A very big welcome to all the visitors to our blog. It's hard to believe that our first term is over already. What a term it has been. We are going to show you some of the things we got up to over the past four months. We hope you enjoy!

The Construction Site
Our first Aistear topic was the construction site - and what fun that was. We completed Role Play as builders, digger drivers, engineers to name but a few. We constructed houses and schools using big blocks and lego. We made 2D castles by using our excellent fine motor skills. We also created some blue prints of our builds and made our very own toolbets. It was a busy month. Check out some of the pictures below:

EU Code Week:
The whole of SALI took part in EU Code week and Senior Infants were budding coders too. We did lots of coding work across the fortnight. We first began with programming commands physically on mats with our beebot cards. This was a great way of learning directions. We then moved onto the whiteboard and worked as a class to solve the problems. When we became pros we used the IPads and to finish off the week we used Beebots in stations and had great fun! 

Oíche Shamhna:
Halloween was a really fun time in school. We did lots of cool activities in Aistear. We made some multicoloured pumpkins - we bet you have never seen those before! We also went on a Witch and Wizard walk with our 6th class friends. We walked around the block in our favourite halloween costumes. I think we scared quite a few people around the village!

We really enjoyed the maths topics 2D shapes. We did lots of hands on activities. We created shapes using playdoh and matchsticks and marshmallows and matchsticks too. We used shapes to tesselate and copy some patterns. We completed lots of stations and really enjoyed this week!

The Italian Restaurant
One of our favourite Aistear topics has been the Italian restaurant. We took on the roles of chef, waiter and customer in the role play area. We designed our own menus with Italian food, made art pizzas, used playdoh to create our favourite Italian foods. But, our favourite part of this Aistear has to be making pizzas in class. We used toppings of cheese, tomato sauce and pepperoni and made some delicious pizzas!

Christmas is always a special time in the infant classroom and this year was no different. It started off with some cold snowy days. Although we weren't able to run around we did some lovely winter walks on the yard and enjoyed the little dusting of snow that was there! We completed some lovely pieces of Christmas art including pop art angles, jack frost and a christmas candle. We had a special visit from Santa and we sang a song to him in the foyer. We learned a new song called Ho Ho Ho! - check it out below!

We hope you enjoyed visiting our blog. Check back in soon to see what Term 2 brings!

The boys and girls in Mr. Geaney's Senior Infants have been working on their song singing in recent weeks and would love you to listen to two of our songs!

Every Brand New Day:

Senior Infants had such an enjoyable time in Lullymore for our FIRST EVER school tour! We were so excited on the run-up to it and we had a special calendar to count down the days. This made the excitement build even more!

We got a big double decker bus which was such fun. When we arrived to Lullymore we were greeted by our guides. We got to do lots of fun activities like a train ride, the playground, indoor play area and a tour of crainneogs. We had lunch together and then returned home very tired but delighted with our tour!

Check us out below!

Term 2 was a busy one for us in room 4. Check out the information and pictures below to find out what we got up to!

Aistear: The Post Office
One of the children's favourite Aistear topics this year has been the Post Office. We did lots of fun activities such as delivering post, finding hidden post office words in our classroom, constructing train tracks, making our own fairytale post map, practising our blending by posting in the post box, role play in the post office and lots of sensory work with shredded paper and shaving foam. 

Art: Clay Pots
One of our proudest art pieces to date were our clay pinch pots. This lesson was over two days as we first created the pinch pots and left them to dry. Once they were fully dry we then painted them with our favourite colours. We learned lots of techniques when creating our pots and used water at the end to both smooth and shine our pots. Check out the finished products!

Science/Music: Sound Shakers
We studied sound in science and used recycled bottles and various materials such as cheerios, rice, and lentils to make sound shakers. It certainly created a big mess in our classroom but it was totally worth it when we got to use our new instruments with to accompany some of our favourite pop songs!

Aistear: The Dentist
Mr. Geaney was very impressed with some of our budding Dentists during this Aistear topic. We had some amazing receptionist who helped the Denists when the surgery got busy also. During this Aistear topic we had to scrub plaque using toothbrushes, make some amazing smiles and work on our fine motor in sand by picking teeth (marshamallows) using tweezers. There could be some dentists in our midst in the future!

Art: Valentine's Day
We took our inspiration for our Valentine's Art from artist Jim Dine. We recreated his piece entitled 'Painted Heart' with lots of striking colours. These art pieces got lots of compliments from those who passed them outside our classroom!

World Book Day
We celebrated world book day in style in our classroom this year. We really enjoyed dressing up as our favourite characters from books. We also had a dance party with the other senior infant classroom in the hall!

Aistear: The Farm
Another popular Aistear topic was the farm. We enjoyed lots of activities based on the farm and farm animals. We did lots of art pieces including making spring meadows with paintbrushes, and making paper plate farm animals. We used role play for the farmer's market, soil for planting and water for ducks and lots of farm games like mother and young matching, bingo and puzzles!

St Patrick's Celebrations
We did some themed St. Patrick's Day art which you can check out below. We used crepe paper and water to make special prints!

Spring is Here!
We are always interested in seasonal change and we really enjoyed learning about Spring. We learned lots of facts and Mr. Belgey also took us on a Spring scavenger hunt to our garden. Check out our rendition of 'Spring into Action' below too. We think we did a great job!

Aistear: Space
We loved becoming astronauts during our Aistear topic Space. We used the role play to prepare in the Space Station and to launch from our rocket. We also contructed rockets using lego and big blocks, created an art piece of the sequence of the planets and created rockets also! We loved clay so much before that we created our own clay aliens! This was a really fun Aistear topic!

Thank you Mr. Begley!
We were so lucky to have Mr. Begley teaching us for three weeks. He did so many fun things with us and was so kind to us. We had to get a group picture with him on his final day and before we finished for the Easter break!

Thanks for visiting and see you soon, 
Senior Infants!

January
In January, we were happy to return to school to see all our friends after the Christmas break. We shared lots of fabulous stories of our break and of the excitement of Santa’s visit to our homes.
In Art, we experimented with Primary and Secondary colours and made our very own colour wheels. We then created a colourful class caterpillar.

​The following week, we explored what we had learned about mixing colours to create tonal hot and cold colours. We were all experts at this!

​In Aistear, we learned about the Post Office. We built postal routes, made maps for the Postman, went on a word hunt, worked in the sorting station and wrote and posted letters to our friends. We learned the process of how letters and parcels arrive at their destinations. This was fascinating!

In Science, we explored floating and sinking. Thankfully, all of the water containers stayed upright and most of the water remained in them! 

​February
In Maths, we learned about 3D shape. We are all very familiar with cubes, cylinders, spheres and cuboids. We sorted shapes, drew pictures with them, built shapes using matchsticks and play doh (This was a challenge!) and made towers.

​In Music, we made shakers using a variety of different dry foods. We listened to and discussed the sounds our instruments made. This may have resulted in us having a picnic lunch as the clean up became a little too much… we were secretly delighted!

In Handwriting, we used matchsticks and lollipop sticks to make our capital letters E, T, K and H!

Listen to the song we learned whilst learning about the Lifecycle of the Frog.

We became Dentist’s in Aistear.

​March
In phonics, we matched pictures to words, went on word hunts, played board games and other games to help us learn our ‘ai’ sound.

​On Pancake Tuesday, we decorate pancake faces and ate pancakes with our favourite toppings… they were devoured before we had time to take pictures!

​In Drama, we created Sculpture Galleries. We worked with a partner to mould each other into shape for others to view in the Gallery. We learned that it is very hard to keep a straight face!

World Book Day was so much fun. We had some interesting characters in our classroom that day.

​The water containers returned for maths, and we explored units of measure. We learned how to show containers that were full, empty, half-full, almost full and almost empty.

​Check out our Green Day song, parade and dance moves.

​We had some lovely weather and Gerry invited us to the garden to help him plant some trees.

​April
Early April, saw us take off on a mission to Space in Aistear. We learned about Astronauts, their voyage into Space and the planets.

​In phonics, we worked on out oo and oo sounds before our well-earned Easter break!

​We hope you enjoyed catching up on what we got up to in Term 2.
From,
Senior Infants

November and December have been two jam packed months in our classroom and we have lots of pictures to share with you all so you can keep up to date with our adventures!

Maths: Patterns
One of our maths topics in November was pattern and we really enjoyed this one! We made lots of patterns out of different maths manipulatives in our class and as we got more confident, we started to introduce three coloured patterns and even made tricky patterns for our partner to finish! Our last activity of this topic was making pattern snakes which were proudly displayed outside our classroom for everyone to see!

Aistear: The Italian Restaurant/Café

Aistear is one of our favourite times of the day and we think the Italian Restaurant/Café has also been one our favourites so far. We did so many activities in this Aistear topic for the month of November. 
We:
- designed and wrote our own menus
- Made junk art pizzas
- Used playdoh to create Italian Food
- Made art using different types of pasta
- Sequenced the cooking of a pizza
- Used restaurant utensils in sand. 

However, I think everyone's favourite station was making their own pizza, cooking it and eating it afterwards. We chose our own toppings and watched them cook in the oven. They were so tasty that every plate was empty afterwards!

Team Hope

Mr. Geaney would like to express a big thank you for all the donations to the Team Hope shoebox appeal. We raised €240 and were able to donate 12 boxes to those less fortunate. We were delighted to be able to help those that aren't as lucky as we are at Christmas. 

Art Galore!

We love our art lessons every Thursday and have become very good artists since September. Some of our favourite pieces to date include our adaptation of Renoir's 'Umbrellas.' We also really enjoyed working in our groups to create a collage of the seasons as we were learning all about them in SESE. 

Science Week

For Science week in Senior Infants, we took part in 3 different experiements. We first explored the skittles experiment and nobody could believe how the colours ran from the skittles so quickly to make such a cool design on the plate. 
We then investigated dancing raisins by placing raisins in a cup with some 7up. As soon as the raisins dropped to the bottom of the cup, they began dancing to the top. 
Lastly, we all watched as Mr. Geaney made a stick man come to life on a plate and we watched him move in water - this was really cool and we couldn't believe it when he started moving on the plate!

Maths: Number Stories

Number stories have been one of the hardest parts of maths this year but we have never been afraid of the challenge! We also started these topics by working on the number, the number formation and making sets. When we were experts at that, we began using our maths manipulatives and mats and we ended up being pros and the number stories. We were so good, Mr. Geaney called us Mathemagicians!

Science: Materials all around us

One of our Science topics in November was Materials. We explored so many different materials and became really good at identifying items that were made from these materials. We used concrete materials too and also categorised many pictures according to their materials. Check us out below!

Gaeilge

Is aoibhinn linn Gaeilge!! Mr. Geaney is so proud of our hard efforts during Gaeilge lessons and we always try out hardest in every lesson. We use Gaeilge in the classroom as much as possible and we have become really good at speaking in Irish to each other. We all work very hard because we want to become 'Gaeilgeoir na Seachtaine'! Check out some of us speaking as Gaeilge below:

Christmas in our Classroom

We have loved the build up to Christmas in our classroom. There was great excitement every morning to see what Jingles the elf had gotten up to. Mr. Geaney was worried that he might do something mischevious! We explored the nativity in Aistear, did lots of Christmas exercise, and some amazing art work including Jack Frost art and Pop Art Angels. Check it all out below!

Christmas Treats

Just before the Christmas Holidays, Mr. Geaney treated us to some delicious hot chocolate and kinder chocolate. We got to watch the panto from the helix as we drank our hot chocolate! What fun!

Looking back on term 1 in Senior Infants. Oh, what fun we have had!
​
September
In September, we were so excited to be reunited with our friends after the summer break. We spent some time getting to know each other and settling into our new classroom and learning new routines.
We really enjoyed working on our fine motor skills to help with our writing and colouring. We used pegboards, lollipop sticks, threading bead, stickle bricks and whiteboards.

​We used play doh to practice our letter formation.

In maths, we learned to sequence our numbers 1 – 5 and made and matched same as sets. Sometimes we did this with a partner and sometimes we worked on our own. We also gave ladybirds some spots to help add our numbers.

​We began an adventure on the ‘Construction Site’ in Aistear. We took on the role of builders in the role play area, ensuring safety first! We used lego to construct some of our own buildings and we dug through some soil and sand. In the art station, we made tool belts. Best of all… we had a building site right outside our classroom window and took the opportunity to observe some of what was going on, on an actual building site. We loved seeing some of the many construction vehicles in action. We may have even spotted someone’s Grandad busy at work!

​Take a listen to our singing as Gaeilge.

​October
October saw some great action in the P.E hall. We worked on our balls skills and built our gross motor skills.

In Aistear, we moved onto ‘Houses and Homes’. We have some natural Mam’s and Dad’s. Some were cooking up a storm in the kitchen, whilst others looked after the babies and one or two even made very important work calls. We made homes using lollipop sticks, played with the dolls house and even wrote about the different types of homes.

​After that, we couldn’t resist our Halloween themed Aistear. Check us out!

​In October, we celebrated our birthday twins. Not only do we have two sets of twins in our class, but we also have two sets of birthday twins!

​Lastly, Halloween! We had so much fun dressing up and parading around the school yard for our friends.

November
In November, we all returned to school after a well-earned midterm break.
We worked on our patterns in maths. We followed patterns, made some fantastic patterns of our own and worked together to find patterns.

​We raised money for TEAM HOPE! This will go a long way in helping those in need this Christmas.

​In Science, we learned about different types of materials and sorted them out into different categories.

​In Art, we made a season’s collage in our pods. We use different resources in each pod. Can you tell what each pod used?

​Our phonics have been getting a little trickier. We have been learning our digraphs. Ask your child what happens when two vowels go walking. We used a story to spot the ‘oa’ sound and worked as a team to match ‘oa’ words and pictures. Team work makes the dream work!

​We learned more ball skills in P.E. This time using a racket. Check out the look of concentration on some of our faces.

​Lastly, we travelled to Italy to ‘The Italian Restaurant’. We all agreed that the best part of the Italian restaurant was our homemade pizzas. They went down a treat – even if we did have to wait for our turn to make them to come around!

December
The month is not over yet, and we still have lots of very exciting things to come. We have been quite busy and didn’t get to take many photos. We are working on our hot chocolate challenge in a bid to have hot chocolate, cookies and marshmallows before the holidays. The tub of hot chocolate and cookies on teachers desk are very tempting!
We learned how to tell the time. We can now read o’clock time. Check out some of the fun games we played together.

‘Elfie’ is visiting our classroom and has been up to all sorts. He got stuck to the board, was chased by dinosaurs, fell asleep in the dolls cot and even let loose with some shaving foam. Who knows what he will get up to next!
We recorded our Christmas songs, which we know you will love.

​We are enjoying lots of Christmas art activities. Some you have seen at home already and some that will be with you in the coming days.
Oh, did you hear our new song? Play Feliz Navidad and hear me sing along. We were learning about Christmas in Spain and know this means ‘Merry Christmas’.
For now, we are going to begin to unwind (just a little) and enjoy the next few days in school before the Christmas holidays.
 
From,
Senior Infants 😊

Our last day before our mid-term break was an exciting one as we got to dress up for halloween. We watched a halloween movie and had a halloween parade with the other infant classes!

Happy Halloween everyone!