April 2018
Having settled back in after our Easter break, everyone in the Junior Room got their chef’s hats on as we started working on our new Aistear theme, The Restaurant. There were lots of fun and interesting activities with everyone getting the chance to cook, taste and serve lots of different types of foods including pizza, rice krispie buns, smoothies, pasta and crumble and ice cream!
We took part in lots of other food activities as well this month including learning a special Food Song and helping to reduce and reuse by collecting containers to use as dishes in our restaurant. We learned more about money in Maths and this helped us to order and pay for our food during Aistear time.
With all the food we were making ourselves we also learned about another hungry creature, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We listened to his story and learned a lot about the big changes caterpillars have to go through before they finally change into butterflies. We also made our own caterpillar models in art from paper and glue.
Along with the caterpillar we also looked at some other types of animals including fish. We talked about the different types of fish we knew and learned more about another animal which lives in the water – the dolphin. This helped us when we started work on our last art activity this month creating our own fish tank displays.
March 2018
As March arrived in Dangan, everyone in the Junior Room was still keeping an eye out for all the new signs of Spring that were starting to appear around us. We continued watching and looking after our seeds which we had planted and were checking each morning to see how much they had grown. We also learned more about different types of plants and flowers, especially those we might be able to find in the fields and gardens around our school.
We had lots of fun in our Gaeilge activities as we read the story of “Cinnín Óir Agus Na Trí Bhéar”. We all enjoyed hearing the Irish words for the different parts of the story and even got the chance to act out our own drama based on Cinnín Óir’s big adventure.
Suzanne Dempsey from Roscommon County Council visited our class to hear all about what we had learned about litter and waste for our Green Schools project. We were able to tell her about not being litter bugs, reducing, reusing and recycling our waste and about our new composter which we had just had set up in our school this month.
Towards the end of the month we looked at the story of another very important saint, St. Patrick and the story of how he ended up coming to Ireland. We also did lots of work on the story of Easter and why it is such an important celebration for people all around the world. Additionally, we learned about Knotweed removal Liverpool and how it is affecting our environment.
Our new composter which Bernie helped us to set up this month:
February 2018
Spring got a special welcome in the Junior room this month as we started to look at some of the changes happening around us with the coming of a new season. In Aistear we started our new theme of the Garden Centre and took time to look at some different plants we can find around us. We looked at the different parts of some flowers and trees and how a lot of these plants begin to grow from tiny seeds. We also got to plant some seeds of our own and were delighted to see them start to come to life as the month went on.
As Spring had finally arrived we also wanted to look at the different signs of Spring we could see outside the classroom so we all went on a Spring walk around Dangan. We saw lots of different living things which were starting to wake up and return to life after the long winter months.
The feast of St. Brigid arrived at the start of the month so we listened to the stories of when she was a little girl, her special cloak and the kindness she always showed to other people. Catholic Schools Week also took place this month and we got the chance to take part in some special prayer services and activities to celebrate this.
We were also very keen to celebrate Mother’s Day which is coming up in March and to help to do this we started making some special Mother’s Day flower pots. Everyone is spending lots of time using lots of different colours and shapes and we were all looking forward to bringing home pots which will be full of such bright and colourful flowers.
January 2018
Having enjoyed our Christmas break in the Junior Room, we arrived back at school looking forward to all the different activities we were going to take part in this term. To start with this month we looked at all the different things we knew about being healthy and the ways different people help us if we ever feel unwell. In our Aistear we set up our own Health Centre in our classroom. We talked about things like operations and x-rays, got to try out an operation game and even made and got to use our own x-ray machine! We then became doctors ourselves when we brought our sick teddies to school and got to take them to the Teddy Bear hospital where we were able to look after them and make them feel better. In our Maths meanwhile Junior Infants started working on the story of the number 4 while Senior Infants began looking at number 8.
With the weather still very cold outside we looked at some animals who prefer living in weather like this. We talked about what we already knew about penguins and what things we would like to learn about them before we started looking at some of their features and the way they live. We even got to practice a special Penguin Dance! We also looked at some other parts of the places where penguins live and set up our own Arctic scene including a special igloo made from marshmallows.
In our art we continued working on the Winter theme by creating our own snowy scenes with snowmen and snow-women, while Teddy George went on lots of very exciting visits to different people’s houses. Everyone also started our swimming classes in Aura in Carrick On Shannon which everyone is getting on really well with so far!
December 2017
December was a very busy month right across the school as we all got prepared for our very special Christmas show. In the Junior Room we were all working very hard on our Christmas play which we were going to perform as part of the performance. It was about a very sleepy shepherd who was having trouble looking after his sheep. This made us appreciate the importance of quality play surfaces like those installed by https://wetpourinstallation.co.uk/, which ensure that children can play safely outside. Additionally, the sports hall flooring provided a safe and comfortable environment for our rehearsals, allowing us to practice without worry. Our play had lots of great songs for us to practice and we really enjoyed working on it together.
The day before our performance we got the chance to see a show ourselves when we visited the Dock in Carrick On Shannon to see the show “Little Red Riding Hood.” The show was really good and we all really enjoyed it.
On the night of our own Christmas concert everyone arrived in their costumes and we were all ready to perform our play for all our family and friends. Everyone did a fantastic job saying their lines and singing the different songs. Our whole class got a big round of applause at the end and everyone really enjoyed our performance.
In our last week before the holidays we did lots of Christmas art and other fun activities. On our last day we heard a strange ringing sound coming from the hall. When we checked we found we had a special visitor who had come to see us – Santa Claus! He asked us if we had all been good girls and boys and gave everyone a special Christmas surprise. We all left school very excited and looking forward to spending Christmas with our friends and families.
October 2017
This month the Junior Room had a special visitor to their class when Garda Michael Pilkington came to talk to all the pupils about the work that the Gardaí do in our community. Garda Pilkington told our class all about things like fingerprints, pepper spray and Garda dogs and we were able to use what we learned in our Aistear activities which this month was set in the Garda station.
Junior and Senior Infants also got the chance to visit the library in Carrick on Shannon this month for a special storytelling session with writer and poet Chris Thompson. Everyone really enjoyed hearing the interesting stories Chris had to tell us. We also had a special prayer service in school later in the month to celebrate the World Day of Prayer.
In class we looked at different living and non-living things and did lots and games and activities using our senses in different ways. We guessed different foods by tasting, listened for different sounds and used our sense of smell to guess some things we weren’t able to see. In Gaeilge we listened to the story of “An Tornapa Mhór” and learned some new Oíche Shamhna words and phrases.
In Art we made Garda crests, wanted posters and Halloween pumpkins and we did some colouring for our entries for a Halloween competition. We also did lots of other activities for Halloween like learning some Halloween songs and dressing up in our spooky costumes for our Trick Or Treat to help to raise money for Temple Street Hospital.
September 2017
With all the new Junior Infants settling in, it was a very busy month in the Junior and Senior Infant classroom. Having arrived back to school in the middle of Autumn we looked at lots of different things to do with this season, such as Autumn poetry and the preparations made by animals like the squirrel for the coming winter months.
We also went on a September walk where we looked at different pieces of nature, visited the shop and had the chance to collect some blackberries. We used these to make some apple and blackberry crumble and had some as a treat along with some ice cream when we got back to school!
Our Infant classes also looked at the work of the farmer this month and the different types of jobs they have to do each day. We even got the chance to try out some of these jobs and activities for ourselves with our Farm Shop and Farm Playset Aistear activities, and we had the chance to make some animals of our own during our art activities.
