​Hello everyone! Welcome back to our Class Blog. 

This school term has been quite different for us. We spent January and February working online in our homes. We really looked forward to the live calls twice a week with Ms. Gaire and our friends. Ms. Gaire was so happy with us and said we worked really well at home. As a result, she gave us another leaf for our Achievement Tree. Our Achievement Tree is looking very full now! 

We are so happy to be back at school again with all of our friends. Have a look at some of the activities that we did since we returned to school. 

Throughout the month of March, we worked on the theme of "Spring" in Aistear. We learned a lot about the season. We went on a Nature Walk around our fabulous school garden to look for signs of Spring. We noticed lovely daffodils, beautiful flowers starting to grow and buds appearing on trees. We sat in our class groups on the four benches in the Zen Area, closed our eyes and listened for the sounds of Spring. We heard birds chirping, water flowing from the wonderful water feature, the wind blowing and the beautiful noises created by the little chimes hanging from the trees. We did various activities during the Aistear sessions. The Senior Infants wrote a piece about the season of Spring and the Junior Infants created a Spring Montage by cutting out and sticking lovely Spring pictures onto colored card. After learning that many animals have their babies in this season, we were able to match the mammy animals to the baby animals. At the cutting station, we cut out the various parts of a flower, assembled them correctly and stuck them onto a page. The Junior Infants created lovely Spring flowers with tall, green stems and the Senior Infants made really nice little lambs. We all made fluffy, feathery little chicks. We learned a poem call "Spring." Have a look at the photographs of our work and at a video of our performance of the poem. (Click on the arrows to scroll across and see all of the photographs and videos.)

​In Science, we learned about the lifecycle of a ladybird. We completed various activities on the topic to consolidate our learning, including drawing pictures of the life cycle and taking part in games. We made vibrant ladybirds during an Art lesson. Each ladybird looked so different due to it's many and varied amount of spots.

​We covered a few topics in Maths this month. We enjoyed working on the topic of "Length." We focused on concepts, such as, tall, short, wide, narrow, long etc. We played with small cubes and large blocks to make various towers of different sizes and we were able to compare the towers using the Maths language that we learned. It was fun!

​We also liked working on the topic of "Capacity" in Maths. We were able to complete the pages in our Maths workbooks very well, but our favourite parts of the lessons were playing with various containers, beakers and water. Ms. Gaire poured Mi-Wadi into the water to colour it orange. It looked nice but we were not allowed to drink it! We experimented with containers of different sizes and estimated how many full containers would fill a large basin/ bowl etc. We tried not to splash anyone with water, and miraculously, we mostly managed to stay dry! It was Ms. Gaire that made the most mess!

​We celebrated World Book Day together on Thursday 4th of March. We brought our favourite book into school. Everyone got an opportunity to show their favourite book to the class, call out the title and explain why we like the book. We had the chance to read the book and look at the pictures for a while and also show the book to our friends at our group table. In the P.E. Hall, Ms. Gaire read a story called "Monkey Puzzle." We listened carefully for the different animals in the story and we embodied each animal by miming it's movements around the P.E. Hall. Ms. Gaire thought she was going to be attacked by lots of snakes, but thankfully, she was saved just in time! It was so much fun!

​During an Art lesson, we made gorgeous cards for our Mammies for Mother's Day. We know that many of our mothers really like flowers, so we created a pot with a colourful plant. We made it extra special as we used our hand prints to create the plants and finger prints to create the flowers. Out Mammies seemed very happy with our fabulous cards.

​We celebrated Saint Patrick's Day together in our classroom. In advance of the special day, we learned about Saint Patrick. During an Art lesson, we made a little dancing shamrock man. We tested his dancing skills by playing Irish music and dancing along with him. We learned an Irish poem called "Seamróg Ghlas" and an Irish song called "Lá le Pádraig." We had a little parade in our classroom. Have a look at the photographs and three videos below.

​On Friday 19th of March, we raised awareness for people with Down Syndrome by taking part in "Rock Your Odd Socks Day." We wore odd socks to school to show support for our friends with Down Syndrome. Ms. Hetherton came into our classroom to admire our odd socks!

​We are so excited for Easter Time! We designed lovely Easter egg wrappers at school. Ms. Gaire and Buddy the Bunny set up an Easter Egg Hunt in the classroom and devised clues for us to solve. We solved each clue with ease and were lead to yummy Easter treats! We learned a poem called "The Easter Bunny." You can listen to our poem below.

​We hope you have a brilliant Easter Break! Ms. Gaire, Buddy and Cuddles say "hello!" Happy Easter from all of the Junior and Senior Infants!

Hello! Welcome back to our Class Blog! 

We have been working very well over the last two months at school. Here you can see pictures of our work in action and samples of our lovely work. Enjoy! 

We worked on many Maths topics over the last few weeks. We particularly liked working on "Patterns." We enjoyed creating our own patterns with lollipop sticks, links, cubes etc. The Seniors Infants worked on the topic of "Time" and can now tell the time in hourly intervals. The Junior Infants worked on numbers 1, 2 and 3. Have a look at some of our work!

​During November, we worked on the theme of "The Supermarket" in Aistear. We set up our own Supermarket in the classroom. We played in the Role Play area taking on the roles of customer, shop assistant, counter worker, manager, etc. At the "Cut & Paste" station, we sorted fruit and vegetables. We made items that can be purchased in a Supermarket with playdough. At the "Games" station, we played various games. The Senior Infants wrote their own shopping lists and the Junior Infants did a drawing activity. We designed some lovely cupcakes that could be sold in the Bakery section of a Supermarket. It was a lot of fun!

​We also focused on the theme of "Winter" in Aistear. We completed various tasks, activities and worksheets based on the theme. We created fabulous snow globes using the technique of pointillism. We made lovely winter caps and hung them from a clothes line outside our classroom. We made snow people and winter clothes from playdough. At the "Cut & Paste" Station, we sorted winter and summer clothes. We did beautiful drawings of a winter scene in our Art Notebooks. The Senior Infants wrote a piece about the season of winter and the Junior Infants completed a tracing activity.

​Throughout the last fortnight at school, we worked on the theme of "Christmas." This was a very exciting theme for us. With Christmas music on in the background, we helped Ms. Gaire to decorate the classroom. We decorated the little Christmas trees and set up the classroom Christmas crib. Ms. Gaire read us a story called "The Christmas Collar." Also, we learned all about The Christmas Story. We designed our own Winter/ Christmas jumpers. We love how different and unique each jumper looks. In the Play Area, we created the Christmas Story by playing with the figurines and pictures from The Nativity Story. At the "Cut & Paste" Station, we each created a fabulous Christmas tree. We made gift boxes, Christmas trees, baubles etc with playdough. The Senior Infants wrote a piece on the Christmas story and the Junior Infants created a Christmas montage. As a class, we created a lovely Nativity Scene using black sugar paper, chalk and pictures. We took part in various games and activities. We espcially enjoyed doing some Christmas themed yoga, watching the Helix Panto "The Sword in the Stone", singing Christmas songs and learning new poems. Have a listen to two poems that we learned.

​Our class took part in the school's Christmas Concert Video. We spent weeks practising the poem "I'm a Little Snowman" and the song "Christmas Time." We were so excited when the day came to record our performance. We hope you enjoyed the show!

​We have been working so hard at school and having fun while doing so. Last week, Edel, our school secretary, arrived at the door of our classroom with a special envelope that was addressed to our class. It was very exciting! Ollie opened the envelope and Ms. Gaire read a two page letter from Tinsel, Santa's no.1 Elf. Tinsel heard how well we are working at school. He knew that the Junior Infants are making fantastic progress learning the Jolly Phonic Sounds and he knew how well the Senior Infants are performing during Power Hour at school. As a result, Tinsel thought we deserved a little gift! He gave us a little riddle to solve in order to locate our gift in the classroom. Amelia solved the riddle and we found special activity books for everyone in our classroom Christmas stockings! We were so excited! In the second half of this school term, we earned another 10 leaves for our Achievement Tree. Ms. Gaire is so proud of us. We had a party to celebrate our success.

​We hope you all have a lovely Christmas! 
Lots of love,
Junior & Senior Infants

The run up to Christmas is always a busy one and Senior Infants were working hard for the last two months. 

Our Aistear theme for November was the Italian Café/Restaurant. We did role play like we were in an Italian restaurant. We were waiters/waitresses who took orders and delivered food, customers and chefs who cooked and really enjoyed this station. We also did lots of different art work based on books on our topics - Handa's surprise and the Tiger who Came to Tea. 

We have loved the anticipation of Christmas and we've been full of Christmas cheer in our classroom. We love our decorated classroom - our windows were painted with snowmen and reindeer to name but a few, we have a lovely Christmas tree and lots of lights around the room. 

We did lots of Christmas art which we really enjoyed and were so excited to bring them home. Our Aistear theme was 'The Nativity' this month and we really enjoyed using our new crib to act out the scenes. We also did role play with masks and sequenced the story. 

With science week upon us, we decided to carry out some cool experiments to finish off the week in a fun way. 

You can see us below having lots of great fun together. We investigated colouring in food by doing the skittles experiment. We also made 'raisins dance' by placing them into 7up and watching the gas in the drink make them move from the bottom to the top of the cup. The other experiment we undertook was called 'the dancing man.' Mr. Geaney demonstrated this experiment. He drew a stick with whiteboard marker on a plate and slowly introduced water. Amazingly, the stick man lifted from the plate and danced in the water for a short period of time. 

We really enjoyed science week 2020. 

Hello everybody! Welcome to our Class Blog. We are excited to show you some of the activities we have done in the first two months of school. 

Our teacher, Ms. Gaire, teaches Junior Infants and Senior Infants. We are settling well into the school year and we are enjoying making new friends and playing together. 

Have a look at the photographs of everyone in our lovely class and the photograph of the Junior Infants that featured in "The Leinster Leader" paper.

We love taking part in Aistear every week. During September, we focused on the theme of "The Construction Site." In the Role Play area, we dressed up as builders and worked at the Construction Site. At the Construction Station, we created buildings using shapes, building blocks and lego. At the Drawing & Colouring Station, we created blueprints of buildings we wished to build and the Junior Infants coloured the tools used by a builder. At the Fine Motor Station, we used playdough to make the tools in a builder's toolkit. Finally, at the Writing Station, the Senior Infants wrote a list of tools needed for a building project. It was lots of fun!

​During October, we focused on the theme of "Autumn." At the Nature Station, we sorted acorns, leaves, conkers, sycamore helicopters, pine cones etc. At the Cut & Paste Station, we sequenced pictures to show what happens to deciduous trees in Autumn. At the Art Station, we created Autumn trees using the technique of pointillism. The Junior Infants completed worksheets based on the topic of Autumn, while the Senior Infants worked in their Autumn Booklets. We learned a song called "Autumn Leaves."

​We enjoy Art lessons and have created lovely pieces of Art work so far this term.

​We worked on various Maths topics over the past two months. We really enjoyed working on 2D shapes. Here are some photographs of us working at various Maths stations. We created shape pictures, made shapes using lollipop sticks, completed worksheets and played a sorting game.

​We celebrated Halloween together in our classroom. We focused on the theme of "Halloween" for a week in Aistear. We created our own "magic potion" that turned us into various animals after just one "sip!" The Senior Infants wrote the list of ingredients that we used to make our magic potion. The Junior Infants drew a picture of a spooky Halloween character. We watched a video called "Room on a Broom" and we created scary pumpkin faces. We played various games, such as "Pin the tail on the witch's cat", throw the sweets into the cauldron, pass the balloons etc. We sang Halloween songs, danced to spooky songs, and did arts and crafts. We finished the week by dressing up in fantastic costumes and took part in a Halloween parade in the school yard with the other Infant classes. Our class showed off our impressive costumes in the parade. Have a look at the activities we did and have a listen to our class performance of the Halloween poem "Knocking On My Door."

​We have been working so hard. Ms. Gaire is so proud of us and so pleased with our efforts. We have a Class Achievement Tree. When we work hard or show kindness or achieve success, Ms. Gaire rewards us with a leaf. Our aim was to earn 10 leaves on our Class Achievement Tree. We earned our tenth leaf just before the MidTerm break! We were thrilled! We had a party to celebrate our success. We enjoyed some yummy treats, played with toys and had a dance party.

​We had a great first half term at school and we are looking forward to the remainder of the term.

Hello to everyone visiting our class blog for the first time this year. We are all delighted to be back in school together and enjoying some really fun activities with our new teacher. Although COVID means we have to do things a little differently, it doesn't stop us having lots of fun and learning lots of new things too. Check out what we have been doing for the past two months below:

We were so excited to be back in school in late August. We were put into pods to keep us safe. Here are some pictures of us on our first day in Senior Infants:

Art is one of our favourite subjects. One of our first pieces of art was using string which we really enjoyed. We did this art piece of large pieces of A2 paper which we now have stapled together and they have made our art folders. This is where we store all our art pieces from the year and they will go home at the end of the year. Check out the process below:

Aistear is another of our favourites in Senior Infants. Our first Aistear topic was 'The Construction Site' which was great fun. We played with machinery in the sand, we build houses and schools using lego and construction blocks, we designed blue prints, we made tool belts and we used our role-play area to act out working on a construction site. On our final day of the construction site, we all received a hugh-vis jacket which we wore home. See us in action below:

Another popular Aistear topic was 'Houses and Homes.' We were very busy in the small world area with the dolls house, serving dinner and acting out scenes from home in the role play, designed our dream bedrooms in our foldable houses and constructing different types of houses which we made into estates. All the fun and learning can be seen below:

Because the season of Autumn is upon us we have been learning all about the Squirrel, autumnal leaves and signs of Autumn. We brought in some autumnal leaves to school which we put to good use in art by making squirrels and using the leaves to represent their tails. We also used the leaves to do some leaf rubbings. Lastly, we used the art technique of pointillism to show autumn leaves on the trees. All our artwork is displayed proudly outside our classroom which you can see below:

We love maths in our classroom and some of our most recent topics were 2D shapes and pattern. We used lots of different materials to make 2D shapes and because it is halloween, we also made some 2D shape witches which you can see in the pictures below. We made lots of patterns using our maths manipulatives and even worked in our pods to see how long our patterns could go:

One our favourite times of the year is Halloween so Mr. Geaney had to make a special halloween Aistear for the week before our mid term. In this Aistear topic, we played with some spooky coloured water and sand which has lots of creepy bugs in it. We did our Role Play on one of our favourite stores - 'The Room on the Broom' using sequencing cards and masks. We also made halloween split pin characters and painted an image from 'The Room on the Broom'. What fun we had!

We celebrated the last day of school in style. We had a halloween parade outside with the other infant classes and played lots of fun games like make a mummy, throw sweets into the cauldron, pin the tail on the cat, pin the hat on the witch and the balloon games. We finished the day off with a movie and some treats!

Happy Halloween everybody!

Check out what the Junior & Senior Infants got up to in Term 2.

​In January, we focused on the theme of “The Post Office” in Aistear. We read the story “The Jolly Postman.” We designed a map for the postman to help plan his journey around the village to deliver the letters. As well as taking part in many other activities, Senior Infants wrote a letter to their families and Junior Infants drew pictures. We put our work into envelopes with a stamp and home address. We walked with excitement to the local postbox to post our work to our families. We couldn’t wait for the post to arrive to our homes! Our families were very proud of our great work!

​After studying the role of a postal worker in detail, we looked at many other occupations. We all drew a picture of the job we would like to have in the future. 
Members of An Garda Síochána came to visit us to inform us about their roles. We got to see the Garda car, Garda jeep and Garda horses.

​“Mindfulness Week” took place in January. Throughout the week we did some mindful colouring, we listened to relaxing music and did some yoga sessions. Yoga was our favourite way to relax. Check out some of our yoga positions!

​During February, we worked on the theme of “The Hospital.” We learned about the roles of a doctor, nurse, midwife, surgeon, radiologist, paramedic etc. We dressed up in the Role Play corner and took on various roles to look after some patients. We did various activities, for example, we created x-rays, made “Get Well” cards, created our own stethoscopes, used play dough to make various pieces of equipment used in a hospital etc.

​Our class like to celebrate seasonal events and achievements. We celebrated Valentines Day together by enjoying lovely treats from our visit to the Cake Sale and we made Valentine cards for our families. We celebrated Pancake Tuesday in our classroom also. We learned a poem called “Pancakes”, took turns flipping a pancake and decorated our own pancakes with various syrup/ flavoured sauces/ lemon juice and marshmallows. They were delicious! We have been working very well and earned 30 leaves on our Class Achievement Tree! Ms. Gaire is so proud of us! We celebrated this achievement by having a dance party!

​World Book Day took place during the first week of March. We dressed up as our favourite characters from our favourite books. We enjoyed Story Time in the classroom. Afterwards, we took turns explaining our costumes to the class. Mary Grace, an author came to visit us. She read some of her stories to us.

​Seachtain na Gaeilge was an exciting time for us. We listened to Irish music and leaned some Irish dancing. We had our own little St Patrick’s Day parade in our classroom. 5th class students invited us to view their “Seo Faisin” and 6th class students invited us to hear their lovely time whistle playing.

​Term 2 was a fun and memorable term. Little did we know that it would be cut short and that we would not spend Term 3 together in school. We all look forward to reuniting soon & creating more fun, educational, exciting and special memories together. 

Ms. Gaire’s Junior & Senior Infants