December 2017

December was a very busy month in the infant room.

Ovoca Manor
We visited Ovoca Manor to see the "Follow the Star"  Nativity performance. It was such a lovely experience for the children and it was followed by arts & crafts.

Pantomime
We had a wonderful day in Dublin to see Rapunzel and visit McDonalds in Stillorgan. Everyone had such a super day out. There were a few who went to sleep on the way home on the bus.

Aistear
Our theme in December was Christmas. We acted out the nativity story, Santa's Workshop, Christmas Post office.

Christmas Carol Singing
We sang at the Christmas lights festival in Rathdrum and we were joined in our classroom by the carol singers from Avondale Community College.

Rock a bye Baby
The infants were adorable in our Superstar Nativity Performance. Our Rock a bye baby was loved by everyone and the infants did a Super job.

Happy Christmas Everyone.

November 2017

November has been another busy month in the infant room. The children are progressing with their sounds in the jolly phonics and are busy with Aistear.The following is a snapshot of what happened in the infant room:

Aistear 
The theme for November was fantasy. The children learned about cowboys, princesses/knights, dinosaurs & superheroes. It has been great fun and a great opportunity to learn more about what it was like to live during these times or pretending to be a superhero.

Skip Hop Workshop
The children had a wonderful opportunity to learn new skills at skipping & hopping. It was so much fun and now we can skip with the senior room at break times.

World War 11 
The senior children had a heritage schools visit for World War 11. The infant room got an opportunity to see all of the items from the demonstration including army uniforms and even a soldier's lunchbox!

Science Week
During Science week the children had a great opportunity to become scientists. Every day we carried out new experiments and learned new things. We predicated and learned outcomes. It was a fantastic week and we lots of children said they want to become scientists when they are older.

October 2017

October 2017
The infant room has been very busy during October with everyone really looking forward to Halloween!

Aistear
The theme for October was All Around Us.

English All Around Us
The children revised their jolly phonics letters and digraphs through art, small world, home corner and reading & writing.

Colours All Around Us
The children revised all of their colours by colouring rainbows, acting out the story of brown bear and went on a colours trail.

Maths All Around Us
The children learned that maths is everywhere and we made number characters, number face portraits, maths trail, create stories in small world for 10 fat sausages, 5 monkeys jumping on a bed, elephants on a spiders web.

Autumn All Around Us
The children learned to spot the signs of Autumn, we acted out the story of Room on a Broom and in art made some fab Halloween spiders, ghosts & witches legs aswell as Autumn trees.

Glendalough
We visited the Glendalough Wicklow National Park. The children explored the education room with all of the animals and nature. The children then went on a treasure hunt to find the colours of the park. After lunch we collected leaves and did some leaf rubbings. It was a fantastic day out.

Maths Week 2017
During Maths week we had a fantastic maths trail with 5th & 6th classes. Each child had a passport which they stamped at each maths activity. It was fantastic. Every day each child was awarded as a Maths Wizard.

MS Readathon
Each child are still working hard on the readathon. Even though the junior infants can't fully read yet - they can record stories that are read to them and also when they find the phonic letters that we have learned. Also the senior infants can record their oxford reading tree books.

Halloween
The children had great fun on our dress up day. The day was themed around our favourite book characters in conjunction with the MS Readathon.

September 2017

We are delighted to have welcomed 15 new infants to our classroom. We have been very busy getting used to our school routines and activities. Each morning the children play together in groups and get to know all of their classmates.

Jolly Phonics
The junior infants have started learning their letters through the Jolly Phonics Programme. They have learned s,a,t,i so far and are very excited doing their homework.

Aistear
The junior & senior infants were very excited to start Aistear. The theme for this month is All around us- English all around us, Colours all around us, Maths all around us and Autumn all around us. The children are all in their groups - elephants, leopards, giraffes, crocodiles.

Mrs Lawson
We were all very sad to say goodbye to Mrs Lawson but we all did our best to give her the best send off possible. It was so lovely when she came into our room and we sang "Jesus is my best friend" and Lamh Lamh Eile. We also presented to her our artwork of our hands to her. She said it was the best day of her life (next to her wedding!)

Playground
As a thank you for all the infants hard work we went to the playground for our golden time. We all loved our trip to the playground.

National Fitness Day
We had great fun on National Fitness Day. The infants beat Mrs Doyle and Sarah in the races - there were lots of types of races- running, elephants, robots, hopping, skipping, The infants were the first children to earn points for the school and the children were triumphant at the end !!

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 !!