Junior Infant Newsletter 7th September 2015

A big welcome to all of the new Junior Infants boys and girls (and their parents!).

The children are settling in well to school and it is great to see lots of lovely smiley faces coming in to school every morning.

We have been very busy in school already:

• *       In Maths we have been learning about the colour red and how to sort materials by colour. We are also learning number rhymes ‘5 Little Monkeys’ and ‘One Little Finger’. We are also beginning to count up to 5.
• *       We have been doing lots of fine motor activities to get us ready for writing.
• *       In English We are learning lots of nursery rhymes like ‘Incy Wincy Spider’, ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’, and ‘Humpty Dumpty’. We are also learning how to write our names.
• *       We are doing lots of colouring and trying our best to stay inside the lines and use lots of different colours

For the next week we will be learning all about our bodies and how we grow and change.

Vocabulary: The body: arm     hand     head    eyes    ears   nose    mouth   chin   hair    neck    cheeks    shoulders  knees   elbows     toes     feet     legs     back       stomach Growing: Baby  toddler    child    teenager     adult      elderly      growing    big    small

How you can support your child’s learning: *       Talk to your child about things they can do now that they could not do when they were a baby ( riding a bike, writing their name, feeding themselves, dressing themselves) *       Encourage your child to be more independent by getting them to do things for themselves (putting on and taking off their coat, dressing themselves, opening and closing their lunchbox, tidying up their toys, feeding themselves) *       Show them pictures of them as  a baby and discuss all the changes that have happened *       Go to the library and find books about the body and growing up.

Nursery rhymes to practise at home:

Incy Wincy Spider	Humpty Dumpty
Baa Baa Black Sheep	Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes
If you’re happy and you know it	2 Little Dicky Birds
5 Little monkeys	1,2,3,4,5 Once I caught a fish alive
One Little Finger	Hokey Pokey

These rhymes can all be found on Youtube or on our class blog  on the right hand side. 

Notices:

*       Junior Infant Parent Introduction Meeting is on Wednesday 9^th September at 11am in the school hall

*       From Thursday 10^th September Junior Infants will finish at 1.40pm every day. Please ensure you are there on time/ someone is therein your place to collect your child as they can become upset if they don’t see someone

We look forward to working with you all this year. Please don’t hesitate to come to us if you have any concerns.

Many thanks,

Fiona Murray and Sarah Stapleton

Houses and Homes in Junior Infants

It has been another busy month in Junior Infants!

We were delighted to come back to school after the Christmas holidays and we got straight back to work!

In January we have been learning all about houses and homes.

We read stories like 'A Squash and a Squeeze' and 'The Three Little Pigs'.

 

We are getting very good at sequencing, and we were able to sequence the story of 'The Three Little Pigs'.

 

 

In Art we painted beautiful pictures of our houses and we decorated the houses of the three pigs. In Music we learned new songs like 'Gotta Build a House'.

 

Our play time was all about houses and homes too! In Ms Murray's class our role play area was transformed from the jungle  in to an Estate Agent's office. Teacher went to a real estate agent's office in Bray and got lots of magazines and pictures of houses for us. We took turns pretending to be the customer looking to buy a house, and being the estate agent helping the customers.

 

We did a lot of construction play this month. We had a sand box that we pretended was a construction site with tools and trucks. We had to wear hard hats! We used Lego, Stikle Brick, blocks and Mobilo to plan and build our houses.

 

A big thank you to everyone for a FANTASTIC 'Art at Home Project' this month! The theme was 'Box Town' and look at the amazing houses and buildings that the children made at home. Well done everyone!

 

Thank you also to the parents for attending our Parent Workshops this month, which were based on 'Play'. We wanted to show the parents all the work we do in Junior Infants, even if the children think they've just been 'playing all day'!

 

  Have a look at our video to see what we have been up to this month!

 

Autumn in Junior Infants

In October we learnt all about Autumn.

We went on an Autumn scavenger hunt to see if we could find some signs of Autumn.

We saw conkers on the ground, helicopter seeds, acorns, leaves on the ground and we even saw a squirrel!

We collected signs of Autumn and put them on our Autumn table in our classroom.

We learnt Autumn songs like 'Falling Leaves' and read Autumn stories like 'Leafy the Leaf that wouldn't leave'.

We did lots of play activities based on Autumn. Have a look at our video to see what we did.



Play time in Ms Murray's Junior Infants

The Doctor's Surgery

Playtime is so important in our class and it is our favourite time of the day!

During the year we will be having lots of exciting role play themes, and pretending to be lots of different people. Keep an eye on the blog to see what we have been doing during our play.

When we were learning about different parts of our bodies such as our arms and legs

we had a doctor's surgery set up in our classroom. We learnt rhymes such as 'Miss Polly had a Dolly', watched videos on Youtube about trips to the doctor, and read books such as 'Next Please'.

When we were playing in the doctor's surgery we had to take turns being the doctor and being the patients.

Check out our video to see us hard at work!

 

Going on a Bear Hunt

Ms McHale's class learned all about Journeys in March. 

We had a post office in our class room and we went on lots of journeys around the school to deliver all out mail.  When we came back we drew maps to show the journey we took when delivering our mail.

We also read books about journeys.  Our favourite book was "We're Going on a Bear Hunt".  We acted out the story and did lots of art work for our bear hunt display.  We also drew our own bear hunt maps to show how well we remembered the book.

When we were finished the story we went on our own Bear Hunt in the school garden.  Ms McHale hid lots of coloured bears around the garden.  Each team had a map with pictures of objects in the garden on it.  We had to find the object in the garden and then colour in the bears on our map.  It was a great day.

Phonics Games to Play at Home

Choose some of these phonics games to play at home:

• PBS Kids - Alphabet Games
• CVC Machine
• Initial Sound Matching Castle
• Phoneme Pop
• Sesame Street - Jumping Rhymes
• Starfall - Learn to read (games and stories)
• Jim's Whirlyword Machine

The Postman Visits Ms Collins

The Post Office - Ms McHale's Class

Ms McHale's class are learning all about writing and sending letters and the post office. 

We wrote a letter to 1st class.  We had to put the letter into an envelope and then we wrote the name and address on the envelope.  We also needed to put a stamp on the letter or the post man would not deliver it.
When the envelope was ready, we posted our letter in the post box in our class post office.  One of the children was the class post man. He wore his post man hat and a bright coat and he had a post mans bag.  He had to take the letter out of the post box and put it in his post man's bag.  Then we were ready to go.

We all went off to find the classroom.  It was a long way.   We had to go around corners and up the stairs, but we found it.  When we arrived we knocked on the door and we delivered our letter to Ms Barry's class.

When we came back to the class we drew a map showing how we got up to Ms Barry's class to deliver our letter.

The next day was very exciting.  Ms Barry's class sent a letter back to us. They had put their letter in an envelope and they wrote our class address on the envelope.

We look forward to sending more letters and parcels around the school this month.
This is the song we are learning all about addresses:


Here are some videos about the post office:

• Off to the Post Office - The Delivery Office
• Off to the Post Office - The Deliveries
• Post Man Pat in a Muddle

Junior Infants are learning to read and write

Junior Infants have been very busy over the past two months learning their first sounds and their first sight words.








So far we have learned these sounds:

We have done lots of activities to help us practice our sounds.

• We use our sound books to say our sounds
• We sing the Jolly Phonics songs.
• We have a special action for each sound.
• We practice building words using our sound cards.
• We play games with our sounds and look for pictures and words that start with our sounds.  We can make sets of pictures that start with the same sound.
• We look for our sounds all around the classroom.  In our books, in the library, on posters, on the whiteboard and when the teacher is writing.
• We practice writing our sounds using lots of different tools.  Here are some pictures of us making our sounds using toy cars.

We have also been learning some new sight words.  We practice our new words at home and in school every day so we know them really well.

• We have used our words to make sentences. Sometimes we stick pictures into our sentences to help us with the new words.
• We bring our word bags home every night and we play games with the words.  We practice reading the words and making sentences at home.
• In school we play word bag games with our friends and our teacher.
• We play games on the computer and practice making sentences with our new words.
• We look around the classroom for some of our new words.  We look on the posters, in our books and on the whiteboard.

Here are some of the activities we have done with our words this year:

Jolly Phonics

Practice Jolly Phonics at home with your child using these Jolly Songs and the actions that go with them.  Your child should be able to show you the actions for the sounds.  Keep checking your sound book for the sounds that have been learned in class and any new sounds that have been covered, and then sing the songs at home while you practice the songs.



If you are interested in learning more about using Jolly Phonics with your child, or purchasing extra materials for use at home, you can visit the Jolly Learning Website.

Also, it is a good idea to look through the Parent Teacher Guide to Jolly Phonics which you can download by clicking here: