School Closure due to Covid-19

Our love goes out to all of our pupils and families during this difficult time of school closure.  We know that it can be difficult for our pupils to understand why we are not in school and why we cannot give a date when we will be back.  We are in contact with all our families and in consultation with our SNA staff are sending home lots of videos, links and activities for all our pupils to try at home if they wish.  However, we know it is a busy and stressful time for everyone so any activities will be listed here only as an aid should you so wish.  We don't want to add to the pressure families are feeling at this time.  Emer, the junior 5 teacher and I will post a set of activities on our pages every second week.  She and her team have some wonderful ideas for movement, cookery etc so you should head over to the junior 5 page for great activity ideas if you find yourself at a loose end over the next few days.  Pop back here next week for some more from us!

Tracy

Pancake Tuesday

We celebrated Pancake Tuesday by making delicious pancakes in class. After watching a video, we learned the sequence of how to make the pancakes and we recounted the sequence together.  First we added an egg to flour and then mixed in some milk to create the batter.  We were very careful not to touch the hot plate and watched Tracy as she poured the batter onto the frying pan.  It was so much fun to try out different toppings - some of us loved sugar and lemon juice and others were mad about Nutella.  No one wanted more honey!!!

A Trip to Ernie's

We had the best day on Monday. We took the bus right into town to visit Ernie's famous fruit and vegetable shop on Sea Road. As our theme this month is healthy eating we knew a trip to Ernie's would be the perfect kickstart to the month.  We were so well looked after by Ernie and another very generous customer in his shop.  We went home armed with bags of delicious fresh fruit and we made an amazing fruit salad in the afternoon.  We ate kiwis, bananas, oranges and apples.  We are learning about how healthy food is good for our skin, hair, teeth and bones and how it will help to keep us strong.  Thank you so much Ernie

A visit to the Post Office

Great excitement in Junior 4 today as we sent off our self portraits to the Texaco Art Competition. We went to the post office, bought an envelope and a stamp and paid the lady to post them.  Fingers crossed for us in the competition!

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!!