The Farm

Junior Infants have been busy learning all about the farm. 

We learnt about the different animals that live on a farm and made fabric and fibre animal crafts for display. 

We worked in our groups to make animal reports about some farm animals and then tell the class what we had learnt.

 We wrote about the different animals in our special farm writing books. 

We read some stories about the farm, like Farmer Duck and The Pig in the Pond. 

We also learnt some songs like 'Old MacDonald Had a Farm'. 

Junior Infants know lots about the farm now! 

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!

 

Infant Art Displays

Junior and Senior Infants have been very busy this year working on all their projects.  Here are some displays showing off all their hard work.

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:

We went on a Circle Hunt

We have been learning all about shapes in Junior Infants.  We have learned all about the circle, the square and our new shape is the triangle.
We gave each shape a special character.  We learned poems about the shape characters to help us to recognise the attributes of the different shapes, and to draw the shapes.

 

We drew circles, squares and triangles, coloured them in and cut them out.  We are getting better using our scissors.  We have used different tools to practice making shapes. We have used straws, pipe cleaners, lolly pop sticks and paper strips.We also use our big whiteboard to practice drawing shapes and we have been using playdoh to make shapes.

 

We made pictures using circles, squares and triangles.  We made shape monsters, shape men, spooky ghosts and witches using all our shapes. 

We also went out around the school on a circle hunt.  We were surprised at how many circles we found around the school.  There are circles everywhere.  Have a look around your house to see what shapes you can see.

Autumn in the Infant Classroom

Infants have been learning all about Autumn.

Autumn Weather
We have been watching the weather every day and we have recorded how the weather has changed on our class chart.  During September and October it has gotten colder and there are more cloudy days and less sunny days.

Autumn Trees
We have also gone out on nature walks around the school to look for signs of Autumn.  We have lots of trees in the school.  We saw that the leaves on the trees have been changing from green to brown, yellow, orange and red.  We collected some of these leaves for our class nature table.  We sorted these leaves into different colours.
We looked at three special trees.
We used clues to find out what trees we were looking at.  We looked at the leaves on the tree and the seeds from the tree.

• The sycamore tree with it's star shaped leaves and it's helicopter seeds.
• The horse chestnut tree with it's fingered leaves and the chestnut and conker seeds.
• The oak tree with it's pretty, frilly leaves and it's acorn seeds.
• We also found lots of blackberries growing in the hedges around the school.  These will be great for feeding the birds.

Everyone should go to visit their local park and look for signs of the trees changing in Autumn.  Particularly look for our three special trees.

Here are some pictures from our nature walk.

Learning About the Hedgehog

We have learned about the animals we see in Autumn, particularly the hedgehog. 

We learned that the hedgehog has brown spines on his back, a brown furry face and a brown furry tummy.
It likes to eat slugs, snails, worms, fruit and insects.

It lives in hedges and makes a nest in dry leaves and grass.

The hedgehog curls up in a spikey ball to protect itself when it is scared.  It is a good swimmer and a good climber.

We watched videos and looked at pictures to help us learn.

We made a big hedgehog using our handprints.

We used brown clay and cocktail sticks to make little hedgehogs and then we made our hedgehog a nest using brown and orange, autumn leaves.

Infant Art and Writing Displays

We have been very busy in Junior and Senior Infants this year. Here are some of our art displays from the year.