Junior Infants
We have three Junior Infant Classes
Ms. Champkin Ms. Coughlan Mrs O’Brien
June 2019 Update
Update 2:
We are learning all about the different countries and cultures represented in our classrooms. Some of the children in our classes have been teaching us how to say hello, how are you and goodbye in their home languages. We have loved this so far! We have been looking at the different flags and painting them too- Ireland, Poland, Lithuania, Ghana, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, Russia, Armenia and many others.
We did a really fantastic job raising money for our school for the sponsored Rainbow Walk- well done everyone! It was great fun getting all the cars and buses to beep for us while we walked in our colourful clothes.
It may be almost Summer but we are still busy working hard in our classrooms – revising the story of 6, perfecting our handwriting, writing reports about sea creatures and minibeasts as well as reading stories and practicing lots of songs both old and new. Take a look at the new photos below update 1.
Update 1:
June so far has been a very busy month! Our themes are Minibeasts and Summer. We have been learning lots about minibeasts such as bees, ladybirds, caterpillars, butterflies, worms, beetles and ants. Our Aistear home corner is set up as a busy Minibeast Exploration Lab where we have been using magnifying glasses to examine and identify if the minibeasts have wings / antennae / legs etc. During messy play we have been improving our fine motor skills to pick up worms (pretend ones of course!) using tweezers. We have been scooping soil to cover the worms underground too. We have really enjoyed learning about colour mixing, creating butterflies, painting bees, cutting and sticking various minibeasts amongst many other creative projects! Have a listen to the songs ‘7 Continents’, ‘Here is the beehive’ and ‘The bees go buzzing’ which we have been learning (check them out on Youtube).
On Friday 7th June we had a special ‘Science Day’ in our school. We tried to make the tallest towers using blocks, cups, paper and even using marshmallows! We loved seeing the variety of interesting experiments in the hall too, 2 of our favourites were the static energy balloon and the string telephone where we could hear the sound vibrations travel right to our ears!
Take a look at some of our June photos below!
Our theme for this month is Space. We have been learning all about the planets, the sun, the moon, astronauts, rockets and lots more! Our Aistear role play area has been set up as the International Space Station. We have been in role as astronauts exploring outer space, pretending to float around with our special helmets, placing satellites into orbit and learning about the planets and stars. We are learning the solar system song and we have also been watching StoryBots videos about Space too. With the weather improving we are enjoying doing PE outside whenever possible! Take a look at our photos below.
This month we are learning all about Animals- farm animals and wild animals! We are setting up a zoo in our classroom for during Aistear role play time. There are zoo keepers, customers and lots of animals to care for & see too! We are learning the letters v, w, x and z. In Maths we are working on adding 2 sets together, using our numicon to explore partitioning the numbers 3, 4 and 5 and making graphs of our favourite animals. As the weather has been getting warmer, we have been doing some of our PE outdoors. This has been such great fun and we have been practising our running, skipping, throwing and catching skills as well as playing with frisbees, scoopers, footballs and tennis rackets. We were lucky to have a special Music class in the hall too where we played lots of different instruments and we have been learning about rhythm and beat.
This month we are learning all about Transport, The Post Office and The Farm. We have set up a post office as our role play area for Aistear. We have been busy delivering letters, sorting and wrapping packages, designing stamps and writing postcards. With our lego and construction toys we have been making the different types of transport the postman and postwoman travel on to deliver our post- bikes and post vans!
Our main theme for the month of February was ‘The Restaurant’. Look at our restaurant and coffee shop photos below! We pretended to be the waiter/waitress, chef and customers! For our small world area we had a restaurant with tables, chairs, food and small world people ready to eat and chat.
We made our favourite foods with playdoh, designed and wrote a menu and wrote about our favourite foods.
We have now started our new theme, which is “The Post Office”.
In Maths we are learning all about the number 5 and how to partition the number.
We are practising our handwriting every day- we are learning to write the letters s, e, l and t . Our handwriting is really improving, we love to write!
We have completed a lot of work based on “Biodiversity” as we are working for our next “Green Schools Flag”
Our theme for this month is ‘School’. During Aistear we have been pretending to be the teacher, principal, caretaker, secretary and of course the pupils too! We have been doing lots of winter themed art. In Maths we have been learning about 2D shapes and the numbers 4 and 5. Have a look at our photos below of what we’ve been doing this month!
This month has been a busy one so far in Junior Infants. We have been preparing for our Christmas Show which we had today in the hall for all our families and friends. We sang beautifully and really enjoyed learning all the songs together.
We are now starting to use our jollyphonics sounds knowledge to sound out and blend short words like at, mat, cat and sat.We are starting to spell these words too and are listening out for initial sounds in words.
We have been learning how to write the letters c, o, a, d, g and q. Writing is fun. Practice makes perfect- keep on writing every day!
There are elves visiting us from the North Pole and we have set up Santa’s Grotto areas this month for our Aistear area. Have a look at the photos below to see more of what we have been doing this month:
We have been learning all about some very important people who help us- the doctor, nurse, optician and dentist. We explored each of the themes during Aistear this month with a role play area, small world, messy play, art and writing stations.
We really loved pretending to be the doctor, nurse, optician, dentist, receptionist and patients. We learned how to take and read an x-ray, how to use a stethoscope and how to write a prescription.
During messy play we created our own plaster cast mix and we made arm and leg casts for the baby dolls who had broken bones. It wasn’t long until they were all better again!
In Maths we have been learning about the numbers 2 and 3. We have been doing lots of hands on group tasks writing the numbers, making the numbers using playdoh, making sets of 1-5, exploring dice number patterns, finding different ways to show 2 and 3 on our peg boards and connecting links to make different lengths from 1-10 links.
We have also been exploring capacity while using our sand trays and water play areas. We have been filling small and large containers using sand and/or water- filling them up to the top, emptying them, exploring how many scoops of sand/water it takes to fill the container, finding out which container holds the most and which one holds the least.
During Gaeilge we have been learning about ‘an aimsir’ agus ‘éadaÃ’ – is aoibhinn linn Gaeilge! D’fhoghlaim muid conas dul siar a dhéanamh faoi na héadaà atá á chaitheamh againn agus d’fhoghlaim muid faoin aimsir chomh maith. Rinneamar go leor cluichà freisin- cluiche kim, cad atá sa mhála, cad a thóg mé, éist agus tarraing, cluichà ar an gclár bán idirgnÃomhach agus fÃor nó bréagach!
This month our teachers also met with our parents for the annual Parent Teacher meetings and it was Book Week too. We had a special book week assembly which was fantastic. Check out our photos below to see more from November in Junior Infants.
