February 2016

The children have been very busy again in the junior room. The following are an overview of the activities during February.

Valentines Day

The children made beautiful cards and a heart wreath decoration for their parents. All children were very proud of their beautiful artwork.

Extra Curricular Activities

We concluded our dance classes with Zoe which the children loved. On February 26^th we commenced our 4 week basketball course with Rita. The children are having great fun learning all the basketball passes and moves.

Aistear

This month the children are learning all about different subjects that are all around us.

Music All Around Us – The children learned all about instruments in the orchestra and the families they belong to. They also learned how to play a tune on the piano.

Science All Around Us- The children role played as scientists learning about floating/sinking and materials all around us, They also conducted lots of experiments including making magnet controlled cars, making a lava lamp and constructing volcanoes.

Geography All Around Us- The children learned about the people in our community who help us and in art they constructed the main street of Rathdrum.

History All Around Us – We were delighted to receive historical artifacts from Greenane Maze to assist our children to work as historians. The children constructed family trees and learned about the 1916 anniversary this year.

Willow Weaving

The children loved being part of the willow weaving workshop. They were very proud to have contributed towards making such a lovely willow basket for our school.

Food Dudes

The children are loving being part of the Food Dude Programme. It is lovely to hear the children being so enthusiastic about eating fruit and vegetables.

Competitions

The senior infants took part in the INTO handwriting competition.

The junior & senior infants took part in the World Book Day Favourite Character Competition in conjunction with Bridge Street Book Shop in Wicklow.

January 2016

The infant room has been very busy during January.

Jolly Phonics
The junior infant children are nearly finished learning their letters for the jolly phonics programme and are ready to start reading. The children are very excited and can't wait to start reading.

Write-a-Book Competition
The senior infant children are busy writing their write a books. The topic is our favourite season and each child is writing their own book. We will be submitting them to the Blackrock Education Centre on February 12th.

Green Schools Poster Competition
Each classroom are creating posters to highlight our green schools message. Our key message is using bins and removing rubbish in our schools.

Aistear
The theme for January is weather and seasons. We were discussing weather, seasons and clothes. The children designed clothes for different weathers for their teddies and had a teddy bear fashion show. In addition the children learned all about being weather scientists and how to forecast the weather. The children conducted lots of weather experiments and how the water cycle works.

December 2015

Christmas Carol Service

The junior and senior infants  were delighted to be part of the school’s Christmas Carol Service. We performed Leanbh Beag Iosa with 1^st & 2^nd Class and a Gift to you on our own. It was a beautiful carol service and the Hosanna Rock was fabulous. The icing on the cake was performing our service in our wonderful new sports hall. What a great evening!

Ovoca Manor

The junior, senior infants & 1^st class children were thrilled to be invited to Ovoca Manor to see the Follow the Star. The children really enjoyed the performance and activities.

Avondale Community College

The junior infants were invited to a special Christmas party in Avondale Community College. We sang Christmas carols and met Santa. It was a lovely morning of Christmas spirit.

Christmas Disco

The children had a wonderful time at the Christmas Disco and of course visiting Santa. All the children in the infant room were told by Santa that they were on the good list!

Aistear

In December the infants learned about the nativity story, Santa’s Workshop and the Christmas Post Office.  We also made lots of Christmas arts and crafts.

November 2015

Aistear

This month our theme was Fantasy where we talked about Cowboys, Princesses, Knights, Dinosaurs and Superheroes.

The children had great fun acting out stories on the themes, creating designs in the small world theme and constructing art pieces.

Religion and Aistear

The children used the Aistear programme to learn about some of the stories in our religion book. We acted out the stories of Zacchaeus, Jesus calming the storm and the Good Samaritan. It was a really wonderful way to integrate our religion programme with the Aistear structure.

Arklow Colouring Competition

Congratulations to Layla and Molly on being selected to go forward to the final in the Arklow Colouring Competition.

Science Week

The children had great fun partaking in the Science Week. The children learned lots about famous scientists and visited the 3^rd-6^th classes Science Exhibition.

1^st Class

We said good bye to our 1^st class children. While we are very sad to say goodbye to them but it is a really great new path for our school.

September & October 2015

September & October 2015

Welcome to all the Junior Infants! They have all settled into school life and are doing a great job. The senior infants and 1^st class children are working hard and helping to welcome the junior infants into our school.

September and October have been very busy with lots of activities.

Aistear

The junior room have been very busy with our Aistear programme. The children are really embracing and loving our active learning programme.

To date we have explored a number of themes including : English all around us, Maths all around us, Colours all around us and Autumn all around us.

The children have the opportunity to explore the themes through drama/role play, art, reading & writing and small world. The children are working in smaller groups which enhances their problem solving and social skills.

Jolly Phonics

The junior infant children are having a great time learning their letter sounds and formation. So far, they have learned s, a, t, i, p, n. They are enjoying the songs and actions associated with each letter and are working very hard on their letter formation.

Tree Day

We had a wonderful day in Avondale to celebrate National Tree Day. Junior Infants to 4^th class visited Avondale and we even got to travel on the school bus ! We had a lovely day involving a tree trail around Avondale where we saw photographs of animals/birds that live in Avondale and we also learned about items that are made from trees. When we returned to the marquee we had a little break and then had a tour of Avondale house. It was fun seeing what life was like many years ago including the toys they played with. Then we finished our day with an art project and a trip to the playground. It was a lovely day out.

Maths Week

During Maths week we had great fun learning about maths all around us. We had fun active maths activities in our Aistear each day, we had maths stations in our classroom where we identified shapes, sorted, matched, classified items and identified numbers around us . We were delighted to team up with the 3^rd class for a maths trail around the school. It certainly taught us that maths is all around us !!  In addition we had a maths song each day and we celebrated a maths hero for each day. It was a really great week.

Cheerios Breakfast and Pyjamas Day

We are looking forward to the cheerios breakfast and pyjamas day on Friday. In addition, in our classroom we will make chocolate apples and lots of Halloween arts & crafts in the junior room.

Happy Halloween Everyone.