October 3 2018

September News from Ms. Olson’s Class!

What a start to a fantastic new year in Senior Infants! Our monthly theme for September was ‘All About Me’ and we thoroughly enjoyed learning about families, our bodies, our school and of course recognising how special and unique we all are!

During Aistear time, we had great fun playing in the Doctor’s Surgery role play corner. We had to sign patients in at reception and instruct them to wait in our waiting room, before being seen by the doctor in the treatment room. We were also very excited to play ‘Teach your Monster to Read’ on the class computers and we’re definitely getting the hang of using the mouse and the keyboard now.

  

In English, we have been working really hard to learn all our Jolly Phonics and to develop our blending skills. We read ‘Owl Babies’ by Martin Waddell and ‘The Smartest Giant in Town’ by Julia Donaldson and learnt how to predict, question, summarise and make connections! In Maths, we have been super busy sorting collections of objects into sets, making patterns and partitioning for three, four and five. We also carried out some data investigations and recorded them both on paper and using our interactive board. In Gaeilge, we learnt many phrases in relation to ‘Mé Féin’ and ‘Lá Bréithe’ and sang some new songs and rhymes.

  

In S.E.S.E, we made family trees, identified the names of our body parts and went on a tour of our school before creating a big map on the classroom floor of our journey. In Drama, we played some fun games and read ‘Elmer’ by David McKee. Poor Elmer was sad that he was different from all the other elephants but we helped him to feel better by finding a solution to his problem! We like to start our day with a song, so we have been singing some lovely songs in Music. We are currently learning a song in preparation for Halloween – it is called ‘There was an old witch..’ And last but not least, we have made some beautiful artwork in Senior Infants. We drew and painted our self portraits and made some lovely Wassily Kandinsky inspired autumn trees!

  

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May 9 2018

April was an Eggciting Month in Senior Infants!

What a busy month we’ve had in Senior Infants! Our monthly theme was ‘The Sea’ and we had great fun exploring this topic.

In English we read the stories, ‘The Snail and the Whale’ and ‘Sharing a Shell’ by Julia Donaldson and discovered that Julia is a big fan of rhyming words just like we are! We love ‘Rhyme Time’ in our class each morning! We found some very interesting words for our word wall and we liked writing our own adventures for the Snail and the Whale. We also wrote about a time when we went to the seaside (real or imaginary!).

In Maths we had great fun learning about capacity. We sorted different sized containers and estimated and measured how much water, sand and different materials could fit into them. We also decided which containers would be best for holding different materials. Ms. Olson played a trick on us in our last capacity lesson – she poured water from a small container into a larger container and asked us if the containers had the same amount of water in them or whether they were different! Ms. Olson managed to trick quite a few of us (hehe!).

We had great fun in S.E.S.E this month. We learned about ‘The Titanic’ and constructed our own Titanic models in Art. We investigated different materials from the seaside including sand, pebbles, stones, sea glass, driftwood and even seaweed. We were able to touch the materials and feel the difference that water had on them. For example, when the seaweed was dry it felt quite crunchy and hard and when wet it was slimey and slippery! We also did a floating and sinking experiment and made predictions about which objects would float and which would sink. We learned about some interesting sea animals too. Did you know that an octopus has blue blood? We were very lucky to receive a Big Grow package from our friends at Innocent. We grew some lovely cress, spinach and peas and made sure to water them everyday.

In Music, we learned the song Apusski Dusky and performed it for the Junior School at assembly. We also listened and resonded to songs from The Little Mermaid – ‘Under the Sea’ and ‘Part of Your World’. In Art, as well as our Titanics, we made jellyfish mobiles and newpaper sharks and in Drama, we helped ‘The Rainbow Fish’ decide what to do with his shimmering scales.

                                  

We had great fun in our Aistear stations this month, in particular, we really enjoyed our time in ‘The Pirate Ship’. We also loved our time at the water and sand play station. We love getting messy!

However, perhaps the biggest news we have from Senior Infants this month is: We welcomed four beautiful ducklings into the world! We incubated the eggs for 28 days and on the 25th and 26th April 2018 we welcomed James Pond, Smash, Sir Quacks-a-lot and DJ Tiny into Senior Infants. At two weeks old, they are now too big to come to school anymore and they are off to a lovely new farm home in Enniskerry to be with some other ducks. We’ll miss their little chirps in the classroom!

That’s all from us here in Senior Infants, we hope you’ve enjoyed reading our blog post!

 

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December 22 2017

Wrapping Up for Christmas in Senior Infants!

Well what a busy month it has been in Senior Infants! From nativity plays to Aistear, Wildlife Warrior Workshops to Christmas sing-a-longs, December has been a cracker of a month!!

For much of November, Senior Infants had been practising for their production of ‘What a Star!’ and boy did they shine! On the 7th December 2017 all the Mums and Dads, Grannys and Grandads, brothers and sisters came to see our star-filled nativity show and everyone was very impressed. The children put on a fantastic performance!

In between practising for our play we made sun catcher nativity scenes, Christmas elves, Christmas tree decorations, penguin pictures and Christmas cards.

 

We had so much fun during Aistear this month, as our theme was Christmas all our stations were linked. We were busy elves in Santa’s Workshop designing, making and wrapping toys whilst the postmen and women delivered children’s letters to Santa; we baked chocolate chip cookies for Santa Claus and we made lovely Christmas cards.

     

We’ve had some special visitors in Senior Infants this month, Jingles – our Elf on the shelf (who we managed to catch on camera!! The footage can be seen on our Twitter page @MsOlsonsClass) and two lovely hedgehogs from Hedgehog Rescue Dublin. We learned a lot about hedgehogs and hibernation during our Wildlife Warrior Workshop. It was lots of fun!

To send us on our merry way, we finished off the term with a lovely sing-a-long, singing carols such as Jingle Bells, Away in a Manger, Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer and Santa Claus is Coming to Town! That’s it from Senior Infants, Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

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December 22 2017

‘C H R I S T M A S spells Christmas’ in Ms. Hegarty’s Class

We learned lots and really enjoyed ourselves during all the rehearsals for our  Nativity play. After many practices, on 8th December, we put on ‘C H R I S T M A S  spells Christmas’ for our families.  The boys and girls put on a super performance which everyone loved.  Here are pictures of the cast

 

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December 22 2017

November News from Ms. Hegarty’s Class

During November we started rehearsing our nativity play.  It was a little surreal trying not to talk about Christmas or Santa (it was much too early!) while singing lots of Christmas songs and acting out the Nativity.  We were very fortunate to have polydrons from the yard in our classroom in this month and we had great fun building with them.

Here are pictures of some things we made while learning to follow instructions and diagrams.

 

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November 13 2017

Interviews in Senior Infants

Senior Infants were excited to answer my six questions. These were their answers:

I asked Ben and Olivia in Ms Hegarty’s class what their favourite subject is and they said phonics and science. They made scary skeletons. They have been learning about spiders and have had a wonderful year so far. They sung their poem about bony skeletons. They are rehearsing songs for their Christmas play. Ms Hegarty thinks her class is fabulous.

In Ms Olson’s class, I asked two children what their favourite subject was. They answered Religion and Art. In Art they made aliens and painted planets with puffy paint. Last month they learned about Space and this month they are learning about Emergency Services. They are learning songs from Bua na Cainte. The teacher and the class are enjoying their year so far!

Ms. Olson’s Puffy Paint Planets

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November 6 2017

Space in Senior Infants!

For the month of October, we learnt about ‘Space’ in Ms. Olson’s Senior Infant Class!

During Aistear, we had so much fun pretending to be astronauts in our Space Centre Role Play Corner! We liked to sit in the Space Rocket, man the control panel and act out our rocket launch by counting down from 10 and shouting ‘BLAST OFF!!’ when the countdown reached zero! Once in Space, we pretended to walk around as if there was very little gravity around us!

In Art, we made puffy paint planets – we created a mixture of shaving foam, glue and paint and painted a thick layer of the mixture on to black card. When dry, the puffy paint had a sponge-like texture and our planets look great hanging outside our classroom!

October was a great month for S.E.S.E! In History, we learned that Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon (alongside Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin) and we watched a video clip of the Apollo 11 moon landing. We found this very interesting! Having learned many fun facts about Neil Armstrong, we were then able to construct a timeline of his life to develop our sequencing skills. In Geography, we learnt about our Solar System and all the planets within it. We pretended to be all the different planets orbiting around the sun! Finally, in Science, we really enjoyed doing rocket launch experiments! For our first experiment, we tried to get balloons to launch across a piece of string and we were very successful! In our second experiment, we used a vitamin C tablet to launch a film canister into the air. It was very exciting!

To take a look at videos of our experiments and Aistear time along with plenty of photographs of our artwork, please visit our twitter page – @MsOlsonsClass

 

 

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October 16 2017

Autumn has Landed in Senior Infants!

For the past month, Ms Hegarty’s class have been making new friends and have been playing with each other in the yard. Other than making friends, the class have been doing a lot of nature related activities. The class went on a nature walk and found a variety of nature objects such as leaves and acorns. With these they then made a nature table. One pupil found a large cone about three times the size of a normal cone.

In Art they did leaf rubbings using Autumnal colours. The class really enjoyed this a lot.

 

Ms. Hegarty’s Nature Table
By Eoin, Media Team
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June 8 2017

Sleeping Beauty’s Beautiful Feast in Senior Infants

Ms Hegarty’s class have been designing Sleeping Beauty’s Birthday Party Menu. They have also been learning about the Irish Stoat. They were also having a lot of fun learning magnetism and electricity. They did a hunt for materials that are magnetic around the classroom.

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May 8 2017

Interviews in Junior and Senior Infants

Hey guys, welcome to this month’s blog story!

I interviewed Michael, who is a student in Mrs Black’s class and Ms. Olson – one of the Senior Infants’ teachers.
Michael really likes school and his teacher because he said both are fun! They do lots of Maths, English and Irish in his class and he loves most subjects. The best part of his day is playing with his friends in yard and in one word he described school as “good”! Michael, if you’re reading, thank you very much for the great interview!

Next I had a very interesting conversation with Ms. Olson. She loves being a teacher in St. Anne’s because of the lovely atmosphere, the children here are always happy and smiling, and it is a nice place to teach. She has been teaching here for two years and last year she was teaching resource. Last year she also taught in St. Peter’s in Bray so she actually split her time between both schools! She said the funniest thing she has experienced in St Anne’s was just recently, when she watched the children’s reactions to the chicks hatching out of their eggs in her classroom. She loves Maths time because they play lots of games and she believes the children enjoy doing maths through play. The reason she loves teaching is because for her, every day is different, no two days are the same, and you meet and get to know so many wonderful children.

The big news in Ms Olson’s class this month, was the hatching of the famous chicks – Mario and Lu-Cheapy. They went from eggs to chicks in her classroom! Unfortunately they grew up too quickly and the class had to say goodbye. The good news is that they have gone to a new home where they are very happy!

By Ava, Media Team

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