Ms. McLoughlin's class, Senior Infants, Room 5

Gardening in May

noreply@blogger.com (Scoil Chaitríona Junior) — Fri, 17 May 2013 13:31:00 +0000

We checked on our garden today.

We did some weeding and saw some nice bugs and insects.

We picked garlic, carrots and radishes.

We will try them all once they have been cleaned and sliced.

Learning about lifecycles

noreply@blogger.com (Scoil Chaitríona Junior) — Thu, 16 May 2013 20:50:00 +0000

Today we learned (or revised what we know) about lifecycles.

We talked about the lifecycle of the frog, the hen, the butterfly, the duck, the plant and the tree.

After talking about each one we made lifecycle jigsaws, filled in lifecycle sticky charts and played with frogs and butterflies in all of the stages of their lifecycle.

Ask us about lifecycles now.

We are really experts on this!

A growing potato and a caterpillar

noreply@blogger.com (Scoil Chaitríona Junior) — Thu, 16 May 2013 20:30:00 +0000

Look at the classroom potato. It has been growing really well in our press!

This is an absolutely amazing caterpillar made at home from an egg box.

We just love this wonderful caterpillar!

Papier mache ladybirds

noreply@blogger.com (Scoil Chaitríona Junior) — Thu, 16 May 2013 20:26:00 +0000

We love bugs and insects.

We covered yoghurt pots and clay balls with newspaper soaked in flour and water.

This is called papier mache.

Today we finished our ladybirds by painting them and sticking on their eyes.

They look really nice.

Visit from Tom Cuffe the birdman

noreply@blogger.com (Scoil Chaitríona Junior) — Wed, 15 May 2013 13:37:00 +0000

Thank you so much Tom for visiting our class today.

Tom showed us some great origami birds and then told us lots and lots of interesting facts about birds.

We learned about the biggest bird in the world and the biggest in Ireland, the smallest birds, the birds with the longest wingspan, the birds with the biggest and smallest eggs, the birds who can fly the fastest, dive the fastest, tallest birds and lots more.

We were shown how to draw birds, how birds catch and eat mice, what might be in an owl's pellet and what different birds sound like.

We had a fantastic morning with Tom and we learned so much today.

We are all so interested in birds after Tom's talk today.

Thank you so much Tom!

Visiting our class library

noreply@blogger.com (Scoil Chaitríona Junior) — Wed, 15 May 2013 13:16:00 +0000

Shells and shapes

noreply@blogger.com (Scoil Chaitríona Junior) — Wed, 15 May 2013 13:12:00 +0000

Look at the great shells and seaweed found on the beach.

We really enjoyed playing our 2D and 3D loop game in maths.

Floating and sinking

noreply@blogger.com (Scoil Chaitríona Junior) — Tue, 14 May 2013 12:43:00 +0000

We had fun testing to see what objects float and which sink.

We enjoyed guessing first and then testing.

Bird's nest, a jumping frog and ants

noreply@blogger.com (Scoil Chaitríona Junior) — Mon, 13 May 2013 13:21:00 +0000

Teacher found a nest in her garden. It had been blown from its tree by the wind.

She also found a little white egg nearby.

Tom Cuffe, the bird man will be visiting us on Wednesday. He will help us to identify the nest and the egg.

Emily found a frog in her garden.
Her dad Adrian carefully put the frog into the pets bowl and took him in some pond water to visit us in school. He was gorgeous.
We took the lid off to have a look and he jumped all round the class.
We were very surprised but we really enjoyed his visit to our class!

Meanwhile, elsewhere in our class:-

We are having great fun reading comics hand written and hand drawn by our own students,

We are looking after our worms and ants,

and we had girls from 1st class visit us to show us their caterpillar.

Thanks to all who make learning such a fun and hands-on experience for us all!

Bug collage

noreply@blogger.com (Scoil Chaitríona Junior) — Fri, 10 May 2013 13:46:00 +0000

Worms in the apples!

noreply@blogger.com (Scoil Chaitríona Junior) — Fri, 03 May 2013 13:24:00 +0000

What's worse than a worm in your apple?

........a half a worm in your apple. Yuck!

May altar

noreply@blogger.com (Scoil Chaitríona Junior) — Fri, 03 May 2013 11:39:00 +0000

May is the month of Mary.

We have a little May altar with a statue of Mary, a candle, some lovely fresh flowers and a rosary beads.

We are saying a decade of the rosary each day in May.

String telephones and our band

noreply@blogger.com (Scoil Chaitríona Junior) — Thu, 02 May 2013 09:55:00 +0000

We have been learning about sounds and vibrations.

We tried out some string telephones. We were surprised that the sound of our voices could travel through the string.

We used our sounds:- voices and drum beats - to make a great class band.

Some of us used our morning play time to match up opposite words or to make lots of silly sentences.

Fables

noreply@blogger.com (Scoil Chaitríona Junior) — Wed, 01 May 2013 13:54:00 +0000

We are reading and watching lots of Aesop's Fables stories.

We love the messages of the fables.
Check out these great links to online fables:

An egg box hedgehog

noreply@blogger.com (Scoil Chaitríona Junior) — Wed, 01 May 2013 13:50:00 +0000

Look at the fabulous hedgehog made from an egg box.

Such talented students and such talented parents.

Well done to all!

Intensive Literacy Learning

noreply@blogger.com (Scoil Chaitríona Junior) — Wed, 01 May 2013 13:34:00 +0000

We are really lucky.

We have 5 teachers teaching us every day for 30 minutes.

We read story books with them,

we write in our copies,

make words with magnetic letters

and play word games.

This is a fun part of our day and we are improving at our reading at a great rate!
Thanks so much to all the teachers who are helping us.

PE time

noreply@blogger.com (Scoil Chaitríona Junior) — Wed, 01 May 2013 13:30:00 +0000

We played "What time is it Mr. Wolf?" and really enjoyed it.

Next we practised egg and spoon races.

We finished our PE class with a fun game of "cat and mouse".

2D and 3D shapes that roll or slide

noreply@blogger.com (Scoil Chaitríona Junior) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 13:12:00 +0000

We had lots of fun with shapes today.

We had to name squares, rectangles, circles, triangles and hexagons and we had to find out which shapes roll, which shapes slide, and which do both.

Next we tried with our 3D shapes: cube, cuboid, cylinder, sphere, triangular prism, hexagonal prism, cone, triangular pyramid and square pyramid.

We discovered that all the shapes which rolled had circles in them.

Shapes with corners slide very well but don't roll!

Fun with sounds

noreply@blogger.com (Scoil Chaitríona Junior) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 13:07:00 +0000

We are learning all about sounds and hearing.

Today we made an elastic guitar and we noticed that the bigger the elastic is the lower the note it makes.

The opposite is true too. The smaller the elastic is the higher the sound it makes.

Teacher had a tuning fork.

She showed us how it makes a note and we all took turns listening the the note it makes.

Next she showed us what happens when you put the vibrating tuning fork in water. It makes a huge splash. We found this hard to do, but once you get good at it, it is really spectacular.

Teacher also showed us how a ping pong ball will bounce when you put a vibrating tuning fork against it.

We were able to get rice to vibrate and jump just by putting the vibrating tuning fork against the rice cup.

Finally we listened to what spoons sound like when you tap them against a table and hold their string outside your ear. We could hear all sorts of different bells! Again, the larger the spoon the lower the bell's note and the smaller the spoon the higher pitched the sound of the bell.

Ways to travel data

noreply@blogger.com (Scoil Chaitríona Junior) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:00:00 +0000

Look at our favourite ways to travel!

Food pyramid game and insect game

noreply@blogger.com (Scoil Chaitríona Junior) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 13:55:00 +0000

We played two great games in PE

We played a food pyramid game where we each had to choose a card, then find a space on the food pyramid to sit on. We really know where each food belongs on the food pyramid.

We also played a three legged game, which became an insect game when two pairs came together and tried to move with all 6 legs. This game was a lot of fun!

Positional words

noreply@blogger.com (Scoil Chaitríona Junior) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 13:50:00 +0000

We had fun giving directions and getting our friends to put bugs or shapes on a grid on the board.

We used the words over, under, beside, to the left of, to the right of...

Check out this link for some cool mini beast songs:

We practised our colours and all our shapes including squares, circles, rectangles, ovals, triangles, pentagons, hexagons, octagons and decagons.

Super Dino and the aliens

noreply@blogger.com (Scoil Chaitríona Junior) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 13:45:00 +0000

Super Dino had a wonderful time last weekend.

He got a new suit of clothes and he met some fantastic aliens.

Photos from Doodle 4 Google

noreply@blogger.com (Scoil Chaitríona Junior) — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 18:43:00 +0000

Check out some wonderful professional photos of the event on

http://marcosullivan.photoshelter.com/gallery/DOODLE-4-GOOGLE-2013/G0000E.4Be9hk3EU

Telling the time

noreply@blogger.com (Scoil Chaitríona Junior) — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 13:36:00 +0000

We are learning to tell the time. We are all really good at reading the hours, and some of us are great at reading the half hours too!

We would love you to ask us at home and we can help you read the time!