Welcome to Bláithín's Junior Infants
2019 - 2020
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Supporting home learning in phonics, reading and numeracy
Here are some ideas and activities to support you with numeracy, reading and phonics during home learning. Included are some simple activities which require minimal resources or preparation. I have also included some of our favourite counting and phonics games from when we were in school. Hopefully this will be useful for home learning. Let me know how you get on, and have fun! 
Below are some documents produced by the NCCA that will support parents and guardians, which may be helpful to you.
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Jeremy's Diary
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Hello to everyone in Bláithín's Junior Infant class!
I miss you all so so much. I also miss going home with one of you every weekend and having lots of fun with you. I hope that you are all happy, healthy and safe at home. I have been keeping busy with Bláithín and Geraldine the Giraffe. I've decided to start posting my diary here each week, to keep you up to date on what I have been getting up to! I will post a PDF link of my diary describing what I have done in the past week. I hope to see you soon, even though I don't know when that might be. It's a little scary, but I have Bláithín keeping me safe at home. It makes me happy to know that your Mammies and Daddies are keeping you safe at home too. Anyways, don't forget to check in each week to see what I've been up to! Keep sending Bláithín your pictures, she smiles every time she is sent something from one of you. All the best, Jeremy. |
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HOME LEARNING
Congratulations to you all completing your first year in Primary School. It is a big step and you couldn't have done any better. I am very proud of you all and of everything you have overcome and achieved in the past few months. You have been wonderful to teach this year. I am very lucky to have had such lovely children in my class. I will miss you over the Summer and I look forward to reuniting with you all in school in September. I hope you all have a fun-filled Summer holiday.
Best wishes to you all,
Bláithín.
JUNE
Our Best Work 22nd - 30th June 2020
This is our last week of home learning. I can't believe it is the end of June already. I am very proud of you all and everything you have achieved since the school closure in March. You have been working so hard at home and doing your very best in such difficult circumstances. I just want to say thank you for everything. Even on your last week of home learning from school you are working away. Some of you have sent in images of your teaching posters for our Jolly Phonics sounds. Our theme this week is Summer and many of you are taking part in the Summer scavenger hunt and lots of you are practising your tricky words (you, your) and making fantastic sentences using them. Well done to all of you.
Our Best Work 15th - 19th June 2020
We mixed it up a little bit this week, we had two themes combined! We had a space and zoo theme. We had lots of fun during our class Zoom call watching the animals in Dublin Zoo in a mini virtual school tour! Our book this week was Fly me to the moon, a wonderful book with a very interesting story. Everyone did such wonderful work with this book and it was brilliant seeing everyone's entries of the activity sheets. We focused on the number 9 this week and many of you put together physical stories of 9 in your homes. We also played a game at home of 'Feicim le mo shúilín beag" based on the zoo animals we saw in our 'virtual tour'. From Monday we have 7 school days left and then we will be finished for the summer holidays.
Our Best Work 8th - 12th June 2020
I hope you have enjoyed our week off doing fun things, relaxing and enjoying the weather when it was nice. This week our theme for learning is Minibeasts. We organised a special viewing of Bee’s musical, which had been put together by The Ark: the musical is filled with buzzing and songs, dancing and flying. Oh, and you learned lots of important things about bees along the way! WE focused a lot of our work around minibeasts this week, including our reader: Fly Away Home! We revised weight in maths and everyone got very creative in how to make a balance scales in their homes. I loved how everyone's scales were made using different items! I was super impressed with everyone's Gaeilge work, you're all becoming so good ag labhairt as Ghaeilge!
MAY
Our Best Work 25th - 29th May 2020
More fantastic work this week from everyone. We have moved on to a higher number of 7 and we are also revising partitioning. Our story this week was 'Giraffes can't dance' and we read it during our Zoom call on Wednesday. We are still celebrating Wellbeing Week so we all did a dance from GoNoodle during our class call. It was lots of fun!
Next week we have a week off school, so I hope you all take the time to rest, play and enjoy the sunshine!
Next week we have a week off school, so I hope you all take the time to rest, play and enjoy the sunshine!
Our Best Work 18th - 22nd May 2020
Another week learning from home for our class and everyone has done amazing work! It was so lovely to see you all during our class Zoom. We read the story 'Aliens love underpants' and we all think that it is a very funny book. In this week's work, we looked at more tricky words and we had a book to read with the tricky words: I, the, my, was. We also focused on éadaí and the number 6.
You are all doing so well at home, it is great to see how you are learning more and more every day and getting better and better at writing and reading. I am very proud of you all.
You are all doing so well at home, it is great to see how you are learning more and more every day and getting better and better at writing and reading. I am very proud of you all.
Our Best Work 11th - 15th May 2020
Well done to all the boys and girls who have been engaging in home learning this week. You all have done outstanding work every week, and I am very proud of you. This week our school were celebrating Book Week. We all took part in our very first Junior Infant Zoom call.
It was wonderful to see you all and I'm already looking forward to next weeks video call.
The book we focused on for this week was 'What the ladybird heard'. We asked you to make a story map of the route the thieves took to get to the fine prize cow's shed! We also finished revising our phonics we had learned in school and now we are going to start revising our tricky words. We learned at home about bia and how to say 'is maith liom' and 'ní maith liom'. Finally we revised the number 5 and we looked at adding 1, 2 and 5 cent coins. This weeks scavenger hunt was a kitchen hunt!
Here's a little look at what some of us got up to this week...
It was wonderful to see you all and I'm already looking forward to next weeks video call.
The book we focused on for this week was 'What the ladybird heard'. We asked you to make a story map of the route the thieves took to get to the fine prize cow's shed! We also finished revising our phonics we had learned in school and now we are going to start revising our tricky words. We learned at home about bia and how to say 'is maith liom' and 'ní maith liom'. Finally we revised the number 5 and we looked at adding 1, 2 and 5 cent coins. This weeks scavenger hunt was a kitchen hunt!
Here's a little look at what some of us got up to this week...
Our Best Work 5th - 8th May 2020
This week our focus story was 'The Pig in the Pond'. We had to come up with a silly sentence and draw the pig in something else! In maths we were revising the number 4 and money. We looked at counting games using 1c, 2c, and 5c coins. Everyone's handwriting is getting better and better each week. So well done to all of you! An seachtain seo comh mhaith, d'fhéachamar agus d'fholghaimeamar ar bréagáin as Ghaeilge. (This we also looked at and learned about toys in Irish).
APRIL
ACTIVE HOME WEEK 2020
Well done to all of you who took part in
Active HOME Week!
I was over the moon seeing so many of you making a big effort, to put in at least 60 minutes of exercise every day for one whole week. So many of you sent in your Challenge Charts and many of you sent in pictures of you being active at home!
Congratulations to all the Junior Infants on winning the Active HOME Week competition!
The whole Junior Infants have been active for
181 hours and 56 minutes combined!
That is such a big achievement! We are already looking forward to our special P.E. class from an external coach in September!
I am blown away by how well you have all done.
You should all be proud of yourselves, I know I am!
On the main page of this website, there is a dance class video put together by one of our own Junior Infant parents. In the video, there are 4 dances that you can try at home.
It would be a good idea to record yourself doing the dance and send it to me via the
homelearning@firhouseetns.ie email.
It would be brilliant to see you all practicing your dance moves at home and I can post them on our class page for your friends to see.
On a side note...
Just because Active HOME Week is over,
it doesn't mean being active for 60 minutes each day should stop.
We need to all keep moving for more than 1 hour every day!
Keep up the good work everyone :)
Here are the challenge charts that have been sent in from our class so far
Here are some images of our class being active during Active HOME Week
Our Best Work 27th April - 1st May 2020
I've been blown away by the wonderful work you all have been doing at home! It was excellent to see so many of you participating in Active Home Week! A big big thank you to everyone who has engaged in or has sent in their Challenge Chart! Thank you all so much for everything you have done so far, I am very proud of you all.
Mad Hatter's Hat Museum
We are so lucky to have so many talented ARTISTS here in Junior Infants. You should be very proud of the hard work you have put in to making these outstanding hats! Maith sibh!
Our Best Work 20th - 24th April 2020
You have all been working so much with your home learning activities. It is fantastic to see how creative and imaginative you all are. You should all be very proud of yourselves. Keep up the amazing work! And remember, make lots of time for playing too!
Below you will find the amazing Home Learning that the boys and girls in Junior Infants have been doing the past few weeks. I am very proud of them all!
Ayman has sent in more wonderful work he has completed at home! Go Ayman!
Scarlett has been doing lots at home! Take a look at the wonderful work she has done.
Liam has been working really well at home. Here is only some of the terrific work he has done recently.
Cillian has been doing super work on the core learning work we sent home at the start of the week. I really like your drawing Cillian.
Fatiha has been practicing her lovely handwriting at home. She has also been working on StudyLadder, go Fatiha!
Well done to Lilly on the wonderful effort she has put in at home. Fair play to you Lilly!
Josh has been working super hard at home! Here is just some pictures of the work he has completed at home. Well done Josh!
Ayman has been working hard at home! I really like your drawings of the mountains, beautiful work Ayman!
Look at the wonderful calendar that was made! Giving us inspiration to make something like this for when we are back at school!
Here is some work that Abby completed at home earlier in the week. It's so creative!
Here is some work that Xavier completed since the school closure. I think it is fantastic, keep it up!
Jeremy and Geraldine the giraffe have kept busy too!
They have been taking care of the class potatoes and made decorations for St. Patrick's Day!
They have been taking care of the class potatoes and made decorations for St. Patrick's Day!
MARCH
For the month of March, our Aistear learning theme was the fancy dress shop. We loved exploring all the different costumes and becoming familar with money and paying for items in a shop.
Some of our lovely photographs have gone missing off the camera, so I have Jeremy the bear on the lookout for them! I'll keep you posted
We've been planting again, and this time it was potatoes! Yummy, we can't wait to watch them grow and make something delicious with them in June.
We started off planting the potatoes outside but it got so windy we were being blown away! Inside was much safer to plant our yummy potato seeds.
We all wore something glás for the day and we had a great time
What a seachtain! And we finished off with Lá Glas and a Céilí Mór. We had great fun Irish dancing and watching the other classes dance too
FEBRUARY
Our Aistear learning theme for the beginning of the month of February was the Restaurant. We had lots of fun learning about the restaurant through play!
Our fundamental movement skill we were focusing on this month was STRIKING. We practiced our striking with a hand technique using balloons. Best P.E. lesson ever!
Our daffodils have grown so much! We can't wait to see our tulips grow in March/April
At the beginning of the month we planted Daffodil and Tulip bulbs. It was so much fun!
We LOVED planting!
We love to build! We are becoming expert infant builders!
Grandparents' Day 07/02/2020.
A BIG thank you to all the wonderful grandparents who came to visit us and celebrate Grandparents Day. We asked the grandparents questions about what life and school was like when they were our age. Thank you for having so much patience and being so generous with your time. We really enjoyed the day and hope you did too!
JANUARY
This month was all about how to eat healthily and keep active.
STEAM WEEK
To celebrate STEAM week, we went to the Exploration Dome. We went inside the dome and experienced the solar system! We could see stars, planets, moons and so much more. We learned about the weather on different planets and all about the constellations.
We recently had our first reading circle. We read with some members of the Firhouse Educate Together Secondary School. They read to us, and we had a chat about the story. We really enjoyed it and are already looking forward to our next reading circle. Thank you to Firhouse ETSS!
Today some members of the Dublin fire brigade came out to visit Junior Infants. The firefighters were extremely kind and took lots of time out of their day to show us the fire engine. We each had a turn to use the hose and to get into the fire engine. It was an absolutely amazing day!
DECEMBER
Here are pictures of the children's highly anticipated visit to Firhouse Post Office. We had a fantastic morning. A big thank you to the staff in the Post Office and to Paul and the fourth class for your kind help with making this trip so memorable!
For the month of November, our school held an attendance drive called 'Every School Day Counts". This national campaign is run by TUSLA Educational Welfare Services each year. Here are the children who attended school every day for the whole month of November.
Congratulations on such an achievement!
This our class writing our addresses on envelopes. We are getting ready to send home a card for the first time. A big thank you to Paul and the 4th class for helping us get ready for our visit to the post office at the end of the week!
This week we had a visit from Eilbhe from ArtZone and she showed us how to make our own pencil toppers using air dough! It was so much fun making the polar bear toppers!
We came to school dressed the same, and we LOVED it!
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NOVEMBER
We had our first buddy reading lesson with the fourth class. We really enjoyed reading our books together and telling the class about our reading buddies. Thank you fourth class!
On Wednesday 20th November, we had some special visitors to our classroom - a vet, a veterinary nurse, and Lily the dog from Firhouse Vets! They told us about what they do each day, how they help animals and how we can look after pets. They answered all of our questions and we learned so much! What a fantastic way to end our theme of the vets. We even got to feed Lily the dog some treats and to listen to her heartbeat with the stethoscope. A massive thank you to Firhouse Vets for teaching us so much.
We learned about floating and sinking this month. We made boats in small groups and had a blast testing them in the water!
Our class earned 20 golden tickets. We then took a vote to decide what to do to celebrate. We voted to make popcorn on Friday evening.
This week we planted daffodil and tulip bulbs in window boxes. We hope they will bloom in the Spring. Our class will take care of them during the Winter and wait eagerly for the signs of the bulbs to begin sprouting. We had so much fun planting!
Our Aistear theme this month is the vets. We are having lots of fun learning about the vets and building vet surgeries.
OCTOBER
Self-Expression Day
We fund raised money for Educate Together by dressing up as someone who inspires us or as ourselves expressing our personalities. Our costumes were so beautiful, that we held a parade and showed everyone in the school the effort we put in for Self-Expression Day!
We started learning how to play gaelic football with Adam. We will have 4 training lessons in total. We are enjoying learning how to play GAA through games.
We had our first visit to the school library recently and we borrowed a book from the library. We all seem to be enjoying reading our books at home.
We went on a nature walk around the school and collected leaves that we could use in our art. We looked at all the beautiful colours and jumped in a big pile of leaves. We has so much fun!
We have been learning all about the doctor's surgery and the hospital. We were lucky enough to have a visit from Nurse Sinead on Wednesday 16th October! She showed us some of the things that are used in a hospital, like bandages, stethoscopes and needles. Sinead explained the different things that doctors and nurses do and how they can help us. Thank you, Sinead, for visiting us!
Cricket Ireland came in to teach us how to play cricket. We had lots of fun learning and playing fun games.
We had our first class trip on Friday 11th October. We went to the Civic Theatre to see a show called Fairytale Friends. We all really enjoyed the trip, and the show was very funny! A huge thank you to all the parents who came, and all those who offered to help. We had a great day, and are already looking forward to our next trip!
We were so lucky to get to use the Beebots for Code Week 2019. We began to develop our coding skills. Thank you to the children from older classes who helped us!
SEPTEMBER
Our first month in Junior Infants has been so much fun!
Developing our math skills
We have kept ourselves busy settling in to school, making friends and playing fun games!
International European day of Sport
It was European School Sports Day on Friday 27th September. We aimed to have 120 active minutes through our two yard times, some yoga, busy breaks, go noodle and best of all - we had extended P.E. and a dance party with all of the Junior Infants!
Our first day at school
Our first day at school. We were all very excited to start in junior infants in Firhouse. We played games, read stories, sang songs and made new friends.