June 1 2023

March News from Ms. Olson’s Class!

We had lots of fun exploring our theme ‘Animals and the Farm’ in March.

In Aistear, we started learning about ‘The Vet’. We had lots of fun playing in the veterinary surgery – we had to pretend to be receptionists, vets, veterinary nurses and we brought our pets to the vets. We used teddies as pets or sometimes we liked to pretend to be the animals ourselves! We practised our cutting and sticking skills too as we learned about the life cycle of a frog. We watched a cool video about it first and then cut out pictures of the life cycle and stuck them in the right order. We had great messy fun playing in the jelly and chia seed frog pond in our tuff tray and we enjoyed making farm animals for our farm frieze. We were very lucky to be invited to Mr. Ryan’s class to see his tadpoles and frogs too!

In week two, we enjoyed a week of the vet visiting the farm home corner where we enjoyed pretending to be farm animals on the farm! We also constructed fields for the farm animals and sorted the animals into the correct fields on our tuff tray. We decorated our farm shop pop up stall and we also learned about the life cycle of a chicken in preparation for our own hatching chicks! Finally, in week three, we loved buying fresh produce from the Farm Shop! We planted and harvested vegetables in our tuff tray, we did a cut and stick activity where we matched the animal to their home and we enjoyed exploring with magnets.

In English, we have really taken off with our reading and we have nearly finished our Jolly Phonics! We practise our tricky words and blending each day which is helping to improve our reading skills too. We love taking books now when we have finished our work and we read them to our friends as well as to our teacher. Our writing is coming along great too! We love Fridays as we do free-writing when we can write about whatever we like unaided. Monday to Thursday we do literacy stations – we do one station each day. Usually our stations are: two phonics games, news writing and a cutting skills worksheet. At the end of the day we love story time – this month we read the stories ‘Farmer Duck’ and ‘The Pig in the Pond’ by Martin Waddell. World Book Day occurred in March as well and we brought in our favourite books to show our friends and we had such fun dressing up as our favourite book characters! We went to the Book Fair and were able to get some new books. There was also a competition for the best costumes – won by a jellyfish and a dragon! We also made lovely bookmarks!

In Gaeilge, we were learning all about ‘Lá ‘le Pádraig’ (St. Patrick’s Day). It was Seachtain na Gaeilge (Irish Week) and we had such fun doing Irish dancing and performing at our concert. We sang the songs ‘An Leipreachán’ (The Leprechaun), ‘Lámha Suas an Féidir Leat’ (Hands Up) and ‘Sín do Lámha’ (Stretch Your Hands), ‘Tá mé ar mo Shuigh ar mo Chathaoir’ (I’m sitting on my chair) and ‘Beidh Aonach Amárach’ (There will be a Fair Tomorrow). In Maths, we continued on with our partitioning and combining within 3 and 2 and we really enjoyed playing games where we had to add on one and two. We also enjoyed learning about money and looking at coins with magnifying glasses before doing some coin rubbings.

In S.E.S.E we enjoyed learning about the signs of Spring and singing our four seasons song. We learned about farmers, animals and their young, animal homes, vets and identified what pets we had. We learned about the lifecycle of a frog and a hen in preparation for our own hatching chicks. We also enjoyed learning about the story of St. Patrick and sequencing his life.

In Art, we made lovely St. Patrick’s Day Leprechaun pictures with our faces. We also made lovely Mother’s Day cards using cupcake liners to create a flower. We also made kitchen roll bunnies and potato stamp cards for Easter.