Happy Holidays from Junior and Senior Infants! We are so excited to be finishing our first and second years in Kilcornan National School! We have had a very busy, but very fun last term in school.

We took part in ‘Bike to School Week’ in May and we cycled and scooted and walked to school. We know all about how important it is for the environment when we use cars less.  We have learned so much about the environment this term and how to take care of it. We learned about the importance of pollinators and encouraging bees on the school grounds. We learned about buying fresh, local and seasonal produce. We did projects on bees and made seasonal calendars. We also looked after the fruits and vegetables planted by the green schools committee in our classroom. We are looking forward to continuing this work next year.

After all our hard work helping the green schools committee in the school, we were so excited to hear that we had received our 10th green flag!! We had the best day at the flag raising ceremony singing ‘What a Beautiful World’ that we had learned and watching Declan Hannon raise the flag. Declan was very kind and signed autographs for us. We then got another surprise when an ice cream van appeared! Thanks to the Parents’ Council for this. When we thought the day couldn’t get any better, Peter Nash arrived with the Liam McCarthy cup and we all got our pictures with it. What an amazing day!

We went on our first school tour this month also. We went to Arena 5 and enjoyed Jump Lanes and soft play there. We had a yummy feast of pizza, chicken nuggets and chips. Even though it was raining, the rain stopped just in time for Mungret playground on our way home. We had such a great day!

Thank you so much to Ms. Mullane and her Sixth Class for organising a sports day for us. We played games with a parachute, had 3 legged races, potato and spoon races, funny dress up races and hula hoop games and activities.

Míle buíochas to Catherine who helps us in our class everyday! We are very lucky to have you helping us. We want to end by extending an extra special thank you and slán to our Principal, Mrs. Wixted on her retirement. Mrs. Wixted has been in our class all year helping us. We will miss her so much! Thank you Mrs. Wixted for all your help and kindness. Happy Retirement and we look forward to you coming back to visit us soon!

Wishing you all a safe and happy summer. Slán from Junior and Senior Infants!

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Pupils were so delighted to be able to go on what, for many of them, was their first school tour! Junior Infants, Senior Infants and First Class went to Arena 5 where they enjoyed soft play and jump lanes. They had amazing fun sliding, building, climbing and practicing their acrobatics! They then had delicious chips, sausages, chicken nuggets and pizzas for lunch. On the way home, they visited Mungret playground for even more fun. A big thank you to Catherine, Marian, Ms. Quinn and Mrs. Wixted who accompanied Ms. Balfry and Mrs. Gleeson on the tour. See the photos gallery for more pictures of the day!

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We have had a busy second term in school! Junior and Senior Infants have been working so hard,they deserve a rest! Juniors started handwriting and have been practising their posture, pencil grip and letter formations. Both classes are engaging with C.A.P.E.R each night and Juniors are also practising their blending and reading. Both classes have moved onto their last class readers and are engaging in lots of free writing. Juniors are working their way through their number stories and are up to the story of 4 while Seniors have completed their number stories up to 10! Ms. Balfry is very proud of everyone!

We have been so lucky to have many exciting activities in school this term. We loved our first Pancake Day and visiting the Sixth Class café for pancakes and treats. We also loved being part of our Green Schools harvest day and getting to see all the local produce. We even brought some in ourselves! We have really enjoyed learning all about taking care of the environment this term. We learned about food miles and food waste and even made our own seasonal calendars! We know it is important to buy locally produced food and food that is in season. We have been growing fruits and vegetables at the back of our classroom and watering them each day until they are ready to be moved outside. We also loved learning about pollinators and how we should be trying to save the bees. We have been collecting SuperValu’s ‘save the Bees’ tokens. We created our own projects on the bees also.

We were excited to see the Book Fair coming to our school and bought lots of books to practice our reading at home. We also had great fun dressing up as our favourite characters for World Book Day.

We did lots of art this term. We made cherry blossom paintings for spring as well as rainy day umbrella outline paintings and giraffes. The giraffes linked in with our oral language work on ‘The Zoo’. As part of this theme, we also watched the live web cams from Dublin and San Diego zoos! It was so interesting!  

We all went on a spring walk around the school grounds, identifying signs of spring, such as buds, cherry blossom, nests etc…We also loved being part of our first Team Limerick Clean Up on the school grounds. We care about keeping our school clean!

We were also excited to practice our smiles for the school photographer Dermot when he came to visit and take our pictures!

It has been really lovely to have some more freedom in our pods this term. We can help each other more and have story time and circle time together. Senior Infants have also been able to join Mrs. Gleeson’s class for Aistear, which they are thoroughly enjoying!

On the last day of school, we enjoyed a scavenger hunt around the school yard. We were also shocked when we saw the Easter Bunny hop past our classroom windows. Ms. Balfry didn’t believe us, until he came into our classroom!! He gave us all Easter eggs! We were so surprised with this special treat!

We are looking forward to our Easter holidays and eating lots of eggs! Check back with us for more updates. Cáisc shona daoibh from Junior and Senior Infants!

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Happy Christmas from Junior and Senior Infants!

We have had a super term at school. We have all been working so hard and deserve a lovely Christmas break. Juniors and Seniors have been learning lots of new sight words and practising our reading. We are learning to read fluently. We are practising our pre writing and writing skills and learning to sit up straight and hold the pencil correctly when we are writing. We all learned about 2D shapes in Maths and Seniors revised 3D shapes. We enjoyed our art lessons and made winter bobble hats using wool and Christmas baubles forthe tree. We also learned about penguins and made our own using card. We are enjoying our movement breaks everyday using Go Noodle and ‘Freeze’ is still our favourite song!

Pupils thoroughly enjoyed taking part in Science week in November. We created tin foil boats and tried to make them float based on a science video we watched. We made pretty rainbow patterns using skittles, plates and warm water. We watched ‘walking water’ from one glass to another using water, food colouring and kitchen paper. Finally, we created explosions by mixing acids and bases which we all loved watching!

Ms. Balfry was so proud of us all during Anti bullying week. We learned about what good friends do and how they act towards each other. Ms. Balfry gave us kindness awards whenever she saw us using our kind words, hands and feet towards each other. We painted pictures based on kindness slogans and listened to stories based on kindness.  

We had such fun on our first Pyjama day in school and even wore our slippers and dressing gowns! Christmas jumper day was also great fun and we loved wearing our Christmas clothes for such a good cause.

We had a special visitor this month in the form of Santa’s elf Jingles!  We looked forward to coming into school every day to see what mischief he had been up to! We couldn’t believe our eyes though when we went over to visit the community centre and who should appear only Santa!! He told us that Jingles had been telling him all about our classroom and that everyone was on the nice list. We sang Christmas songs with him. What a shock we got when we arrived back to our classroom to find that Jingles had put lots of presents under the tree from Santa!! We got chocolate, cookies and even some reindeer food for Christmas Eve.  Thank you Santa!

We also had two special treats this month. We took part in the Lime Tree Theatre’s live stream of ‘How to Catch a Star’, a beautiful story of a boy who didn’t give up on his dream. Thanks to Mrs. Gleeson for organising this. We also joined a live storytelling from Limerick City and County Library where storyteller Róisin Meaney told us two beautiful stories about a sad donkey and an angry snowman. We drew pictures of the stories afterwards and really enjoyed the experience!

A big thank you to Catherine and Mrs. Wixted who help us in school each day. We want to wish everyone a safe and happy Christmas and look forward to seeing all our friends again in the new year!

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