Height

Today we learned about tall and short.  We compared all the children in our class and decided who was the taller.  We learned that people were taller than some children but were shorter than other children in the class. 

Then we all lined ourselves up in order of shortest to tallest. 

We learned that Ezekiel is the tallest boy in our class. 

St Nicholas' Day 6th of December

Happy St Nicholas' Day

The 6th of December is St Nicholas' Day.  Still celebrated in many countries.  They celebrate St Nicholas' Day in the Netherlands.  The children leave their shoes outside the doors of their bedroom in the hope that St Nicholas' will leave a present.  He had a reputation for secret gift-giving, such as putting coins in the shoes of those who left them out for him. Teacher left a shoe outside the door of our classroom we will see if St Nicholas' leaves a small gift for our class.   

Saint Nicholas' is the patron saint of children. 

Visit from a dentist.

Last week we learned all about teeth as part of national tooth day.  Today we were very lucky to get a visit from a dentist.  Jahangir's daddy is a dentist and he took time out of his very busy day to come and talk to all the boys and girls in our class.  He told us how to care for our teeth.  He told us we need to brush our teeth twice a day and most importantly at night.  We should brush our teeth for three minutes.  We are going to ask our mammys and daddys to time us next time we brush.  Dr Rashid brought a model of our teeth along to show us how to brush correctly. We learned it is very important to brush the back teeth as sometimes we miss them. We learned we do not need to cover our tooth brush in tooth paste, a pee size amount is just fine. First we should rince our mouth out, then brush horizontally  but with our tooth brush facing slightly upwards towards our nose.  Another important tip Dr Rashid gave us was it is important to brush your gums aswel as your teeth. 

 

Making snowmen

 

We made our very own snowmen that will not melt like the snowman we made from real snow.  We used glue and cotton wool (but we like to call it "the fluffy stuff") to make our snowmen. 

Its Winter Time

Everyone is wearing their winter clothes now.  The temperatures have been below zero for a long time now.  We are learning all about snow and frosty weather.  How it effects our plants, birds, people and roads.  

Thick and thin

We sorted all the books in our library.  We decided it would be a good idea to put all the thick books on the bottom and the thin books on the top.  It was hard work because we had lots of books to sort but we DID IT!!!

 

Thick books in one pile and thin in another.

Ask us to do some sorting at home we are very good at it now.  

Fun with magnets

We were learning all about magnets last week.

We were talking about the materials that are used to make the things we use every day; chairs, tables, lunch boxes, toys...  We discovered lots of different  materials; wood, plastic and metal.  It was very easy to find the metal things because it is hard, cold, shiny, strong and our magnets would stick to it. 

We also discovered that magnets are fussy things. They will not stick to just anything.  In a magnet north repels north, south repels south, but north and south attract each other. In our experiment that meant that the two blue sides would not stick together no matter how hard we tried and the two red sides would not stick together but the blue and the red attracted each other and stuck together very quickly.  In discovering this we learned that we could push and pull things using magnets or even make our magnets spin around in circles. 

 

 

We know that the north side repels the north side and the south the south of magnets so they will not stick together. We placed the magnets in such a way that they repel each other and in so doing appear to be floating.  We thought this was like MAGIC!!

Dick Whitttiongton

The West Middlands Theatre Company came to our school.  They put on a great show for us.  We tought it was very funny.  Some of the children in our class even got to take part in the play.  Take a look at these snapshots from the play. 

 

 

 

Acid Test in Junior Infants

In winter we eat and drink more.  We wanted to test our favourite drinks for acid.  We know that acid is very bad for our teeth and we should wash our teeth after having something that contains acid.  First we needed some PH neutral water.  eacher chopped a red cabbage in half and poured hot water over it, we left it to cool.  That left us with this purple water. 

Then we tested a variety of drinks to find out if they contained acid.

We also tested water and milk. 

 

 



Some children were surprised at the results.  We found 4 of the drinks we tested turned the water pink that means they contain acid and therefore we should brush our teeth after drinking them.  Apple juice, orange juice, ribena and coke all made the water turn pink.  



Birds enjoying the seeds

Early this morning before any children were in school the birds were eating the seeds from the bird feeders we put on the tree yesterday.  Looks like we will have to make some more.

Winter; observing the changes in junior infants

We have noticed the weather is getting colder and things outside are looking a little different. 

Today we went on a walk to look for the changes that Winter has brought.  Some of the birds have left for warmer countries and harry the hedgehog and his friends are hibernating, having their little rest until the Spring time.  We noticed most of the leaves have fallen from the trees. 

The little birds are soon going to find it harder to get food.  The weather is colder and the ground is getting harder so the birds will find it hard to get the wiggly worms.  So we made our very own bird feeders with a variety of seeds inside.  We decided to make it in to a round shape to match all the round things we are searching for.  We needed to hang the bird feeder in a place the birds could find it.  We think this was a good spot!

 

 

Learning about round shapes - Junior Infants

We hid two balls around the classroom and tried to find them.  They big ball was easy to spot but the small one was not so easy.  It was ON top of the whiteboard.  We found the small one later under the table but on top of the chair. 

Then we worked in our groups to hunt for all the round things in our classroom.  We found lots and lots of round objects including marbles, acorns, beads, marla we made round and oter things.