Welcome to the Junior Room’s Page
Academic year 2021/2022
In our class this year there are 15 students from Junior Infants, Senior Infants and First Class. We will keep you updated, on this page, on all of the fun and interesting things that we do in school.
Handwriter of the Week
Aistear
Art Work
Santa’s Pants
STEM Challenge – build the tallest Christmas Tree with paper cups
Actively Learning Word Families
Procedural Writing
The children were focusing on the writing genre before Christmas. They wrote how to make their favourite sandwich. How to make Rice Krispie buns and how to catch Santa Claus!
Music and Dance
Active Movement Break
In our class this year there are 13 students from Junior Infants, Senior Infants and First Class. We will keep you updated, on this page, on all of the fun and interesting things that we do in school.
April 2021
The children explored the theme Space in April. In history they learned that Neil Armstrong was the first person to walk on the moon and Buzz Aldrin was second. Michael Collins protected the rocket while they were in the moon.
In Geography, we learned how we have day and night. We learned the planet song and the order of planets from the sun.
In Aistear they had a role play corner. They used fantastic words such as launched, explored, craters, meteors and asteroids.
In construction they used lego and blocks and built rockets and space stations.
In Junk art they made their own rockets using bottles, tinfoil and paper .
In art they painted their own planet and made up a name for their planet. They drew aliens to live on their planet!
In science they made rockets that fly using a straw.
Remote Learning: January
STEM Challenge: Make a bridge that can hold toys.
STEM CHALLENGE: Make a boat that floats!
A lovely bird feeder for the birds.
The children made a house of cards. This was not an easy task ! Well done for your dedication and patience!
STEM CHALLENGE: Tallest tower challenge using any materials/objects at home.
Crazy Combo Creatures: Mythical animals which would be so cool if they were real !
STEM ACTIVITY: The children wrote their names in 3-D. They are a creative bunch !
December
The theme for December was the Arctic/Antarctica and of course Christmas/Winter. The children learned about all the animals that live in the arctic and antarctica. They learned that polar bears are found in the Arctic and they learned that the skin of a polar bear is actually black ! In art they drew fantastic polar bears using chalk and pastels.
In art the children made sock snowmen, fabric Christmas trees, a reindeer and Polar Bears.
Trip to the church to hang up the decorations they made. 
Hot chocolate and a movie on the last day.
Role play: Santa’s workshop:
Blocks: The children made santa’s workshop adn a candy factory using blocks.
The arctic. The children loved our small world area this month. In history the children learned about Tom Crean the Irish explorer. Some pretending to be him on his expedition to Antarctica.
The arctic. The children loved our small world area this month. In history the children learned about Tom Crean the Irish explorer. Some pretending to be him on his expedition to Antarctica.
Playdough and messy play
The children making fabric Christmas trees.
Sock snowman
November
Well done to our handwriters of the week.
Friendship Week: 23rd Nov to 27th November:
Friendship week was a great success. The children engaged in S.P.H.E lessons about friendship and bullying and did a puppet show to demonstrate how to stand up for themselves. The children did random acts of kindness throughout the week. The children brought in a box each and every child wrote a compliment for every child in the class. The children brought the boxes home and they got to read the lovely messages they received from their classmates at home. They did buddy reading ad they really enjoyed reading and discussed books together. They wrote a recipe for a friend and they wrote a friendship poem. Well done everyone on a fantastic friendship week.
The children wrote friendship poems.
The children drew how they are kind to their friends. Being Kind has a domino effect !
Science Week November 8th-15th
The children engaged in a lot of Science activities during Science week. We did experiments and design and make activities.
Skittles experiment: What happens when you add warm water to skittles? Predict and observe…. The colours dissolve and the skittles get smaller, leaving only a white substance.
In water: Gummy Bear absorbed the water and increased in size. In Salty water the Gummy Bear increased in mass a small bit and in vinegar increased but became a messy blob. (Forgot to get pictures of the above experiment) .
Which is the best coin cleaner,.. water, coke, ketchup , vinegar or lemon????Ketchup!!!!!
The children deigned and made a cinema . The success criteria was to be at least the height of a prit stick. The width of a A4 page. Have a foyer, box office, sweet shop, cinema screen and toilet. As you can see all groups achieved the success criteria. Some even added a car park or did a drive in cinema which is very relevant for the times we are living in !! Well done 🙂 
October
Our theme for the month of October was School, Halloween & Autumn. The children discussed the signs of Autumn. We set up a lovely nature table with all things autumn related brought in by the children. The children made autumn trees and discussed the animals you see in autumn.They made hedgehogs out of clay and toothpicks and they painted them brown. The first class children wrote an acrostic pumpkin poem and everyone made pumpkin clay pots. We read the story Room on a Broom . The children made lots of interesting potions in the role play area and the children wrote a recipe to turn their teacher into a……
Halloween Monster Mile
Lots of wonderful hedgehogs
Bat Silhouettes. The children used a bat template and did the outline using chalk and smudged it outwards to create a brilliant bat template. They also learned some interesting facts about bats.
Number recognition and formation
Lego Schools
The children drew some spooky ghosts.
The children made fabulous pumpkin clay pots.
First class wrote fantastic pumpkin acrostic poems.
Investigating what colours stand out the most on white and black paper.
September
Home was the theme for the month of September and the children had great fun acting out different roles within the home. Mammy was serving children to these hungry children,
Our Self Portraits
The children made houses using lego. To achieve the success criteria, the lego houses had to be at least the height of a glue stick, at least the same width as an A4 sheet of paper and have all the necessary rooms to make a house.
The children had lots of fun during water play. I overhead them measuring which container could hold the most water. They discussed what a baby needed to be happy such as food, love and baths 🙂
We read the story “The Three Little Pigs. The children dramatised the story and made the three little pigs houses. One made of straw, one made of sticks and the strongest one made of bricks.
Some Maths and fine motor skills.
Dr.Suess “Oh the Places we’ll go”
Winners of handwriter of the week so far…. well done everyone 🙂
Winners of writer of the month so far.. Well done, we have some future famous authors amongst us !
March
The Junior Room had a lovely visit from Nurse Joanne today! This month we have been learning all about the hospital as part of our Aistear programme. We really enjoyed hearing all about the job of a children’s nurse. We had the opportunity to ask lots of questions and were very lucky to get to see and use all the different pieces of equipment involved in the job. Bhí lá iontach againn!
February
In February, the children in the Junior Room were very busy learning all about Spring. We went to the garden centre in role play and built our own garden centres in construction. We painted scenes from “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” and we also planted our own seeds. We are looking forward to seeing our flowers grow!
May
Our caterpillars got fatter and fatter during May and eventually spun their chrysalis. The children loved watching the transformation.
After about two weeks we had butterflies!
A huge well done to First Class who took part in the Scríobh Leabhar competition. They wrote fantastic books and three of them were chosen as winners.
All of the children in the junior room put in a huge effort during English Literacy stations over the past 8 weeks. They read so many books and were delighted to have the 6th class in to help us with our stations.
Our Aistear theme for the month was ‘The Restaurant’. The children had loads of fun writing menus, building restaurants and playing in the role play restaurant.
April
We have been having great fun outside with some of our new P.E. equipment. Here are some pictures of us with the new javelins.
This month we looked at vets and the work that they do. We set up our own veterinary surgery in role play where the children worked hard to look after all of the different animals.
The children have been building higher than ever with their new unit blocks. Here are some pictures of what they have built.
The children had a fantastic time using some of our new science equipment to take part in a mini-beast hunt. The children worked in groups to find mini-beasts, identify them and then to capture them in pooters. In art the children then made mini-beasts out of clay and went on to paint them.
Our class were given some tiny caterpillars that we have been watching get fatter and fatter. Soon they will build their chrysalides and eventually we should see them transform in to butterflies.
The children listened to the story of The Rainbow Fish. They then created their own Rainbow Fish.
March
The children had great fun doing an Easter egg hunt on the last Friday before the holidays.
The children made beautiful hand and finger print cards for their mothers and grandmothers for Mother’s Day.
First class have been busy typing up some of their written work on the school laptops.
We continued the theme of the ferry port for March and the children have been very creative and imaginative in their different stations for Aistear this month.
The children learned lots about St. Patrick this month and drew some fantastic pictures of him.
All classes have been working hard on their free writing this month.
Congratulations to the winners of the ‘Seachtain na Gaeilge’ raffle who won some fantastic Easter prizes.
February
A huge thank you to the Ballyragget ‘Light up the Night’ tractor run who raised money to fund a fantastic talk for the children from Muirne from ‘Buddy Bench Ireland’. Muirne spoke to the children about the how to use a Buddy Bench and then supplied us with our very own Buddy Bench.
February has arrived and we have been learning about all things ‘water’. Our role play area has been set up as a ferry port, we have been building large ferry boats with our new construction blocks and we even introduced a water station this month.
January
We have been learning all about Africa in class this month. We incorporated Africa into all of our Aistear stations, learned lots of facts about Africa and have read a few books based in Africa including ‘Handa’s Surprise’. The children really enjoyed reading this story, sequencing it and then acting it out.
We have been taking part in the ‘Food Dudes’ programme this January. The children have been trying oranges, apples, bananas, grapes, cucumbers, mangetout, peppers and carrots.
We have been working hard on letter formation. Here we are practicing our letter formation through ‘writing stations’.
Bhíomar ag foghlaim faoi chaitheamh aimsire. Seo roinnt pictiúir de na páistí ag imirt biongó trí Ghaeilge.
December
Our Christmas play ‘A Midwife Crisis’ was a huge success. Thanks to all the parents for all their help in learning the lines and organising the costumes and thanks to everyone who came to watch and support us.
For P.E. this month we were focusing on dance. Here are some pictures of us dancing in the classroom.
After the snow day we thought that we deserved a treat to warm us up. Here we are making and drinking some lovely hot chocolate.
We made sock snowmen in art!
Aistear was based around Santa’s Workshop this month. Here are some pictures of us working in Santa’s Workshop, writing letters to Santa, building Santa’s workshop and of course wrapping presents.
Maths was all about shapes this month. We then decided to create pictures from 2D shapes.
Here are the links to the songs for our Christmas play ‘A Midwife Crisis’.
The Late Late Toyshow
Well done to our classmate Tádhg who did a fantastic job showing toys on The Late Late Toyshow this year. We are very proud of him. Here we are having chocolate Christmas lollipops the day before the show.
November
November has come and gone and we can’t believe it is December already. November was jam packed with The Christmas Shoebox Appeal, Friendship week and preparation got underway for the Christmas play ‘A Midwife Crisis’. Here are some photos of us with our ‘buddies’ during Friendship week and with our shoeboxes for the Christmas shoebox appeal.
Our theme for the month was ‘The Hospital’ and we were very lucky to have Marie come in to speak to us about what nurses do. She even showed us some of her equipment and let us try some of the equipment too.
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We were learning about magnets in science and we even made our own personalised fridge magnets.
Junior Infants
Senior Infants
First Class
Winter art
Happy Halloween from the Junior Room
October
First class have been busy writing procedures this month. They wrote a procedure about ‘How to carve a pumpkin’ and then they carved a pumpkin for the classroom. They also wrote about ‘How to make chocolate biscuit cake’ which they then went on to make, eat and share with the whole class.
October was a very busy month in the Junior Room. Our theme of the month was the farm and we completed lots of farm related activities. We built farms in construction, we read the books ‘Farmer Duck’ and ‘Molly’s Supper’ and we recreated scenes from these stories, we built farms, milking parlours and barns in junk art, we played with the farm in small world and we even set up a farm shop in the socio-dramatic play area. Here are some pictures of our farm related activities.
In October, we also read the story ‘Owl Babies’, we then used this story as a stimulus for two lovely art lessons where we used brown crepe paper and paper plates to create Mummy Owl and we used pom-poms dipped in white paint to create Sarah, Percy and Bill.
Autumn was also used as a stimulus for an art lesson on ‘Autumn Trees’, where we used cotton wool and autumn themed paints to create an autumn tree.
Junior and Senior Infants have been busy in maths where they have been using comparisons. They have also been working hard in English using their magnetic letters to build words. Here are some pictures of them at work.
First Class have been enjoying playing oral language games such as Hedbandz and Articulate.
Self Portraits – September 2017
First Day of School
Work that we are proud of – September 2017
On this board we display some of our best work. First Class were focusing on recount writing for September and they published their recounts on the laptops.
Sorting Sets in Maths
Junior Infants have learned the first group of sounds. Here they are making words with their magnetic letters.
Houses and Homes
It has been a busy month in the Junior Room. Our theme for this month has been ‘Houses and Homes’. We looked at different types of homes in geography, discussed the different materials used to build homes, read the story of ‘The 3 little pigs’, built the homes of ‘The 3 little pigs’ in art, played house with our new kitchen, labelled the rooms of the home, built houses with Lego in construction, built houses in the sand box, built houses in junk art, discussed and drew our journeys from our own homes to school, and played house in our ‘Small world area’. I think that everyone really enjoyed this theme. Here are some pictures of this work.
