Junior Infant Newsletter 3rd November 2015

Welcome back to everyone after midterm break. We’re delighted to see the children back with happy faces and ready for lots of work!

We have a busy term ahead!  

For the next fortnight we will be covering lots of new things such as learning:

*       New sounds: ‘c’, ‘e’, ‘h’, and  ‘r’.

*       New sight words: Look, at, the, my, look, I, am, like

*       How to write the letter ‘a’

*       Number 2

We are starting to learn all about animals. For the next fortnight we will be learning about animals that hibernate and pets we can have.

Useful Vocabulary Winter    Autumn    hibernation    hedgehog   squirrel    nuts    gathering food      squirrel nest or ‘drey’     hedgehog  nest Cat    kitten   dog  puppy   rabbit    hamster    guinea  pig    bird    goldfish      snake     turtle      tank     aquarium     cage   hutch     bed       bowl    lead       collar

Some rhymes to practice at home:
Mary had a little lamb	Little Bo Peep
Hickety Pickety	I have a pet (Super simple songs available on youtube)

How you can support your child’s learning: Literacy: *       Find things around the house/ in books that start with our ‘s’,’a’, ‘t’, ‘i’, ‘p’ and ‘n’ sounds   as well as our new sounds ‘c’   ‘e’    ‘h’   and ‘r’. *       Cut out pictures from magazines/ brochures/ leaflet with this sound *       Look for this sound in the environment (on signs, in books) *       Encourage your child to practice writing their name and the letter ‘c’ at home Numeracy: *       Practice counting to 5 *       Find things that are pink and orange *       Find 2D shapes in the environment: circles, squares, triangles, rectangles *       Encourage your child to do sorting and matching activities at home: using pasta, toy cars, toy blocks, or socks!  S.E.S.E. *       Talk to your child about winter  and hibernation: what is hibernation? What animals hibernate? Why do animals hibernate? Look for signs of hibernation (squirrels collecting nuts) *       Maybe you could help hibernating animals at home: visit http://www.dspca.ie/   to find out how you can help hedgehogs at home *       Talk to your child about animals we keep as pets. Talk about the different ways we have to care for our pets (food, bed, play time, walks, bringing to the vet). *       If you have a pet bring in a photo to show the class!

Reminders:

Ø Please return homework folders and nursery rhyme kits each day.

Ø If your child is absent please ring the office so we can record any explanations.

Ø Encourage your child to put on and take off their coat independently- this is an important skill to be learnt as the weather begins to get colder!

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! 

Reading in Junior Infants

We are always learning new words in Junior Infants.  We play word games, we practice our word walls and we read our books every day.  

Here we are going on a word hunt around the classroom with our student teacher Ms Lawless.   

Sometimes we go around the school looking for words.  
Maybe when we go out with our mummies and daddies we could start looking for words around the town. 

Every morning we are in our literacy groups.  We are very lucky to have some mummies in to help us with our reading and writing.  They play games with us, they help us to write in our books, and they read our books with us. It makes our groups so much fun to have parents in to help us. 

Here are some pictures of us working in our Literacy groups.  It would be great to have lots more parents in to help us. 

JI Parent's reading, 2015

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!

 

Phonics Games

There are lots of fantastic websites on the internet with Phonics Games.  Here are a few of them to play at home:

Family Learning: A great selection of fun phonics games at different levels.

Starfall: A selection of phonics and early reading activities.

Super Simple Learning: Phonics games for kids.

PBS kids: The Quiet Machine (phonics games)

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: