Maths 

We have had great fun exploring maths this January - we have compared length - long, short, longest and we have looked at some new prepositions - in, on, under and beside.  Stay tuned for photos of us measuring heavy and light!

Mapping, Art, Play, Drama and Our Local Community

,We take a cross-curricular approach to learning in St Josephs and in Junior 4 we have focused on learning about aspects of our local community this term.  To this end we have
*created shops and buildings in construction (art),
*visited local places of business and interest - cafés, the doctor, shops, playgrounds, parks and the cinema - (SESE - geography)
*engaged in mapping activities to orient ourselves around the school and through a make believe town. (SESE - geography)
*handled money in real life exchanges, through play, and in dedicated maths sessions (maths)
*taken time to explore these themes through play (Aistear).  We have had many play sessions of "going to the café"; "going to the shop" and "visiting the doctor". 
*explored these themes through drama games, make believe and story books - Oral language, reading and drama
*recounted trips into the local community by discussing photos of our adventures (SESE - history; Language and communication)

Here we are taking a trip into Barna woods yesterday to explore its beautiful landscape. We also made a town from our construction piece in art and we had great fun driving people into town and dropping them from the "car park" to the "doctors", "cafe", "shop" and "play ground".  Today we visited the cinema and saw "Frozen 2".  It was amazing.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow

We are investigating our senses this month and one of those is the sense of touch.  We explored materials - rough, smooth, prickly and tickly! We also got really messy and had a great day creating our own snow.  We made a little snow man, snow balls, and experienced the feeling of touching snow.  

Trip to the Doctor

We have been learning all about going to the doctor this month.  We have played with doctors' sets, read stories and explored lots of vocabulary on going to the doctor.  Finally today we got to experience the real deal.  We are so lucky to have had the opportunity to visit with Dr Eamonn in his practice and meet all of the lovely staff and learn all about what happens in a doctor's surgery.  We brought our own "Doctor's bags" which we made in art with us and Dr Eamonn was very impressed. 

In the Jungle!!!

We performed our assembly this week in front of the whole school.  We chose to sing The Lion Sleeps Tonight which is one of our favourite songs.  We made costumes performed our song by singing and through LÁMH also.  This is a video of us practicing.  We hope you enjoy it. 

Costumes, Pumpkins and a spoooooooooky trip to the Library - Must be Halloween

Drama in Junior 4

We absolutely adore drama class in Junior 4. It's a time to play and have fun and engage in make believe and role play.  We use our imagination to create worlds where a simple towel can transform into a bed, a scarf, a super hero cape, a magic carpet - the possibilities are endless. We play mirror games and this month we have had great fun dressing up in Halloween costumes!  Some of us also visited the Black Box theatre to see an amazing show as part of the Baboró Children's Theatre festival - there was music, dancing, movement, laughter and most importantly loads of tiny orange balls that we got to throw around the place at the end!!!

Maths in Junior 4

We find the opportunity to engage in maths lessons in locations all around us - sometimes in the classroom, sometimes outside.  Every day is a maths day.  We have been exploring prepositions - in, on, under.  We looked for circles in our environment and we sorted items into sets that were circles and not-circles.  We also have been collecting data on the colours of leaves we find in the environment which links in very well with our Geography curriculum.  Autumn is the perfect opportunity to find colour in nature!

A walk by Rusheen Bay

 How lucky are we to have these beautiful walks on our doorstep? We had a ball in Rusheen Bay last week.

A Fun Week

We are loving our time in Junior 4.  This week has been a great week.   One morning we started with a yoga session to breathe, relax, stretch and say a big hello to the day.  We had great fun at PE and spent some time in the afternoon playing guitar and singing our favourite songs. We love Country Roads, Baby Shark and the Lion Sleeps tonight.  What's your favourite song?  We spent some time chatting about our favourite books also and we completed an art project on our names - we are learning to read and write our names.  Sometimes we like to play with old mobile phones and chat to each other.  We were talking about trips to the doctor and we even ordered pizza!! (We're still waiting on that delivery unfortunately....)
Major congratulations to 3 of our pupils who won prizes for their art work in the Mountbellew Agricultural show! We are absolutely trhilled for you and it was very well deserved

Cafe Time!!!

What a day we had today - we practiced ordering food, handling money and using a till during an Aistear play session and then we were ready for the real thing! We landed at the Headford Road Shopping centre ready for some lovely treats and we really enjoyed ourselves.  We even had time to browse the toy section and put our skills to the test in one of the shops!  We gave the cashier our items and exchanged money.  We even got to "tap" a card!!  It was such a busy day, the only thing for it was a lovely relaxing yoga session at the end.
​A great day was had by all!

Welcome to Junior 4

We are delighted to be back to school in our new classroom in Junior 4.  We have already had music with Cormac, which we love and have done some Autumn art activities for entry into the Mountbellew Agricultural Show.  We are so happy with how our pieces look.  Fingers crossed!!