Seniors & First Class Easter Update

What an amazing term we have had in Seniors and First!

In oral language we were learning about the zoo. Dublin Zoo has a live feed from various areas in the zoo where we could watch the animals. We liked to check in on them at different times of the day to see what they were up to! We also checked on the live feed from San Diego Zoo. This really helped us when we were learning about ‘time’, because of the time difference if we got the time wrong the animals were all gone to sleep for the night! We saw elephants, giraffes, wildebeest, rhinoceros, polar bears, a tiger (who seemed to sleep all day!) and sea lions. We were very interested in the conservation work that most zoos do to help endangered animals.

We have made some wonderful pieces of art work: the colourful rain painting where we had to use a straw to push the ‘rain’ on top of the umbrella silhouette; drawing the Big Scary Monster; creating daffodils for spring; making St. Brigid’s crosses from paper; constructing the cutest pigs from shapes; making shamrock characters with arms and legs; creating prints of easter eggs using foam and roller paints – we love being creative and getting the chance to admire everyone’s art work. Since we can mix again, we like to walk around to all the desks and admire the art up close.

In SESE we read Raindrop Bill, who taught us about the watercycle. We read the story of Jack Frost and created our own weather characters –Tommy Tornado, Rosie Rainbow and many others.

We also learned a lot about recycling. We examined maps to get to the recycling centre, we sorted materials into the same categories and learned a song about recycling. We took part in the TLC clean up around the school. We are so proud of our school and love to have it looking beautiful.

We examined the earthworm. It was really interesting to see how an earthworm uses their muscles to move. We tried to move like earthworms,which was great fun and much harder than we expected!

In maths, we made up fun stories when we were learning ‘The Story of 8’, ‘The Story of 9’ and ‘The Story of 10’. We got very creative – one ladybird gave her spots away to her friend who had none (8+0=0, 7+1=8 etc.);there were marbles that landed in a volcano and some that landed in the sea(4+5=9, 3+6=9 etc.)

We read ‘Ten Fat Sausages’ and ‘Trixie Ten’. These were stories to help us examine and consolidate our learning of the number 10.

We learned about weight and used the balance and cubes to investigate how heavy different objects were.

We also learned o’ clock – and half past inclass – and worked in pairs with our own clocks to test each other.

In literacy we used the story of ‘Trixie Ten’ to help us withour sounds. We made up our own characters and gave them new names.

Senior Infants are reading so well. We are going to start our final class reader after Easter. We are also engaging in CAPER (children andparents enjoying reading), which is something we love to do at home with an adult.

First class have just finished their first class novel, ‘Camper Van Fun’, and really enjoyed dramatizing all the different sounds that were happening. The children acted out all the shenanigans that happened in the story!

We have done lots of writing – procedural, narrative and poetry – in both classes. We remember to do our finger exercises before we start writing, have a sharp pencil, good posture and use finger spaces to makesure our writing is the best it can be.

We were delighted when the restrictions lifted enough to allow us to mix outside of our pods. We were able to start Aistear with all of Senior Infants and First class. We have an Aistear topic, split into groups and have five stations over a week. Some of our stations so far have been: reading, writing, role play, small world, sand play, science, egg hunt, art, and puzzles. It is a wonderful time for collaborative learning through play. We try and use the language that we are learning when we are in our groups.