In January, we learned all about the Polar Regions in Junior Infants. In Aistear we had lots of fun playing in both the Arctic and Antarctica home corner. We were polar explorers searching for different animals, we had to set up camp in the freezing climates and build igloos. It was lots of fun. We had fun playing with small world based in the Polar Regions using our tuff tray. We enjoyed making fake snow to add to our tuff tray so that we could play small world in the Polar regions with Antarctic and Arctic animals. We especially enjoyed ice-skating the frozen Polar animals across our tuff tray and diving the penguins into our water bath. We also did lots of cut and stick activities to learn about penguins and polar bears and constructed snowmobiles with Lego and polar animals with playdough.

In English we continued to learn our Jolly Phonics, Tricky Words and we enjoyed playing phonics games. We enjoyed engaging with the books – ‘The Emperor’s Egg’ by Martin Jenkins, ‘Lost and Found’ by Oliver Jeffers and ‘The Polar Bear and the Snow Cloud’ by Jane Cabrera. We found ‘The Emperor’s Egg’ to be very informative and we learned many facts about penguins. We also enjoyed our literacy stations – writing our news, playing phonics games and practising our cutting skills.

In Gaeilge we enjoyed learning about ‘Caitheamh Aimsire’ (Hobbies). We liked learning about ‘Caitheamh Aimsire’ as we learned new vocabulary and sang songs and rhymes relating to toys! Toys were definitely on our minds in January straight after Christmas! In Maths we took a giant leap forward as we started learning how to partition and combine within five! We have been learning our number stories for all the ways we can make five: 0 and 5; 5 and 0; 1 and 4; 4 and 1; 2 and 3; 3; and 2. We also enjoyed playing maths games on the iPads.

In S.E.S.E, we learned all about Antarctica and the Arctic – we especially liked learning about penguins and polar bears. We learned about the Irish explorer, Tom Crean, who almost made it to the South Pole. We learned the names of the seven continents and we had such fun singing the continents song on YouTube. We also completed our work on the five senses and had great fun exploring our sense of touch! We used blindfolds and felt different materials and textures.

In P.E. we had lots of fun during our dance classes with Ms. Casey from the Catherine Casey School of Dance and we enjoyed learning lots of GAA Ball Skills with Coach Steve from Shankill GAA. We also got our new climbing wall in the Junior Yard and had such fun trying it out!

In Art we made beautiful penguin and polar bear collage pictures. We also decorated a handprint poem for Grandparents’ Day.  In Music, we sang some lovely songs – our favourite being ‘Boa Constrictor’. The song is so funny as it is about being eaten by a boa constrictor!

We hoped you enjoyed our blog this month – stay tuned for February’s news!