News from Ms. Black’s Junior Infants!




This month we went to the polar regions with our Aistear.
We made penguins and polar bears and had great fun finding out about Tom Crean and all his adventures in Antartica.
We set up camp and went fishing in the arctic and followed Tom Crean’s example and went to explore the South pole. We looked at the emperor penguin and were amazed to see that the male penguin minds the eggs.
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
Hello Shankill, and once again, welcome back!
Today, we’ll be discussing recent happenings in St Anne’s! As we all know, there has been Christmas fever spreading faster than the plague, and there have been plays left, right and centre, and we’re getting the scoop on the some of them. Starting in Junior Infants, in Ms Woods’ amazing class. Their class performed “Our First Nativity”. I even had the pleasure of meeting the two stars of the show who played Mary and Joseph. They said they loved playing the parts, rather than being their usual selves, Emma and Matthew. They also loved the songs. They said Ms. Woods did a really good job, and they think she’s a really cool teacher.
Next I visited Ms McManus’ class where I met Clara and Charlotte. Their play was called “The Night Before Christmas”, which they said was hilarious. They loved all of it, and the best part was, some people got to wear their PJ’s. They said Ms. McManus was great. Well done 1st Class.
Next and finally, I came to Ms. Hughes’ Senior Infants. Their play was called “Christmas Toy Story”, and I interviewed Morgan and Isabelle. They loved ‘The song with the guitars’! That narrows it down! They loved the toys, and saying lines, and they said it was fun.
They say Ms. Hughes is really nice and smart. That wraps us up for today folks. See you next time!
By Ava
Creative Media Team
It has been quite a while since our last blog post. We had a busy few weeks leading up to Christmas. We had an amazing performance at our Christmas play and everyone was so proud of us. We sang with beautiful singing voices and we said our lines using our stage voices.
We came back from Christmas with a fresh attitude to work. We have been focusing on the theme of toys and have even invented our own toy. We had to make sure our toys were unique enough for someone to want to buy one. We had some great ideas like an edible unicorn doll that grows back when you eat it! We will post some pictures of our work in our next blog post!
We’ve also been very lucky to start ball skill this term with Steve. We’ve had two weeks so far and we have really enjoyed it!
We have had a very busy couple of months in Ms. Woods’ Junior Infant class. Our theme for November was food and we had a pizza parlour and an ice cream shop in our socio-dramatic area in the classroom. We designed our own restaurants with stickle bricks and created pizzas from play dough and paper.
Mr. Dunne’s third class kicked off the New Year with a bang! We’ve been doing loads of really interesting things in class so far this year. Here’s a few examples!
We’ve been learning about time and how to tell the time. We decided to make our own clocks using paper plates and a lot of hard work! They work really well, and we’re finding them really helpful in class. Not to mention, we got to add our own designs to them to personalise them. You can tell we spent a lot of time on them… but, after all, hard work takes time!
We’ve also been learning about the food pyramid and the five food groups – carbohydrates, fruit and vegetables, dairy, protein and fats. We’ve been looking at what’s in our lunches and what we’re eating at home. We created menus that contained all of the five food groups! We also looked at the amount of sugar in different kinds of drinks. You can see in the picture below the amount of sugar in flavoured water, Sprite, a smoothie (although this is the good, natural kind of sugar!), a Monster energy drink and a bottle of Coke. We were all really surprised at some of them!!
That’s all for now, we’ll check back in again soon!
One horrible rainy Thursday, Bob the goldfish and his human friend Bill sat playing their version of poker. They each threw in a flake of fish food and looked at their card. The pair couldn’t find cards small enough for Bob so they made their own. Bob had an amazing hand (or fin, as they call it in fish poker). He had four fish Queens.
When the time came and they had to throw down cards, Bob gave a shout of delight. (This fish can talk, you see). “You owe me a trip to mars, my friend, as Bill picked the laminated pieces of paper out of the fish bowl. “Oh man,” said Bill as he searched for his wallet. He opened it, and out blew a ball of dust. He threw it on the couch, beside where he was sitting. He shoved his hands down his pockets, and found an unused, unscratched, scratch card he sighed. “Look, Bob, I might be able to get you a… new tub of fish food if I get a few quid from this card. Sorry, I knew you wanted to go to the World Fish Association of Fish, or WFAOF.” Bob sighed, as Bill scratched away the card to reveal the numbers. He had six numbers. A €4, a €200 , a €150, a €2k, another €2k and a €2. He only needed one more €2k, but he had a stinking €2. “I’m sor-” Bill began, but Bob shouted, “Wait..” “The end of the €2 isn’t scratched away!” Bill excitedly grabbed a coin and scratched. It was a €2k! They screamed and shouted so much, that their old neighbour, Mrs. Nonsence came to give out, but when she found out why they were making noise she joined in.
The next day, Bill booked the flights, and on Saturday the man and his fish went to the rocket station that so happened to exist and only be alive a minute walk away. Bob was in his portable space bowl. Bill was in a space suit. After hours of going through tests and training, they were ready to fly! They got onto the plane and looked around. It was amazing! They readied themselves, and soon it was take off. “3.. 2.. 1.. BLAST OFF!” The rocket blasted away from the station. They sprung away from earth and soon they were in space. A few days later, they landed. The door opened. They stepped out of the rocket. Then, they looked around. There was a sign saying “Welcome to Saturn!” Bob turned in his bowl, giving Bill devil eyes. “Saturn, Bill. SATURN???!” Bill blushed. “Umm… Sorry, lets go back to the rocket.” They turned and the rocket was starting to blast away. They jumped inside, as it began to blast. Phew! They changed the destination on auto pilot to Mars, not Saturn because Bill had pressed Saturn. A few days later they arrived in time for the World Fish Association of Fish meeting. On the last night of the meetings, there was a raffle, and Bob won. They weren’t told what the prize was, just to get on the rocket and relax. They did so, and a few days later the rocket stopped. They got out of the plane, and found a sign saying “Congrats, you’ve won a holiday for 2 months to stay in … Saturn!”
By Ava
6th Class
Ms. Aivalikli
This year in Ms Kelly’s class we have done a lot. We will be doing projects throughout the year. Our first project was on bridges. There were so many things we could do using bridges as a topic. We could make model of bridges, write about bridges or draw pictures of bridges. Most people decided to make a model of a bridge. However, some people chose to write about bridges too. We had about 20 days to get it done. Most people who made models used tall lollipop sticks. One bridge was made out of straws. Another person made a project out of clay. There was also a project made of wood and nails. In assembly, our class did a presentation on Bridges. Everybody had to read 1 fact about Bridges. Then, we sang the song ‘A Bridge over troubled water.’
Written by the Creative Media Team