December 20
2024
November 22
2024
Senior Infants – Aistear & Christmas Play
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November 22
2024
Fun & Learning happening in Senior Infants
October 18
2024
Maths Week 2024 in Senior Infants
June 29
2024
Green Flag Ceremony
October 12
2021
September News from Ms. Maguire’s Senior Infants!
Welcome to our Senior Infants blog. September has been a very exciting busy month. We settled in to our new room and have welcomed a new friend into our class. In September we had a lot of fun playing with our new room’s toys and have been busy doing lots of arts and crafts.
Our theme in September was All About Me and in Aistear, we practiced our skills as doctors in role play. We also practiced our fine motor skills through cut and paste. We enjoyed creative play with play dough and constructive play through playing with lego. We watched the song ‘A spoonful of Sugar’ from Mary Poppins, which we found very funny, and we enjoyed learning to sing it by ourselves. We also loved getting to do free play on Fridays.
We have been busy revising our Jolly Phonics from Junior Infants this month. We have been going over our letter formation and writing in our free writing copies. We have also started recount writing focusing on ‘Our News.’ In Irish, we have learned the songs “Lámh, Lámh eile,’ “Ceann, Gualainn, Glúin is Cos,’ and ‘Tá teidí ag siúl.’ We have also been practicing our conversation skills. While in maths, we have been revising the story of 5. We have used a lot of materials like teddies and cubes to practice different ways of making 5.
We have been practicing building our hand – eye coordination and our leg strength through practicing our throwing and catching and jumping, hopping and skipping in P.E. We connected our SESE with Art and collected fallen leaves to make an art project in preparation for next month’s theme. We also enjoyed learning about primary colours and the colours that we can make when we mix them.
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!
June 11
2019
May News from Ms. Olson’s Class!
Our theme for the month of May was ‘The Sea’. We had great fun during Aistear time as we had a pirate ship in the classroom! We had to sail our private ship and go on the hunt for treasure! We also made pirate ships out of Lego and engaged with lots of messy play in the form of water and sand play! Towards the end of the month we did some paper weaving and made woven fish. They turned out really well!
In English, we read the story, ‘The Snail and the Whale’ by Julia Donaldson. We focused on using our comprehension strategies including summarising and questioning. We also worked on our rhyming skills as Julia Donaldson’s books are great for learning about rhyme. This really helped us when we came to write in our PAT rhyming word families book. We also read ‘Winnie Under the Sea’ by Valerie Thomas. We thought this story was really funny. We wrote a summary of the story in our copy books and Ms. Olson was so impressed with our handwriting and spelling!
In Maths, we had lots of fun learning about capacity. We played with sand, counters, cubes and water as we investigated the capacity of different objects. We read the story of ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ and had to decide which bowls and cups to use for the three Bears by estimating and measuring which container held more / less. We even had a little popcorn party and had to decide which was the best container to use to share out the popcorn! We also started subtraction in May which is amazing because subtraction is really First Class work!
In Gaeilge, we learned lots of nice poems, songs and phrases surrounding the themes of ‘An Teilifís’ (Television) and ‘Siopadóireacht’ (Shopping). In S.E.S.E, we spoke about a trip to the seaside and wrote about a time that we went to the seaside and what we did there. We also learned about the Titanic. We were very lucky because two boys in our class brought in some fact books about the Titanic that we had a little read of. It was very interesting. We watched some underwater footage of the Titanic and were amazed that there are still some plates in the cabinets in one of the dining rooms!
It was Active Schools Week at the end of May and what a week it was! On Monday we had martial arts and circuit training. On Tuesday we had Sports Day. On Wednesday we had GAA and dance lessons and on Friday we got to go on four bouncey castles. It was such a fun week!
In Music, we learned some nice songs including ‘Apusski Dusski’ which is a song about a sardine, ‘Jackie the Sailor’ and ‘Chuaigh mé go dtí an Trá’. We also listened to some songs from ‘The Little Mermaid’ and discussed the mood of the songs. We also got a visit from Music Generation which was very cool. They showed us some instruments including the Cello, the Violin and the Piccolo. They also played us a few pieces of music. It was very enjoyable. Finally in Art we made lots of cool pieces. We made newspaper shark collages, paper plate jellyfish and egg carton Titanics! Check them out! Thanks for reading our blog, we cannot believe we only have a couple of weeks left in school before the holidays and before we become big First Class!!
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!
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!
