Christmas Post Office

We have been having a lot of fun in our Christmas Post Office Aistear this week! 

Table 1: Christmas Small World

Table 2: Art-paper plate Christmas trees and doing the art for our Sweden projects

Table 3: The Post Office- The children were very busy wrapping presents, writing letters and buying stamps to post them to the different addresses all around our classroom!

Table 4: The Theater- last week the children did the Nativity story and this week they were allowed to create their own Christmas stories. They had to make up the story, write the script, make the puppets and practice before they put on the show. The stories were brilliant-Why There Was a Llama on Santa's Sleigh, The Lost Christmas Tree, Frozen 3 and Santa's Worst Nightmare!

Aistear is a great way to use vocabulary, practice reading and writing, develop social skills and cover a lot of curriculum subjects in a fun and informal way!

An Post

Many thanks to Edel and all the staff at Trim Post Office for letting us visit today! Edel spoke to us about the different services post offices provide and Emma, who was behind the desk, sold us some stamps! We even posted a letter! The trip will help us to prepare for our Christmas Post Office role play next week!

An Nuacht

Senior Room Games

Many thanks to the Senior Classroom who designed and created brilliant magnetic games for the Juniors and Seniors! It was great for us to see STEM in action in a fun way! The games were really brilliant!

STEM STATIONS

We had so much fun last week at STEM stations. 

1. Science: Growing sugar crystals experiment

2. Technology: Coding

3. Engineering: Creating a parachute to protect an egg (we had even more fun later on when we dropped the eggs off the balcony to test the parachutes!!!)

4. Maths: 2D Shape dinosaurs cut and paste activity 

Check out the brilliant parachutes before testing!

We also had a Teddy Bear Picnic on Friday because the children had been so well behaved while I was out! 

Sound Timelines

1st Class explored sound in Science this week. They thought about the sounds they hear from when they wake up to when they get to school. Then 1st Class wrote out these sounds in chronological order. They had to make the sounds with their voices.  

Today, Juniors and Seniors helped 1st Class to find instruments that matched the sounds in their timeline.

STEM Stations

We began STEM stations today in the Junior Room. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths. We had the following stations:

1. Science: Using magnets to make the witch from Room on the Broom fly across the night sky

2. Technology: Coding. The children completed challenges on the app 'Daisy the Dinosaur' to introduce them to coding

3. Engineering: The truck carrying Ms. Keane's new shoes is stuck at a river! Using only pasta and playdough, the children had to construct a bridge to get truck across.

4. Maths: the children made numbers from connecting blocks. Seniors had to write the number words and 1st Class explored place value too. 

The stations were loads of fun, and a great hands-on way for pupils to explore these important subjects! 

Autumn

We began learning about autumn yesterday! In the video you can see the children hard at work drawing, labeling and writing about things we see in autumn.

You can also see some of our flexible seating options in the video. Flexible seating gives the pupils the freedom to choose how they complete written work. They pick the option that helps them to learn the best. Flexible seating allows the children to move while they work, provides sensory input and ensures everyone is comfortable! 

The Best Thing So Far...

Last week we practiced breaking sentences into words. Have a look at everyone's favourite part of school so far this year!

1st Class made brilliant projects this week about the different body parts for Science.

First Day Back!

Check out the superstars in our room who had a brilliant first day back! 

Our three new Junior Infants were very brave and had a super day! Well done to Seniors and 1st Class for setting an excellent example today!

Wanted Pirates

Ahoy! Thar are pirates on th' loose! Be careful. These are mighty dangerous pirates...

Pirate Playtime

Our theme for May has been Pirates! Arrrrgh!

We began our learning with Pirate Camp. We had to learn about the 5 Oceans and then about some sea creatures. The children know lots of interesting facts on these two topics! We learned a bit about pirates long ago too and got our very own pirate names! Shiver me timbers!

 The children did a fantastic job on their pirate books. They had to write an ocean fact, a sea creature fact and a pirate fact.

Then we brought our learning into playtime. We had a very messy water station where the children explored floating and sinking, and capacity, informally. They made ocean scenes at the art table by  experimenting with different shades of blue. There was the role play area with a pirate ship, buried treasure and map making. The construction area had pirate pictures to inspire the building there too. 

Yo, ho, ho!!!