as ball skills with Coach Steve from Shankill GAA. We also did gymnastics with our teacher, practising our jumping and rolling skills!

That must have been a record long blog but we had to tell you all about our chicks! We hoped you liked reading about our time in school during the month of May. We will have our final blog of the year up during the last week of school. We cannot believe our time in Junior Infants is nearly over! We are getting so grown up!

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

December 6 2020

Food Glorious Food in Ms. Olson’s Junior Infants!

In November, we explored the theme of ‘Food’. We had a lovely mid term break but we were delighted to be back and engaging in Aistear again! We visited the Pizzeria, the Bakery and the Supermarket in our home corner this month. We enjoyed playing the roles of the chefs, bakers, customers, waiting staff and shop assistants. In the pizzeria, we were greeted by the waiting staff, who showed us to our table and gave us our menu. When we had ordered our food the chef made us delicious pizzas. Afterwards, we had to pay our bill and if the service was good, we gave them a tip! Some people decided to order their pizza over the phone for delivery so the waiting staff had to answer the phones too. In the bakery, we enjoyed eating delicious treats baked by the baker – there was the option to sit in as well or you could browse the selection and get the cakes for take away. In the supermarket, we enjoyed using the shopping baskets to carry our food that we had selected from the shelves. We then put it all on the conveyor belt and the shop assistant scanned it for us and put it in to our shopping bags. We had to make sure that we got our receipts too!

We also enjoyed constructing the pizzeria and supermarket using Lego, Duplo and Sticklebricks. We used the small world people to play with our constructions afterwards. Some of our constructions had take-away only facilities replicating our lives at the moment! We did some great cut and stick activities this month including ‘How to Make Pizza’, sequencing the story of ‘The Little Red Hen’ and ‘How to Make a Jam Sandwich’. We also enjoyed making playdough cookies and cakes for the bakery.

In English, we continued on with our Jolly Phonics. We are getting very good at blending short words now and we are learning our Tricky Words! Soon we will be ready to start reading little books of our very own! Our writing is steadily improving and we are enjoying playing our phonics games and doing our fine motor stations each day. We read some great stories this month including ‘Pizza at Sally’s’; ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea’, ‘The Little Red Hen’ and ‘The Enormous Crocodile’.

In Gaeilge, we have been enjoying exploring the theme ‘Bia’ (Food) using our Bua na Cainte interactive programme. Our listening skills as Gaeilge are greatly improving and we are finding the games much easier to play now! We enjoyed singing along to the food themed songs and learning simple phrases such as ‘Is maith liom ___’ (I like ___)

In Maths, we continued to focus on number work, engaging in activities such as counting games, number formation, making sets of numbers, learning about ordinal number (first, second, third etc.) and playing maths board games to develop one-to-one correspondence. We also explored different patterns such as ABC and AABB patterns. We made these patterns according to colour, shape, size and random objects. We learnt about length too! We did lots of timed exercises to see who could make the longest object with the materials provided within the time. We made objects of varied lengths using playdough, stickle bricks, interlocking links, beads and thread and interlocking cubes. Towards the end of the month, we had great fun with our friend BeeBot developing our spatial awareness skills as well as number and shape work.

In S.E.S.E our focus was on food and people at work! We looked at how pizza is made, who makes it and where it originates from – Italy. We learnt about the seven continents through singing the continents song on YouTube and discovered that Italy is shaped like a boot and is in Europe. We then tried our hand at making our own pizza! We learnt how the yeast makes the pizza dough rise. We left our dough to prove by the radiator and were amazed at how much it grew! We added our toppings and our margherita and pepperoni pizzas were delicious!

In Art, we made paper plate pizzas. In Music, we loved learning little songs including ‘Miss Polly Had a Dolly’ and ‘Down by the Station’. We also started learning the songs for our Christmas play!

In P.E., we had great fun practising our ball skills with Coach Steve from Shankill GAA. We are now learning how to do solos as well as bouncing and catching the ball. We also enjoyed doing games with our teacher. We were learning how to balance beanbags on rackets and how to control a beanbag and ball using a unihoc stick. We did some team relays with the rackets and unihoc sticks. It was great fun!

Finally, in S.P.H.E, we have been learning all about our five senses. We did a taste test to identify our four different tastes – sour, bitter, sweet and salty. We tasted the foods – natural yogurt, lemon, a jelly sweet and crisps to identify the different flavours. Some we weren’t so keen on!

Thank you so much for reading our blog, tune in next month to read about all things Christmas! It’s sure to be a cracker!! 🙂

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

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

October 18 2020

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

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

Internet Safety

On Wednesday 1^st of May, Seamus from Zeeko came to talk to us about being safe and careful on the internet. Zeeko shows people how to be safe online and encourages us to spend less time online.

He told stories about the internet.

We learned that if you stay looking at a screen late at night a light called blue light would trick your eyes into thinking it is daytime and you don’t sleep properly.
We learned about “stop, block, tell” which helps you if someone is mean or rude in a message. If you get a mean message you stop, block the person that is sending the message and then tell someone.
We learned that you should have a chat buddy, these are people you can talk to if something happens or just in general. To have someone that you trust to help or ask questions.
We learned that if you put photos of you online anyone can use them.

Media Team

Category: Media Team, S.P.H.E | Comments Off

May 20 2019

News from Sixth Class!

As we settle into our last term together in St. Anne’s – we can’t quite believe how quickly our time here has gone by.

In class at the moment we are reminiscing daily and looking forward to the big transition to secondary school. Many of us are going to different schools around the area and some of us are heading there on our own. It’s going to a big change but one we are preparing ourselves for in class through S.P.H.E lessons on topics such as relating to others, effective communication and myself and the wider world. We are excited and anxious in equal measure but we are definitely ready for the challenge and our next chapter.

Speaking of chapters – we are almost finished reading our latest class novel – ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ – what an amazing book it is. We love reading books that bring history to life through story and this is definitely an excellent example of how it should be done. Linking with this we are learning about WW2 in history, Europe in Geography, propaganda and our visual art will be pretty impressive too we hope, as we attempt silhouette art.

So as you can see we are still very busy on the academic side of things and alongside that we are working hard on our End of Year Show, which is on June 12^th and 13^th – we cannot wait but we’ve still got lots of work to do with our teachers Ms. Kett and Ms. Aivalikli before we’re stage ready.

The highlight of the last few weeks was of course our confirmation. The weather was amazing, the ceremony was beautiful and the day was memorable. Many of us shared the day with family and friends, some at home, some in hotels and restaurants but we all agree it was a truly wonderful day and occasion for us all.

Another highlight was of course getting our Class of 2019 hoodies – I’m sure you’ve spotted us around the school (we never take them off :0)

With active schools week coming up and testing continuing, we will keep working hard for the next few weeks and we look forward to our show, our end of year tour to Avon Rí and of course our graduation ceremony.

Bye for now!

Category: Sixth Class, S.E.S.E, Art, S.P.H.E | Comments Off

December 4 2018

Junior Infants – Ms Walsh

Hi Everyone,

We have been very busy and having fun here in Junior Infants, even though we are missing Ms Walsh.

We have been working hard at our Nativity play and we are learning all our songs for that:)

Here we are making or Christmas trees and wreaths, you will see them outside our door when you are coming in to school.

We are also hard at work playing with lego and playdough.

In SPHE we have been learning all about different tastes, like sweet, sour and salty and deciding we we like, and which we don’t like.

We have been doing some relaxation with the book Listen to the Sky which we all really enjoy and feel very relaxed afterwards.

Thanks for reading this and see you at our play – We can’t wait!

Category: Junior Infants, Art, Music, Drama, S.P.H.E | Comments Off

November 21 2018

News from Ms. Rigby’s First Class!

We’ve had another great few weeks in Room 3. We have been so amazing that we even won a hot chocolate party!

We’ve been busy with our new playground idea called circle of friends. Circle of friends is a circle of children from our class who have a corner of the yard for themselves where they can play with blocks, chalk and a ball. We are encouraged to use positive hands and kind words when playing. This is the only rule to being part of the circle. We have really enjoyed this and have found that we are mixing really well and making new friends. The circle has become bigger each week. We really think that we are playing much more kindly because of the circle and we hope the benefits of it will last a long time. We then made a friendship recipe as part of SPHE to remember what makes a great friend.

We also went to space recently and wrote postcards home. This was a really fun activity. Some of us really used our imagination and it was very believable that our postcards were actually from space.

The Sam Maguire came to visit us last week. We were all so excited. Maybe someday we will have the opportunity to win it. We just haven’t decided if that will be playing for Mayo or Dublin yet!

Category: First Class, S.P.H.E | Comments Off

November 4 2018

Mischief Managed in Ms. Kett’s Class!

We have gone Harry Potter mad in Ms. Kett’s 6^th class and we’re currently starting the 2^nd book in the series. Although some of us have read them before, lots of us haven’t and we’re all thoroughly enjoying reading and disecting them. We are using the novel to inspire our art, teach us about story and character development and of course how to improve our own writing by using rich and descriptive language and a variety of adjectives and adverbs, a speciality of J.K. Rowlings.

As 6^th class is our last year in primary school we began the year by writing a letter to our teacher with some requests and hopes for the year ahead. We are very excited about confirmation preparation and of course getting ready for the big move to secondary school. With this in mind we’ve been having lots of conversations around SPHE topics such as – friendships, looking after ourselves and making good choices. We’ve also been discussing healthy eating and good habits and began our studies of the human body by looking at the heart and lungs. The brain is next – we can’t wait. In history we are currently learning all about the Georgian Era and looking at architectural evidence round our great city. We are drawing and constructing Georgian building and doors and are becoming increasingly impressed by the magnificient buildings from the past. We are going on our first tour next week to Henrietta Street museum and the Hugh Lane Gallery. We are excited and looking forward to many more educational (and fun) tours throughout the year.

This month we also produced a ‘Passion Project’. We researched and prepared these at home and presented them to the class on completion. The variety and standard of the projects was excellent and it was facinating to learn about each others passions in such detail. We learned a lot from each other; some baked brownies and cookies (very popular indeed) and explained the process, others chose football as their passion (surprise, surprise), other projects included the World of Disney, Harry Potter, Horses, Hockey, Parties and even The Immune System, to name but a few. They were all fantastic and very informative. We are looking forward to doing many more projects throughout the year ahead.

We’ve also been keeping our eyes peeled for signs of Autumn and in particular the amazing changing colours in our environment. We’ve learned about photosynthesis and the Season s at a global level. The wonderful autumnal colours have inspired more art.

Overall we’ve had a great start to the year and are looking forward to Halloween and the mid-term break now but also learning much more as the year unfolds. Slán.

Category: Sixth Class, Literacy, History, Science, Art, S.P.H.E | Comments Off