A special visitor in Junior Infants...

We had a very special visitor in Junior Infants today! His name was Jim and he works in Dublin Zoo! He told us lots of interesting things about the animals that live in Dublin Zoo. He showed us some pictures of the animals, we saw elephants playing in the water, monkeys up the trees and meerkats sunbathing!
He also brought some things for us to touch and feel, like an ostrich egg, some animal skins and an elephant foot!
We had a lot of fun touching the different things and learning all about animals.

Autumn in Junior Infants

In October we were learning all about Autumn. We learnt about animals we might see in Autumn, activities we might do in Autumn and the different signs of Autumn. We went on an Autumn Walk around our school to look for these signs of  Autumn. We saw lots of different coloured leaves, berries growing on bushes, conkers and sycamore seeds on the  ground and even some acorns!

Junior Infant Newsletter 3rd November 2015

Welcome back to everyone after midterm break. We’re delighted to see the children back with happy faces and ready for lots of work!

We have a busy term ahead!  

For the next fortnight we will be covering lots of new things such as learning:

*       New sounds: ‘c’, ‘e’, ‘h’, and  ‘r’.

*       New sight words: Look, at, the, my, look, I, am, like

*       How to write the letter ‘a’

*       Number 2

We are starting to learn all about animals. For the next fortnight we will be learning about animals that hibernate and pets we can have.

Useful Vocabulary Winter    Autumn    hibernation    hedgehog   squirrel    nuts    gathering food      squirrel nest or ‘drey’     hedgehog  nest Cat    kitten   dog  puppy   rabbit    hamster    guinea  pig    bird    goldfish      snake     turtle      tank     aquarium     cage   hutch     bed       bowl    lead       collar

Some rhymes to practice at home:
Mary had a little lamb	Little Bo Peep
Hickety Pickety	I have a pet (Super simple songs available on youtube)

How you can support your child’s learning: Literacy: *       Find things around the house/ in books that start with our ‘s’,’a’, ‘t’, ‘i’, ‘p’ and ‘n’ sounds   as well as our new sounds ‘c’   ‘e’    ‘h’   and ‘r’. *       Cut out pictures from magazines/ brochures/ leaflet with this sound *       Look for this sound in the environment (on signs, in books) *       Encourage your child to practice writing their name and the letter ‘c’ at home Numeracy: *       Practice counting to 5 *       Find things that are pink and orange *       Find 2D shapes in the environment: circles, squares, triangles, rectangles *       Encourage your child to do sorting and matching activities at home: using pasta, toy cars, toy blocks, or socks!  S.E.S.E. *       Talk to your child about winter  and hibernation: what is hibernation? What animals hibernate? Why do animals hibernate? Look for signs of hibernation (squirrels collecting nuts) *       Maybe you could help hibernating animals at home: visit http://www.dspca.ie/   to find out how you can help hedgehogs at home *       Talk to your child about animals we keep as pets. Talk about the different ways we have to care for our pets (food, bed, play time, walks, bringing to the vet). *       If you have a pet bring in a photo to show the class!

Reminders:

Ø Please return homework folders and nursery rhyme kits each day.

Ø If your child is absent please ring the office so we can record any explanations.

Ø Encourage your child to put on and take off their coat independently- this is an important skill to be learnt as the weather begins to get colder!

Colours in Junior Infants

We have been learning all about our colours in Junior Infants. So far we have learnt about red, blue and yellow. Next we will be learning all about green. We do lots of activities when we are learning about colours: we make a colour table, we read a book about the colour, we learn a rhyme about the colour and we sort things by colours!
Here are some pictures of us hard at work sorting materials by colour.

PE in Junior Infants

We have started PE lessons! This month we are learning lots of new skills like balancing and throwing and catching. We are using beanbags to practise these skills.

Attendance Certificates

Look at all of the children in Ms Stapleton's class who had full attendance for September. 

Well done!

Shapes

Junior Infants have been very busy learning about shapes in maths. We are learning about the circle and the square. We made shapes using our playdoh.

Welcome to Junior Infants!

A big welcome to all of the new Junior Infants to Ravenswell. Its going to be a great year!

September in Senior Infants

We've had lots of fun this month in school. Here are a couple of the things we've done:

We've been learning about autumn and went on a walk to see what signs of autumn we could find. We saw conkers and lots of coloured leaves that had fallen. We know that in autumn the weather starts to get colder but the weather was lovely when we went out on our walk! 

We have really been enjoying our GAA lessons too. We're getting really good at throwing balls to one another and this week we even played a game! We had to throw the ball to each other and score goals. We were so hot by the end!

We are loving our Irish lessons and our favourite song is 'Seasaigí Suas'. Ask us to sing it for you and you'll get the biggest smile! 😀

Junior Infant Newsletter 21st September 2015

Junior Infant Newsletter 21^st September 2015

Hello again from Junior Infants.

We have had a busy fortnight in Junior Infants.

We have started staying in for the full day until 1.40pm. We are a bit tired but we are getting lots more work done!

This is what we have been doing for the past two weeks in school:

• *       Maths: We have been learning about the colour blue, matching, sorting and number rhymes
• *       English: We have started Jolly Phonics and have been learning about the sounds ‘s’ and ‘a’. We are also writing our names, tracing, colouring, and learning new rhymes
• *       Oral Language: We have started our Oral Language Chatty Groups. We are in special small groups working with teachers in stations. This fortnight we were talking about ourselves, our families and school.
• *       Fine Motor Skills: Every morning we do our fine motor activities to help us when we start to write. We are also doing lots of tracing and cutting.
• *       S.E.S.E. (History, Geography, Science):  We have been talking growing and changing, our bodies, and things we can do now that we’re big.

Nursery rhymes to practise at home:

Where is Thumbkin?	Jack and Jill
Miss Polly	Little Miss Muffet
Hickory Dickory Dock	Rólaí Pólaí

For the next two weeks in school we will be learning about our families and school.

Vocabulary: Mum (mother/ mammy)  Dad (father/ daddy)   brother   sister      uncle   aunt        grandparents       grandmother (granny, nanny, nan, gran)             grandfather (grandad, grandpa)       cousin older            younger                      family

How you can support your child’s learning: Literacy: *       Find things around the house/ in books that start with our ‘s’ or ‘a’ sound. *       Look for this sound in the environment Numeracy: *       Can your child count to five? Practice this at home (e.g. chanting, clapping, stamping) *       Find things that are blue and yellow  S.E.S.E. *       Talk to your child (using photos if necessary) about the people in their family. We have been talking to the children about how all families are different so make sure they can name the people in their family (e.g. brothers and sisters) *       Bring in a photo of your family for use in class *       Get started on your Art at Home Family Tree project. Talk to your child about how people are related *       Go to the library and read books about families(e.g. the Large family books) S.P.H.E. (Social, Personal, Health Education) *       Talk to your child about the importance of washing their hands properly and practise this at home.

Reminders:

• *       Don’t forget your yellow History Timelines
• *       P.E. is on Mondays and Wednesdays. Please wear school tracksuit and runners.
• *       Parental Involvement Programme Workshops start this week: Thursday 24^th September Ms Stapleton’s Class and Friday 25^th September Ms Murray’s class
• *       The Carambola Lunch Programme has started- if you have signed up for this your child will receive their lunch in school every day. They do not need anything extra.
• *       Please bring in a photo of your family for use in class. This photo will be stuck in their ‘Family’ booklet

We look forward to seeing everyone at the workshops this week.

Fiona Murray and Sarah Stapleton

Junior Infant Newsletter 7th September 2015

A big welcome to all of the new Junior Infants boys and girls (and their parents!).

The children are settling in well to school and it is great to see lots of lovely smiley faces coming in to school every morning.

We have been very busy in school already:

• *       In Maths we have been learning about the colour red and how to sort materials by colour. We are also learning number rhymes ‘5 Little Monkeys’ and ‘One Little Finger’. We are also beginning to count up to 5.
• *       We have been doing lots of fine motor activities to get us ready for writing.
• *       In English We are learning lots of nursery rhymes like ‘Incy Wincy Spider’, ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’, and ‘Humpty Dumpty’. We are also learning how to write our names.
• *       We are doing lots of colouring and trying our best to stay inside the lines and use lots of different colours

For the next week we will be learning all about our bodies and how we grow and change.

Vocabulary: The body: arm     hand     head    eyes    ears   nose    mouth   chin   hair    neck    cheeks    shoulders  knees   elbows     toes     feet     legs     back       stomach Growing: Baby  toddler    child    teenager     adult      elderly      growing    big    small

How you can support your child’s learning: *       Talk to your child about things they can do now that they could not do when they were a baby ( riding a bike, writing their name, feeding themselves, dressing themselves) *       Encourage your child to be more independent by getting them to do things for themselves (putting on and taking off their coat, dressing themselves, opening and closing their lunchbox, tidying up their toys, feeding themselves) *       Show them pictures of them as  a baby and discuss all the changes that have happened *       Go to the library and find books about the body and growing up.

Nursery rhymes to practise at home:

Incy Wincy Spider	Humpty Dumpty
Baa Baa Black Sheep	Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes
If you’re happy and you know it	2 Little Dicky Birds
5 Little monkeys	1,2,3,4,5 Once I caught a fish alive
One Little Finger	Hokey Pokey

These rhymes can all be found on Youtube or on our class blog  on the right hand side. 

Notices:

*       Junior Infant Parent Introduction Meeting is on Wednesday 9^th September at 11am in the school hall

*       From Thursday 10^th September Junior Infants will finish at 1.40pm every day. Please ensure you are there on time/ someone is therein your place to collect your child as they can become upset if they don’t see someone

We look forward to working with you all this year. Please don’t hesitate to come to us if you have any concerns.

Many thanks,

Fiona Murray and Sarah Stapleton

Caterpillar Update in Junior Infants

Junior Infants have been very busy learning all about minibeasts.

We had a very special delivery from the postman. It was a brown box that said 'Urgent: Open Immediately!'. In the box we found.... caterpillars!

     






The caterpillars were very small when we first got them. They had to eat the special food in their jar. They ate lots of food every day until they were big and fat!
        


Every morning we would look at our caterpillars and see how big they were growing. We wrote sentences about our observations in our writing copy.



We noticed that the caterpillars were crawling to the top of the jar. They were hanging down. One morning we came in to our classroom and saw that one had made a cocoon!

Over the next few days all of the five caterpillars made cocoons. They are now hiding in their cocoons until they are ready to change into beautiful butterflies!

Infants Fun Club

Infants Fun Club has started back again for the third term.  We have a big group this term and will be keeping them very busy.  We will be making the most of the summer with lots of outdoor activities every week.

We have two groups, the Ladybirds and the Butterflies.  Each group will have a chance to play parachute games, go Bug Hunting, play a variety of fun running games, and work on mini-beast activity stations.   We hope it will be a great term for all of the children taking part.

Here are some of the photos from our clubs.

Yellow Flag Developments!

The Yellow Flag Committee are organising an Intercultural Week after the June bank holiday. Each class will have to do projects on two countries. There will be different activities on during Intercultural Week. Each day every class will take part in something. We are looking for parents or relatives to help out during this week. If anyone is interested please contact the school; help is very much appreciated. The next step for the Yellow Flag is for the classes to think of a slogan or rap to represent the diversity in our school.

The Farm

Junior Infants have been busy learning all about the farm. 

We learnt about the different animals that live on a farm and made fabric and fibre animal crafts for display. 

We worked in our groups to make animal reports about some farm animals and then tell the class what we had learnt.

 We wrote about the different animals in our special farm writing books. 

We read some stories about the farm, like Farmer Duck and The Pig in the Pond. 

We also learnt some songs like 'Old MacDonald Had a Farm'. 

Junior Infants know lots about the farm now! 

Maths in Junior Infants - Term 2

We have been learning loads of new Maths this year.  In Junior Infants we try to keep our Maths as fun as active as possible.  We are counting all the time, and we count everything.  We sing loads of number rhymes and songs to help us learn our numbers.

We are always learning new maths games and have lots of interesting and colourful equipment to help us learn new things.

Here we are doing a shape experiment.  We wanted to learn which 3-D objects will roll and with will not roll down the hill.  We found out that the shapes with the curved sides will roll down the hill, but the shapes with the flat sides will not.  We also know that toys with wheels will roll down the hill, because the wheels have curved sides.

JI Maths, rolling

We also invited the parents in to a Presentation about how maths and number are taught in Junior Infants, and how they can help their children to learn at home.  A copy of the presentation can be downloaded by clicking on the picture.

Chinese New Year

In Ravenswell we are working towards our Yellow Diversity Flag, and as part of this, we are celebrating the wide variety of cultures in our school and our local community.

In February we all celebrated Chinese New Year.  It was a very exciting two weeks around the school.  All our pupils learned lots of information about the country of China, the Chinese people and the Chinese culture.  In particular, we learned about the history and the traditions surrounding the Chinese New Year festival.

Our school was filled with displays of Chinese arts and crafts and our writing about China.  We were delighted with how it turned out.  Every class contributed some of their art work to make a wonderful Chinese New Year display in the reception area.  We hope you have enjoyed looking at our work. Here are some pictures of the displays that were up around the school.

Chinese New Year 2015

We were also very lucky to have a visit from Master Yang Dong.  He came to the school to give us a display of T'ai Chi and Kung Fu.  All the children from Junior Infants to Second Class went down to the hall for the demonstration.  We had such fun.  His demonstration was amazing, but the best part was when he invited everyone to join in.  He showed us some kung fu positions and we all tried to copy him.  It was brilliant.  Here are some of the photos of us doing our kung fu moves.

Kung Fu Display, 2015

Reading in Junior Infants

We are always learning new words in Junior Infants.  We play word games, we practice our word walls and we read our books every day.  

Here we are going on a word hunt around the classroom with our student teacher Ms Lawless.   

Sometimes we go around the school looking for words.  
Maybe when we go out with our mummies and daddies we could start looking for words around the town. 

Every morning we are in our literacy groups.  We are very lucky to have some mummies in to help us with our reading and writing.  They play games with us, they help us to write in our books, and they read our books with us. It makes our groups so much fun to have parents in to help us. 

Here are some pictures of us working in our Literacy groups.  It would be great to have lots more parents in to help us. 

JI Parent's reading, 2015

Gymnastics in Junior Infants

Ms McHale's Class have been learning how to do Gymnastics in PE.

We are learning tumbles, balancing, crawling, travelling using our hands and our feet.   It's tough going but we're getting better and better. 

JI Gymnastics 2015

New Teacher for a New Term

Such a busy time in Junior Infants this term.  

In Room 6 we said goodbye to our old teacher Ms Piggott:

And welcome to our new teacher Ms McHale.  We hope we're going to have a very fun year in Junior Infants.