Welcome to the Senior Infants’ update! We have been very busy since September! We sit in three large groups, which allows us to work together and share. We have a reading area with a warm mat and comfy cushions, a sand table for messy play and a carpet area for stories. We are working on our words and practise our reading every day. We are also becoming more independent, cleaning up after ourselves and writing down our own homework.
We are doing Aistear in our classroom this year. ‘Aistear’ means ‘journey’ and it is our journey through play-based learning based on different themes. We split into different groups for Aistear time and spend time at different stations during the week. Our stations change every week and include a literacy station,a numeracy station, an art station, a sand table and a plasticine station to name a few!
Our Aistear themes so far have been ‘Myself’,‘The Airport’, and ‘Minibeasts’. We have made caterpillars with pom poms and spiders with plasticine. We have created our own realistic passports and used them in our role play for the airport. In our writing group we have created wonderful stories based on the adventures of different minibeasts. We have also learned about the Wright brothers and made and flown our own paper planes.
Our current theme is‘Autumn’. We are learning about hedgehogs and the changing environment around us. Hedgehogs are mammals – ask us what we know about mammals! We have a wonderful nature table, which the children add to when they find something interesting in the garden or Curraghchase. We are making realistic hedgehogs at the art station.
We are practising welcoming visitors to the classroom ‘as Gaeilge’. We also love to play ‘Deir ÓGrádaigh’ and sing ‘Ceann, gualainn, gluain ‘is cos’ comh tapa agus is féidir linn!
We are learning lots of new games and new ways to move our bodies in PE. Movement helps our learning so we make sure to get lots of movement breaks in between lessons. Go Noodle has some of our favourite dances. We also have a breathing ball to help us focus on our breathing as a way of meditating and feeling calm.
Everyone is Senior Infants has a stamp card and the teacher gives us stamps for lovely writing,homework, kind sharing or nice behaviour. When we get 10 stamps we can choose a prize from the prize box, which is closely guarded by a vicious dog called Coco! Sandy is our class teddy and he visits a different house each night. He has great fun spending time with us and seeing what we like to do outside of school. We each draw a picture and write something that we did together in Sandy’s special book. We really enjoy looking back over the adventures that Sandy has been on with each of us!
‘The Gold Cushion of Great Work’ is a very special cushion that the teacher gives to a child who has done some great work during the day. That child gets to use the cushion the next day as a reward. We always give a big ‘bualadh bos’ to the people who get a reward to show them that we are proud of them.
We are looking forward to great fun in school when we dress up for Halloween, and a well-earned break over the mid-term! We have worked really hard since we started Seniors!