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.

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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

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!!

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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!

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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!

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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

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!

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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!

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March 11 2019

Back to School with a Bang in Senior Infants!

January was an interesting month in Senior Infants because we learnt all about Egypt! We had lots of fun during Aistear time. We enjoyed playing in the Airport Role Play corner where we pretended to be going on our holidays to Egypt. We liked building pyramids out of Lego. We pretended to be archaeologists digging for buried treasure during sand play and we worked as a team to create cool mummies and sarcophaguses.

In English, we spent a lot of time on narrative writing as we entered the Write a Book Project. Our book was about a little boy and a little girl called John and Jojo. They went on a school tour to an Egyptian museum and managed to travel back in time to have a scary encounter with a mummy! It all turned out ok in the end though!

In Gaeilge, we learned many songs and phrases around the topics of Bia (food) and Éadaí (Clothes). We loved playing little language games using picture cards in pairs because we were able to talk to our friends using the simple phrases that we’d learnt. In Maths we revised pattern and data. We made lots of different patterns using shapes, camels, pegboards and unifi cubes. We did a survey of our class to investigate what everyone’s favourite toy was and then we recorded the data by making bar charts.

In S.E.S.E we learnt all about Egypt. We learned about Egypt’s landscape, rivers, mountains and cities. We learnt about Egyptian food and animals that you might find in Egypt such as camels, cheetahs, crocodiles, hyenas and cobras. Then we learnt about Egyptian pharaohs such as Tutankhamun and Cleopatra and about pyramids and mummies. We found it all very fascinating!

In Art, we wrote our names in Egyptian hieroglyphs and we made pharaoh pictures using our photographs. We also made Egyptian golden necklaces using dyed pasta! They all turned out really well!

In Music we’ve been learning lots of songs as we always start our day with a song. We particularly enjoyed learning the song ‘Over in the Meadow’ and we loved performing it for our Grandparents on Grandparent’s Day. In Drama, we read the story ‘The Girl with the Red Slippers’ which is an Egyptian version of Cinderella. We had great fun pretending to be ballerinas and acting out the different parts in the story. Finally, we have been doing dance in P.E with Catherine Casey and we learnt a dance from the Lion King. You can check it out on our twitter page – @MsOlsonsClass

Category: Senior Infants, Literacy, Numeracy, Gaeilge, Aistear, S.E.S.E, Art, Drama, Physical Education | Comments Off

January 14 2019

A Winter Wonderland in Senior Infants!

Happy New Year from all of us here in Ms. Olson’s Senior Infants. We can’t believe it is 2019 and we are into our fifth month of school! Time flies when you’re having fun!

In December we explored the theme of Christmas and Wintertime and we really enjoyed ourselves! In Aistear, we loved playing in the Post Office / Santa’s workshop. We had to write letters to Santa, post them in the post box and wait for the elves to design, make and wrap our presents before Santa delivered them to us! At another station we baked chocolate chip cookies for Santa (although we may or may not have eaten them ourselves hehe…)

In Literacy, we read the stories ‘Bear Snores On’ by Karma Wilson and ‘One Snowy Night’ by Nick Buttersworth. Both stories were set in wintertime and the main characters were animals. We also spent some time learning how to write letters. We even drafted our own letters to Santa Claus before copying out the finished piece on to a lovely Santa letter template. Our handwriting was so neat that Ms. Olson displayed them on our classroom wall! In Gaeilge, we learned lots of phrases and new vocabulary surrounding the theme of ‘An Nollaig’. We learnt the songs ‘Bualadh Bos’ and ‘Seo í an Leanbh Íosa’ which are versions of Jingle Bells and Away in a Manger. In Maths we learned about 3D shapes – cube, cuboid, sphere and cylinder. We liked going on shape walks, playing with our 3D Beebot shape mat and making 3D shapes out of marshmallows and cocktail sticks!

In S.E.S.E we learned about the different animals that hibernate and migrate in winter. We also sequenced the story of Christmas and we had great fun learning about materials – in groups we designed toys and we made them out of materials that we could find in the classroom. We then presented our toys to the rest of the class. We also made snow by adding water to polysodium acrylate (the stuff inside nappies!!) in Science!

We made some lovely things in Art last month! We made Christmas elves using our faces, winter penguins, Christmas tree decorations, stain glass nativity scenes and nice Christmas cards for our families. We were very lucky to be able to perform some songs at assembly in Decemeber. We sang an extended version of Jingle Bells and Santa Shark. All the other children loved our performance and even sang along! We also performed our Christmas play ‘What a Star!’ for the school and our parents. We did a fantastic job and Ms. Olson and our parents were so proud of us! We really are superstars in Senior Infants!

Thank you for taking the time to read our blog. We hope you liked it! Our next blog is sure to be an interesting read as we are currently learning about Egypt! Check it out next month – in the meantime keep track of what we are doing by following us on twitter – @MsOlsonsClass!

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