Ms. Kelly’s Class Project!

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

Category: Fifth Class, Media Team, S.E.S.E, Music | Comments Off

January 14 2019

Science Week!

This year science week was the 11^th to the 18^th of November. Science week is when schools all over Ireland spend a little extra time on science. Some schools decide to carry out exciting experiments. Mr. Donnelly’s 4^th class made paper helicopters and oobleck. My favourite experiment was when we made oobleck. Oobleck is made out of cornflour and water. We put in red or green food colouring. We loved science week because science is such a fun subject. Science week makes learning more fun. It gives us a chance to become scientists for the week and develop new skills. We cannot wait for science week next year!

Written by the Creative Media Team

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January 14 2019

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

Junior Infants – Room 9

Hello and Happy New Year Everyone,

We are all delighted to be back after Christmas, we have only been back for a week and at the moment we are learning about the South Pole.

The South Pole

We are learning about animals, the weather, and transport that you would use in the South Pole. Our play area is set up for camping in the South Pole and we have played at cooking food. We have binoculars, toy penguins and maps to enhance our learning experience. We have made penguins in Art which are displayed outside our room – come and check them out:)

Maths

We have been learning about different shapes. We’ve been making sets and working out which set each shape belongs in.

Poems

We have also been learning a poem called The Penguin.

That’s all from Junior Infants – hope you all had a great Christmas and loved our play, as much as we loved doing it. Bye for now.

Category: Junior Infants, Literacy, Maths, Aistear, 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

December 9 2018

News from Ms. Woods’s Junior Infants

October was a scary month in Ms Woods Junior Infants class. The children opened their own fancy dress clothes shop and there were witches, ghouls and wizards everywhere. They were even writing their own spells in a spell book.

Some witches were hanging around the corridor outside our door.

We had witchy stories and poems and we were learning lots of new words from Oiche Shamhna in Bua na Cainte. We were learning lots of new things while having a great time.

Category: Junior Infants, Gaeilge, Aistear | Comments Off

December 4 2018

Junior Infants – Ms Walsh

Hi Everyone,

We have been very busy and having fun here in Junior Infants, even though we are missing Ms Walsh.

We have been working hard at our Nativity play and we are learning all our songs for that:)

Here we are making or Christmas trees and wreaths, you will see them outside our door when you are coming in to school.

We are also hard at work playing with lego and playdough.

In SPHE we have been learning all about different tastes, like sweet, sour and salty and deciding we we like, and which we don’t like.

We have been doing some relaxation with the book Listen to the Sky which we all really enjoy and feel very relaxed afterwards.

Thanks for reading this and see you at our play – We can’t wait!

Category: Junior Infants, Art, Music, Drama, S.P.H.E | Comments Off