Potion Lab

We are getting ready for Halloween in the Infant Classroom! For playtime, our classroom has become a spooky Potions Lab! The art table are creating spiderwebs with oil pastels and watercolour paint, there is a Halloween matching game at another table, the playdough table are creating different ingredients for the potion in the cauldron, and the messiest learning of all is taking part at the drama table where we are pretending to be witches and wizards creating potions! 

Last week was Maths Week, so we began learning about capacity using our potions lab. It's a fun way to develop vocabulary such as full, nearly full, empty, holds more, holds less, holds as much as...We are also doing some whole-class work on estimating how many jugfuls of potion will fill a certain container and ordering containers of potion in order of capacity! 

The Potion Lab is also great for oral language development, as the children dictate their potion ingredients and method for me to write down, sharing, motor skills, and literacy! It's also just fun to make a big mess! Have a look at our spooky room: 

Happy Halloween to the Juniors and Seniors! Well done on your fantastic costumes today! :) 

Well done especially to Poppy and David who won the Parent's Association Best Dressed prizes: 

Papa John's!

Poppy won a Halloween colouring competition in St. Patrick's N.S. and all of Juniors and Seniors got to go to Papa John's at Supermacs to make our own pizzas! It was such a great trip and everyone really enjoyed it! The children got to roll out the dough, spread the sauce and cheese, and choose their toppings. Then we got to gobble up the pizzas fresh from the oven! Thank you to Papa John's for a fantastic day :) 

Competition Winner!!! 

Schools in the Past

Before we went home today, we had a very exciting visitor in the classroom! Ms. Keane's Grandma came in to talk to us about what it was like to be in school in the past. Grandma was also a primary school teacher and she told us a bit about that too! We did some coin rubbings with old money, used an old-fashioned weighing scales and saw how they used to make toys from potatoes and sticks in the past! Grandma also told us stories about school in the past, even about times when she was a little bit bold and got into trouble! We had loads of questions for her and learned a lot! 

She even left some surprises in the classroom for everyone tomorrow...

Thank you Grandma :)  

Playtime

In the Infant Classroom we like to learn through play as much as possible. This week our theme is School. There are 4 stations in the room with a different activity at each one and the children swap tables each day. 

Here we have the children doing socio-dramatic play. They take it in turns to be the teacher and the other children are the pupils. They are working on drama and oral language skills, and exploring jobs in our local community (teachers) which links with SESE. Depending on the activities their new teachers give them they are also practicing writing, reading and maths skills! 

The construction station is loads of fun and the children are working together to build a schools. They are developing communication skills, fine motor skills and creative thinking. 

This group have built Ms. Keane in the far left corner and the whiteboard in the one opposite!

The playdough station works on fine motor skills and creative thinking too. The children are making people or things they see at school. This also ties in with SESE as well as working on spatial awareness. 

Taking the playdough Rolla!  

Ms. Keane doing work! 

David worked really hard to make Mr. Larke!

We are also exploring Autumn at the moment in school! The leaves are changing colour and we are using these colours to make prints from different materials. This links again with SESE, fine motor skills, art, and oral language skills, as well as being lots of fun and messy! We are covering pages in our Autumn prints and cutting leaves from them to decorate our SESE tree!