Caterpillar Update in Junior Infants

Junior Infants have been very busy learning all about minibeasts.

We had a very special delivery from the postman. It was a brown box that said 'Urgent: Open Immediately!'. In the box we found.... caterpillars!

     






The caterpillars were very small when we first got them. They had to eat the special food in their jar. They ate lots of food every day until they were big and fat!
        


Every morning we would look at our caterpillars and see how big they were growing. We wrote sentences about our observations in our writing copy.



We noticed that the caterpillars were crawling to the top of the jar. They were hanging down. One morning we came in to our classroom and saw that one had made a cocoon!

Over the next few days all of the five caterpillars made cocoons. They are now hiding in their cocoons until they are ready to change into beautiful butterflies!

Infants Fun Club

Infants Fun Club has started back again for the third term.  We have a big group this term and will be keeping them very busy.  We will be making the most of the summer with lots of outdoor activities every week.

We have two groups, the Ladybirds and the Butterflies.  Each group will have a chance to play parachute games, go Bug Hunting, play a variety of fun running games, and work on mini-beast activity stations.   We hope it will be a great term for all of the children taking part.

Here are some of the photos from our clubs.

Yellow Flag Developments!

The Yellow Flag Committee are organising an Intercultural Week after the June bank holiday. Each class will have to do projects on two countries. There will be different activities on during Intercultural Week. Each day every class will take part in something. We are looking for parents or relatives to help out during this week. If anyone is interested please contact the school; help is very much appreciated. The next step for the Yellow Flag is for the classes to think of a slogan or rap to represent the diversity in our school.

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! 

Maths in Junior Infants - Term 2

We have been learning loads of new Maths this year.  In Junior Infants we try to keep our Maths as fun as active as possible.  We are counting all the time, and we count everything.  We sing loads of number rhymes and songs to help us learn our numbers.

We are always learning new maths games and have lots of interesting and colourful equipment to help us learn new things.

Here we are doing a shape experiment.  We wanted to learn which 3-D objects will roll and with will not roll down the hill.  We found out that the shapes with the curved sides will roll down the hill, but the shapes with the flat sides will not.  We also know that toys with wheels will roll down the hill, because the wheels have curved sides.

JI Maths, rolling

We also invited the parents in to a Presentation about how maths and number are taught in Junior Infants, and how they can help their children to learn at home.  A copy of the presentation can be downloaded by clicking on the picture.

Chinese New Year

In Ravenswell we are working towards our Yellow Diversity Flag, and as part of this, we are celebrating the wide variety of cultures in our school and our local community.

In February we all celebrated Chinese New Year.  It was a very exciting two weeks around the school.  All our pupils learned lots of information about the country of China, the Chinese people and the Chinese culture.  In particular, we learned about the history and the traditions surrounding the Chinese New Year festival.

Our school was filled with displays of Chinese arts and crafts and our writing about China.  We were delighted with how it turned out.  Every class contributed some of their art work to make a wonderful Chinese New Year display in the reception area.  We hope you have enjoyed looking at our work. Here are some pictures of the displays that were up around the school.

Chinese New Year 2015

We were also very lucky to have a visit from Master Yang Dong.  He came to the school to give us a display of T'ai Chi and Kung Fu.  All the children from Junior Infants to Second Class went down to the hall for the demonstration.  We had such fun.  His demonstration was amazing, but the best part was when he invited everyone to join in.  He showed us some kung fu positions and we all tried to copy him.  It was brilliant.  Here are some of the photos of us doing our kung fu moves.

Kung Fu Display, 2015

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