June
Our themes this month were 'Minibeasts' and 'Summer'.
We explored different insects found in our gardens. We looked at their features and made our favourite ones out of clay!
We explored different insects found in our gardens. We looked at their features and made our favourite ones out of clay!
We went around the school and Poly tunnel in search of a range of insects for our 'Minibeasts Scavenger Hunt'. We were amazed at what we found. We had almost given up on finding a spider when the biggest one we had ever seen turned up! Some (adults!!!) were too nervous to take a closer look at its features, so it was set free quit quickly!
We were very lucky to have a dance teacher on work experience in the school who gave us some lessons in the hall. Everyone showed great concentration throughout and learned some super dance moves!!!
We have been learning about fractions. We started exploring 'half' on the Interactive Whiteboard.
We read a story called 'Pirate Pete and his Parrot'. Afterwards, we made our own treasure maps using lots of different hiding spots for the Treasure!
During our Summer theme, we read 'Rainbow Fish' story. We recycled some old C.D's and made beautiful Rainbow Fish mobiles. We then looked at other sea creatures. Although we learned that jellyfish are transparent, we decided to make ours as colourful as possible!
April/May
Our themes for April and May were "Life Cycles" and "The Circus"
The children learned how to make playdough this month. They decided on green and blue!
For our Life Cycle theme, we began by looking at the life cycle of the plant. It is important to know that plants need water, air, sunlight and soil to survive. To show this, we made flower books!
Next we planted our own flowers (sunflowers), to see how the elements affect their grow. We are checking daily to see if our seeds are spouting so watch this space!!!
We looked at images to see what to expect from our sunflowers. We then made paper plate sunflowers and used sunflower seeds for the middle.
Every morning we have a 5 minutes metal maths session. We have been focusing on number formation, using rhymes to do this correctly. It has proven to be very successful with children showing great improvement in their counting and formation of numbers in maths.
Our Wednesday cooking sessions have brought more delicious recipes our way. We made toasted cheese rolls and jam tarts with our initials on them. But the winner of all the recipes we cooked this month was 'Our Favourite Sandwich'. We had some interesting combinations like banana, cheese and onion. But the most popular was the good old ham and cheese sandwich. Children also made a cup of tea to wash down their fabulous snacks!
Here you can see children creating some gorgeous artwork using masking tape and different colour paints. The peeling off the masking tape at the end was the highlight of the activity!
Although our class is great to carry out our Weekly litter picking in the yard on Mondays. 'National Spring Clean' day was a day to bring the whole school together, insuring that the school is free from rubbish. While carrying out our duties, we got side tracked and decided to check on all the lovely vegetables and plants growing in our poly tunnel.
Continuing with our Life Cycle theme, we read the book 'Franklin Frog'. In this book we looked the frogs journey from an egg to an adult frog.
We then made frog life cycle concertina books so that we could refer to them if we forgot any of the process.
We then made frog life cycle concertina books so that we could refer to them if we forgot any of the process.
Maths, Art and drama were combined when we learned the song '5 Little Speckled frogs'. Children are enjoying the tactile elements of our display daily.
When the children learned that frogs uncoil their tongues to catch insects, they we slightly confused at how this works. So they partook in an activity where they did just that! Using velcro party blowers, they took it in turns to catch as many creepy crawlies as they could. Although this was slightly noisy, its was so much fun. Our pond life sensory box gave children the opportunity so see and feel the different elements found at the pond.
For our 'Circus' theme we looked at a video showing all the different Performers found at the Circus. We made clowns using a range of materials and a balloon for the nose!
We had an opportunity to practice tightrope walking. There were some very impressive moves being shown as they made it from one end of our 'tightrope' to the other. We also played different Carnival games in 'The Primary 3 Circus'.
As there was such an interest taken in the trapeze artists and tightrope walkers, we decided to explore how they balance. Using our rulers we looked at the importance of distributing the weight of an object evenly on both sides of the the rope in order to balance.
On Tuesday 16th May, we we so lucky to Celebrate African Week with lots of unique activities around the school. The day began with a drumming session on the Bongos. We then experienced the foods and spices used in African cooking. Finally there was an African clothes fashion show which was a huge success and everyone looked absolutely amazing!
March
Our themes for March were St Patrick's Day, Mother's Day and Easter.
Our children are very interested in rainbows. For this reason, we did a lot of work based around them in the build up to St Patrick's Day!
We began by creating hand print rainbows. Everyone loved the sensation on the paint on their hands and of course who doesn't love getting really messy!!!!
We made rainbow paper chains to decorate our school hall for St Patrick's Day.
With the construction of our 'Crazy Leprechauns' underway, children were painting, cutting, sticking and assembling with great concentration. They looked wonderful and cheered everyone up!
The children made a great effort to accessorise in green for our St Patrick's Day celebrations!
We were very lucky to have Ms Walsh and Shauna demonstrate some wonderful Irish dancing. Then we all had the opportunity to learn some moves ourselves. Well done to everyone for putting in such a great effort!
We made delicious healthy, fruit skewers for cooking. The children were eager to share, so they brought some to the lunch room for the other classes to enjoy also!
For our Easter theme, we began exploring eggs! We read a book called 'Odd Eggs'. This book taught us about lots of different eggs, from chicken eggs to ostrich, fish and even dinosaur eggs!
There was a bit of a surprise on our weekly Library trip this week. The Library has a new computer system to check in and out books. The children practiced scanning the books and waited until the name appeared on the screen. The machine then printed out our receipt. The children love 'Library Role Play' in school, so it was lovely for them to take ownership of the process in the actual Library!
We decorated Easter egg templates using pencils, glue and tissue paper.
Our EGGSperiment had us putting eggs in vinegar to see if the shell would dissolve. The shell became transparent and soft after two days! We were then able to bounce the eggs off the table, BUT as we dropped them from a higher height, they began to burst!! We made such a mess and loved waiting for the eggs to SPLATTER all over the desks! This was our favourite experiment this year!
For maths, we had to correctly order the Easter Egg number stripes, starting from the smallest number to the largest.
As a lovely way to end before the holidays, our class put on an Easter Bonnet Parade for the school. We had been very busy constructing our bonnets from a range of different Easter materials. We looked up pictures of other bonnets beforehand. We then designed our hats using diagrams. Construction was fun and we needed help from the adults when using certain materials. After our Parade in the hall, we performed some songs for the school. We were delighted when Miss Susan Ryan's, some of Ms Dunfords and Ms Orla Ryan's performed some lovely poems and songs also!
February
Our themes for February are Valentines Day and Dental Hygiene.
The month began so sweetly with Primary 3 making delicious vanilla ice- cream. This was our weekly cookery session, but also a Science experiment. The children put milk, vanilla essence and sugar into a small sandwich bag. This was then put into a Larger sandwich bag of salt and ice. We shook the bags for ten minutes until the ice and salt mix made the milk freeze! Now we wont have to buy ice cream ever again!!!!
The month began so sweetly with Primary 3 making delicious vanilla ice- cream. This was our weekly cookery session, but also a Science experiment. The children put milk, vanilla essence and sugar into a small sandwich bag. This was then put into a Larger sandwich bag of salt and ice. We shook the bags for ten minutes until the ice and salt mix made the milk freeze! Now we wont have to buy ice cream ever again!!!!
On Friday 10th February, we took part in the Operation Transformation, 10 @ 10 activities. We were very tired afterwards as everyone put 100% into the training session.
One of our Maths sessions involved children sorting coloured buttons. This lovely tactile activity was made by putting the buttons and clear washing liquid into sandwich bags. These were then taped to the table.
Valentines kicked off in Primary 3 with our craft workshop. We made 'love penguins' and special Valentines cards for our loved ones.
We were fully active again for our Valentines themed gross motor activities. From love hopscotch to cupids arrow toss, the children got really involved and had a wonderful time!
Our dental hygiene theme began with the story; 'The boy who hated toothbrushes'. We discussed the importance of brushing our teeth daily. For maths, children had to put the correct amount of bristles on their own toothbrushes.
We have started our 'Weekly litter Picking' every Monday. We try to make sure the school yard is a safe and clean area for us all to play in daily!
To continue our 'Dental Hygiene' theme, we watched a video showing us what happens when we go to the dentist. It demonstrated how to brush our teeth properly, to make sure they are sparkly clean. We then brushed our own teeth using our new toothbrushes.
We learned how fizzy drinks stain your teeth. We soaked hard boiled eggs in coke and then used our toothpaste and toothbrushes to clean them!
Animals have a fascinating range of teeth sizes and shapes. We looked at some of them, including the razor sharp teeth of the crocodile!
We sorted out the good and bad foods for our teeth. Then using our toothbrushes, we scrubbed the 'dirty' teeth.
'Twinkle, twinkle little star, look how shiny our teeth are!' Matching the children to their smiles proved to be a lot of fun!
We have become very competent in our lámh signs since September. Not only are we learning new signs for words daily, but also signs for songs. This month the children asked if they could perform their songs and signs for the other classes. We also brought along our favourite instruments to accompany some of our songs. It was so much fun and the children were very proud to show off all they have learned through lámh this year.
Every Wednesday we go to the library for Social Skills. We spend about an hour there. During this time we look through the books, picking out our favourite ones! We sit quietly and read our new books. We check out the books on our library card and return them the following week!
We looked at an artist called Kandinsky, who painted 'Squares with concentric circles'. Children created their own 'Concentric Circles' artwork inspired by Kandinsky. Some were drawing and painting their circles, while others were cutting and sticking! Overall everyone create a beautiful piece of work!
January
After a lovely Winter break, the Primary 3 children were eager to get back to school to catch up with their friends! We swapped lovely stories of what everyone did, where they went and what they got for Christmas.
For January we are looking at animals.
We made animal sandwiches using different vegetables. We also made sure that everyone took responsibility for cleaning up after themselves.
For January we are looking at animals.
We made animal sandwiches using different vegetables. We also made sure that everyone took responsibility for cleaning up after themselves.
We constructed some lovely owls to perch on the tree outside our room!
After learning about where animals live and why it is important that they have houses, children designed and built homes for our animals. It was great to hear their reasons behind using certain materials!
During Art, we mixed Primary colours. So for Science we made colour spinners and watched all the colours 'mix' into one!
We had a wonderful time in our class Vets Clinic. Some children brought in their own 'sick pet' teddies to attend the Vets. We had a reception area, waiting area, pet food area and Vets theatre where all the animals were treated. Once finished at the vets, the animals were brought to the Groomers to be washed and dried.....and hugged!
December
We welcomed December by taking a walk down town to look at the lights and decorations. We also prepared our Christmas Countdown Calendars.
Faithlegg- This years visit was another magical experience! To fill us in on all we needed to know beforehand, some of Santa's helpers came to the school.
November
Our November themes were 'Fruit and Vegetables' and 'The five Senses'
Our fruit and veg smoothies went down a real treat!
Our fruit and veg smoothies went down a real treat!
We decided to find out what was everyone's favourite fruit. We made a pictogram to show our results!
We enjoyed reading 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' so much, that we made our OWN books showing the little caterpillars exciting journey!
While exploring 'Our Senses' we made large paintings with our feet!
We used our five senses when we made popcorn.... sight, touch, smell, hearing and the most important.... TASTE!!!
October
October has come and gone and our pupil's learning focused around the themes 'Community Helpers' and 'Halloween'.
As October arrives.... so does cold weather, coughs and sneezes!!! So to insure that we are keeping our hands free from germs we carried out an experiment. We used glitter to show how hard it is to remove germs from our hands! Great fun and very effective!
It was very interesting to find out what community helper everyone would like to be.....
We had great fun with science experiments in October.
From making our tissue ghosts dance, using ballloons....
From making our tissue ghosts dance, using ballloons....
.... to unsuccessfully trying to make raisins dance. However, we had great ideas from the children as to why the experiment didnt work!!!!
Busy bees of Primary 3!
Pupil's of Primary 3 have leapt into learning this September.... quite literally!
We have had great fun looking for signs of Autumn in our local environment....
We got very messy experimenting in the classroom. We created leaves by marbling shaving foam and paint. We also discovered the beautiful leaf shapes we could, make by blowing paint with straws.
Our budding chefs have enjoyed learning new skills in the kitchen this September. However, they have enjoyed the tasting process even more!
Apple sponge cakes....
banana and blueberry pancakes...
fairy bread...
