We had another busy month in Junior Infants! Our theme for February was Homes and Houses. In Aistear we had great fun doing lots of different activities each week. In the socio-dramatic play corner, we enjoyed playing in the kitchen making dinner; acting out the different parts in ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ and pretending to be the Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf! We did lots of construction activities such as playing with Lego, Duplo, Stickle Bricks and Straws – we made things like houses for the Three Little Pigs and different sized furniture for Goldilocks and the Three Bears. We enjoyed playing with playdough – we bricks, sticks and straws for the Three Little Pigs’ houses. We also practised our cutting and sticking skills whilst sequencing the stories of Goldilocks and the Three Little Pigs and designing our own houses. We also enjoyed acting out the stories in the puppet theatre and with the doll’s house in small world.

In English we continued to learn our Jolly Phonics and Tricky Words and we enjoyed playing phonics games. We enjoyed engaging with the book – ‘A Squash and a Squeeze’ by Julia Donaldson and we are really progressing with our own differentiated readers! We are loving using our blending skills to decipher all the words in our books. We participated in the ‘Write a Book’ competition and produced a fantastic book about our favourite things. We worked really hard on the writing and pictures and sent it off to be judged. We received it back last week and we got lovely feedback and special certificates!

In Gaeilge we enjoyed learning about ‘Sa Bhaile’ (At Home). We liked learning one song in particular ‘Dhá Éan Bheaga’ as it is the Gaeilge version of ‘Two Little Birdies Sitting in a Tree’! In Maths we followed on from partitioning and combining within five and learnt the number stories for four! We also enjoyed learning about capacity. We used the story of ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ to investigate the how much each bears’ porridge bowl could hold. We also had a popcorn party for Goldilocks and had to decide which container would be the most suitable for holding the popcorn! We enjoyed eating the popcorn too! We also celebrated Pancake Tuesday in Junior Infants and enjoyed sequencing how to make a pancake before eating our own! Yum!

In S.E.S.E (Science, Geography and History), we learnt about  homes and electricity. We learnt about the different rooms in homes, things you might find in those rooms and activities that happen there. We looked at homes in the past and we discussed what type of home everyone lived in. We learned about electricity and we investigated making static electricity. We managed to make our hair stand up, we attached a balloon to a wall, we picked up pieces of paper using a balloon and we bent water in the tap using a balloon!

In P.E. we loved our dance lessons with Ms. Casey and our ball skills sessions with Coach Steve.

In Art, we made lovely Valentine’s Day cards for our parents. We also drew and painted our dream houses.

We hope you enjoyed our blog, tune in next month to hear what we got up to!

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!