Senior Infants 2021/2022
Ms. Claire Carolan

​** PE is on Thursdays **
Please wear your tracksuit and suitable runners
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World Book Day

We celebrated World Book Day this week.  We really enjoyed the visit from Seosamh the Story teller and DEAR time. 

Pancake Tuesday

We read the story of the Giant Pancake and did some drama activities based on the story, we even tried flipping pancakes!

Investigating Towers

We were learning about France and the Eiffel Tower this week. We explored different ways of making towers, which group could make the tallest tower without standing on a chair and which classroom materials made the strongest towers....and after all that hard work we had some croissants as a treat.

Table Football

Anybody fancy a game of finger football?  As part of our Sport theme this month the children made and played some finger football games.

Merry Christmas Everyone

Merry Christmas everyone, I hope you all have a lovely Christmas and that I will see you all safe and well in the New Year.  We had a lovely Christmas Lunch today, pulling crackers and telling jokes.  Only 3 more sleeps!

Space

Our theme this month is Space the children have really enjoyed learning about the sun, moon, stars and other planets in our solar system. The also learned about the Apollo 11 moon landing and the astronauts on that mission.  Here are some of our lovely rockets.  We also investigated making our paper rockets fly.

Happy Halloween!

Halloween is almost here, the children are looking forward to celebrating it safely with their family and friends.  We experimented with colour mixing to make beautiful bonfires and print to make create bat silhouettes.

Autumn is all around us!

We have been working on the theme of Autumn this week.  We went on an Autumn Nature Walk and collected leaves and helicopters.  We even spotted apples on the tree in the senior yard.  We used paper to create our own Autumn trees in art.

Friendship Week

We celebrated friendship week this week. We discussed what friendship means to us, how we can be a good friend to others and made friendship chains to remind us of all of the wonderful friends we have in school.  We also learned the poem 'Friends at School'.

European Day of Sport Sept 2021

Thank you to Mr. Murray and the wonderful 6th class children that helped to organise all of the activities today to celebrate our day of sport.  The children had a great day and really enjoyed all of the different activities and games.

Welcome Back to Senior Infants

A very warm welcome back to all of the boys and girls (and parents too).  The children had a great first day and week in Senior Infants.  The walls were a bit bare today in our new classroom but we won't be long about filling them up.

Sports Day ( June 2021 )

We had a great Sports Day today.  The rain held off and we had lots of fun participating and supporting each other in our races.  Well done to all the boys and girls...you are fantastic.  If we don't sleep tonight, we never will. ;)

Sponsored Walk

It was great to get out in the fresh air today for our sponsored walk.  Thanks to all the parents, relatives and neighbours that sponsored the children, your support is greatly appreciated.

Marvelous Marbles

We had great fun playing 'Mr. Packman' and 'The Cube' with marbles this week.  We even made some marvelous creations with marbles and playdoh too. (And we worked on our fine motor skills too!)

Planting Seeds

We reused our compostable water bottles as plant pots for our seeds today and we conserved the leftover water to dampen the compost for our seeds.  

'Hoppy' Easter Everyone!

Happy Easter Everyone! Well done on all of your hard work the last few weeks, settling back into routine and getting back to our new normal. Have an 'egg-cellent' Easter and stay safe.  Looking forward to seeing you all in two weeks. :)

Beautiful Bonnets

Well done to all the children and parents on their wonderful creations.  They all looked great and I hope you had lots of fun making them together.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

World Book Day

We celebrated World Book Day this week.  We even managed for our wonderful storyteller to read to us over Zoom.  The children really enjoyed the three stories Seosamh read to us, especially 'Mrs Wishy Washy'. Some of the children dressed up as their favourite story book characters and we all enjoyed some paired reading and sequencing activities.  Some of the children even tried their hand at story telling too, they were fantastic.

Spring Is In the Air & All Around Us!

We went on a nature walk to today, around the school ground and looking for signs of Spring.

WELCOME BACK!
It was a longer break than we expected but we are all so happy to finally be back in the classroom today.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

There was lots of excitement today as a very special visitor waved through the window and told us we were all on the 'Nice List'!
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Christmas Is Coming.....

Look at all of our Christmas themed creations....

Run, run as fast as you can....we made our own Gingerbread Man

We had lots of fun today making our own Gingerbread Men out of salt dough.
First, we measured out the salt and four
Next, we added the water
Then, we mixed it altogether
Finally, we cut out Gingerbread Men before popping them  in the oven to bake.
We will have to be very careful they don't run away when we open the oven door.

Run, run, run as fast as you can...we had lots of fun reading the story 'The Gingerbread Man'

We read the story the Gingerbread Man and had lots of creative fun exploring the story through drama and art.

Busy At Maths

Here are a few of the activities we've been working on during November....
Roll a number: one child rolls the dice and the children make sets of that number
Cubes in a cup: working in pairs each child takes a turn to roll a dice and puts that number of cubes in a cup, the child that fills the cup first wins and they count how many cubes are in the cup altogether.
Patterns: we have been working on copying and extending a pattern
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Kindness Awards

Well done to the children on receiving their positive behaviour awards for yard time this week, little acts of kindness go a long way to brightening up someone's day. I'm very proud of you, well done you are great 'bucket-fillers'.

How long is a piece of string?...or a chain?

We've been working on length this week in maths.  The children sorted their links into different colours, made chains and measured them against each other comparing the different length of each chain.  Ms. Morley even joined in with this activity and the children enjoyed chatting to her and explaining that all the chains needed to start at the same point.
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Sound Swatting!

We are working on initial sound isolation, the children had great fun with this activity swatting the correct picture as we played 'I Spy a picture beginning with...'

Experimenting with shadows...

We investigated how shadows were made today...when we stood facing the sun, we couldn't see our shadows because they were behind us. But when we turned and put our back to the sun we could see our shadows in front of us. We even enjoyed a game of shadow chasing.

Winter Is On its Way!

We went for a stroll around the school grounds to look for some signs of Winter, the deciduous trees have lost their leaves and although it was sunny we needed our winter woolies.

A smile for Tuesday....

What a lovely way to start the day...Emily made a smile for everyone this morning during activity time.  We had been discussing friendship and some of the small things we can do to show kindness to our friends and let them know we care. 
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Golden Time!

We had Golden Time today, there was lots of activity in the home corner, an-ghaeilge sa siopa breagáin, lots of co-operative play with the train track and great collaboration with our constructions.  We had so much fun, we almost forgot about home time!
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Spiders are amazing!

We made spider webs this week to help work on our fine motor skills and hand eye co-ordination, it was a little tricky a first but we stuck with it....how do spiders do it so well with their legs?
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Construction

We were busy making constructions this week based on our weather theme...the children used straws to make umbrellas, elaborate kites and even a steering wheel to drive the car through puddles!

Hedgehogs: Take Two

Here are some pictures of our little friends as they prepare for their winter sleep.
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From Hedgehogs to Happy Birthday!

A wonderful way to end our first week back at school. We had intended to make PlayDoh hedgehogs this morning during activity time but when somebody mentioned it was my birthday, the hedgehogs turned into beautiful birthday cakes...I was so lucky to blow out the candles and make lots of birthday wishes.
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HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Well done to all of the boys and girls for settling into Junior Infants so well. Here are a few photos of some of the fun we have had this week and today...we were busy cutting out a puca for gaeilge, we worked on patterns to give Winnie the Witch some new socks, we had our spooky Halloween Parade and a balloon party. We even got to 'Trick or Treat' on the classroom door with Annemarie.
Enjoy the holidays everyone and stay safe, I'm looking forward to seeing you after the break.

We read the book Dry Bones and drew some dancing skeletons..."The toe bone is connected to the foot bone...."

5 Little Pumpkins sitting on a gate.....
We had fun today making our own playdoh pumpkins!

Farewell Mr. Murphy!
Mr. Murphy retired today after 35years of service in our school.  We participated in the ceremony via Zoom.  Afterwards Mr. Murphy visited our room to say goodbye and to keep up our wonderful work in Junior Infants.  We counted to 35 and gave him a big 'Bualadh Bos'. Best of luck Mr. Murphy and thank you.

There was a chill in the air this week that reminded us that Autumn is definitely here.  We went on a small nature walk around the school grounds looking for signs of seasonal change.  We saw how some of the leaves on the trees are starting to change colour, we collected and played with helicopters from the Sycamore trees and we even spotted an apple on one of the trees in the yard. Can you find it in the photo below?

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National Day of Sport

We had a great day of sport.  Everyone engaged in all of the activities but most importantly we had lots of fun being active :-) We will definitely sleep tonight!

We have also been exploring print.

We've been very busy this month...we've been working on our fine motor skills, experimenting with pattern and sorting. We've been engaging in lots of activities to keep our fingers busy.

​Well done to everyone on a wonderful first day of school. The children ​were fantastic. We all lined up safely, waved goodbye and enjoyed our first day of big school.
We had lots of fun...the first day of many.

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A very warm welcome to all of the boys and girls that visited our classroom today. It was lovely to meet you all.  We had great fun chatting, learning a new poem, reading Dear Zoo and playing with playdoh.
I'm looking forward to seeing you all again on Monday.