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!

Welcome to Ms. Keogh's Class Blog. This will be a hive of activity this year and we can't wait to show you all the learning and fun we get up to. Check us out on our first day of school! Be sure to check in regularly. ​

Welcome to Mr. Geaney's Class Blog. This will be a hive of activity this year and we can't wait to show you all the learning and fun we get up to. Check us out on our first day of school! Be sure to check in regularly. ​

What a busy last term we have had here in Senior Infants. As we finish our last couple of days in Senior Infants we look back on all the learning we haver achieved and the fun we have had together. Although we are a little sad to be finishing and moving into different classes next year, we had so much fun together. 

We love maths in our class and have done brilliant work in it this year. We loved the topic of Money and did so many activities. We did stations in money and worked with real coins to help us understand. We are now experts at identifying and using coins up to 10c. We used a shop scenario to buy and sell items, sorted coins, used piggy banks and played some fun money games! 

We did many topics in maths this year. We explored weight and were very good at identifying items that were heavy or light. We also used pan balances and a variety of items to see which weigh heavier or lighter. We also explored capacity and really enjoyed using water with some miwadi and lots of different utensils. Check us out in action!

We love art in our classroom! One of our favourite pieces was our Crazy Cow art pieces that we did all on our own. Mr. Geaney drew it step by step on the board and we followed. We were so impressed and proud of ourselves. We had a second go at clay also and made some cool aliens to use in our space station for Aistear. We also explored Claudé Monet's water scenes and attached a bridge to make it into a water scene! Check out our creations below!

Father's Day was a special occasion that had to mark in our class. We made some cool cards that folded out very big. We hope all the Dad's loved their cards!

One of our Science topics this term was Magnets and we think we are experts now at recognising items that attract a magnet and those that do not. We had a wide variety of items in our sharing tray that we had to first estimate before testing. We noted our results in our copies. We then explored our classroom environment with our magnets and were surprised with some of our finds!

One of our favourite Aistear topics this year was Space. We had so much fun pretending to be astronauts working in the space centre. We also used our clay aliens in our small world area. We made amazing solar systems and rockets that we were so proud of. We now know some amazing facts about space, are able to recall the order of the planets and even which is the smallest largest and closest to the earth. We could have future astronauts at NASA among us! 

As we are coming to the end of our time in Senior Infants, Mr. Geaney has organised a 10 day countdown with a special activity each day. We have 10 balloons which are filled with activities that we get to pop each day and it is so exciting. So far, we have played quizzes on the IPads, done chalk art on the yard and even make chocolate biscuit cake in our pods. We had an amazing breakfast morning with cereal, toasts and fruit. We visited the playground for the first time and we so excited. We also completed a maths trail in the car park and some very clever children found out which car was Mr. Geaney's. We had a virtual school tour of Dublin zoo and had some pop corn to enjoy the videos. It is so exciting to pop the balloon and see what the special activity is each morning. 

A big well done to all the boys and girls in Senior Infants. They have worked so hard this year and should enjoy a lovely summer break before they go into First Class. 

Hi everybody! Welcome back to our final Class Blog of the school year. We really made the most of our last term together, as a lovely class. Have a look at some of the fun activities we did throughout the term. 

In the month of April, we worked on the Aistear theme "People Who Help Us." At the Cut & Paste station, we read "scenario" cards and chose the best person to help with the matter. We learned a poem called "Firefighter" and at the Art station, we created a fire scene attended by a firefighter. Also, at the Art station, we drew a picture of the occupation we would like to have when we are older. It seems like we will be very helpful adults working as vets, teachers, chefs, guards and working in many other important roles. We played matching games and completed worksheets to consolidate our learning. At the Playdough station, we read instructions to create certain pieces of equipment, specific resources and vehicles needed by various workers.

​Throughout the month of May, we worked on our favourite topic to date in Aistear: "Under The Sea." At the start of every Aistear session we happily sang along to the song "Under The Sea." We learned the names of many sea creatures and watched videos of them in their natural environments. At the Play station, we played with sand in the sand pit and water in the water basin. At the Cut & Paste station, we cut out sea creatures and stuck them onto blue card to make a sea scene. At the Playdough station, we created lovely sea creatures. At the Art station, we drew pictures of colourful and varied sea creatures. We also created a picture of a sea horse in the ocean. The Senior Infants used paper plates and paint to make bright and vibrant fish. The Junior Infants used paper plates, paint and string to create beautiful jellyfish. At the Writing Station, the Senior Infants wrote a poem that we learned called "Scary Shark" and the Junior Infants labelled sea creatures.

​This month, during Aistear, we worked on the theme of "Summer." We learned all about the seasonal changes when Summer arrives. We made jigsaws and played with the sand pit in the Play Area. We picked our favourite flavours to make ice-cream cones at the Art station. We also drew a summer scene in our Art Notebooks. We added to summer pictures with playdough on the playdough mats. At the Cut & Paste station, we cut out pictures and stuck them to a background to create a Summer beach scene. In S.P.H.E., we learned how we can keep safe in the warm weather during summer time. Check out our performances of the poems "Summer Time" and "5 Scoops of Ice-Cream."

​We covered various Maths topics throughout this term. We enjoyed working on the topic of "Weight." We weighed various objects using a pan balance. We also had lots of fun working on the topic of "Ordinal Number." We chose vehicles from the play area to race against each other. Two children held the finish line at the end of the classroom. We held a race to see which vehicle would place first, second, third and last. "Addition" was another fun and hands-on topic to work on. The Senior Infants created a large numberline and worked out the answers to addition sums by jumping along the numberline. The Junior Infants used maths mats to practise adding two numbers together. We all practised addition sums by writing them on our whiteboards and played addition games. Another Maths topic that we worked hard at was the topic of "Money." We used coins to purchase items in our Class Shop and played many games to help with our learning.

Our Gaeilge has really improved this year. Each morning, we say poems, sing songs and create dramas during our Gaeilge lessons. Have a look at the videos of us singing and performing.

​We thoroughly enjoyed learning all about percussion instruments in Music. We learned that we can hit, shake and scrape these instruments to make a sound. We had the opportunity to play different percussion instruments. We explored how we can make a sound with each instrument and categorised the instruments into three groups: instruments that we hit, shake or scrape. The best part was getting to play many instruments over a few Music lessons. It was so much fun as well as being very very loud!

​Our Sports Day was one of our favourite days this term. We had the BEST day and the weather was fabulous. Our day started with dancing and Zumba in the classroom. Then, we went outside and completed an Obstacle Course many times. We absolutely loved it! After break time, we played many games on the AstroTurf. We loved playing games using the parachute. After that, we did many races, including a relay race, egg & spoon race etc. We all went home that day feeling tired but very happy after a great day.

​We reached a big milestone when we earned 30 leaves on our Achievement Tree! Ms. Gaire couldn't believe that we earned that many leaves and she was so proud of us! We celebrated our achievement by having playtime in the PE Hall and lovely ice lollies. A few weeks later, we earned 5 extra leaves, making the grand total of 35 leaves! Of course, we had another party to celebrate our very last leaf. 

Throughout our last term, we did lots of nice activities as Ms. Gaire wanted to reward us for being kind to each other and working very well. We paid visits to the school garden, we had extra play time in our classroom, had fun yoga sessions, played in the school playground and had a visit from the Ice-Cream Van. We really enjoyed the fun activities together.

​We had such a lovely year together in Junior & Seniors Infants. We can't wait to start another school year after the summer holidays. We will check in with you again then! But, for now, SLÁN!