Junior Infant Newsletter 21st September 2015

Junior Infant Newsletter 21^st September 2015

Hello again from Junior Infants.

We have had a busy fortnight in Junior Infants.

We have started staying in for the full day until 1.40pm. We are a bit tired but we are getting lots more work done!

This is what we have been doing for the past two weeks in school:

• *       Maths: We have been learning about the colour blue, matching, sorting and number rhymes
• *       English: We have started Jolly Phonics and have been learning about the sounds ‘s’ and ‘a’. We are also writing our names, tracing, colouring, and learning new rhymes
• *       Oral Language: We have started our Oral Language Chatty Groups. We are in special small groups working with teachers in stations. This fortnight we were talking about ourselves, our families and school.
• *       Fine Motor Skills: Every morning we do our fine motor activities to help us when we start to write. We are also doing lots of tracing and cutting.
• *       S.E.S.E. (History, Geography, Science):  We have been talking growing and changing, our bodies, and things we can do now that we’re big.

Nursery rhymes to practise at home:

Where is Thumbkin?	Jack and Jill
Miss Polly	Little Miss Muffet
Hickory Dickory Dock	Rólaí Pólaí

For the next two weeks in school we will be learning about our families and school.

Vocabulary: Mum (mother/ mammy)  Dad (father/ daddy)   brother   sister      uncle   aunt        grandparents       grandmother (granny, nanny, nan, gran)             grandfather (grandad, grandpa)       cousin older            younger                      family

How you can support your child’s learning: Literacy: *       Find things around the house/ in books that start with our ‘s’ or ‘a’ sound. *       Look for this sound in the environment Numeracy: *       Can your child count to five? Practice this at home (e.g. chanting, clapping, stamping) *       Find things that are blue and yellow  S.E.S.E. *       Talk to your child (using photos if necessary) about the people in their family. We have been talking to the children about how all families are different so make sure they can name the people in their family (e.g. brothers and sisters) *       Bring in a photo of your family for use in class *       Get started on your Art at Home Family Tree project. Talk to your child about how people are related *       Go to the library and read books about families(e.g. the Large family books) S.P.H.E. (Social, Personal, Health Education) *       Talk to your child about the importance of washing their hands properly and practise this at home.

Reminders:

• *       Don’t forget your yellow History Timelines
• *       P.E. is on Mondays and Wednesdays. Please wear school tracksuit and runners.
• *       Parental Involvement Programme Workshops start this week: Thursday 24^th September Ms Stapleton’s Class and Friday 25^th September Ms Murray’s class
• *       The Carambola Lunch Programme has started- if you have signed up for this your child will receive their lunch in school every day. They do not need anything extra.
• *       Please bring in a photo of your family for use in class. This photo will be stuck in their ‘Family’ booklet

We look forward to seeing everyone at the workshops this week.

Fiona Murray and Sarah Stapleton

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!

Sports Day 2013

What a fantastic day we had on Sports Day this year.  It was a beautiful sunny day and the whole

school went over to the Bray Emmets GAA club .  There was a wonderful timetable of events organised for the Junior classes and the Senior Classes.

We had sack races, water races, a funny hat relay, a fantastic obstacle course and we played bean-bag golf.

Thanks a million to Mary Collins and Ms Byrnes for organising the day, and to all the teachers and parents who helped us with all our activities.  We had a brilliant time.

Here are some of our photos from the day.

The Postman Visits Ms Collins

Picnic in the Garden

Seachtain na Gaeilge Concert

This year, for Seachtain na Gaeilge, we had a school concert in the PE hall.  Everyone spent a few weeks preparing their Irish performance.  There was singing, poetry, dancing and drama.  Some classes had put lots of work into lovely costumes as well.

It was great to see everyone putting on their best show.   Here are some of the photos from our concert:

Windows on the World: A visit from the Kenyan Ambassador

We had a big day in the school on Thursday.  Over the past few weeks, 4th, 5th and 6th class have been working on their Windows of the World project in preparation for St Patrick's Day. This year our school has been given Kenya as our country. 4th, 5th and 6th class have been learning all about the country, the culture, the people, the geography, the animals and the art work.

To help us celebrate Kenyan culture the Kenyan Ambassador to Ireland, Catherine Muigai Mwangi, came to visit our school. We worked really hard to decorate our school in preparation of the visit. We had balloons, bunting, ribbons and flags in the Kenyan colours - red, black and green. All our pupils lined up at the front of the school and they waved their Kenyan flags to welcome the Ambassador.


The Ambassador planted a tree outside the school to commemorate her visit. She then went to visit 4th, 5th and 6th class to talk to them about life in Kenya. The girls had lots of questions for the Ambassador, and the Ambassador brought some gifts from Kenya for the girls. It was an excellent visit.

Over the next few weeks the girls will continue to learn about Kenya and they will prepare their display for their Windows on the World shop front. We can't wait to see it.

Gymnastics in Junior Infants

For the last two months Junior Infants have been doing Gymnastics in PE.


We are learning lots of different ways to travel using our hands and feet, we are learning different types of rolls - pencil roll, ball roll and the forward roll, and we are learning to use some gymnastics equipments like benches and mats.

It has been lots of fun.  Here is a video of us in our PE class.

We love Gaeilge!!

Junior Infants are learning Irish. Last month we learned how to talk about our clothes or our Eadaí.

We know sciorta, geansai, stocai, broga, briste, guna, hata agus cota.

We are also practicing our Irish songs and rhymes every day. Here is out rhyme about teidí's clothes:
Tá teidí agam.
Teidí deas bui.
Ta hata agus cóta air
Le broga is stocaí.

Every month we learn a little bit more.  Look at our lovely Líne Éadaí

Step it Up - Keeping Healthy during Operation Transformation

We are taking part in Operation Transformation in our school. Everyone is trying to be more healthy, to eat better and to do more exercise. Our parents and staff have even set up their own Operation Transformation Groups.

 

To help everyone in the school be fitter and more active the girls from 6th class went to every other class in the school to teach them the Step It Up dance. They came to visit us today and we danced and jumped and clapped. It was a great idea to keep us warm on a cold day.

You can see the official Step It Up video on You Tube by clicking here.

Here is a video of the 6th class girls teaching Junior Infants the Step it Up dance.

Spring Time Hunt

It's Spring Time again and Ms McHale's class went out to explore the school grounds and to hunt for signs of springtime appearing around the school.

The children were given partners and each pair had their own binoculars to help them to find things, and a clipboard with a special Spring time Checklist, so they could record everything they saw on their walk.


We had a great time looking for buds and leaves on the plants and trees.  Hunting for spring flowers like daffodils and crocuses.  And we were very quiet when we were listening to the birds singing their spring time songs. 

Here are some photos we took of our walk and some of the things we found on our walk.

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.

Working Hard in September

There are lots of things we can do while we are learning to write.  We are working on our fine-motor skills, which means we are learning to use our fingers in different ways.

We use lots of different tools to do different things.  Here are some of the activities we are doing this week to prepare us for our writing later on.

 

It's a good idea for children to practice a range of activivities like this at home.  Particularly useful activities include:

• Cutting pictures from magazines
• Drawing and colouring pictures using a variety of tools (markers, crayons, pencils, chalk...etc)
• Painting using big and small brushes
• Playing with playdoh and mala.
• Make jigsaws of different sizes.
• Use kitchen tools to pick up small things, pour liquids, sort items by colour or size...etc.
• Put close pegs on to the washing line, around a box..etc.
• Fit paper clips onto pieces of paper.
 



 

Wow work with mala!!

We have been using our mala over the past few weeks to make different shapes and numbers. Sometimes the mala is very cold and hard to use, so we leave it on the windowsill, and the sunshine makes it soft. 

Today we were making the number 1 and we were making circles with our mala.

Two children did some wonderful work with their mala today.

Daniel made his numbers from 1 to 10 using his mala/





Ciara wrote her name using her mala.

Well done for the Wow Work!!!!

Our First Week in School

Junior Infants have been very busy during their first week in school. Have a look at some of our photos.

Junior Infants Working Really Hard

The Junior Infants have been working really hard. They are real busy bees! Look at our pictures of the children hard at work.