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!

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

January 14 2019

First Class – Ms McManus

After a really lovely break, we’ve started to settle down in first class after a crazy and fun lead up to Christmas! One of the first things we did as a class, was discuss New Year’s Resolutions. We brainstormed some ideas that we knew we could stick to for the whole year, and everyone chose one to write up as a reminder. We’ll let you know how they’re going throughout the year!

Just before the break, we learned all about Christopher Columbus and his explorations. We learned about his life as a trader and chatted about how difficult life would have been as an explorer, before the invention of airplanes! Once we felt we knew enough about Columbus, we created fact files so that other people in our class could come and learn about him too!

Our first art lesson of the year focused on a printing technique called ‘pointilism’. We used cotton buds to fill outlines of our favourite toys with colour. It took a long time and the boys and girls had to be very patient, but I think the hard work paid off!

Pointilism Examples:

Category: First Class, S.E.S.E, Geography, Art | Comments Off

January 10 2019

Paleontologists at work in Ms Hughes’ Class

Lots of exciting things have happened in Senior Infants since our last post. We had an exciting November. Science Week inspired our theme ‘Dinosaurs’. We worked as scientists excavating fossils from our Paleontology sand pit dig. We used our chisels and brushes to uncover fossils and then we recorded our findings on our clip board chart- serious business!

We made our own salt dough ‘fossils’ by imprinting shells and toy dinosaurs into the dough. In art we created dinosaurs bone pictures. Deva also built us an amazing Volcano so we could really go back to a prehistoric world during role play time. We have learnt the different names and characteristics of lots of dinosaurs and we have even done ‘The Dino Stomp’ dance

We really enjoyed our dance classes with Ms Casey and we also wowed the parents and teachers in our performance of ‘A Christmas Toy Story’. We are a talented bunch and can’t wait to see what learning and fun term two brings.

Category: Senior Infants, Aistear, S.E.S.E, Art, Drama | Comments Off

December 16 2018

“You’re Under Arrest”…..in Ms. Olson’s Senior Infants!

Our theme for the month of November was ‘Jobs’ and what an interesting month it was! In Aistear, we had a Garda Station role play corner which we really loved! We had to answer all the 999 calls and dispatch the guards to different situations. We had a Garda car to take us to those emergencies and we even had a cell to hold the prisoners! We also had to fill out incident forms and take finger-prints. It was a lot of fun!

We also made Emergency Services puppets in Aistear. We made Guards, Mountain Rescuers, Paramedics and Firefighters. Take a look at our creations!

In Literacy we read and did lots of work on two different stories related to our theme – ‘Lost and Found’ by Oliver Jeffers and ‘The Little Red Hen’ by Michael Foreman. These stories show how people help us. In ‘Lost and Found’ the little boy helps the penguin find his way home and in ‘The Little Red Hen’, the hen makes new friends who help her to make bread. We spent a lot of time developing our comprehension skills such as predicting, questioning and summarising when reading these stories, as well as analysing and dramatizing the feelings of the characters. We also wrote a of list of things we thought the little boy and the penguin might need on their trip to the South Pole!

In S.E.S.E we learnt all about jobs. We realised that there are so many different jobs that people do in the world and we had a think about what we would like to be when we grow up. We also learnt about the Emergency Services and the different work that they do. Probably the most interesting part of our month was when we devised questions to interview our parents about their jobs. We practised our interviewing skills in school beforehand by conducting mock interviews in pairs and then we interviewed our parents for homework. We loved hearing about the work that our parents do and we want to say a big thank you to our parents for letting us interview them!

In Music, we learnt lots of songs surrounding our theme such as ‘What shall we do in our work today?’ and ‘Harry was a fireman’. In Art, we made Emergency Services vehicles out of egg carton boxes. Take a look!

Finally we were busy preparing for our Christmas play – ‘What a Star!’ which we performed for our parents in early December. We did a fantastic job and everyone was so proud of us! Here’s a sneak peek of some of the pictures from our dress rehearsal. More to follow on our next blog post! Thanks for reading!

Category: Senior Infants, Aistear, S.E.S.E, Art, Drama | 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 11 2018

3…2…1…BLAST OFF!

During the month of October we learned all about Space! In English we read the story ‘Whatever Next!’ by Jill Murphy. In this story, Baby Bear finds a space rocket in the cupboard under the stairs. He finds a space helmet and space boots in the kitchen and then he zooms up the chimney and lands on the moon, all before bedtime! Whilst reading this story, we practised our comprehension skills of predicting, visualising, questioning and summarising, we learned new vocabulary, wrote a list of things that Baby Bear would need to bring with him to have a picnic and even dramatized Baby Bear zooming up the chimney in his box rocket!

In Maths, we continued to partition and combine for 6 but we also learned all about 2D shapes – squares, rectangles, triangles, circles, ovals and hexagons. We enjoyed going on 2D shape hunts around the school, playing guessing games with the shapes, drawing pictures using 2D shapes, playing with tangrams, using BeeBots to find 2D shapes and constructing 2D shapes out of cocktail sticks and marshmallows. In Gaeilge we learned lots of songs and phrases surrounding the theme of ‘An Scoil’ and of course ‘Oíche Shamhna’.

In History, we learned all about Neil Armstrong and created a timeline of his life. In Geography we learned all about our Solar System. We came up with a great mnemonic to remember the names and order of the planets – My Very Excited Mother Just Served Us Noodles – Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. We even pretended to be the planets orbiting around the sun! In Science we learned all about rockets and how they blast off into space. We made our own balloon rockets and launched them along a string.

In Music we learned lots of songs for Halloween but we also had to prepare for our assembly performance. We learned a song that retold the story of ‘Whatever Next!’ that we had been learning in English. We performed it at assembly to all of Junior Infants, Senior Infants and First Class! We did a fantastic job! In Drama, we played some fun drama games and read the story ‘The Way Back Home’ by Oliver Jeffers. The little boy in the story crash lands on the moon and befriends a Martian. Together we had to come up with a solution to help the boy and the Martian find their way back home! This month, we are busy preparing for our Christmas play, we are very excited to perform it in front of all our families.

In Art, we made some fantastic space rockets made out of plastic bottles and papier mâché. We also made some puffy paint planets. We had great fun making the puffy paint out of shaving foam, PVA glue and paint! Finally to talk about our favourite time of the day… Aistear! We loved playing in our space centre role play corner this month. We had to do all our safety checks before counting down and blasting off into space. We then had to put on our space suits and walk around the moon! We hope you enjoyed reading our blog post. Check back in a month’s time to find out what we have been up to in November and follow us on twitter @MsOlsonsClass to keep track in the mean time!

Category: Senior Infants, Literacy, Maths, Aistear, S.E.S.E, Art, Music | Comments Off

October 29 2018

Mr Donnelly’s Fourth Class

The last few weeks have been absolutely hectic! If we weren’t playing maths games and solving puzzles for Maths week or doing our homework in unusual places for “Roamwork4homework” (see our twitter @zaptower), we were swimming in Loughlinstown pool or experiencing a bit of culture at St. Joseph’s of Clooney’s musical “Footloose”. You see?! Flat out!! Happy Halloween everyone!!!

Category: Fourth Class, Literacy, Numeracy, S.E.S.E | Comments Off

October 23 2018

News from Ms Travers’ Third Class

In third class we are very happy because our favourite subject is P.E. P.E is on Tuesday and Thursdays. On Tuesday, we do P.E with Jay the gymnastic coach. We really love this because we get to do dodge ball and lots of new moves in Gymnastics. On Thursdays, P.E. is with Ms Travers and we do basketball. We are also learning some Irish dancing.

We did Family Tree projects last month. This was very interesting because we learned that some pupils ancestors took part in World War 1 and World War 2! Some pupils ancestors worked in the zoo and some worked in factories.

Pupils have ancestors from all over Ireland including Cork , Donegal, Louth , Kerry , Galway , Meath, Laois, Wicklow and of course Dublin. Some pupils ancestors are from India, Poland, Nigeria, London, France, Ukraine, Greece, Canada , Scotland and Wales. So we are all truly international!

We got two new pupils in our class this term Atif and Kaia and we are glad they joined us .

That all for now tune in next month for more from room 11 .

Signed Ms Travers class

Category: Third Class, S.E.S.E | Comments Off

October 23 2018

News from Ms. Dawson’s Second Class.

Welcome to Ms. Dawson’s second class. We’ve had a very busy first half term. In the last two weeks we made telephones out of tin cans and string. We decorated them and tried them out and we were so surprised when we could hear each other down the lines. They worked the best when we pulled the string very tight.

We had a project to design and make a kite and all kinds of shape and designs arrived in school last Friday just in time for the end of the hurricane. We had great fun flying them in the yard and trying to hold on to them. A few unfortunately needed surgery afterwards!

This week we are looking at Halloween traditions and games and interviewing our parents and grandparents about Halloween when they were young. We are also drawing maps of Halloween Villages. They are scary places to live in!!

We played conkers this week too, an old fashioned game where you try and hit and break your opponent’s conker. It was harder than it looked!

This week is Maths Week and we started our online maths programme, Mathletics. It is a lot of fun and we can even have maths challenges with children from around the world. We also went on a maths walk and looked for maths around our school. Shape jumped out at us everywhere!

If you’d like to enjoy a Disney cartoon from 1929, check out the skeleton dance on you tube. We danced and moved to it and are very impressed with technology from almost 100 years ago! It was a lot of fun!

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

October 17 2018

Ms Aivalikli’s Sixth Class

September saw us focus on North America. We looked at American History through the ages and analysed how colonisation tactics changed from the Native American’s to the American Civil War. We also challenged ourselves by learning the names and location of each American State, we loved playing the states quiz! Our STEM project centred on Native American’s as we created 3D totem poles in groups. Our designs went from individual, paired to finally group plans. We were delighted to see our plans come to life.

As we progressed from Native American History to the Civil Rights Movement our novel Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry has been very moving. We decided to base our September Assembly on the impact of civil rights activities. We sang ‘A Million Dreams’ to inspire others to believe in change.

In P.E we enjoyed joining in with Joe Wicks, aka ‘The Body Coach’ and his initiative to get schools moving. We especially enjoyed when he gave our class a ‘shout out’ live on his YouTube channel.

Lastly our Gaeilge topic in September was Mé Féin, we put together conversations and created short Scratch clips, in which we made our characters have a comhrá as Gaeilge!

In October we’re looking at Georgian Dublin, we are especially looking forward to our tour of 14 Henrietta Street! We will be sure to write about it soon!

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