The Sun, Moon and Stars!

Sorry I haven't blogged much recently, but things have been busy enough in school over the past while - not that that's a bad thing in terms of content coverage!
We have been learning all about the sun, moon and space over the past couple of weeks and the kids enjoyed this immensely! Here is our current classroom display: (Apologies for poor lighting, it is directly under a window!)

Geography/science: 

We discussed features of daytime and nighttime (sun, moon, stars, light and dark colours, people who work during the day and those that work at night, etc) and completed the above poster as they named the various features. We discussed how the sun is still around during the day even when it is cloudy. We discussed how we are never in total darkness because of the moon and stars. We also created night and day pictures. 

The following day, we learned about how the earth rotates and how this causes night and day. We pretended we were the earth as we all held hands in a circle. One child held the Irish flag (they were Ireland) and the other children were other countries in the world. One child held a flashlight (facing the child holding the Irish flag) and pretended to be the sun shining on the earth. They started by shining it on Ireland and I got everyone to rotate around, as the earth does as the day passes. I told the girl playing 'Ireland' that when she could see the sun, she would shout out daytime. When she could not see the sun anymore, she would call out nighttime (as it is now dark in Ireland, with no sun). We then did the same thing with a globe to check whole class understanding. We stuck a sticker on Ireland on the globe and we all shouted out daytime when the sun was shining on Ireland, and nighttime when it wasn't. 

History:
We discussed the first moon landing. We brainstormed things we knew already. We then looked at a PowerPoint which told us about the first people on the moon. 

First walk on the moon! from SeniorInfants

We watched some Youtube videos of the moon landing and talked about how the moon was different to earth. They then wrote about one thing they had learned about the moon landing.

We also read a story the following week on Neil Armstrong's life. We discussed this and created timelines of his life (What Armstong was doing as a child, as a teenager and as an adult).

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0618152393/ref=rdr_ext_tmb

Art: 

We created blazing suns. We talked about colours in the sun, how it is too hot to land on (unlike the moon), and general sun safety (you can't look at it in the sky, you need to protect yourself from the sun, etc). We used crayons in yellow, orange and red to create the suns on A4 pages. We used a squirty container to squirt yellow paint around the center and then repeated this by mixing more yellow paint with PVA glue and glitter. 

Literacy:

We focused on the sounds: 'igh' and 'oo' and following various activities and a lot of practice in reading words containing these sounds, they were included in our morning messages each day e.g. we are talking about the moon today, we are learning about day and night, we are making a moon today, we are dancing to high and low music etc.

                           

Music: 

We sang the song See-Saw (The Right Note) and pretending we were on a see-saw, we went up and down  to accompany the high and low notes in the song. We then listened to pieces of music 'The Elephant' and 'Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy', talked about the music, whether it was high or low pitched and responded to it through dance. I sang high and low notes to them and they showed whether it was high or low by bending down low or going up high on their tip toes. I asked individual children to do this also. 

Geography 2: 

We created a KWL chart of what we had learned about the moon so far and what else we wanted to know about it. 

We played an interactive game on http://www.earthsunmoon.co.uk/. We discussed through our playing of it, how craters are made, how mountains are made, how the moon moves around the earth and how the moon changes shape and what shapes it makes. We noted what we learned on the KWL chart and then created mini-moons from playdough.

English: 

We used what we learned about the moon to write a class non-fiction book about the moon. We looked at some non-fiction texts and talked about things that make a non-fiction text different to a storybook. They then drew a picture of the moon on a template and wrote some facts about the moon that they had learned over the past couple of weeks. We numbered the pages, created a contents page and added a coverpage to our book to complete it. It was then placed in the class library for reading.

So that's what I've been up to for the last two weeks, happy teaching!

Literacy Centers in Senior Infants!

My kids love our new literacy centers - we spend about 15 minutes on them every second morning (alternating with structured play for oral language development!) Each table tries out a different activity everyday:

1.) Readers and Teachers: 

Working in pairs, one child, the ‘teacher’ pointed to words in the room (environmental print, words on posters, labels etc) and their partner the ‘reader’ (wearing cardboard glasses) read the words for them.

2.) Post Office:

 We write letters, cards, shopping lists and notes to our friends and to teacher on different kinds of paper and post them in the post box in the classroom. I have included some word charts to aid their writing (feelings, sports and activities, food, days of the week, months of the year etc).

3.) Label the Room:

  

We label things in the room using post-it notes. They either use invented spelling, words they know already or copy signs from the environment when writing these labels.

4.) Card Games:

 Where one person plays cvc spelling games, another matches sounds to pictures, another matches upper and lower case letters together and another matches words to the appropriate picture. 

5.) Magnetic Letters:  

We pick words from the box to spell on the whiteboard using magnetic letters. 

I have never used literacy centers before but I have to say I absolutely love it ... despite having to clean up all the post-its at the end of the day! I may change some of these centers when everyone has had a couple of goes at each center, but that won't be for a while yet! I'm also going to give maths centers a try sometime soon, but will get back to you on that one! Happy teaching!

People Who Help Us

So when we covered the topic of people who help us, we were nearing the end of term and with all that goes on at these times of the year, we didn't get a lot of our theme covered! Here are some things we did get through however!

Geography: We sang the song 'People in my Town' and watched the video, using this resource to test the children on their knowledge of the various occupations and also to give them the vocabulary they would need to discuss people who help us.

We then checked in our mystery bag to see what had been left for us. We found lots of things like a spanner,  an injection, a stethoscope, a whiteboard marker, a letter, a menu, a scissors, pictures of a hose, a judge's hammer, a suit, a space shuttle and various other things. We tried to guess who left these things for us (what their job is) and talked about where they work. We also mimed various jobs and got the class to guess what job we were doing giving a hint of the place we work at if it proved too tricky! We also matched the people to the place they work in this worksheet I created:

Music: We sang the song 'What Shall We Do In Work Today?' (The Right Note Senior Infants) as a call and response song with one half of the class asking the question and the other half answering it. Each group got a verse to perform (e.g. one group were painters, the other plumbers etc) and they picked an instrument to portray their occupation and accompany their singing.

English: We learned the poem: 5 Strong Policemen:

"Five strong policemen standing by a store,

One became a traffic warden and then there were four.

Four strong policemen watching over me,One took home a lost boy and then there were three.

Three strong policemen dressed all in blue, One stopped a speeding car and then there were two.

Two strong policemen how fast they can run, One caught a bad man and then there was one.

One strong policeman saw some smoke one day, He called the firemen who put out the fire right away."

Creative Writing: We drew a picture of what we want to be when we grow up and wrote about this including where we would work and why we would want to be doing this job.

Oral Language: We discussed the various occupations and played matching games featured on http://treasures.macmillanmh.com/california/students/k/book1/unit6/oral-language-activities/neighborhood .

History: We tried out this lesson based around the story of Sleeping Beauty and discussed how in reality things and people change with age. It also centers around developing an appreciation of older people and the fact that older people are not that different to younger people:
See: http://www.ncaop.ie/schools/youngandold/en/infants/lesson7/teacher/index.htm

http://www.childrenslighting.me.uk/images/products/DISNEY%20PRINCESS%20SLEEPING%20BEAUTY%203D%20LAMP.jpg

Letter Formation Stations

As I haven't finished the current unit of work I am working on at the moment (People who help us) I will write this week about something I do every week regardless of the theme... letter formation stations!
Before I tell you about the different stations I have going during writing time, here is a really good interactive letter tracing resource I use to launch lessons along with letter formation rhymes and stories:

Interactive Letter Formation Resource

For about 5-10 minutes of the letter formation lesson I usually get them to practice writing the letters on their whiteboards and attempt to get rid of bad formation habits before I let them off on their own making letters.

Station 1: Making letters out of playdough. (Here's the recipe I used to make mine: Playdoh Recipe)

Station 2: Continue practicing letter formation on whiteboards.

Station 3: Repeated practice of letters in sand boxes (old perfume gift boxes filled with a thin layer of sand). Shake the box when they run out of space and start again.

Station 4: I give them A5 sheets of paper with the letter printed on them about 6 times.They must cover the letters with glue, cut some pieces of wool up and stick them on to cover the shapes of the letters.

Station 5: Formation of letters on blackboards with chalk or on lined paper taking note of tall, small and fall letters as they write them. Usually consists of a front page of letters (capital and lower case versions of the letter being studied) and a back page of words starting with the letter (e.g Ryan the rabbit).

Possible Station 6 idea: I also like the idea featured on this website: All About Learning Press where a Ziploc bag is filled with soap and taped to the table and then the letters are traced on the bag. I tried making this but have not tried it out in the classroom as of yet!

Children are moved around stations after roughly 5 minutes at a station. They continue the work of the child who has left the seat empty in the case of the writing on lined paper exercise and the sticking wool onto the letters exercise.

Water, water everywhere!

Water as a theme offers lots of opportunities for learning - here are some of the lessons I taught based around water last week!

1) Geography/Science/Environmental Awareness and Care: Water Collages

We talked about why water is important and whether we could live without it. I then got them to come up with ways people use water. The children who answered correctly chose the picture on the table that best suited their answers and stuck it on the chart until all pictures were used.
The following day I posed the question of whether it was only people who need water to live. We discussed where we might find fish in the town I am teaching in - whether there is a sea, river or lake nearby. Following the discussion of the differences between these, we identified our local river and nearby lakes. They suggested animals that live on a river or a lake. They chose the correct picture from the hidden table and stuck it on another chart. 

We then talked about how litter affects people and creatures living in the lakes and rivers and how we could stop them littering these. We decided to create posters/signs to leave by the river to encourage people to stop littering. We talked about what pictures they could include and what words they would need to use. We then mounted these around a large river chart on the wall outside the classroom. (Lesson idea derived from Greenschools website lesson plans).

2) Science: Floating and Sinking

We identified the terminology of floating and sinking and we talked about objects they felt would sink and which would float. We tested various objects in pairs, estimating and giving reasons for their choice first and then marking this in in crayon on the worksheet. We then tested it and talked about why it floated or sank based on weight, materials, etc (Floating objects were identified as being light, made of wood or being filled with air for example). We marked the answer in in pencil. We checked out the BBC website for a revision concluding activity. http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/digger/5_7entry/8.shtml

3) Music: The Little Mermaid
We listened to the Little Mermaid songs 'Under the Sea' and 'Part of Your World' and discussed whether the songs were happy or sad and why. We picked suitable actions to match the sad/happy quality of the music and used these to respond to the music through movement.

Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes.

4) Maths: Capacity

Compared various sized containers and whether they would hold more or less water than each other. Tested it out by filling one container from another.

We estimated and then tested out how many egg cups or spoons of water (and sand) would fill the containers.

We chose which method of measuring we would use: cups or spoons depending on the size of the container.

Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes. 

5) Gaeilge: An Aimsir

We described the weather every morning. We learned actions to accompany the weather elements (ag cur báiste, an grian ag taitneamh, an ghaoth ag séideadh, etc) and mimed these, getting others to guess what we were showing. We picked pictures from the mála draíochta and described the weather shown in the picture. We sang the song: "An bhfuil cead agam dul amach?":

One half of the room sang: 'An bhfuil cead agam dul amach, dul amach, dul amach, An bhfuil cead agam dul amach, dul amach ag sugradh?' The other half of the room replied with ' Níl cead agat dul amach, dul amach, dul amach, níl cead agat dul amach, tá sé ag cur báiste/tá cead agat dul amach, dul amach, dul amach, tá cead agat dul amach, tá an grian ag taitneamh.'

Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes. 

6) Religion:
There is also ample opportunity to integrate water into religion as Alive O2's term 3 lesson 1, 2 and 3 are all based on the theme of water, however we have not progressed this far in our Alive- O programme!

Let's go shopping!

The theme of shopping and food could have lasted for two months never mind two weeks as there was so much scope for integration! Here are some of the shopping centered activities that were undertaken by senior infants!

 1) Oral Language Development: 
We added a play shop area to the classroom for use during structured play and put price tags on all the items in it from 1c - 20c. We used real coins in the play center to pay for these items.
2) Maths: We learned all about money (1c up to 20c). 

Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes. 

• We talked about the different characteristics of all the coins and played 'what's the mystery coin' games as a class and in pairs (they listened to the characteristics of the coins and told me which coin I/their partner was talking about). 
• We played feely bag games for identifying coins without seeing them (using size recognition mainly). 
• We also played bank and exchanged 1c coins for a single coin. (To make them aware of the value of each coin.)
• We sorted coins in terms of value.
•  They used coins to buy items from a shopkeeper in their groups. 
• We added coins to solve problems and see how much money we had in our wallet. (Put dots on coins to remind us of their value and aid counting of money).
• We kept a class piggy bank to make use of our new skills in adding money to see if we could buy a new item for the class shop at the end of the day (during the day I would ask them to put in a 2c or a 1c or a 5c coin until we had a number of coins in the piggy bank to add up at the end of the day).

3) Creative/functional writing: Writing a shopping list. 

We read the story of 'Wallace's Lists' (see: Wallace's Lists book preview) and talked about all the things we could make lists about. We then used words from our food word wall in conjunction with our sounding out skills to write our own shopping lists which we later used in the play shop.

(Apologies for poor quality picture)

4) Gaeilge: Ag siopadóireacht. 

We found food items for our siopa in our mála draíochta. 'An maith leat ___?' was asked of some of the children after each item was removed from the bag and placed in the shop. We learned the vocabulary of 'cheannaigh tú' by trying to guess what each pupil had bought and hidden from us. They also described their actions by saying 'cheannaigh mé___' or 'níor cheannaigh mé ' when a guess was given. We sang and acted out the song 'Cheannaigh mé ___, cheannaigh mé ____, cheannaigh mé ____agus d'ith mé é.' (To the tune of Polly Put the Kettle On). We later changed this song to 'Cheannaigh mé ___, cheannaigh mé ____, cheannaigh mé ____agus chaith mé é' when we were discussing an siopa éadaígh the following week.

5) History: Shops in the past.

We named and discussed grocery shops, pharmacies and sweet shops. We matched items sold in each to the correct shop. We then looked at pictures of what these shops looked like in the past, guessed which type of shop it was and spotted the differences and similarities between the old version and the new version. 

Images do not belong to me. They are used for educational purposes. 

6) Geography: Mapping the Monster's Shopping Trip.
We talked about places and things that you would see if you took a walk through a town. They listened to the Monster's Shopping Trip on the British Council Website: 

They noted the journey the monsters took and the shops they visited. We then discussed making a map of this journey. I showed them how they would start by drawing the monster's house and then the road. We discussed things that might be around the road, buildings, bridges, lakes, trees, signs etc and added the shops mentioned in the story. They then created their own version of the monster's journey.

7) Art: Class Bakery.
We talked about things that you might buy to eat in a bakery. We looked at pictures of these foods (cakes, buns, croissants, pies, doughnuts, biscuits, pastries) and talked about different cake designs. They then created their cakes and pasteries from clay. The only downfall of these creations was that when they dried they were quite brittle to handle and to paint. I covered them in PVA glue to harden them a little before we painted them to minimise damage. If I were making them again I would consider making them from homemade playdough in various colours and then bake them in the oven to harden them, meaning they wouldn't have to be painted. I would also have gone over them myself making sure all the little decorations they had stuck on were merged properly to the piece before it dried. Other than that, the kids loved this and they looked quite impressive on display in our class bakery (which the early finishers created a banner for)!

8) Music: Let's Go Shopping song

"Let’s Go Shopping,

Put on your coat and hat,

Carry your little bas-ket,

Over your arm like that,

And we’ll go walking, walking, walking, walking,

Walking down the street.

Shopping, shopping, shopping, shopping

Shopping for things to eat!

Good morning Mr. Grocer man and how do you do?

(Talking)A very good morning Madam

    What can I do for you?

Id like a dozen new laid eggs,

a pound of butter too,

A nice jar of honey (Doe, doe doe, doe, doe-me)

Here is my money (Doe, doe doe, doe, doe-me)

Good day, (me-doe) (pause)

good day

to you

And we’ll go walking, walking, walking, walking,

Walking down the street,

Shopping, shopping, shopping, shopping,

Shopping for things to eat!"

Spring Has Sprung!

My latest adventures with Senior Infants have been based on the theme of spring.
We started off with acknowledging the signs of spring by looking out the window and then at a spring picture which things kept disappearing from! They had to tell me what sign of spring (daffodils, cherry blossoms, lambs, nests, frog spawn etc.) had gone missing each time.
We also acknowledged our new desktop wallpaper which I feel is an excellent daily reminder of the season!

Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes. 

1) History: 

We read the story of the Ugly Duckling talking about how he felt, how we could help him if we were there at the time and how we should treat people who are different. We then drew a picture of an event from the beginning, middle and end of the story. We cut the pictures out and gave them to our partners to sequence and stick onto some nice blue paper. 

Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes. 

2) English: Instructional writing: 
Following the theme of the ugly duckling we created our own four step ducklings from playdough. (Roll a small ball for the head, a big one for the body and make a tail, stick on googly eyes, stick on a beak.) After they had been made we drew a picture of each stage of the process in four boxes and wrote a sentence about each stage under each picture. We then took a picture of the finished product to stick onto our instructions at the end.

Next week we will be planting seeds and they will undertake a similar task following this activity!

( Edit: See our sown onions!

)

3) Science and Geography: 
We focused on animals and their young. We read the story ' Baa! Moo! What Will We Do?' about some farm animals who lost their babies.                                       

                                                                   Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes. 

We helped the mother animals find the baby animal pictures that I had placed/hidden around the room. They named the baby animals when they spotted them and called out to them using the poem we are learning: Come My Chicks:

Come my chicks,

It's time for bed,

that's what mother hen said,

But first I'll count you just to see,

If you have all come back to me,

Chick 1, chick 2, chick 3, Oh dear!

Chick 4, chick 5, yes you're all here!

We replaced the words 'chicks' and 'hen' with whatever animal we were calling out for at the time. E.g piglets, pig, foal, horse, lamb, sheep, calf, cow, gosling, goose.

We also discussed differences and similarities between the mothers and their young as we found the baby animals.

Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes. 

We also focused on the frog life cycle and played this fun game to learn and discuss the stages of a frog's life: http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/scienceforkids/life_cycle/frog_lifecycle.htm

We then drew the stages ourselves and labelled them after. 

4) Art: 

We painted spring flowers focusing on different flowers we could make with different brush sizes: We dabbed big fluffy paintbrushes on the page to paint fluffy yellow flowers, red thin brushes to paint thin petals and thin dots of blue paint to paint bluebell like flowers. Then we painted in all the stems on the flowers and some grass to finish off!

                  

5) Music:

We sang the song 'Over In the Meadow' (From the Right Note Programme: Senior Infants) about all the animals and their young and we made sound effects between each verse to represent the animal we sang about.

Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes. 

6) History (lesson 2): 

We read the Irish Legend of the Children of Lir on this website:

http://www.askaboutireland.ie/learning-zone/primary-students/infants/english/the-children-of-lir/ 

We linked this with drama by acting out important scenes from the story as we read through it e.g. the transformation of the children into swans, their travelling from lake to lake and their changing from swans to old people. We then drew pictures from the story and wrote a sentence to accompany what we had drawn. We sequenced some of the images drawn following this activity. 

Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes.