Hi everyone, welcome to our first post for Junior Infants! We have been settling in really well and doing lots of fun activities such as painting, playing with playdoh, building lego constructions, counting to ten, learning new action songs and listening to stories! Have a look at our fun photos from our first few days in Junior Infants!
Autumn
The last two weeks the children have been learning all about Autumn. They brought in Autumn leaves, pine cones, conkers and sticks to put n our nature area, which they then used to build nests and habitats for the hibernating woodland creatures. We read the story about Hattie the Hedgehog in Don't Hog the Hedge and made our own hedgehogs using clay, paint and match sticks for the prickly spine. We also constructed our class scarecrow out of boxes, leaves, felt, materials, wool and twigs. We called him Steve! We also went on our sponsored walk around the school grounds and saw more Autumn leaves and even some sunflowers in the school garden! Thank you to everyone who donated money :)
Science Week
For Science week we did lots of cool activities- we played with robot bees, played with magnets, learned about the human body and it's organs, made x ray pictures with cue tips, built volcanoes with Lego and made them erupt with baking soda and vinegar and went exploring outside for bugs and minibeasts! So many fun activities for Science Week!!
Check out our fabulous winter art and sparkly snowflakes!
Junior Infants Cafe
Over the last two weeks, we have been learning all about cafes and restaurants and who works there. For Aistear, everyone took turns dressing up as a waitress, waiter and chef and got to serve their "customers" menus, soft drinks, dinner, breakfast, dessert and then pay for the bill at the end. We had great fun doing that! On week 2, the children got to bake delicious banana bread and make yummy smoothies in the kitchen with Maggy. This was all great practise for our Junior Infants Cafe, which we opened for the parents on Friday 17th! The children put on their chef aprons and hats for the event. They had made menus for the cafe, which they handed out to their mums and dads who ticked what they wanted on the menu, and the children then served them delicious banana bread, pastries, croissants and smoothies. The teachers served tea and coffee. The children had great fun putting their new "serving" skills to good use! Thank you to all the mums, dads and nanas, who came to our cafe, it was a great day!
The Farm
Now that it is Spring, the children had a great time learning about farm animals and their babies. They played farm I Spy, did some farm object counting, played Spot the Difference, measured the height of various farm animals using cubes and even built barns out of recycled cardboard boxes. They also built farms with small lego and big duplo lego blocks to shelter their little farm animals. They completed farm puzzles and jigsaws, made farm animals out of play dough and followed step by step instructions to draw various farm animals on their whiteboards. We also listened to 2 stories-Wake Up Time on Bumble Farm and Grandpa's Farm. We had a great 2 weeks learning about the farm!
Happy Pancake Tuesday!
Junior Infants made pancakes from scratch for Pancake Tuesday and everyone had a turn sieving the floor, beating the egg, pouring the milk, whisking the batter and then the teachers fried them on the pan, to be safe. Then they had lots of fun decorating their pancakes with chocolate spread, marshmallows and sprinkles!
Happy St Patrick's Day!!
Food Aistear
When learning about food, we got to make lots of yummy recipes in the kitchen and in the classroom! We made pizza rolls, lemonade, French toast, Nutella and banana toast and fruit smoothies!! It was great fun learning to follow recipes and try new foods and fruits. We also got to play at the class supermarket and at the restaurant again, where we practised paying with our coins, as we had also been learning all about money in maths! We now know all our coins and how to make up to 10c using different coins!
Happy Easter!
Last week we listened to the story of the Three Little Pigs. In our groups we acted out the story, using masks and props. We also painted and constructed paper plate pig faces as well as practising our cutting and pasting skills by cutting out and sticking together the 3 pigs. We made their 3 houses using yellow crepe paper for straw, lolly sticks and red squares for the bricks. Check out our cool Three Little Pigs display!
Yoga
The children have been having great fun doing yoga with our yoga teacher Vanessa. Check out all our yoga poses!
Halloween
We had great fun on our Halloween dress up day! We had a disco in the hall, then we made chocolate witches hats with cones, melted chocolate, smarties and marshmallows! We made very cool Halloween art with pumpkins (made from apple prints), handprinted ghosts and spooky silhouettes. Check out our spooktacular photos! Happy Halloween!
Christmas
Coming up to Christmas we have had 2 visits with Santa as well as the garda band, where we had a fun carols sing along. We also performed our Nativity for all the pupils and parents, and the children did such a fantastic job. Check out our fabulous Christmas festivities so far!
The children had a great day visiting Santa's Grotto, where they got to meet the main man himself, as well as decorate their own Christmas cookies, make decorations and drink hot chocolate!
Polar Animals
In January, we learned about the polar animals, specifically polar bears and Emperor penguins. We constructed penguins using Actimel bottles and clay, chipped away at icebergs to find some polar animals such as arctic foxes, whales, seals, polar bears, penguins and snowy owls. We even got to play with some fake snow and build igloos for them! We listened to some stories such as The Curious Polar Bear and The Runaway Iceberg, then cut and paste some paper penguins. We practised our writing by labelling the body parts of the polar animals. We had so much fun doing all these cool activities!
Valentines
Happy Valentine's Day!
Letters and Writing
Look at our fantastic tracing and writing skills! We also have great fun working together to sort pictures based on their first letter as we have been learning all about the letters s, a, t, i, p, n, c, k, e, m, h, r, d and g.
World Book Week
This week we celebrated world book week with lots of fun activities. On Tuesday we did a book swap and got some new books from our classmates, as well as buying some brand new books at the book fair. On Wednesday, 3rd class came in to read lots of lovely story books with us and on Thursday, we got to dress up as our favourite book characters. Even all the teachers enjoyed it as they all dressed up as Where's Wally?! It was brilliant fun!
A Visit from the Baby Chicks!
First Class had been incubating some chick eggs for a few weeks now, from the farm, and they finally hatched over this week. Today they came to visit our class and we had great fun holding, petting and feeding the cute baby chicks!
Happy Mother's Day!