Maths in Junior Infants

Since starting school in September, Junior Infants have been working very hard in Maths!

We do lots of fun activities, sometimes we don't even know we're learning we're having so much fun!

In Maths this term we have been learning about:

-sorting

-matching

-shapes

-numbers 1,2, 3

-number rhymes

-patterns

That's a lot of work for our first few months in school!

To show our mums and dads, grannies, granddads and everyone else all our hard work we've made a video to show some of the activities we do during Maths every day.

Junior Infants are busy learning about all the animals in the zoo.





We're reading a book called 'Dear Zoo'.
We really like this story and have been thinking about the kind of pets we would like the zoo to send us.







Did you know that Dublin Zoo has webcams? We've been going on to their website to look at the different animals. We really want to see the elephants but so far they've stayed hidden from us.





Yesterday we made binoculars and today we used them when we went on our safari. We all got on the make believe bus and we drove around searching for animals. We found loads - giraffes, zebras, lions, elephants, wildebeests!

Let's get the Yellow Flag for Ravenswell!

We are delighted to announce that Ravenswell is one of 15 schools in Ireland taking part in the Yellow Flag Programme 2014-2015.

 

What is the Yellow Flag Programme?

The Yellow Flag is a year long programme that celebrates diversity and different cultures.

Over the year we will be working through the 8 Steps of the programme to further develop our welcoming and diverse school. 

 

The 8 Steps of the programme are:

 

 

1. Intercultural and Anti-Racism Training for Staff and Management
   2. Going beyond the School’s Walls: Engaging with the Community
   3. Establishing a Diversity Committee
   4. Conducting an Intercultural Review
   5. Formulating an Action Plan for a Diverse School
   6. Monitoring and Evaluation and Information Dissemination-
   7. Curriculum work-
   8. Production of a Diversity Code and Anti Racist Policy for the school

We are currently on Step 4-The Intercultural Review. Children from 2nd-6th as well as every parent in the school received a questionnaire- thank you for completing these! :)

Keep an eye on the class blogs as well as the Yellow Flag Noticeboard (outside Room 5) for the results of the questionnaires. These will help us in our next step- creating an action plan for a diverse school.

It is sure to be an exciting year as we work towards achieving our Yellow Flag- there will fun events and opportunities for parents to get involved as we celebrate our multicultural school.

 

 

 

Fun Club Monster Art

We have been making scary monsters in Fun Club on Tuesday afternoons.

Danse Macabre

We just listened to a creepy piece of music. It is called Danse Macabre. We drew creepy pictures as we listened to it!

Autumn Nature Walk in Junior Infants

We went on an Autumn Nature Walk on Friday. We were looking for signs of autumn around the school grounds and we found loads! We saw leaves of all different colours (red, yellow, brown...), blackberries  (although some weren't ripe and were still red) and conkers that had fallen on the ground from a big horse chestnut tree. Some of the conkers were still in their prickly shells. We also walked through the fallen leaves on the ground and listened carefully to the crunchy sound they made when we stood on them.

 

 

 

 

 

The Bakery

Our theme in Junior Infants for the start of October is the Bakery. Our home corner has been turned into a bakery and we've been busy buying and selling baked goods.

 

We've also been using salt dough to make pretend cakes, cupcakes and other baked goods. We really enjoy mixing all the ingredients together in the bowl and getting our hands all sticky and dirty when we play with the dough.

 

We had a non-uniform day on Friday to raise money for Open Door. Look at us in our own clothes!

GAA Players of the Week

Week 2 and another great session of GAA. Ms Stapleton is very proud of her Players of the Week this week. Keep up the great work!

GAA Players of the Week

Congratulations to the Ms Stapleton's GAA Players of the Week in our first week of GAA. Well done!

Learning our sounds in Junior Infants

We've started to learn our sounds in Junior Infants, using the Jolly Phonics programme! We've already done two sounds - 's' and 'a' - and we'll be learning loads more over the coming weeks.

We've been using songs to help us learn our sounds. Look in the links section on the right of the page for a link to the Jolly Phonics songs.

Happy Faces in Junior Infants

Look at all the happy faces in our new Junior Infant classes!

We got off to a great start on our first day of school.

It was a busy day, with lots of stories, games and new toys to play with.

Some people even came to take photos of us for the Bray People!

We're all so excited to be in Junior Infants and ready for lots of fun and learning with our new friends.

 

We went on our school tour to Glenroe Farm!

A Special Visitor!

On Thursday we welcomed a special visitor to the school - Ms McHale's beautiful baby girl, Amelie! All the teachers were very excited to meet Amelie and it was great to see Ms McHale again, too. Amelie is now 3 and a half weeks old and is a happy and content little baby. We can't wait to meet her again. Congratulations Ms McHale! 

A visit from Dogs Trust

We had a lovely visit to school from the gorgeous boxer Jake and his owner Fiona. They taught us all about dogs and now we are dog experts. 'Dogs Trust us'. What a brilliant day we had!

Easter in Junior Infants

We have been working so hard in Junior Infants so to celebrate Easter we did lots of lovely things.

First, we  made special Easter baskets.

Then we went to the garden to have an Easter Egg hunt! Someone had hidden lots of eggs and Easter treats all around the school garden. We had to search in the flowerbeds and under pots to find them!

 

We also did some baking! We made chocolate nests for our fluffy yellow chicks to sit in.

 

We had so much fun!

The Farm

The three Junior Infants were busy learning all about the farm.

We read stories about the farm such as Farmer Duck and The Pig in the Pond.

We learnt about the different animals that live on a farm, like pigs, cows, chickens and sheep!

We even learnt that these animals give us food we eat, like sausages, eggs, and milk!

We had exciting play time with all different farm activities: we painted farm animals, we used animals and sensory boxes to make the farm, we used márla to make farm animals and vegetables and our role play areas turned in to 'Farm Shops!'.

 

We also did lots of writing about the farm. Have a look at our lovely 'farm  books' hanging up outside our classrooms.

Another busy month in Junior Infants!

 

World Book Day in Junior Infants

A late post to celebrate World Book Day!

 

We had a fantastic week in Junior Infants celebrating books and our favourite characters. We read lots of new stories such as Dr. Seuss 'The Cat in the Hat'!

The 5th and 6th class girls came down to read us lovely stories. It was very exciting listening to the big girls reading.

On Friday something strange happened in Ravenswell. There were no children in school, but we had lots of book characters! We had princesses, Pippi Longstocking, Alice in Wonderland, Little Red Riding Hood and Pinocchio!

Have a look at the video to see all the fun things we got up to! 

 

Exciting news in Junior Infants!

The three Junior Infant classes got a special delivery in the post yesterday.

 

 

 

We had a package with three brown boxes inside that said 'Urgent! Open Immediately!'.

 

Inside the boxes we found........ CATERPILLARS!

 

We're going to keep the caterpillars and watch as they make their cocoons and then hatch into beautiful butterflies!

 

 

 

 

Keep an eye on the blog to see how they're growing and come in and see them in our classrooms!

 

 

Junior Infants are Learning all about Chicks

The three junior infant classes are learning all about the farm and the animals that live on it.  This week we are looking at the chick.  We are learning to describe the chick, what it looks like and what it does.
Here is a video that teaches us about hens on the farm

We love dressing up!!!

To celebrate World Book Day, the senior infants walked up to the book shop and purchased a book each with their vouchers. They really enjoyed themselves and were delighted with their new books :) A big thank you to all the parents that volunteered to help with the supervision on the walk.

Today everyone dressed up as characters from their favourite books and the costumes were all fantastic! Well done to all the children who took part :)