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

Teddy Bears' Hospital

2012-01-27T12:11:00.000-08:00

Free Poll by Brolmo.com

Our drama

2012-01-26T04:40:00.001-08:00

The REAL very hungry caterpillar

2012-01-26T04:24:00.000-08:00

Storytelling in our class

2012-01-26T04:17:00.000-08:00

Do you recognise our storyteller?

He tells us lots of wonderful stories.

All about houses

2012-01-24T06:10:00.000-08:00

We are talking about houses. We know the different rooms in a house, different kinds of houses, and different houses from different countries: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFYH7xj-EhQ

Today we painted houses while we listened to a really nice song about houses.

Here is the song we heard: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR5qPNPGCmY

Chilly Eskimos

2012-01-22T12:40:00.000-08:00

Look at the eskimos we have been making in art.

We hope they are not too cold!

Morning creativity

2012-01-22T12:09:00.000-08:00

Look at how creative we are during morning playtime/construction time.

Shapes games

2012-01-18T04:36:00.001-08:00

Making shapes with magnets

2012-01-17T06:52:00.001-08:00

Music with movement

2012-01-17T06:51:00.000-08:00

We are learning a new song. It is called "Morning Town Ride".

We responded to this song through dance, mime and actions.

We had a lot of fun with our new song.

Here is a link to our new song from YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6JCzkFpG8k

Working with K'NEX

2012-01-17T06:49:00.000-08:00

We are very creative when we make K'NEX structures.

We love engineering!

We love dominoes!

2012-01-13T04:43:00.000-08:00

Maths number game

2012-01-11T09:54:00.000-08:00

We learned how to play a new matching game. You have to match up numbers, numerals and spots. We will play this in teams and see can each team do the matching correctly. We don't think it will be too difficult for us.

LEGO programming: Cogs and a motor

2012-01-10T11:17:00.000-08:00

Literacy activities in Senior infants

2012-01-10T11:07:00.000-08:00

Tools galore!

2012-01-09T07:19:00.000-08:00

Our newest cocoon

2011-12-29T03:28:00.001-08:00

Confused about the difference between moths and butterflies? cocoons, chrysalis and pupa?

Try out this site http://www.bugs.org/bugquiz/answers/butterfly_moth.shtml

Hope this helps.

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-22T02:37:00.000-08:00

Carol Service

2011-12-22T00:20:00.000-08:00

We had our carol service last night in the church. It was a fabulous event, and we all thoroughly enjoyed the carols and the readings.

Congratulations to all our carolers. You were fantastic!

Paper tree decorations

2011-12-22T00:16:00.000-08:00

Look at the fabulous paper decorations we made in class. We got some help:- from our class artist, Calin, who regularly shows us how to make some lovely crafts.

Fingerprints and measures

2011-12-20T06:49:00.001-08:00

A chef and some engineers

2011-12-20T06:31:00.000-08:00

We ate some really delicious christmas cookies.

They were made especially for us by a fantastic chef!

We are getting really good with the dominoes now!

Pop Top and Bug Spray

2011-12-19T06:08:00.000-08:00

Teacher's new caterpillar

2011-12-19T06:02:00.000-08:00

Monday, December 19th, 2011

Teacher found a very green caterpillar outside on the frosty step. She has rescued it, and we will look after it in school and give it nice leaves to eat and water to drink. Hopefully it will turn into a healthy moth (or butterfly).

Forces with a hair dryer

2011-12-16T11:41:00.000-08:00

Forces Experiments

Gravity and Air

Teacher had a hair dryer and some balls of different weights and sizes.

After chatting about what the balls were made of, and what the balls are filled with, we put the balls in order, starting with the heaviest and finishing with the lightest.

The bouncy rubber ball was heaviest, the ping pong ball was next and the polystyrene ball was the lightest.

Next, we watched what happens when we let go of a ball:- each one falls to the ground because gravity is acting on it.

We took out the hairdryer, and guessed first what would happen if we put each ball into the slipstream and let the force (air) act on it.

We got so good at this that we could even manage to balance two balls in the slipstream.

A rubber bouncy ball does not float at all!

A little polystyrene ball will float up in the air stream, but is not heavy enough, or have a strong enough gravitational force to stay in the slipstream. It just bounces away, every time.

So, what happens if we use a cardboard cylinder (a toilet roll or a kitchen roll) to make sure all the air travels upwards and not to the side.

The ping pong ball is pushed up much higher.

Painting the clay decorations

2011-12-16T06:44:00.000-08:00

Christmas data chart

2011-12-16T06:39:00.000-08:00

Friday, 16th December 2011

Today we chatted about our favourite Christmas things.

Of course we all love Santa and Christmas presents, but these weren't choices for us.

Look at what we chose:

We counted and compared the groups, saw which had most and least, saw "how many more" or "how many less" there were in some groups as compared with others.

We learned lots of maths from this activity.

Another wonderful nativity play

2011-12-15T06:02:00.000-08:00

Well done to Ms. Conneely's class for such a fantastic play today. The songs were so catchy that we just had to sing along. We were all really impressed by such wonderful actors and actresses in this class.

Junior Achievement finale

2011-12-15T06:00:00.000-08:00

We had our final lesson with Josh. We have very much enjoyed our lessons on Junior Achievement with him. We had a great time.

Working with sticklebricks and clay

2011-12-15T05:57:00.000-08:00

The story of the First Christmas Tree

2011-12-14T06:39:00.001-08:00

Teacher told us the story of the first Christmas tree.

It happened when a man from Germany got lost in a forest late one winter's night.

He lit some candles and put them on a tree to keep him from feeling lonely and frightened.

At drama time, the man from the forest came to visit us, and we were able to ask him lots of questions about his frightening experience, and about what the forest was like on the cold dark winter's night.

We also heard how he chose the perfect Christmas tree.

We really enjoyed this story. We will remember it whenever we look at our own Christmas trees.

Nativity plays

2011-12-14T06:32:00.001-08:00

Junior Spider awards

2011-12-13T12:57:00.000-08:00

The story of 7

2011-12-12T10:14:00.000-08:00

Printing trees and The Gruffalo

2011-12-12T10:13:00.000-08:00

Christmas cribs

2011-12-09T10:41:00.000-08:00

More engineering skills

2011-12-09T10:34:00.000-08:00

Look at the great railway track we constructed this morning. We are very proud of it!

Experiments on Sound

2011-12-08T06:07:00.000-08:00

Different notes according to the size of the elastic band!

Playing our straw whistles.

Look what happens when a sound vibrates. It makes the air around it vibrate. Then when these vibrations hit the ear, our brains turn the vibrations into noise, and that is what we hear.
In space, where there is no air, it is very quiet. That is because there is no air to vibrare near the sound, and so the vibrations don't reach the astronauts' ears, so no sound is heard.

More work on the numberline

2011-12-08T05:55:00.001-08:00

After jumping along the numberline yesterday, we moved on to using a smaller numberline and jumping along it with our fingers. It is a really easy way of figuring out difficult puzzles, like what do you get if you add 3 and 5!

Addition: Jumping on the number line

2011-12-07T10:34:00.000-08:00

We are learning to add two numbers together by jumping on the number line.
We have a hopscotch number line in our classroom. Teacher asks us a question (like 3+4), we have to figure out the answer in our head, then jump along the number line to see if we have got the right answer.
This is a lot of fun, and we get the answer right almost every time.

Our Santa Masks are finished

2011-12-07T10:26:00.000-08:00

Guessing time

2011-12-06T11:03:00.001-08:00

Saving Energy

2011-12-05T06:38:00.000-08:00

Telling others about our class blog

2011-12-05T06:34:00.000-08:00

Junior Engineers

2011-12-05T06:26:00.000-08:00

Monday, 5th December 2011.

We have been trying to make a big domino run in the classroom. It is great fun. We are particularly enjoying designing it so the run is quite long. Watch out for a great video on this when we make a really great one.

Congratulations

2011-12-03T04:08:00.003-08:00

Great news: Our school website has received a nomination for an Eircom Junior Spider award!
Read about the Junior Spiders at http://www.juniorspiders.ie/. These awards are awarded at a national level to schools at primary and post primary level, and we are very honoured to be shortlisted for this award.
Well done to all teachers and students who keep our website up-to-date and looking interesting and colourful.
Well done to all parents, families, students and teachers who use our website to keep in touch with what happens on a day to day basis at school, and who use the links to continue learning at home.

More great news: Not only did we receive a nomination for our school website, but we also received two more nominations in the Best School Project category: One of these is for Our Butterfly page of the website http://scoilchaitrionajnrbutterfly.blogspot.com/ , and the other is for Ms. McLoughlin's page of the website http://scoilchaitrionajnrmsmcloughlin.blogspot.com/ .

We wish the very best of luck to our team of teachers and students who will travel to the Helix in Dublin on December 13th to represent our school at the award ceremony. We hope they wow everyone with their stands, showing other schools how we use our website and project pages and how easy it is to learn lots when using these websites.

More work on the geoboards

2011-12-03T04:08:00.001-08:00

Christmas decorations in Room 5

2011-12-01T12:55:00.001-08:00

Parachuting in PE

2011-11-30T12:12:00.000-08:00

We used a parachute in class today.

We were able to make a parachute wheel (both walking and running).

We were also able to make a tent and a mushroom.

Can you figure out from the videos which one is which?

We finished with a ball game. Using the parachute is great as a cooperation exercise.

We have fun with our friends when we play with the parachute.

Papier mache masks

2011-11-30T12:10:00.001-08:00

Waterproof umbrellas

2011-11-29T10:44:00.001-08:00

Lego programming: Robotics in Senior Infants

2011-11-29T06:21:00.000-08:00

Advent wreaths

2011-11-28T06:54:00.000-08:00

Another fabulous rocket

2011-11-28T06:53:00.000-08:00

Rain clouds

2011-11-28T06:50:00.000-08:00

Squares on our geoboards

2011-11-28T06:36:00.000-08:00

Number stories

2011-11-18T06:38:00.000-08:00

Visit to the Aquarium for Science Week

2011-11-16T13:35:00.000-08:00

What a morning!

2011-11-15T11:42:00.001-08:00

Try our video maker at Animoto.

Rocket Launch Morning

2011-11-15T06:53:00.000-08:00

Rocket launching morning

2011-11-14T07:06:00.001-08:00

Myspace Countdown Clock

Ready for our display day tomorrow

2011-11-14T06:42:00.000-08:00

Today we had the opportunity to launch another kind of air rocket. It is a Top Gear rocket.

It came from the home of one of the boys in our class.

This rocket was amazing. It flew so far straight up into the air. It took over 10 seconds to land back on the ground. It was amazing! Thank you so much for lending us your rocket for the morning. We had lots of fun with it.

Volcanoes on Venus

2011-11-11T13:35:00.000-08:00

We know that there are a lot of volcanoes on Venus. We know that there are some volcanoes on the Earth too. We know that they smell foul, that they can give off poisonous gasses and that they spit out very hot, red lava.

Today we made our own volcano in class.

Here are the things you need to make a volcano. You should get a tray to sit the volcano on, a small bottle and some vinegar and bread soda. If you would like the deluxe model, you also need some red food colouring to make the lava look red, and some wash-up liquid to make bubbles.

It was very exciting watching our volcano erupting.

There seemed to be a lot of gas made in this volcano. Was it enough to blow up a balloon? Take a look at this video to find out:

Now that we had a balloon filled with carbon dioxide gas, we wondered whether this gas was lighter or heavier than air. The people who thought it would be lighter than air, thought that the balloon would float when she let go (so they stood up), but those that thought it would be heavier than air and that it would just sink, they sat down on the ground. Look at the result! Who was right?

Next teacher blew up another balloon. We know that we breathe in Oxygen and breathe out Carbon Dioxide gas. That means that the balloon teacher inflated was now filled with Carbon Dioxide. We decided to drop both at the same time and see did they react in the same way? Some of us thought that maybe one would float and one would sink. To keep the test fair, both balloons had to be released at the same time. Look at what happened:

Craters on the moon

2011-11-11T13:18:00.000-08:00

Our own rockets

2011-11-11T06:44:00.000-08:00

Rockets on display

2011-11-10T12:37:00.000-08:00

Junior Achievement

2011-11-10T12:22:00.000-08:00

Balloon rockets and fizzy rockets

2011-11-09T10:36:00.001-08:00

We wanted to launch a balloon rocket. First of all we tried to get our balloon to fly straight to teacher.
This was impossible, though we tried our best.

Some of us thought of other good ideas: putting a straw inside the balloon, tying the balloon to string, and tying string around the balloon.

These were good ideas, but they didn't help us fly the balloon in a straight line. Finally, with teacher's help, we taped the balloon to a straw with thread going through it. This worked really well. We had to figure out in which direction the balloon would fly, and whether we could get the balloon to fly uphill.

We did it!!! Another rocket success story!!

Helicopters and a dragster

2011-11-09T10:03:00.000-08:00

We have some helicopter blades. By attaching a balloon we can get our helicopter to fly. This took a little practice though. We even tried holding the helicopter upside down. Ms. Lally was our champion helicopter launcher!

We all took turns at powering a helicopter that got its energy from our hands rubbing together. Some of the class were very good at this!

We have a car that is powered by balloons. We had to figure out which way to point the balloon so that the car would move forward. We guessed correctly. This is what happens when the balloon faces one way, then the other!

Space games at PE

2011-11-09T09:55:00.001-08:00

Learning about New Zealand

2011-11-08T13:48:00.000-08:00

Our favourite planets

2011-11-08T13:42:00.001-08:00

Felt Rockets

2011-11-08T13:40:00.001-08:00

Water rockets and space

2011-11-07T09:59:00.000-08:00

Launching air rockets

2011-10-28T11:07:00.003-07:00

We didn't quite get it right the first time, but every time after that the rockets flew like real rockets. They nearly made it to the moon!!!

I wonder will any of us become an astronaut when we are bigger and fly to the moon in a real rocket?
We certainly hope we will!

Our Halloween Walk

2011-10-28T11:07:00.001-07:00

A huge Well Done!! to all you wonderful dancers from 1st and 2nd classes. We really were "thrilled" today!!!

Well done too to our wonderful director, Ms. Lally.

We really really loved doing our SPOOKY dance!

Scary skeletons

2011-10-26T06:04:00.001-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpvuqj5nv6U

Halloween mimes

2011-10-26T06:03:00.000-07:00

Hurdles at PE

2011-10-26T04:25:00.000-07:00

Learning about Germany

2011-10-25T06:41:00.000-07:00

Tanya came to visit our class today to tell us all about Germany. We had a wonderful time learning all about Germany.

We saw where Germany is on a map. We saw the German flag (can you guess from this teddy what colours are in the German flag?) We heard about castles, schools, cities, apartments and houses, and we were fascinated to hear that children in Germany don't start school until they are 6 years old (some of us wouldn't even be in school yet if we lived in Germany!) Those of us at school would have no uniform!!

We heard about Christmas and Halloween in Germany, and we even learned some German words. The words we heard were quite long compared with words in English. We think speaking German would be rather difficult, but after hearing all about Germany we would love to go there.

We are very much looking forward to visiting Germany some time in the future. It sounds like a lovely place in which to live or visit. Thank you so much Tanya for telling us all about your wonderful country!

Straw Rockets

2011-10-25T06:33:00.000-07:00

Balancing at PE

2011-10-24T10:25:00.001-07:00

Halloween Data

2011-10-21T06:15:00.000-07:00

We are all excited about Halloween. We are doing lots of Halloween art and crafts, and learning lots of Halloween words in Irish. Today we made a Halloween data chart.

We each got to choose what we like best about Halloween (when it wasn't our turn we kept our eyes closed so we wouldn't see what the others had chosen). We talked lots about which was the most/least popular group, how many were in each group, how many more/less were in the different groups. Which would you have chosen if you were in our class?

Clay hedgehogs and gallery tour

2011-10-20T05:59:00.000-07:00

Fun with shapes

2011-10-20T05:58:00.001-07:00

Marshmallow 2D and 3D maths

2011-10-19T06:59:00.000-07:00

Halloween masks and prints

2011-10-18T06:37:00.000-07:00

2D and 3D shapes

2011-10-18T06:24:00.000-07:00

Pass the parcel: Examining materials

2011-10-17T10:31:00.001-07:00

Rhyming words

2011-10-17T10:30:00.001-07:00

We are getting very good at rhyming words.

We can say lots of words that rhyme with rat, with map, with hag, with man, with ham and with Dad.

We love looking for rhyming words and we even have a song that goes:

"I wish I had a cat, had a cat.......

And if I had a cat, I would.............."

This song changes every time we sing it.

Ask us to sing it for you at home.

Maths with sea creatures

2011-10-14T06:22:00.000-07:00

Visit to the bottle bank

2011-10-14T06:19:00.000-07:00

Flying Helicopters

2011-10-14T05:58:00.000-07:00

Friday, October 14th, 2011

We have been talking about helicopter seeds, and how they fly in the wind.

Today we made our own helicopters and we flew them in the class.

We tried changing direction of the helicopter spins (we did this by reversing the direction of the blades).
We raced the helicopters, some with paper clips and some without to see which would spin more and which would land first, and we raced big and small helicopters. We also looked at the shapes in the helicopters - we found and counted the rectangles in the helicopters. We really enjoyed this flying lesson!

Visit to St. Brigit's garden

2011-10-13T06:17:00.000-07:00

Rubbish bins

2011-10-12T06:33:00.000-07:00

We have been talking about putting our rubbish in the bin. We'll be talking more about recycling in the next week or two. Here are some lovely bins that we painted, cut out and filled with rubbish. They look quite realistic.

Pumpkin construction

2011-10-11T07:22:00.001-07:00

Instrumental "Room on a Broom"

2011-10-11T07:13:00.000-07:00

We have been reading a great story about a witch. It is called "Room on a Broom". We have a small version of this book in our room, and teacher borrowed the big book, so we could all have a good look at the pictures and the words.

Today we took out our instruments, and we used them, and our voices, to put in all the sounds from the story. Have a look at us giving a huge big ROAR like the dragon in the story. The ROAR sounds even more fierce when we use our instruments to help make our voices even more scary.

Leaf rubbings

2011-10-11T07:11:00.001-07:00

Finding acids with red cabbage

2011-10-07T10:44:00.003-07:00

More egg work

2011-10-07T10:44:00.001-07:00