There’s a Starman waiting in the sky – 5th Class in September



What a start to a fantastic new year in Senior Infants! Our monthly theme for September was ‘All About Me’ and we thoroughly enjoyed learning about families, our bodies, our school and of course recognising how special and unique we all are!
During Aistear time, we had great fun playing in the Doctor’s Surgery role play corner. We had to sign patients in at reception and instruct them to wait in our waiting room, before being seen by the doctor in the treatment room. We were also very excited to play ‘Teach your Monster to Read’ on the class computers and we’re definitely getting the hang of using the mouse and the keyboard now.
In English, we have been working really hard to learn all our Jolly Phonics and to develop our blending skills. We read ‘Owl Babies’ by Martin Waddell and ‘The Smartest Giant in Town’ by Julia Donaldson and learnt how to predict, question, summarise and make connections! In Maths, we have been super busy sorting collections of objects into sets, making patterns and partitioning for three, four and five. We also carried out some data investigations and recorded them both on paper and using our interactive board. In Gaeilge, we learnt many phrases in relation to ‘Mé Féin’ and ‘Lá Bréithe’ and sang some new songs and rhymes.
In S.E.S.E, we made family trees, identified the names of our body parts and went on a tour of our school before creating a big map on the classroom floor of our journey. In Drama, we played some fun games and read ‘Elmer’ by David McKee. Poor Elmer was sad that he was different from all the other elephants but we helped him to feel better by finding a solution to his problem! We like to start our day with a song, so we have been singing some lovely songs in Music. We are currently learning a song in preparation for Halloween – it is called ‘There was an old witch..’ And last but not least, we have made some beautiful artwork in Senior Infants. We drew and painted our self portraits and made some lovely Wassily Kandinsky inspired autumn trees!
This September, First Class have been learning all about clothes. We have even been writing stories about clothes on Fridays! We focused on the different clothes that would be suitable for each of the four seasons. In Spring, we usually wear light clothes sometimes made of cotton, but we usually need a light jumper too. In Summer, we wear shorts, t-shirts and lots of sun cream! In Winter, we like to wrap up in woolly scarves and jumpers. Finally, in Autumn, it is important to keep our raincoats close by, especially in Ireland! We spent some time in Science testing which materials would be best during a rainy Autumn, by checking if they were waterproof. We found that plastic, tinfoil, and rubber were the best materials for keeping water at bay! In art, we designed our own tshirts and hung them up. Check out our líne éadaí!
We have all settled in really well to life in Junior Infants. We have had a lot of fun learning each other’s names, making new friends and learning all about each other.
Hello, hello, and welcome back to St. Anne’s news!
Today, I will be informing you of the latest exciting event here in St. Anne’s…….The Talent Show! It was organised and run by the Student Council. It was a fundraiser for the student council who are interested in buying new yard equipment.
Everyone with a special talent was able to present it to the whole school. Many amazing performers took part and hearty congratulations to everyone who did. I was lucky enough to get an exclusive interview from one of the performers Ima Nwozu and one of the many organisers of our Talent Show Hannelie Foley from the Student Council!
Ima says her favourite thing about doing the talent show was the practices and seeing all of the amazing talent from all the participants. She sang “Way too good at goodbyes” while her partner Jennifer O’Dwyer amazingly danced ballet to perfection, to the melodious voice of Ima. She said that she would definitely take part again. She has benefited from the talent show because she is more confident now and in one word she described the experience as ‘amazing’!
Hannelie has enjoyed preparing for the Talent show, as she found it fun. Her favourite part was watching everybody perform. She hopes there will be another Talent Show next year, and in one word she describes it as ‘productive’. Thanks for Reading folks! 😊
By Ava, Media Team
On Friday the 27th April 2018, Mr Allen’s, Ms Kelly’s, and Ms Travers’ fourth classes went on an educational visit to Dublin zoo. They were transported there by bus and when they got there they were split into two groups.
They saw a lot of animals such as different types of monkeys and big cats like tigers and lions. They also saw lemurs, a real panda, orangutans, sea lions and penguins.
After that they went to the African plains and met a tour guide who brought them around and showed them lots more animals and told them lots of interesting facts. She showed them gorillas, chimpanzees, rhinos, giraffes, zebras, ostriches, water hogs and some other species. Then they had lunch and after lunch it was time to head back to the bus. They had a great time and learned lots. Big thanks to all the staff involved.
By Aisling, Media Team
In school, we did a balloon rocket experiment. It was great fun. We watched a video of it on the Whiteboard and then we got started. If you ever want to try this at home, here is what you will need:
What to do:
I would definitely recommend this as I had a lot of fun and so did my class.
By Teagan, Media Team
Hello! My name is Pranav and I write for the St. Anne’s Media Team.
My story is about Alison’s Shop. Alison’s shop was a place where you could get stationary. You could get cool pencils, rulers and much more. The shop started in Ms. Travers’ class and in two weeks everyone knew about it. Without Noreen, Alison and Ms Travers the shop wouldn’t have existed.
In a month it became a trend. All the money went to Trócaire and again it was thanks to Noreen, Alison and Ms. Travers. We raised €420. Fifth class also raised money for Trócaire. As a result, we were able to give Trócaire a large cheque that will support people to live with dignity and independence in some of the world’s poorest countries.
St Anne’s Athletics squad took part in the Cumann Na mBunscoil Athletics Competition on May 28th in Santry.
We had 8 individual sprinters – under 10, 11, 12 and 14 boys and girls. Eoin stole the show with gold in the 100 m final beating off opposition from extremely fast runners. We had 7 relay teams – 4 girls’ teams and three boys’ teams.
The girls under 10 team won a large trophy for coming first in the final.
The under 14 girls won silver in the relay final. Well done to all and many thanks to Aine Murray for helping Ms.Travers with coaching and to all the boys and girls for being such a sport in taking part. We are all super proud.
What a busy month we’ve had in Senior Infants! Our monthly theme was ‘The Sea’ and we had great fun exploring this topic.
In English we read the stories, ‘The Snail and the Whale’ and ‘Sharing a Shell’ by Julia Donaldson and discovered that Julia is a big fan of rhyming words just like we are! We love ‘Rhyme Time’ in our class each morning! We found some very interesting words for our word wall and we liked writing our own adventures for the Snail and the Whale. We also wrote about a time when we went to the seaside (real or imaginary!).
In Maths we had great fun learning about capacity. We sorted different sized containers and estimated and measured how much water, sand and different materials could fit into them. We also decided which containers would be best for holding different materials. Ms. Olson played a trick on us in our last capacity lesson – she poured water from a small container into a larger container and asked us if the containers had the same amount of water in them or whether they were different! Ms. Olson managed to trick quite a few of us (hehe!).
We had great fun in S.E.S.E this month. We learned about ‘The Titanic’ and constructed our own Titanic models in Art. We investigated different materials from the seaside including sand, pebbles, stones, sea glass, driftwood and even seaweed. We were able to touch the materials and feel the difference that water had on them. For example, when the seaweed was dry it felt quite crunchy and hard and when wet it was slimey and slippery! We also did a floating and sinking experiment and made predictions about which objects would float and which would sink. We learned about some interesting sea animals too. Did you know that an octopus has blue blood? We were very lucky to receive a Big Grow package from our friends at Innocent. We grew some lovely cress, spinach and peas and made sure to water them everyday.
In Music, we learned the song Apusski Dusky and performed it for the Junior School at assembly. We also listened and resonded to songs from The Little Mermaid – ‘Under the Sea’ and ‘Part of Your World’. In Art, as well as our Titanics, we made jellyfish mobiles and newpaper sharks and in Drama, we helped ‘The Rainbow Fish’ decide what to do with his shimmering scales.
We had great fun in our Aistear stations this month, in particular, we really enjoyed our time in ‘The Pirate Ship’. We also loved our time at the water and sand play station. We love getting messy!
However, perhaps the biggest news we have from Senior Infants this month is: We welcomed four beautiful ducklings into the world! We incubated the eggs for 28 days and on the 25th and 26th April 2018 we welcomed James Pond, Smash, Sir Quacks-a-lot and DJ Tiny into Senior Infants. At two weeks old, they are now too big to come to school anymore and they are off to a lovely new farm home in Enniskerry to be with some other ducks. We’ll miss their little chirps in the classroom!
That’s all from us here in Senior Infants, we hope you’ve enjoyed reading our blog post!