Fun with Phonics 2

Since my previous post about phonics we have learned four more letters and letter-sounds. Have a look below.

g

g says |g| as in go.

o

o says |o| as in orange.

l

l says |l| as in lamp.

n

n says |n| as in nut.

Aaaarrgghh, Spider!

We are back in school after the Christmas holidays. We had a very busy week.


Super Spiders

We love the rhyme Incy Wincy Spider. Most of us knew the rhyme even before we started school. Teacher was so surprised! Laura told us that spiders have eight legs. We counted the legs on our pictures of spiders to make sure. She was right! James told us that spiders spin webs. Sam told us that spiders eat the flies that get caught in the webs.

We listened to the story “The Very Busy Spider” by Eric Carle. Have a listen.

For our cutting activity we coloured and cut out spiders. Some of us even put patterns on the legs. We are very clever.

We also made spiders using paper plates. They are in the shape of a circle. We painted the plates black. 

We stuck two circles on the plate for eyes. We stuck a semi-circle on the plate as the spider’s mouth. Anna told us the word semi-circle. It means half a circle. We counted out eight legs each. We folded the legs backwards and forwards to make accordion legs.

Our colourful spiders are spinning a web outside the classroom door. Some of the black spiders are out there too. The rest of the spiders are hanging in our classroom. We love having our eight-legged visitors watching us throughout the day!

Playground Games

We are learning playground games in PE. So far we learned The Farmer in the Dell, Duck, Duck, Goose and Cat and Mouse. We had so much fun. Can you guess what game we are playing in these photos?

Winter

We are learning about winter. We drew winter trees, Winter trees have no leaves. Have a look at our trees.

We learned a song called “Snowman”. It’s a great song about building a snowman in our garden at wintertime. We sang it every morning this week. We hope it snows soon!

On Wednesday our teacher read a story for us called Snowman. On Friday as a treat we watched it on the Interactive Whiteboard. We loved it! Here is the story.

Gaeilge

The weather is cold in Winter. Rocaí Rua says “Tá sé  fuar.” Sometimes it rains. We had a lot of rain during the holidays. Rocaí Rua says “Tá sé ag cur báistí.” We know a rhyme called Plip Plop Plí.

Time for Maths

We are talking about time in Room 2. We have lots of different times in our school day like play time, Rocaí Rua time, lunch time, yard time, letter time, home time! We drew a picture of a time we like. Here they are up on the wall in the classroom.

Math Stations

This week we started our math stations. We are in five groups. Ms Currivan comes to our class for half an hour each day. We do a different activity every day. There are four maths stations and one oral language group. The oral language group goes to Ms O’Flaherty’s room. Here are the different maths activities.

Number Jigsaws

Making Sets

Mosaic Pegs

Making patterns

We are really enjoying our math stations!

Happy Christmas Everyone!

The boys and girls in Room 2 would like to wish everyone a wonderful Christmas and a safe and happy New Year!

See you all next year!

Countdown to Christmas

Yesterday was our last day of school in 2013. We will be back again next year for more fun in Room 2! Look at some of the things we got up to on our last week of school before the holidays.

Shapes and More Shapes!

We hunted for shapes in the hall during PE time. We had to make sure to find the right shape of the right colour.

We all had a turn using shapes to make prints in the morning.

Here are some we made displayed on the wall.

We drew more shapes in our maths copies. Some of us even tried writing the names of the shapes!

We drew rectangles.

We drew triangles.

We drew squares.

Christmas Show

We performed some of our Christmas songs and rhymes for our mammies and daddies on Wednesday. We sang Waiting, Jog Along, Little Donkey to Bethlehem, Carol of the Journey, Here Comes Santa Claus and we recited When Santa Got Stuck Up the Chimney.

Here we are sitting on the steps in the hall. All three classes sang together.

Look at all the mammies and daddies that came. They gave us a big bualadh bos! Thanks for coming!

Magic of Music

Catherine came again this week and she brought us on an adventure around the world! We celebrated Christmas in Mexico, Hawaii and the Caribbean!

Here we are in Mexico wearing sombreros.

Here we are in Hawaii wearing hula skirts.

Here we are in the Caribbean with our long dread-locked hair.

Christmas Art

We used shapes to make the nativity scene. We put Jesus in the manger with Mary, Joseph, shepherds and the three Wise Men. Some of us have angels in our picture too. We all have a star at the top.

We made snowy Christmas trees by cutting out three green triangles.

Rhymes

We learned some Christmas rhymes. We can say Pull a Cracker, When Santa Got Stuck Up the Chimney, Little Jack Horner and the counting rhyme Five Mince Pies in a Baker's Shop.

We acted out the rhyme Little Jack Horner.

Writing

We were using our Christmas writing book all week. 

There are different Christmas pictures on each page. Here we are drawing the tinsel and colouring the Christmas tree.

Santa Claus Came to Visit.

On Thursday Santa Claus arrived at school. We dressed up to meet him. We went into the hall to greet Santa! We sang Here comes Santa Claus.

Some of us bought raffle tickets and the winners were called out when Santa was in school. We had three winners! The three lucky boys in our class had their photo taken with Santa Claus.

Carol Service

On Friday the whole school performed the Carol Service. We listened to the story of the birth of Jesus and we sang songs to accompany the story. All the Junior Infants sang Waiting, Mary and Carol of the Journey.

Class Raffle

Just before we went home on Friday we had a raffle in our classroom. We all had a turn pulling a name out of the box. We were all winners. Yippee! Some of us won the colour books we made and others won the big group collages we made at the start of the year using red paper and green paper.

The Shape Shenanigans Continue while Christmas is Coming!

We added two more shapes to our shape table. Have a look.

We went on a shape walk outside. We always walk out the cloakroom door when we go to the yard after lunch. This time was a little different. We had our "maths eyes" on. You won't believe all the shapes we saw - squares, rectangles, circles, diamonds, squares. Shapes are everywhere!

We walked up to the top yard where the big girls and boys play. Straight away we found shapes at the top of the steps. We saw the rectangle shaped red sin bin. We hope we never have to go into the sin bin!

On the top yard there are shapes painted on the ground. We played a game. Teacher called out a shape and we had to find it.

Circles

Rectangles

Triangles

Squares

A shape that's not a circle, square, triangle or rectangle!

We really enjoyed the game. We lined up to go back into the classroom.

We drew circles in our maths copies. Aren't they fantastic?

During PE we worked in teams. We had to collect shapes. Each team had their own colour to collect. After we collected all the shapes we made pictures with them.

Christmas is Coming!

We made Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer with a triangle and hand shapes. We cut out the triangle and the hands. We stuck the hands on top. We used two circles for his eyes. Can you guess what we used the ball of red crepe paper for?

Here are some of our reindeer hanging on the line. They are having a rest before they have to pull Santa's sleigh on Christmas Eve!

We have a Christmas writing book at school. When we coloured the front cover we listened to this song.

We are learning lots of beautiful Christmas songs. We won't give them away just yet though as our mammies or daddies will be coming into school to hear us sing them next week!

Can you guess who is stuck up the chimney in our classroom?

The First Christmas

We are learning all about the story of the First Christmas. We sing songs to accompany the story. We love Jog Along Little Donkey. We cheer the donkey on as he carries Mary all the way to Bethlehem. We also sing Carol of the Journey when Mary and Joseph are travelling to Bethlehem. We put up the crib in our classroom. Baby Jesus was born in the stable. The angels told the shepherds to visit Jesus. The three kings followed a star that led them to Jesus' manger. We gathered all the sheep from our box of farm animals and put them behind the shepherd!

Magic of Music

We had another visit from Catherine from Magic of Music this week. She used a pop-up book to tell us the story of The Nutcracker. The Nutcracker is a story based around Christmas time. It is a ballet and the music was composed by Tchaikovsky.

Catherine gave us parts in the story. One of the boys was the Mouse King and one of the girls was the Nutcracker soldier. The rest of the boys were the mouse army and the rest of the girls were the soldiers. We had to pretend fight each other while listening to the music! The mice were sneaky and tried to surprise the soldiers when the soldiers were sleeping but the soldiers woke up and fought back. The soldiers won. Well done girls!

We then used the instruments. We all had a type of bell, shaker or tambourine. We sang Jingle Bells and played the instruments along with it!

Weight

This week we all had a turn using the weighing scales during the morning activity. We noticed that they were a little bit like a see-saw. The heavy side goes down and the light side goes up. Some of us even balanced the scales!