Junior Infants
End of year video
and our last day in Junior Infants
Click the link below to see some highlights from our fun filled year in Junior Infants.
The fun never stops in Juniors- on our last day we wrote a note to welcome new fairies to the Fairy Garden and chose where to put their new doors. We also enjoyed a Teddy Bears Picnic and a disco.
BFGTOEU Awards
We were delighted to receive our BFGTOEU awards recently. We added another tag to our European Citizenship plaque and we also received an Emerging Citizen School award. We celebrated being award winners at our Achievement Assembly today. The whole school is very proud of Junior Infants for their fantastic achievement.
Click the links below for more information on the project.
Active School Week
We really enjoyed Active School Week. Activities included lots of extra PE lessons, a fun filled Sports Day, circuits, a basketball workshop and a hurling and soccer lesson with 6th class.
Take a look at the video below to see just how active Junior Infants are.
School Tour
We had a super time on our school tour to Loughwell Farm Park in Moycullen. We started the day in the play centre where everyone loved the slides and soft play area. Next it was bowling and giant lego before we moved on to the sand, swings, ziplines, outdoor kitchen and animal hoppers. After lunch we enjoyed the didi cars and little village before we finished off with a tractor ride and a visit to all the animals.
Take a look at the video to see all the fun we had.
Bye Bye Butterflies
We released our class butterflies (Pikachu, Charmander, Chip, Rainbow Unicorn and Very Hungry Caterpillar) in the school garden today. We think they really enjoyed their time in Junior Infants as one of them stayed on our hands for a long time before flying away. We hope they'll come and visit us in the yard again.
We had an interesting visit from a 5th class child who taught us all about weaponry in medieval times. His sibling in Junior Infants helped him to design the shield. Juniors had great fun freeze framing some fight scenes with our 5th class visitors.
Our Class Caterpillars
Introducing Pikachu, Charmander, Chip, Rainbow Unicorn and the Very Hungry Caterpillar (we voted on the names!)
We've been watching our class caterpillars grow over the last few weeks. We've been fascinated by how quickly they grew. They have now formed a chrysalis and we're eagerly awaiting our butterflies.
Fun Fact:
Did you know caterpillars have 4000 muscles in their bodies while humans only have 629?
Congratulations
Well done to the girl's football team who won their Cumann na mBunscol final recently.
What a super achievement!
Fairy Doors
We decided to paint some new fairy doors. We worked in pairs to create beautiful, colourful doors. Next we'll varnish them and then write a note to the fairies to tell them there's new homes available in our Fairy Garden.
A Visit to the Church
We have finished our Junior Infant religion programme. We decided to visit the church to light candles and say prayers for loved ones and people in need.
Fun in the Fairy Garden
We've taken advantage of the recent sunshine by having our Free Play sessions outside.
Thanks to John, the school's lovely caretaker, for tidying up the outdoor area for us.
Our last dance class with Charlotte
We've really enjoyed our classes with Charlotte. In fact we even performed one of her dances for the whole school at our last Star Student assembly this week.
Take a look at the video below to see our final dance class.
Under the Sea
We're Off to Outer Space
We're having so much fun exploring the solar system in our new role play area.
Matisse inspired art
We looked at the artwork of Henri Matisse and then used his work as inspiration to create our own collages.
Big Friendly Guide to the EU
We finished our EU project with a really fun lesson last week. First we talked about the importance of cooperation and compromise. We then worked together in groups to plan and build a structure.
We finished the project by decorating cupcakes to look like the EU flag.
Now we're looking forward to June when we'll receive a plaque for completing the project.
Click the links below for more information on the project.
More celebrations for Newcastle
First we had the hurlers come visit us with the parish cup and now we've also celebrated the school camogie team as the girls won the Andy Keane Memorial Tournament in Carnaun recently. We're getting quite used to making Newcastle flags by now and we waved them and cheered when the girls came to show us their medals and shield.
Well done to the girls- we're very proud of you all!
The Big Friendly Guide to the European Union
Every year Junior Infants take part in the Big Friendly Guide to the EU (BFGTOEU) project. We all love learning new information and asking questions to help understand the world around us.
So far we've learned what the EU is, why it was set up, how many countries are part of it, why the UK left and some facts about the EU flag. The lessons are lots of fun and we even made smoothies to show how bringing things together can create something new.
Click the links below for more information on the project.
May in Junior Infants
Our Aistear theme this month is The Garden Centre. We planted sunflowers and enjoy watering them in our classroom. We're excited to see them grow. We also learned about the artist Vincent Van Gogh and his famous paintings. We recreated our favourite Van Gogh paintings and many of us chose to paint Sunflowers (some chose Starry Night and his self portraits).
This month we have also been working on rolling in gymnastics. We love learning new rolls and moving in different ways across the mats in PE. We've also been hurling and dancing in PE and we run laps of the yard after our Literacy Lift Off sessions.
Also we celebrated a birthday in our class his month.
Baking
We love baking in Junior Infants. Recently we used the first egg laid by our new hens to bake brown bread. We enjoyed some bread and tea with friends.
A Visit from an Author
Alan Nolan, author of Animal Crackers and the Sam Hannigan books, came to visit us in April. Everyone loved his funny stories and had a great time drawing Sindy the budgie.
Hurling
We're really enjoying our hurling sessions each Friday.
A Visit from the Parish Champions
There was huge excitement in Junior Infants when the victorious hurlers visited our class with the Parish Cup. We made Newcastle flags to welcome them and everyone got to hold and drink from the cup.
We're very proud of our hurling team and many children in Juniors are looking forward to the day they can represent our school on the pitch.
Up Newcastle!
A Virtual Farm Trip To The Friendly Farmer
We had a fantastic morning today because we got to go on a special V.I.P. tour of The Friendly Farmer's farm! Accompanied by his experienced and knowledgeable Senior Infant sidekick. They showed us around their beautiful farm. First of all we visited a humongous field about to get seeded for grass. The farmers showed us the seed and explained how seeds travel from the hopper, to the soil. Lots of boys and girls in the infant classes spotted the New Holland tractor and were very impressed with how Ronan's friend Padraig reversed it! Next, we saw some super cute calves resting after a feed in their field and Ronan answered lots of questions from our budding farmers. Ronan showed us around his cool barn that the turkeys live in and our last stop was to see the jersey cows...and what magnificent cows they are! A couple went over to the gate to say hi, while Ronan introduced us to some of the other characters! He even managed a selfie with his favourite one! We learned so, so much about farming today...and we had a great giggle doing so! We want to say a HUGE THANK YOU for a fantastic tour.
The seed has been planted for potential farmers in the Junior end.
Our Amazing New Farmyard Mural
Tríona, our amazingly talented SNA, created fabulous wall murals for both Junior and Senior Infants. The children loved watching the process and even got to help Tríona add some finishing touches to the farmyard scene. Take a look at the video below to see our young artists at work.
Huge thank you to Tríona, we all love it!
People Who Help Us
We've been learning about people in the community who help us. Our role play area became a Garda station. We also made a fire engine for the role play. We made up lots of stories in our small world area. By happy coincidence a local Garda visited the school to oversee our Easter raffle. She was kind enough to show us her Garda car and we really impressed her with all the facts we knew about An Garda Siochana. We hope to welcome a local vet in the coming weeks.
Easter Art, Egg Hunt and Baking
We were joined once again by our friends in 6th class. They helped us make Easter baskets and brought us on an egg hunt.
Wonderful Junior Infant Writers
We love writing in Junior Infants. We can write CVC words and we're even starting to write sentences!
Maths Games
Learning Through Play
Planting Potatoes
Thank you to Mrs. Magnier and the 6th class boys who helped us plant our potatoes in the school garden recently.
Our School Garden
We enjoyed visiting our school garden to look for signs of spring.
Where Does Food Come From?
As part of our Green School programme we've been learning about where our food comes from.
Our snazzy new board!
We've been doing some marvellous work on our new interactive white board. Take a look at the fabulous maths and reading we've been doing. We also love using it for our movement breaks and cardio drumming activities.
Lá Fhéile Pádraig ☘️
Dance with Charlotte
Huge thanks to the lovely Charlotte from Flex Yo Style who did a dance workshop with every class on Thursday. Everyone in Junior Infants loved it.
First Charlotte taught the dance, then the children performed in groups.
Take a look at the videos below of our super hip hopping Juniors.
Hurling
The snow nearly stopped us but we're a determined bunch in Juniors so we held our first hurling session in the classroom on Friday.
We can't wait to get out on the astro for our next session.
Snow in Spring ☃️
World Book Day 🌍 📘
We had a fabulous World Book Day. Everyone looked fantastic in their costumes and we had fun hot seating all the characters in the morning.
Later our lovely friends in 6th class joined us for some paired reading. We read to them, they read to us and then we played games, wrote and illustrated books and decorated book marks with them. We finished off with a group photo.
Star Readers
Spring Art
We are creating some lovely pictures of cherry blossom trees.
Learning Through Play
Our Aistear topic in February was Travel. We loved booking our holidays in the role play area, then boarding our plane and heading off all over the globe.
Our hairdressing kit was a big hit too. Junior Infants were looking particularly smart after a visit to our hairdressers and barbers.
We developed our gross motor skills by climbing the tree in the Fairy Garden, enjoying a lunch time disco with our Senior Infants friends and taking part in Just Dance activities.
We love our new interactive board and often choose to write and draw on it during Free Choice. Vertical writing is very important at this age.
In March we took our magnifying glasses and went on a leprechaun hunt. We already knew all about them so we kept an ear out for little tapping sounds. Only the children could see them though- those clever leprechauns kept hiding on Ms. Fahy!
Paired Reading
We absolutely love reading in Junior Infants. During our Paired Reading sessions we take turns reading with a buddy. We can sit anywhere we want and share a book with our friend.
Oral Language
We love sharing ideas with our friends in oral language lessons. We're getting really good at describing pictures and creating stories using our imaginations.
Wonderful Writers
Take a look at our AMAZING writing! So far we've learned the caterpillar letters (c, a, o, d, g) and ladder letters (i, l, t). We can't wait to learn more letters and write lots more words.
Self Portraits
We showed off our artistic skills in our RSE and art lesson. We talked about all the ways we are similar and different to our friends. Then we used mirrors to study our faces and drew some fantastic self portraits.
Pancake Tuesday
We read a super story, Mr. Wolf's Pancakes, learned a song about making pancakes and finally got to enjoy some delicious pancakes with lots of yummy toppings.
Eeny Meeny Miny Snow!
Everyone had a great time playing games in the snow, the children particularly enjoyed throwing snowballs at the teachers!
Grandparents Day JI.mp4Grandparents Day Part 1
Grandparents Day JI part 2.mp4Grandparents Day Part 2
Grandparents Day
We had the "best day ever" on 3rd February when lots of wonderful grandparents came to visit the school. The children in Junior and Senior Infants said prayers, sang songs, shared compliments and presented little gifts to their grandparents. It was so lovely to see this celebration return and to welcome so many grandparents to the school.
Thanks so much to all the grandparents and parents who were able to join us. Thanks also to Deirdre and our fabulous Parents Association for the tea, coffee and cakes provided, to the parent volunteers who assisted on the day, to 6th class for acting as ushers, to Mr. O'Looney and his 3rd class for letting us use their classroom, to Fr. Benny for his lovely words and prayers and to Ms. O'Connor who organised the day.
Finally Well Done to all the children in Junior and Senior Infants who performed so well. Their families and teachers were incredibly proud of them!
Click on the videos to see the Junior Infant performance.
Reading Eggs
There was huge excitement in Juniors this month as we started Reading Eggs. We love the games and activities.
All details will be sent home after the mid-term so that children can use the app at home.
National Parks and Wildlife Service Outreach Educational Programme
Huge thanks to our two wonderful visitors, from the Burren National Park and Coole Park Nature Reserve, who taught us lots of interesting facts about native birds. We loved it!
January in Junior Infants
Learning through games
We love board games in Junior Infants. We regularly play games in maths and we also enjoy using games to help us learn new sounds and read new words. We love helping each other and we know that we learn from each other. It's also lots and lots of fun to play games with friends.
Feast of the Epiphany
We visited the church on 6th January, The Feast of the Epiphany, to see the three Wise Men in the crib.
A Super Special Surprise Visit
Click the link below to see who came to visit our classroom one night before Christmas!
There was great excitement in the classroom when we saw it and we watched it again and again throughout the day :)
drive.google.com/file/d/1reiqxoSjR-Zmp7nntuM_2Bc-H1TWdgo5/view?usp=sharing
Merry Christmas from everyone in Junior Infants (and some of our 6th class friends)
A Visit from Santa
December in Junior Infants
It was another busy month in Juniors.
We amazed our teacher with our fabulous reading and phonics work.
In PE we loved playing with frisbees and working on our racket skills.
Our Aistear theme was Santa's Workshop so we built sleighs in the construction area, made our own wrapping paper in the creative area, wrapped gifts in the role play area and delivered them to all our friends and made up adventures for Santa, Mrs. Claus and all the reindeer in the small world area.
It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas 🎄 🎅 ☃️
We were so excited about the Toy Show that we decided to decorate our classroom on Friday. We wore festive hats to school. designed Christmas jumpers for Ryan Tubridy, decorated the tree, set up a Winter Wonderland in our small world area and had some hot chocolate and biscuits.
Our wonderful friends in 6th class made some paper snowflakes for Santa's Workshop in our role play area and Tríona is going to decorate the windows.
Christmas has officially started in Junior Infants!
Science Week
During the week we completed many STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) activities. We learned all about engineers and architects through the books Rosie Revere, Engineer and Iggy Peck, Architect. We love working together to complete challenges.
On Friday we joined our friends in 6th Class, they prepared lots of exciting experiments for us. We love learning with 6th- they are so kind and we always have great fun with them.
Supertayto
We read the story Supertayto by Sue Hendra and created our own fantastic vegetable superheroes and supervillains.
Food
Our Aistear theme for November is Food.
We set up a restaurant in our role play area and our chefs and wait staff have been working hard every day creating new dishes and serving all the customers. The customers are very happy with the food and service and have been leaving very generous tips.
Some children showed their creativity by building a barbeque in the construction area while others built birthday cakes in the sand area (the one with "114 candles" was baked especially for Ms. Fahy!)
We've also been learning all about Bia in our Gaeilge lessons and the children love using their new words. Ask your child 'Cad atá sa bhosca lóin?' I'm sure you'll be very impressed with their knowledge.
Learning Through Play
in November
Halloween
We had a spooktacular time in Junior Infants today. We kicked off the morning with a disco and played musical statues and musical chairs. We also had a mummy dressing competition which was quickly followed by a super fun tissue paper fight.
Next it was time for our Halloween parade outside with the rest of the school.
After break Cian joined us for our weekly music lesson. After that we watched a movie, had some treats and played.
Before we knew it it was home-time and the start of our
Halloween holidays.
🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃
We hope everyone enjoyed their first half term in Junior Infants. Have a fantastic mid term and we’ll see you soon.
Ms. Fahy and Tríona
Pickerpals
We are taking part in the Pickerpals Programme this year.
We kicked off Maths Week with a fun art activity. We read the story Lines That Wiggle by Candace Whitman, went on a line hunt in the classroom and created wonderful pictures using the primary colours and lots of different lines (lines that wiggle, bend, curve, wave, curl, whirl, cross cross, zig zag).
We played with a lovely maths resource called numicon and played lots of maths games throughout the week.
We also decorated witches tights using patterns for another art activity using clay (photos to follow next week as it’s not yet finished).
Halloween has well and truest arrived in Junior Infants as our Potions Lab is up and running in the role play area. There are spells being cast all day long and the children and teachers have been turned into princesses, pirates, superheroes, goblins, monsters, spiders, frogs, etc on a daily basis!
We drew spiders in a guided drawing activity and we also joined Ms. Colleran and her fabulous 6th class for an exciting art lesson on Friday. We can’t wait to team up with our buddies in 6th class again soon for more fun!
Teddy Bears Hospital
October News
It was all change in our classroom this week.
We changed seats so we’re sitting with new friends for the month of October.
We’re having a great time in the new doctor’s surgery in our role play area. The staff at the surgery have been kept very busy all week with a wide variety of medical emergencies. Luckily there’s no shortage of doctors and nurses in Junior Infants!
Our construction area now has fantastic wooden jaggo blocks so we’ve been building amazing structures.
This week we found lots of signs of Autumn on our nature walk around the school.
We celebrated National Tree Day by learning about ash, oak and horse chestnut trees. We can recognise their leaves, we know how long oak trees take to grow and how long oak and horse chestnut trees live for, and also what trees are used to make hurls. We then worked together to paint a huge poster for Tree Day.
We learned about hibernation and made some lovely pictures of animals that hibernate.
We are learning about procedures and using words such as First, Next, Then, After that and Finally. We have hand signals for each to help us. On Friday we explained the procedure of making a sandwich. Then we made and ate some tasty sandwiches.
We also had another lovely music lesson with Cian. We can now play Row, Row, Row Your Boat and Hot Cross Buns on the tongue drums.
Friendship Week
We've had a fabulous Friendship Week in Junior Infants.
We started every morning playing games. We're experts at taking turns and we understand that winning is not always important, it's more important to have fun with our friends. We loved playing Charades, Alias, Googly Eyes, Frustration, Snakes and Ladders and Twister.
We really enjoyed doing the kindness challenges Ms. O'Connor gave our class.
We read lots of stories about being good friends, we especially enjoyed Elmer and The Rainbow Fish. We also worked with our friends to complete art activities based on the stories.
We learned a song (click here for video).
We made a poster so everyone knows how to be a good friend.
We did a Compliment Circle where we passed compliments around the circle to show our friends how much we care about them and make them smile.
We played lots of cooperative games in PE and even did some paired yoga activities.
This week we also did some lovely drama games based on our story of the week- Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
Finally on Friday we ended the week with a class breakfast. We had such fun enjoying breakfast with our friends.
Week 3 in Big School
We’ve had another fantastic week in Junior Infants. We
spent the week learning, playing, singing and baking.
We celebrated two birthdays in the class and enjoyed a super music lesson with Cian from Music Generation. Tríona also discovered we have a class full of Star Bakers when she made gingerbread men with the children today.
Now we’re all looking forward to Friendship Week next week.
Congratulations to the rounders superstars in 5th and 6th. We were delighted to see them and their silverware today.
We read the story The Dot and used it as inspiration for our own paintings this week.
Finally Athenry News & Views asked us to send in a photo of our fabulous new Junior Infant class. Keep an eye out in the next edition and you might spot a few familiar faces 😊
Welcome to our New Infants
Well done to our fantastic new Junior Infants on a super start to the year.
We’ve had a busy first week getting to know everyone, playing, singing, dancing, acting and generally just having fun together.
