Welcome to Junior Infants! We were very excited to start our primary school journeys in Kilcornan National School! We have been making lots of friends and getting to know the school and our new classroom. We have been working hard and remembering to use our ‘Kind Words, Kind Hands and Kind Feet’ everywhere that we go. Ms. Balfry is very proud of us and we get stickers for our charts when we are kind to one another.

We love playing in Junior Infants and have had lots of fun building with lego, magnets, sticky bricks, straws and using the kitchen sets and mini vehicles. We also love movement breaks and dancing and moving our bodies with Go Noodle. We have maxed out two characters already!

Even though we are only in school a short time, we have been working very hard. We have learned lots of new sounds already and are practising our blending. We recite rhymes together and love doing Mental Maths and engaging in Maths Talk! We enjoyed using the Athletics equipment for P.E and are getting very good at skipping and hopping and jumping.

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Chloe comes to visit us every week from Music Generation and we have learned lots about musical instruments and singing. Art is definitely one of our favourite subjects and we have learned about the primary colours, secondary colours, colour mixing and warm and cool colours as well as making lovely autumn trees, engaging with fingerpainting and creating spooky Halloween Art like vampire bats! We loved dressing up for Halloween and Ms. Balfry didn’t even recognise some of us. We also took part in our first Jersey Day and had fun bringing our homework into school on ‘Anything but a Schoolbag Day!’

Thanks so much to Ms. Clancy who also teaches us and to Catherine who helps us in class every day. We deserve a good rest after our first term in school and we are looking forward to the Mid Term Break. Check back in with us again soon for more updates. Slán from Junior Infants!

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Nollaig Shona Daoibh from everyone in Junior Infants! We are so excited for Christmas. We are hoping Santa will visit us all on the 24^th of December. Santa sent his elf Charlie to stay with us in school and he has been watching us all very carefully! We think he will report back lots of good things to Santa about us.

We have had the best two months in Junior Infants! We performed in our very first Christmas show in the community hall in December. We practiced very hard for weeks and learned lots of new songs to perform on stage. The girls were angels and the boys were shepherds in the show. Lots of our families came to visit and they were very proud of us. Ms. Balfry was so proud of us too! The name of our show was ‘The Bossy King’. We learned all about the story of Jesus being born when we were getting ready for our show and we love looking at the crib in our classroom.

We have lots of decorations in our room as we prepare for Christmas. We all helped decorate the Christmas tree and everyone brought in an ornament from home to put on it. We painted Christmas robins in art and listen to Christmas stories every day. We learned all about Daidí na Nollag in our Irish lessons and how to say ‘Nollag Shona Duit’ to our friends.

We had our first school trip this month when we went to the panto ‘Aladdin’ in the Lime Tree theatre. It was some of the class’ first time on a bus. We laughed, sang and shouted at the mean character in the panto. It was the best day!

In November, we celebrated Anti Bullying Week and Science Week. We listened to the story of Sid the Sock and made our own odd socks to show how special everyone is. We loved Science Week as we carried out lots of STEM experiments like making our own bridges,causing explosions with baking soda and vinegar and looking at dyes in food with skittles.

We learned all our sight words and read our first reader called ‘The Picnic’ in school. We really loved reading it. We have been working hard learning all our sounds in school too and make ‘predictions’ when we read stories. We took part in four online wellbeing workshops too where we listened to stories, recited rhymes, stretched and danced. We are looking forward to continuing them in the new year.

We started Food Dudes also in November. We loved getting to try new fruit and veg everyday in school and got lots of amazing certificates, stickers and prizes when we tried them. We watched videos where the Food Dudes defeated General Junk by feeding the force with fruit and veg!

We are looking forward to our holidays after all our hard work. Thank you so much to Catherine who helps us in our classroom every day. Happy Christmas from everyone in Junior Infants!! We will be back again soon!

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Welcome to the Junior Infants page! What a busy two months we have had! We have spent lots of time getting to know our new friends, our new classroom and our new school. We are learning all about using our ‘Kind Words, Kind Hands and Kind Feet’ in school and being part of a new school family. Ms. Balfry is very proud of how hard we are working. We have started learning sounds and sight words in Literacy and are strengthening our fingers with our pre writing activities. We are very good at sorting and matching now in Maths and have had lots of fun with concrete materials during these lessons. We love learning Irish and are starting to use lots of Irish words during the day now. We even played Bingo ‘as Gaeilge’.

We got to know our new school by taking a walk around and visiting the apple trees in the garden, the bug hotel, the flower boxes, the crops planted and are learning lots about taking care of the environment. We even saw the green flag that the school has!We love going to the astro turf for P.E and are getting very good at walking,skipping, jumping and throwing now. The Jelly Bean game is our favourite! We also have great fun doing our Go Noodle movement breaks every day in class and are practicing movements to help us with our agility, flexiblity and co-ordination. We have taken part in three online wellbeing workshops focusing on breathing and relaxation techniques with rhymes and stories in between and we really enjoyed them. We will be continuing these in November.

We love art lessons and have made lots of fun things since school started. We made Elmer paintings,autumn wreaths, autumn trees, self-portraits, spooky ghosts and even did some pumpkin printing with apples.

Wednesdays are great days because Nora and Aoife from Music Generation come to visit our classroom. We have learned all about the harp, guitar and ukulele and even got to try them out! We sing songs every week, are learning all about rhythm and dynamics and have even started reading music! We love the Shazam game when we are reading music!

We really enjoyed celebrating Climate Week and Maths week this half term. We played the apple counting game in class where we practiced taking turns. We all made a great effort to have a zero-waste lunch in school and reminded Ms. Balfry about no-power hour when it came! We went for a walk, did some P.E and made Halloween ghosts during this hour.  

We are really looking forward to Halloween and getting to dress up in our Halloween costumes in school. Lots of us are also going to the Halloween party in the community centre. A big thank you to Catherine who helps us in our class every day. Ms.Balfry says we all deserve a week off after all our hard work!

Check back with us again for more updates. Slán from Junior Infants!

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Happy Holidays from Junior and Senior Infants!

We have had such a fun last term in school! We worked hard in class and Ms. Balfry was so proud of us. We really enjoyed making our own maps of the school grounds and using them for orienteering in P.E. It was such fun walking around the grounds using our maps to find objects. We did lots of tests in class and showed how much our concentration has improved. Because of our super behaviour, we filled all the marbles into our class reward jar and were treated to a movie and popcorn day in school.

We went to Stonehall Farm for our school tour where we learned lots of facts about the amazing animals there, played on the go karts and bicycles and bounced on the bouncing castle. We then went to Curragh Chase for a picnic and more playtime afterwards.

We loved making bird feeders with Ms. Ruddle for Biodiversity Week and have learned so much about looking after the environment this year.

Active week was great fun. We really enjoyed using the giant parachute in the Astro turf pitch and we had the best fun doing Zumba in school for the first time. We got to dance in the school yard to great songs.

We really like our teachers but it was the best fun to see them get soaked in the ice bucket challenge! We were looking forward to it for weeks and laughed and screamed when the teachers got water thrown over them. Ms. Balfry even hopped off the chair when the water was thrown over her!

We were so proud to be part of a marathon relay with our schoolmates! Everyone in the class ran as fast as they could around the Astro turf pitch and Ms. Balfry and Catherine ran too. We got a special medal for taking part and the Parents’ Council treated us all to ice creams afterwards. Yum!

We said goodbye to one of our classmates and made her a card with lots of pictures of our fun activities throughout the year on it. A big thank you to Catherine and Ms. Quinn for helping us in our classroom each day. We are so lucky to have you! We hope everyone has a great summer and we look forward to coming back to Senior Infants and First Class in September. You can follow our new journey then. Slán from Junior and Senior Infants!!

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