APRIL
Earth day
Earth Day takes place this year on April 22nd. To mark Earth Day we learned about recycling and we went to see the recycling bins near our school. We never knew so many different things could be recycled! We listened to a story about recycling called 'The Messy Magpie' and the story 'The Earth Book' by Todd Parr helped us to learn about some of the different ways we can help planet Earth. You can listen to 'The Earth Book' below and maybe try out some of the ideas at home too!
SENSES
In SPHE we have been learning about our senses and how our senses help us to learn about the world around us as well as warn us about danger. We explored our sense of sound by listening to different sounds we could hear in the environment and trying to guess what they were and by playing some games of 'Sounds Bingo'. We explored our sense of touch by playing a 'guess the toy' game with our friends. We closed our eyes, our friends put a toy in our hand and we had to guess what it was using only our sense of touch! We had great fun as you can see in the photos below!
look at our grass heads!
Ms. Murphy's Junior Infants took fantastic care of their grass heads over the Easter holidays! Look at how much their hair has grown!
March
Happy Easter!
We enjoyed an Easter chocolate hunt in the classroom...
...our 5th Class buddies came to visit and we did some Easter art together...
... we made some Easter chicks hatching from their eggs during Art...
... and we had an impromptu disco during play time!
SPRING WALK
We took advantage of a break in the spring showers and went on our spring walk to search for signs of spring.
GRASS HEADS!
To investigate the conditions needed for grass to grow we have created our very own grass heads! We are giving our grass heads both water and light to help the grass seeds to grow. We have one grass head that will get light but no water and another grass head that will get water but no light because we also want to see if grass can grow without light/water.
SPRING
We have been learning about the season of spring and in Art we made some beautiful spring flowers. We can't wait to go on our spring walk...whenever these spring showers stop!
Click on the picture to try these online Spring jigsaws.
SEACHTAIN NA GAEILGE
March has been a very busy month because as well as celebrating World Book Week and Engineers Week, we also celebrated Seachtain na Gaeilge! Each day we went to the Irish board by Anke's office to learn the new words for the day and play some games with them. We also went on a hunt for Teidí! Teidí was hidden in 12 different places around the school and we had to find out, 'Cad atá á dhéanamh ag Teidí?' Ms. Murphy's Junior Infants would make great detectives because they found all of Teidí's 12 hiding places! We met our buddies to do some Seachtain na Gaeilge art activities and we performed an Irish song (An Madra Mór) at assembly. We also really enjoyed our Lá Glas!
Engineers WEEK
For Engineers Week we set up stations with 4 different challenges and over the course of the week each group got an opportunity to try each station. 3 of our stations were inspired by fairy tales and the final station was a Lego activity on the iPads. The children came up with amazingly creative solutions to the challenges posed at each station and it is clear there are lots of budding engineers in Ms. Murphy's Junior Infants! Have a look at some of the brilliant ideas the boys and girls came up with below.
Station 1: Help the pigs create a house that the wolf cannot blow down! The wolf (Ms. Murphy's hair dryer!!!) came to try blow down each of the houses but they were all too strong and we can confirm that all the pigs managed to stay safe from the wolf as a result!
Station 2: Help Rapunzel escape from her tower! Some of the ideas at this station over the course of the week included stairs, slides, steps, trampolines, planes, helicopters and bouncy castles!
Station 3: Help the Gingerbread Man cross the river. Some of the ideas at this station over the course of the week included bridges, stepping stones, tunnels and boats!
science and music
In Science our theme has been Sound and we have been talking and learning about sounds in the environment as well as loud/soft sounds and high/low sounds. We decided to create our own musical instruments using plastic bottles. We tested 4 different materials (pasta, rice, beans and salt) inside a bottle to hear the sound each one would make. We then each picked our favourite material to fill our bottle. Afterwards we used our maracas to make loud and soft sounds and watched Ms. Murphy carefully to know when to make a soft sound and when to make a loud sound. We were excellent at this as you can see in our video below. It was a lot of fun making and using our own maracas!
lITERACY
Click on the images below to try some of the literacy games we will be playing in school this month. We have been doing very well with our blending, segmenting, rhyming and high frequency words and Ms. Murphy is very proud of us 🙂
Segmenting: Spell the word correctly.
Rhyming words: Find the matching rhyming word.
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High frequency words 9-18: Find the matching word.
High frequency words 1-8: Memory matching game.
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maths
In Maths we are learning to partition sets using concrete materials.
spring
The daffodil bulbs we planted in October have now started to bloom.
FEBRUARY
World Book Week!
In Junior Infants we love reading so much we spent all week celebrating World Book Day!
On Monday we had a World Book Day Scavenger Hunt!
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On Tuesday we went on a 'Where's Wally?' hunt around the school! It was great fun and we found Wally hiding in lots of different places upstairs and downstairs!
On Wednesday we read 'Postman Bear', played a game of I-Spy based on a picture from the book and created birthday cards for Postman Bear. We also played a game of 'Guess Who?' by trying to guess which staff members were hidden behind their favourite book in the photos on the whiteboard. Finally, Mrs. Howard came in to read her favourite book 'Superworm' for us. Julia Donaldson wrote both 'Postman Bear' and 'Superworm' and she also wrote some of our other favourite books, 'The Gruffalo' and 'The Smartest Giant in Town'. We think she is a really great author!
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On Thursday we dressed up as our favourite characters and we told our class all about our favourite books.
We also met our buddies to show them our costumes and books and to see theirs too. We love spending time with our buddies 🙂
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The whole school went to the halla to listen to the story, 'The Day The Crayons Quit'. All the staff in the school were dressed as crayons for World Book Day!
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Our school also took on the challenge of 'One Book, One School, One Day'. The aim was to pass one book ('The Vanishing Lake') from classroom to classroom and have it read in all classrooms before the end of the day. We are delighted to say we succeeded in completing the challenge!
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Rainbows
Some of the boys and girls came into school very excited after seeing a rainbow on their way to school. We decided to use this as a stimulus for our art lesson and we created our very own rainbows!
PANCAKE TUESDAY
We really enjoyed making (and eating!) our pancakes on Pancake Tuesday!
Cake sale for turkey and syria
5th and 6th Class organised a cake sale to raise funds for the people of Turkey and Syria affected by the the recent earthquakes. We were thrilled to meet our buddies at the cake sale and we enjoyed choosing our delicious cakes too! Thank you to everyone for so generously supporting this fundraiser.
Buddies
We love spending time with our buddies. This month we enjoyed reading time and games in the halla with them.
LEGO Six Bricks
We have been using our Lego Six Bricks while working on rhyming this month. If we heard two words that rhymed we held up our green brick, if they didn't rhyme we held up our red brick. We also followed a colour code to identify rhyming words on our picture sheets.
valentine's dAY
We made special Valentine's Day cards for our families and used our cursive handwriting to write them!
Inspired by the art of Kandinsky, and his love of painting using colours and shapes, we created our own special Valentine's Day art.
LITERACY GAMES
We have started to use the school iPads for 10 minutes a week during phonological awareness stations. Below you will find the literacy games we have been playing if you would like to try them at home too!
January
P.E.
In P.E. this month we have been working on dribbling, trapping, kicking and passing the ball...
... an we have also been working on balancing and tossing beanbags and balls on our rackets.
GRANDPARENTS DAY
For Grandparents Day we wanted to do something very special for our grandparents/special people to show them how much we love them. We drew pictures of our grandparents/special people, filled out fact-files about them and even made cards and bookmarks for them. The boys and girls cannot wait to share their work with their grandparents/special people and tell them just how wonderful they are 😊
NUMBER HUNT
We went on a number hunt around the school to see if we could find any of the numbers we have been learning about. We spotted numbers everywhere!
ART
In Maths we have been learning about 2-D shapes and in Art we used circles, squares, triangles and rectangles to create shape robots. We even named our shape robots and decided what jobs they would do for us!
In SESE we have been learning about the season of winter and in Art we created paintings comparing autumn trees and winter trees. We also designed some winter clothes!
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BUDDIES
This month we had great fun making jigsaws with our buddies.
Winter Walk
We wrapped up warm for our winter walk and we were lucky enough to see lots of signs of winter while on our walk. We saw holly, red berries, robins, bare trees (deciduous trees) and also evergreen trees. We made sure to stop at the Hugging Tree too to make our obligatory wishes!
DECEMBER
Christmas Fun
Happy Christmas from Ms. Murphy's wonderful Junior Infants 🎄🎅
Our trip to the post office
We made special Christmas card for our families and then we went to the post office to post them.
We went into the post office and bought our stamps....
...and then we put them in the postbox! We hope our families love their special cards 😊
TOYS
In History we have been talking about toys babies would like to play with and toys children our age would like to play with. We discussed the differences between them and why toys for children our age might not be suitable for babies. We then had a Show and Tell day in class. We brought in our favourite toys and we all got to sit on teacher's chair at the top of the room and tell our friends about our toys. We also brought in some toys from when we were babies to show our friends. We really enjoyed seeing all the different toys!
Role Play
Our theme in English last month was 'The Hospital' and so for play time we set up our very own hospital in our classroom. The Junior Infant hospital was an excellent hospital and everyone received wonderful care while they were there!
English Writing
Ella is the name of the character in our English programme and in our story last month we found out that Ella had broken her leg. We decided to decorate and write Get Well Soon cards for Ella. Ms. Murphy knows Ella's teacher so we decided to post Ella's cards to her. We put on our coats and headed to the post office to post our cards. We couldn't believe it when a few days later there was a special delivery to the school for Ms. Murphy's Junior Infants! The postman had delivered an envelope for everyone in the class. When we opened our envelopes we found a Thank You card for each of us from Ella. She really liked the cards we made for her and wanted to say thank you to each of us!
November
SCIENCE WEEK
We had great fun during Science Week. We used magnets to investigate if different objects were magnetic or not and then we went on a hunt around the classroom to find more magnetic objects!
We loved watching our dancing raisins!
We made rainbows using skittles and warm water!
We tested materials to see if they were waterproof and we were delighted our buddies came to do it with us.
Buddies
As well as doing some Science with our buddies during Science Week we also enjoyed some games with them outside!
FOOD DUDES
We have been really enjoying trying fruits and vegetables with the Food Dudes. So far we have tasted blueberries, bananas, apples, oranges, cucumbers, carrots, peppers and tomatoes. Everyone in Junior Infants has tried every single one of these fruits and vegetables and Ms. Murphy is very proud of us 😊
SOUNDS
We have now started Group 2 of Jolly Phonics. You can find the song and action for each sound below.
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'How Full IS YOUR BUCKET?'
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In class we have been talking about showing love and kindness to others. We read the story "How Full Is Your Bucket?". We will continue to be "Bucket Fillers" in Junior Infants and complete acts of kindness in school and at home.
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OCTOBER
Happy Halloween!
room on the broom
We read 'Room on the Broom' in class and then we made brooms out of card. We sequenced the story by colouring the characters, cutting them out and putting them on our brooms in the correct order. During this activity we worked on our colouring, cutting and sequencing skills. We were thrilled with how our brooms turned out! You can listen to a version of the story below.
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blending
We have been very excited in Junior Infants as we are now able to read words! We have been learning to blend our first group of sounds in class and we have been learning to read some high frequency words too. We are doing brilliantly and Ms. Murphy is so proud of us 😊 You will find some blending videos below.
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BUDDY TIME
We love meeting up with our buddies and spending time with them. We really enjoyed having reading time with them this month 😊
Gymnastics
We have had so much fun learning gymnastics over the last 4 weeks. We have learned how to do rock and rolls, pencil rolls, egg rolls and forward rolls. We have also worked on our balance and we even learned how to do donkey kicks!
Autumn
On our autumn walk we saw many signs of autumn. We found acorns, conkers, fallen leaves, blackberries, helicopter seeds and spider webs! On our autumn walk we also visited the Hugging Tree. Legend has it that the Hugging Tree can grant wishes if you give it a hug so we all gave the Hugging Tree a hug and made a wish! When we came back to school we enjoyed using our magnifying glasses to look at the items we had collected because we could see them in better detail. We also had great fun trying to get our helicopter seeds to spin! When we had finished exploring our items we used the leaves we had collected to make leaf lanterns.
MATHS
In Maths we have been learning about pattern. We used concrete materials to make patterns and we also created patterns in Art.
Healthy eating
In class we have been learning about healthy eating and the food pyramid. When we met up with our buddies we played a game of food pyramid bingo and we designed healthy lunchboxes together too using the food pyramid to help us choose a variety of healthy foods.
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Irish
Our theme for this month is 'Bia' (food). You will find some of our new vocabulary below.
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our school
We became more familiar with our new school as part of our work in Geography. We visited our secretary Anke's office to say hello and we planted daffodils with our caretaker Cathal. We went upstairs to see the St. Brigid's cross with our school's golden rules on it and we explored the upstairs area of our school.
lego sIX bRICKS
This month we have been using our Lego Six Bricks to explore length and the concepts of more and less. We have also been using them to help us learn about pattern. We picked two of our bricks and marched around the classroom chanting our pattern! We repeated this lots of times with our different coloured bricks. We then used coloured paper to create patterns.
Fun on the Farm
Our theme in oral language this month has been Fun on the Farm.To tie in with this we have been learning Old McDonald and we even tried some "On the Farm" yoga from Cosmic Kids. You can find the video below if you'd like to try it at home!
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Planting
Mrs. Howard brought us some daffodil bulbs to plant. We talked about the different parts of the bulb, the importance of planting the bulbs with their roots pointing down and the things our daffodil bulbs would need to help them grow. Cathal our caretaker dug holes around the oak tree at the front of the school for our daffodil bulbs and he also gave us soil to fill up the holes after we had planted our bulbs. We cannot wait to see our daffodils in springtime!
PENCIL GRIP
We have been doing lots of work on learning how to hold our pencil correctly. We have been doing so well that Ms. Murphy even gave us her very special whiteboard markers to write with! You will find a video showing correct pencil grip below.
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sPACE wEEK
We thoroughly enjoyed Space Week! We listened to the story 'Aliens Love Underpants' and then used clay to make aliens. We looked at videos made by astronaut Chris Hadfield that showed us how astronauts eat, sleep and brush their teeth in space. We learned that in space you float because there is no gravity. We then made pictures of ourselves as astronauts in space! We watched a video of NASA's SpaceX Crew-5 Mission launch to the International Space Station (5/10/22) and then made our very own rockets. We also learned about why we have night and day, we sorted activities into day/night activities (while also working on our cutting and colouring skills) and we listened to the stories 'Back to Earth with a Bump' and 'Night Monkey, Day Monkey'. Finally we learned about Neil Armstrong and watched a video of the first moon landing.
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September
BUDDIES
One of the highlights of Junior Infants so far has been meeting our buddies 😊
Sounds
We have started learning our sounds using Jolly Phonics. You can listen to the sounds here: www.jollylearning.co.uk/resource-bank/learn-the-letter-sounds/
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You can find the actions for the sounds here:
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You will find the song for each sound in Group 1 here. Please note each song is played twice.
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GYMNASTICS
We really enjoyed our first week of gymnastics!
FINE MOTOR SKILLS
To get ready for learning to write we have been doing lots of activities to strengthen our fingers. It has been lots of fun!
ART
We have lots of budding artists in Junior Infants! This month we painted/printed our names, we painted bowls for the three bears from Goldilocks and filled them with porridge, we have drawn our self portraits (using mirrors to make sure we drew our features the correct way and used the correct colours for our eyes, hair, etc.) and we even created cave paintings after listening to the story Cave Baby by Julia Donaldson.
P.E.
In P.E. we have been working on our balancing, throwing and catching skills.
lego six bricks
In our class we are using a programme called Lego Six Bricks. Everybody in the class has a set of six Lego bricks and throughout the year we will be using Lego Six Bricks to develop our perceptual, numeracy, literacy, physical and social-emotional skills. Below you will find some photos of one of the Six Bricks activities we did in class this month. We divided into pairs and put a schoolbag between each pair to act as a barrier. One partner built a tower using their Lego and described to their partner how they were building the tower, e.g. red on the bottom, yellow on top, then green, etc. The other person in the pair tried to build the same tower by listening to their partner and following their directions! Once finished each pair compared their towers to see if they had built identical towers. We worked on so many skills while doing this activity (e.g. colour awareness, describing, listening, following instructions, sequencing, etc.) and best of all we had so much fun while doing it!
IRISH
This month in Irish our theme has been 'Ar Scoil' (At School). We have enjoyed playing Irish games and chatting with our partners in Irish too. Below you will find some of the new words we have been learning and also a sheet showing the pronunciation of the words.
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maths
In Maths we have been learning to sort materials by colour, size and object.
HISTORY
As part of our work in History we created a time capsule. We each had an envelope and in it we put a photo of our first day at school, a piece of string measuring our height and a drawing of our favourite things (colour, food and toy). We then put our envelopes into a box, sealed the box and put it up high out of reach! We will open it again in June to see how we have grown and changed during our year in Junior Infants.
Friends 😊
We are all great friends in Junior Infants and we have lots of fun playing together 😊
go noodle
We exercise regularly throughout the day using Go Noodle. Here are some of our favourite songs to exercise to. Why not try them at home too!
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Days of the Week
We have been learning the days of the week. We enjoy singing this song to help us to remember them in order.
NURSERY RHYMES
This month we have been learning Humpty Dumpty, Incy Wincy Spider, Jack and Jill and Hey Diddle Diddle.
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