Welcome back to Seniors! We have had a wonderful two months getting settled back. We have a pom-pom jar in our classroom and we get rewards when the jar is half-full and fully-full! Our full-jar rewards have been to make and decorate buns and to bring a teddy in from home to play with. We also have our own stamp cards and we earn stamps every day. We get a prize when we get up to ten!  

We love to read stories and are reading more and more independently. We have started our first class reader of the year, ‘Ella Goes to the Airport’, and love talking about our characters and the adventures they get up to. We love writing in our copies and our books. Our writing has become much more mature, and we enjoy taking care when we are writing. We love having DEAR time where we get books from the library. We sit on the carpet and get comfortable with a book. We love following the pictures and telling the story ourselves.  

We love numeracy and learning with numbers. We do lots of hands-on activities both independently and collaboratively. We play with the resources when we have our work done! We really enjoyed ‘Math’s Week’. We did lots of different and creative Math’s activities during the week. We were each awarded with a certificate for taking part in Math’s Week. We have been playing lots of Maths games – Buzz, Higher and Lower, Blast off – which feel like too much fun to be learning! We love using concrete materials in our Maths lessons and we count every day.  

We learned about Autumn and went on a nature walk around the school. We collected fallen leaves and used them to make an Autumn wreath.

We love having Andrea join us from Music Generation. We have learned lots of songs together and she even brought a huge, big drum once and let us all have a turn playing it.

The build up to Halloween has been great fun! As part of a science experiment using magnets, we made paper ghosts which could hover in the air. We have been reading “Spookley, the Square Pumpkin” and “Room on the Broom”. We have been learning about the spider and we created beautiful prints of Halloween spiders. They were spooky!

We are all enjoying learning new things and building positive relationships and friendships. We are extending our literacy skills and enjoying lots of conversation where we valued everyone’s opinion and what they have to say. We are continuing to support each other and respect each other’s differences and uniqueness.  

Senior Infants is a great place to grow and learn and we are happy to enjoy what each day brings. We are looking ahead full of positivity to what the the next half term holds.

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What a busy term we have had here in the Senior Infant classroom!

Our best day ever was our school tour day! We went to Arena 5, to Jump Lanes and the soft play area. It was brilliant fun! It was exciting getting on a big bus and travelling with all our friends. On the way home we stopped and played at Mungret playground.

Music Generation helped us create our own song. They recorded it and played it back for us. They turned fruit and vegetables into a musical instrument and played them like a keyboard! That was especially exciting!

We completed another collective marathon! We had a marathon relay on Monday the 16^thof June. The Parents’ Council provided a fruit stand, which was lovely and refreshing.

We did a lot of work this term too! In maths, Seniors learnt all about capacity. We compared all our drinks containers and put them in order. It was a bit tricky, because some bottles were tall and some were wide. We started reading the time using o’ clock.

We completed our Stay Safe programme in SPHE. We visited ‘An Trá’ in our Irish lessons and enjoyed playing le buicéad agus spád! We made cáca breithlá and played bíongó.

We learned about Irish wildflowers and conducted many hunts in search of different varieties. We learned about different clouds and how the water cycle works. We observed the weather everyday.

Our reading and writing has improved wonderfully. We read many, many stories – some of our favourites were ‘Rainbow Fish’ and ‘The Giraffe, the Pelly and Me’.

We designed and created our own birthday cake. We made a 3D octopus using cheerios for the suckers on their tentacles. We made a summer scene with flying butterflies. We also created an outfit for George the giant from ‘The Smartest Giant in Town’. We used lots of different fabric and fibre to create different textures from his old gown and sandals to his ‘smart’ clothes and shoes.

It has been a great learning term. We are ready for our summer holidays!

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Welcome back to Seniors! We have had a wonderful two months getting settled back. We are delighted to have two teachers this year – we think we are getting twice as many rewards!

We have started our first reader of the year, ‘Ella Goes to the Airport’, and love talking about our characters and the adventures they get up to. We love writing in our copies and our books. Our writing has become much more mature, and we enjoy taking care when we are writing.

We are lucky enough to have a couch in our classroom! We use it when we have carpet time. The teacher chooses different pods or children to use the couch. We also use it when we have free play. It becomes part of the ‘house’.

We love having DEAR time where we get books from the library. We share our bean bags and cushions and get comfortable with a book. We love following the pictures and telling the story ourselves.

We love ‘Show and Tell’ on a Friday. We are allowed to bring something special from home, that we can show to our friends. The teachers like to challenge us to bring something other than a toy!

We really enjoyed ‘Math’s Week’. We did lots of different and creative Math’s activities during the week. We were each awarded with a certificate for taking part in Math’s Week. We have been playing lots of Maths games – Buzz, Higher and Lower, Blast off – which feel like too much fun to be learning! We love using concrete materials in our Maths lessons and we count every day. Our favourite, most recently, was the ‘Story of 6’ told through the Magic Muddy Puddle.

We learned about Autumn and went on a nature walk around the school. We collected fallen leaves and used them to make an Autumn wreath.

We love having Chloe join us from Music Generation. We have learned lots of songs together and she even brought a huge, big drum once and let us all have a turn playing it.

The build up to Halloween has been great fun! As part of a science experiment using magnets, we made paper ghosts which could hover in the air. We have been reading “Spookley, the Square Pumpkin” and “Room on the Broom”. We have been learning about the spider and we created beautiful prints of Halloween spiders. They were spooky!

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We have learned all about the dentist and our teeth. It was great timing as some children had a visit with their dentist. We learned songs from ‘The Singing Dentist’, and loved watching him – he was very popular with everyone!

We have been participating in the Food Dudes initiative. We were so lucky to get to taste a portion of fruit and a portion of vegetables daily for 16 days. We got stickers and rewards each time we tasted something. Now we are going to try our best to continue bringing some fruit and vegetables to school as part of our lunches because we want to be fit, strong and healthy just like the Food Dudes!

We celebrated Science Week. We did lots of experiments. We enjoyed behaving like scientists. We made predictions, observed the outcome and recorded our results. We examined the effects of certain liquids on our teeth and now we have more of awareness of tooth decay and the importance of brushing our teeth. We completed an experiment called Walking Rainbow Water and a Rainbow Milk experiment. They were great fun!

We have enjoyed a seasonal History lesson on toys. We examined toys from the past and even watched an old episode of ‘The Late Late Toy Show’, when Gay Byrne was the presenter. It was so funny to see the types of toys that were popular when our parents were small!  

In Literacy we are all doing wonderful reading everyday. We are all getting more confident and fluent with our reading. We also did some persuasive writing as part of our literacy lessons. We had to persuade Eddie the Elf to come to live in one of our houses.We all did such a good job with our writing that poor Eddie couldn’t pick! He ended up having to pull a name out of a hat. We got to display our writing in our classroom for Eddie to see and we are so proud of it.

In Maths Senior Infants enjoyed learning the Story of 7 through the story, The Naughty Bee. We loved acting out the story on the carpet and pretending to be the bee! We have also been learning all about 2D shapes using lots of hands on materials and activities in groups and pairs. First Class have been using lots of concrete materials too to help with addition up to 20 and money problems. We found it easier to solve the problems when we were using real money!

Sa Ghaeilge, we learned a lot of vocabulary for An Nollag! We played Biongó, made cartaí Nollaig and read stories. Bhí a lán spraoi againn!!

During Anti-Bullying week we discussed how we should all be kind to one another and what to do if we feel we are being bullied. We did activities such as “Cup of Kindness” and “A Helping Hand”. We really enjoyed listening to the story Simon Sock and on the last day of Anti-Bulling week we got to wear odd socks!

We celebrated Christmas Jumper Day in honour of the Children’s Health Foundation. The school raised€600 in total. It was a lovely way to raise money and remember those less fortunate than ourselves.

Our class was lucky enough to be visited by Santa’s Scout elves. Mrs. Gleeson and Mrs. Conway were relieved that they were good elves and behaved themselves for the most part!

We went to the LimeTree Theatre in Limerick to see the panto, Aladdin. We had a great time! Some of the characters were so funny and we really enjoyed dancing and singing along to the songs. We were thrilled to get to bring Treat Bags with us full of lots of goodies. We want to say a big thank you to the Parents’ Association forgiving us these!  

We have had such a wonderful time preparing and performing our Christmas Shows! We loved our singing lessons and had such fun adding dances to each song. It was a great experience being on stage and we were delighted to have all our families in the audience. We are so lucky to have such a wonderful facility as the community hall.

Nollaig Shona daoibh go léir!