Aistear: (March 2017)

We are busy bees with Aistear and we link all our lessons to the theme for the week. The theme for March is “People who help us”.  

Week 1: Garda Station

Week 2: Fire Officer

Week 3: Optician

Week 4: Dentist

We welcomed Garda Darragh into our classroom so the children could see the uniform and ask lots of questions. It is invaluable for the children to see and hear all about the Gardaí. We got to hold a bat, handcuffs, pepper spray and Garda Darragh even used the walkie- talkie back to the station in Wicklow. We said hello to the Garda in the station. The children learned the importance of not lying and telling the truth. A big thank you to our visitor for providing the children with this great experience.

Garda Sergeant giving the order for the day

Traffic Control

Measuring the suspect

Our home corner- Garda Síochana Station

In conjunction with our discussion about “People who help us” – we welcomed the Rathdrum fire crew to our school so the children could see the fire engine and all of their life saving equipment. It was great for the children of the Infants and Junior Room to see the fire officers and learn from them in person. It was so exciting to try on their helmets and gloves. We even got to use the hose with Fireman Dave. They have huge cutters used to cut cars open when somebody is stuck inside. When they left, they put on the siren. I think we will have a future fire officer in our class. A massive thank you to the Rathdrum Fire Service for a thrilling morning that we will never forget.  

Putting out the fire

Small world: Fire Services

Biodiversity (Posted- March 2017)

In the Infants classroom, we based our Aistear themes around bio-diversity this year. We covered the themes of “Vegetable Garden”, “The Farmer- Food”, “The Farmer- Spring Animals”, and “The Garden Centre”.  Through our Aistear stations of reading and writing, art, small world and home corner, we explored the importance of flora and fauna. In our role play area, we planted for and cared for imaginary plants, gave advice to costumers, and sequenced plant growth. We visited our school garden and learned about the equipment needed to care for the vegetables and flowers. In class, we planted cress seeds and observed the germination period. I think that Mr. Cress head now needs a visit to the hairdressers!  

Our Aistear group names are based on mini-beasts names- caterpillars, bees, grasshoppers, and ladybirds. The class dramatized each of the mini-beasts and understand how they are connected to the circle of life of the flowers in the garden.  

We read beautiful books based on biodiversity- The Enormous Turnip, The Little Red Hen, Farmer Duck, and Jack and the beanstalk. After reading the books, we acted them out using props, costumes and sometimes puppets. Every book had plants growing and people caring for the plants throughout the stages.    

We learned about the life cycle of the hen. Sequence skills were used to order the pictures. We also ordered the life cycle different farm animals. We now can name the adult and young of most farm animals. Are you "kidding" me?!

We are so very lucky to have numerous bird-feeders just outside our window. We added our wire of apples and fat balls to the bird feeding stand. We had to be careful to be quiet while the birds had their breakfast in the morning. Our Senior Infants were fantastic at watching out for our small feathered friends! One confused bird even tapped on the window instead of the bird feeder. 

October 2016

Aistear

The junior & senior infants were delighted to start Aistear again in our classroom. This month the theme was “People who help us”.

The themes were as follows:

Week 1: School

Week 2: Park Rangers/Autumn

Week 3: Library

Week 4 : Doctor’s Surgery

For each theme we included the four stations – home corner : role playing/ small world: creating the scene using small world materials/ art: creating a art piece under the theme/ reading & writing: sequencing/drawing pieces under the theme. The children then report on each section to tell us what they did that day.

Library Visit

As part of the Aistear theme we visited the library in Arklow. We loved sitting in the children’s area to look at all of the books and the librarian read a lovely story to us. We registered with the library for our class membership and received our own library card.

Harvesting & Soup

The 3^rd & 4^th classes harvested the vegetables from the vegetable garden and then the 5^th & 6^th classes made lovely vegetable soup and scones. The junior and senior infants then were invited to the hall to taste the soup. It was yummy!

Heritage Council

Grace from the Irish Heritage Council visited our school to help us with our biodiversity flag. We went out to our school garden and learned all about the trees that grow in our garden. It was very interesting.

ESB

We were delighted to receive a visit from the ESB Networks to tell us all about being safe around electricity. They presented us with ESB high visibility vests and took our photographs. We entered a competition about being safe around electricity.

Maths Week

The infants had a great time during Maths week where each day we conducted different activities to show that maths is all around us. The highlight of the week was the maths trail with 4^th class. Each child received a prize for being a maths hero.

Halloween Dress Up

We were delighted to get dressed up for Halloween on our last day before mid-term. We paraded around the school yard and all of the parents watched us. It was great fun. Happy Halloween !!