Aistear

We have started Aistear in Junior Infants.  Senior Infants join us while we do it.

We are learning all about School this fortnight so the first thing we do every day after break is sing a song about school called ‘This is the way we go to School’.  Then we get into our groups and go to our different stations.  

There are 5 stations so we get to go to a different station every day.  There is an Art Station, an Oral Language Station, a Fine Motor Station, an SESE Station and a Role Play Area.  

We are really enjoying Aistear and look forward to it every day!

                      This is our Aistear rota so we know which station each group is going to.  

        Ms Ormiston moves the activities around the colour wheel each day after we sing our song.

              This is our Art Station with Patricia where we cut out different shapes and glued them                                          onto a large sheet of paper to make a school.

 This is our Fine Motor Station where we used play dough to make things on the mats.  We had to make lots of things related to school: a school bus; a teacher for the classroom; a healthy lunch to put in the lunchbox; pencils for the pencil case; some things you would put in a school bag.

    This is our Oral Language Station where we have lots of fun playing language games with 

         Ms Tinnelly. We discuss posters about school, play School Bingo, Name 5 things and 

                                                       lots of other games.

               This is our Role Play Area where we had lots of fun pretending to be the teacher,                                        playing in the sand or making patterns on the board.

      This is our SESE station where we work with Ms Ormiston doing History, Geography and Science work.  For History we discussed starting school for Junior Infants and coming back to school for Senior Infants and the changes that occur as we grow and move to different classes.  We learned about all the different rooms in our school and their purposes for Geography.  We discussed different materials you would use to build our school or the materials used to make different items in our classroom for Science. 

Best of Luck Meath Ladies!

Meath Ladies have reached the Intermediate All-Ireland Football Final. We were very busy in Seomra 2 creating artwork to show the team our support.

A past pupil of Scoil Mhuire Moynalty; Marion Farrelly will be proudly lining out on Sunday next (September 16th) in Croke Park for this important game.

Our teacher's club team mate Orlaith Duff will also line out for the Royals. Many of us met both Orlaith and Marion at the GAA Cúl Camps this Summer where they passed on their knowledge and skills as Cúl Camp Coaches.

These players have inspired some of the boys and girls in Seomra 2 to practise their skills and participate in GAA.

We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the team on reaching the Final and wish them the very best of luck!

UP MEATH!!!

Seomra 2 - Back together again

Ms. Rafferty welcomed back the senior infant and first class pupils on Wednesday last. There was a great sense of excitement as we heard all about the fun things everyone got up to over the Summer holidays.

We are looking forward to sharing lots of our news and work on the blog this year.

Here is our friendship tree, we made the leaves using our hand prints.
We remember that we belong together and we celebrate being back to school and being together again!

Junior Infants PE fun

We had great fun in PE today playing Parachute games and Cat and Mouse.  Some of us were very fast and 3 of us managed not to get caught by Tom Cat!

Junior Infants GoNoodle

We are loving GoNoodle in Junior Infants.  It is such a great way to integrate movement and mindfulness throughout the day when our brains need a break! The Zumba is brilliant and we love the Think About It activities too.

Junior Infants First Day

We had great fun on our first day in school! 

We played with pegboards and made some pretty patterns.  Some of us played with the wonderful wooden doll house and some others made colourful patterns by joining camels together.  We loved making and building things with lego too!  Some of us were busy working as carpenters with the tool bench and others enjoyed racing cars on the mat.  

We also painted our hands and made some beautiful hand prints to put with poems for our Mammy’s and Daddy’s.   Teacher was really impressed with how good we were and we even helped tidy up after ourselves!  We really love school!!

3rd Class - Bug Hotel Project

St Mary’s Villas Bug Hotel Project

On Friday 8th June we received an invitation from John Sullivan to help him with a very special project at the St Mary's Villa's estate. Ms Clarke and Ms Ormiston arranged the trip for us.

On Tuesday 12th June fourteen very excited 3rd class pupils put on their hi-vis jackets and walked the distance to St Mary's Villas. John was there to greet us and we could see an array of tools and bags laid out on the grass and we could see a wooden structure that was to be transformed into a bug hotel.

John explained how he needed our help to create a hotel for bugs, bees, and all sorts of insects to visit and live in. John explained that insects play a very important role in biodiversity and that we need them to keep the eco system going. The bug hotel that John built was made from old pallets. He explained that we were going to fill the gaps by packing it with a variety of recycled materials that would attract a huge number of creatures.

John emptied the bags of recycled materials for us. In the bags was an array of different materials. John had collected pine cones, twigs, bamboo sticks, logs, bog oak as well as recycled materials such as egg cartons, shoe boxes, toilet rolls, cardboard, cans, bottles, milk cartons and a wicker basket. There was even an old boot! John also had a bag of turf that came all the way from Offaly.

We started to design and fill the bug hotel with the 'new furnishings'. We had lots of ideas and the 'rooms' filled up pretty quickly. We built some 'bug beds' using toilet rolls and bamboo sticks. A living room was designed using a shoe box lid, some eggs cartons for couches and a plastic lid for a television.

John also had two creepers that we helped to plant at the side of the hotel. When all the hard work was completed we helped John to put mesh all around the outside of the hotel. This will help to keep all ‘rooms’ intact.

In no time at all, the wooden structure had been transformed into a ‘luxury’ hotel for bugs. We even spotted our first visitor – a spider that had set up home an egg carton! Other visitors that joined the spider were snails and ants.

We had a great time working on the bug hotel and we learned so much information and facts from John about biodiversity. We would like to thank John for the invitation to be part of the project. We look forward to working with John again in the future and to learn even more about insects and other wildlife.

While we were down at St Mary’s Villa’s, John showed us around the other projects that he has been working on around the estate. We saw all the vegetable and fruit gardens, the wildlife garden and the chicken coop! John told us all about the various types of chickens that are living there and we got to hold the Silk chickens Snowy and Snowflake! We learned that silk chickens have five toes!

The work that John has been doing at St Mary’s Villa’s is exceptional and very educational and we were delighted to be part of the development of the biodiversity set up in the area!