April News from Ms. Olson’s Junior Infants!

Although April was a short month with our Easter Holidays, we packed a lot in! Our theme for the month was ‘Animals and the Farm’.

In Aistear, we enjoyed acting out the story ‘The Scarecrows’ Wedding’ by Julia Donaldson in the Farm Home Corner. We made ‘jewellery’ for Betty O’Barley from the story using beads and buttons in patterns. We designed a wedding cake for Harry and Betty using shapes in patterns and we loved playing with the farm and the farm animals in small world! In week two we constructed fields and animal pens using stickle bricks and sorted the farm animals into each field. We created a group picture of a farm with lots of colourful rainbows 🙂 and we learned about the life cycle of a chicken in preparation for our own hatching chicks! Finally, in week three we loved buying fresh produce from the Farm Shop! We also enjoyed doing jigsaws, learning about the life cycle of a frog and making farm animals out of playdough.

In English, we have really taken off with our reading! We have finished our Jolly Phonics and now we are revising our consonant and vowel digraphs and learning about the magic ‘e’! We practise our tricky words and blending each day which is really helping to improve our reading skills too. We love taking books now when we have finished our work and we read them to our friends as well as to our teacher. Our writing is coming along great too! We love Fridays as we do free-writing when we can write about whatever we like unaided. Monday to Thursday we do writing stations – we do one station each day. Usually our stations are: news writing; word families (e.g. -at words); sentence writing (we build the sentences with flashcards and then write them into our copies) and a CVC worksheet (consonant-vowel-consonant three letter words e.g. cat). Before we start our stations we love listening and watching our word family videos on YouTube. We listen to the Jack Hartmann ones! At the end of the day we love story time – this month we read the stories ‘Farmer Duck’ and ‘The Pig in the Pond’ by Martin Waddell. We also finished off ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’ by Roald Dahl and on recent rainy days we watched the movie adaptation at lunchtime.

In Gaeilge, we’ve enjoyed learning phrases, songs and poems surrounding the theme of Éadaí (Clothes). In Maths, we continued to revise combining for 4 and we started doing some simple sums! We enjoyed playing maths games including ‘Make Four’ and ‘Dikki Dikki Dox’ to reinforce our stories of 4. We also started comparing sets of objects and identifying which had more and which had less as well as calculating how many more / less they had. Towards the end of the month we started learning about money. Money is a tricky topic to grasp especially in relation to the idea that a 2c or a 5c coin is more valuable than a 1c coin even though they are all single coins! To teach this concept, we start out with coin tokens instead of real coins. A coin token has dots on them to denote whether it is a 1c, 2c, or 5c coin. We played a fun exchange game whereby we exchanged 1cs for 2cs and when we had enough – for 5cs too.

In S.E.S.E we enjoyed learning about the signs of Spring and singing our four seasons song. We learned about farmers, animals and their young, animal homes, vets and identified what pets we had. We learned about the lifecycle of a frog and a hen in preparation for our own hatching chicks. Hatching our own chicks was the biggest part of our S.E.S.E learning but you’ll have to wait to read all about it next month in our May blog!

In Art, we made lovely scarecrows in response to our story ‘The Scarecrows’ Wedding’ by Julia Donaldson and we made hatching chicks in honour of our own hatching chicks! Take a look!

In Music, we continued to start our day with a song and we particularly liked the song ‘The Three Bears’ as it was all about Goldilocks and the Three Bears! In S.P.H.E we started our Stay Safe Programme and finally in P.E. we loved doing ball skills, playing playground games outside in the sunshine and learning a dance routine to ‘I Just Can’t Wait to be King’ from the Lion King. Thanks to Catherine Casey School of Dance for the routine. You can watch our performance on our Twitter page @MsOlsonsClass.

That’s all for now, check back in a couple of weeks to see how we got on in May with our lovely chicks!

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

June 5 2019

April News from Ms. Olson’s Class!

Our theme for the month of April was ‘The Weather’. We had great fun during Aistear time playing in the weather station. We had to pretend that we were on the television giving the weather forecast whilst the rest of the group watched us from the couch! It was lots of fun!

In English we kept a weather diary. Each day we wrote about the weather. Unsurprisingly it rained for most of the week! It is Ireland after all!! We also did some explanatory writing and learned about the water cycle! We continued on with our Literacy Lift Off programme too, we have all progressed so well in our reading since beginning this programme! As well as reading, we’ve been working on our rhyming words and word families, we like doing our PAT workbook where we write down all our rhyming words. We were also very lucky to have an author come in to speak to us about the book he had written in aid of Temple Street Hospital – The Return of the Dragon by Don Briggs and illustrated by Naomi Peppard. He read us the story and Naomi showed us how she drew and painted the pictures. We were able to buy a copy of the book and all the profits go to Temple Street Hospital. The book has already raised €3o,000!

In Maths this month, we learnt about length. We did lots of activities including making worms out of play dough and comparing the lengths with other children in our class; sorting different objects according to length, length hunts in the classroom; measuring the length of the corridor, classroom, table and hall using the Easter Bunny’s footprints; making different length pasta necklaces and measuring how far we could throw beanbags! We love Maths because we are always learning in an active way!

In Gaeilge we learnt songs and phrases related to ‘An Aimsir’ (The Weather) and ‘An Cháisc’ (Easter). In S.E.S.E we investigated static electricity by doing some cool experiments with balloons. We also explored the work of meteorologists, day and night, the different types of weather and the effect that the weather has on people e.g. on their clothes. We looked at colours and realised that there are many different colours some of which are light and some are dark. We loved investigating shadows. We drew around our shadows in the yard and then revisited them later to see whether they had moved. Unfortunately it took us a few days to do this as we had to wait for some sun!! We also did some weather experiments, we made the water cycle in a glass, raining clouds and we tested different materials and coats to see which were waterproof!

In Music we learnt some lovely songs including ‘Marvellous Things’; ‘Hokey Pokey’ and ‘Mo Ghairdín’ and in Art we made hatching chick pictures, Easter cards using potato prints and rainbow mobiles. To reward our good behaviour we had a eggcellent easter egg hunt on our last day of term before our Easter holidays! It was so much fun!

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

May 2 2019

Mr Hacketts 2nd Class News!

We’ve had a busy few weeks as we come to the end of the term in 2^nd class.

In Maths we have been looking at money and are working out how to add different amounts and also how much change we get. We have been using coins to help us work out our answers.

We also planted our very own seeds and we were lucky enough to have Cushla bring us in a grow box. We have planted the seeds in small containers in our class and have vegetables of every kind. There certainly are some green hands in this class. This week we will move them and plant them in the garden outside our window.

As Easter is fast approaching we looked at chocolate, how it is made and where it comes from. This was followed up with a trip to the Butlers chocolate factory. We had a tour of the factory where we found out how the chocolates were made and packaged to be sent around the world. We then went to a demonstration and got to decorate our own.

In lift off some of the children have been producing some fantastic projects based on the books they are reading.

Our write a books were returned from being judged and as you can see the children put in some extra hard work really did produce some amazing books!!!!

Category: Second Class, S.E.S.E, Science | Comments Off

April 3 2019

News from Ms Livingston’s Class

Welcome to Ms. Livingston’s Senior Infants. This month, our Aistear theme was People who help us. We learned all about people in our community such as firefighters, doctors, nurses, dentists, lollipop ladies, paramedics, lifeguards and more! We performed two poems at junior assembly, one about how firemen help us and another about the gardaí.

We all dressed up in our Irish colours for St. Patrick’s Day! We looked at the St. Patrick’s Day parade and also how other countries celebrate it around the world.

We went on a Spring nature walk around the school grounds. We recorded any signs of spring. We found a lot of daffodils. We also saw lots of different flowers which some classes had planted in Senior Yard. We used our five senses while on our walk. We could smell lavender from the school garden. We also could hear birds chirping.

We also planted our very own seeds from the Incredible edible programme. We first planted the seeds in small containers in our class. Some of the food we planted were turnips, lettuce, carrots, potatoes, strawberries, and chives. When they started to sprout in the pots, we moved them and planted them in the garden. We hope to see them grow even more!

Category: Senior Infants, Aistear, S.E.S.E, Geography, Science | Comments Off

April 1 2019

Senior Infant Science Trip!

In March, the three senior infant classes went on an outing to Explorium. Explorium is the new Science and Sports centre in Sandyford. We travelled by bus and arrived at Ten O’ Clock. We spent two hours freely exploring the exhibits. There were areas where we could play in a pretend shop or dress up and put on a show on a stage! There was a sensory room where our drawings came to life on a giant screen. There was also kinetic energy and musical exhibits exploring the science behind sound. Of course, a popular feature of the day was the indoor adventure course which included a net climbing frame and slide. We really enjoyed our day out!

Category: Senior Infants, Science | Comments Off

January 14 2019

Science Week!

This year science week was the 11^th to the 18^th of November. Science week is when schools all over Ireland spend a little extra time on science. Some schools decide to carry out exciting experiments. Mr. Donnelly’s 4^th class made paper helicopters and oobleck. My favourite experiment was when we made oobleck. Oobleck is made out of cornflour and water. We put in red or green food colouring. We loved science week because science is such a fun subject. Science week makes learning more fun. It gives us a chance to become scientists for the week and develop new skills. We cannot wait for science week next year!

Written by the Creative Media Team

Category: Media Team, Science | Comments Off

December 13 2018

First Class – Ms McManus

During the month of November, we spent a lot of time learning about space. The whole class showed such a big interest in space and had such amazing knowledge on the topic, that we even created a space table! Every morning, we would spend a few minutes discussing any new objects or creations that were brought in and placed on the table. We loved to spend any free time we had picking up some new knowledge from the amazing things people brought in.

A really important person we learnt about during the month was Neil Armstrong, who was the first man on the moon. Did you know that Armstrong was just 15 years old when he got his first pilots license? He was also part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, for many years. To help us remember these facts and to help us understand his life better, we created these ‘Neil Armstrong Timelines’

Before we started working on the topic of space, we wanted to show how much we already knew! We created a KWL in our copies, and a lot of us wanted to learn more about the planets. We started our lesson by creating large pictures of what we thought all of the planets might look like, and what order they might be in. Having discussed everyone’s different ideas, we learnt a rhyme to help us remember the order of the eight planets:

My Very Elderly Mother Just Served Us Noodles

Once we had learnt a little more about the planets, we created these space pictures! Can you believe we put black paint over our beautiful colouring? It was a little scary but we think it paid off!

Category: First Class, S.E.S.E, Science | 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

October 29 2018

Ms Ryan’s Second Class

Welcome to Ms. Ryan’s 2^nd class! What a term we’ve had! At the start of the year we went on a mini-beast hunt around our school. We looked closely for minibeasts in different habitats and recorded what we saw and where we found them. Some of the minibeasts were not so mini!

We have been learning all about our locality in SESE. We created maps of Shankill and discussed the bridges in our area. This was so interesting as we didn’t notice how many different types there are. We learned all about how they stay up and what they are used for. We even tested a few types of bridge structures using paper to see which could hold the most weight.

Last week was Maths Week! We had lots of fun challenging each other on Mathletics for our homework. We also challenged other children in the school and around the world! We discovered maths all around us both at home and in school with scavenger hunts and a maths trail. For art we created some spooky symmetrical monsters.

Let’s hope the year continues as successfully as it started. Happy Halloween from Ms. Ryan’s class!

Category: Second Class, Literacy, Numeracy, Science | Comments Off

October 14 2018

News from Mr. Dunne’s Third Class!

It’s been an absolutely wonderful start to the year in Room 13, with plenty of interesting and exciting things just one month in. Recently, we’ve been doing plenty of discussion on the changing autumnal weather. We went out on a nature walk to have a search for as many beautiful colours we could find, and took some souvenirs back in with us! We then did some observational drawings which can be seen decorating the hallway just outside our room.

We also worked on creating self-portraits and the results are just amazing! There are some very talented artists up here in Room 13…

We’ve been doing the daily mile each day (depending on the weather!), and we recently carried out an investigation into how exercise affects our pulse rate. In other science-y news, we created some old-fashioned cup telephones to investigate how sound travels! We had great fun doing this, and we were all surprised at how well the sound travels through the string. Amazing!

That’s not all, each week we have been debating RTÉ News2Day’s question of the week. Each week, the children’s news show poses a ‘Question of the Week’ and we have a whole-class discussion and debate, write our opinions and send them in! So far, two of the children in our class (Isabelle Forde and Alan Morley) have actually had their answers read out on the news.

Lastly, we have been working really hard on our family projects. Have a look at a few of them below, and see the fantastic imagination and creativity brought to these projects!

We will update again soon, and thanks for reading our blog post!

Category: Third Class, Literacy, S.E.S.E, Science, Art | Comments Off