I am introducing the topic of  money in school at the minute. The children have examined money and sorted it into sets of coins that are the same. It would be great if the children could help you at the shops and get an opportunity to use money in real life experiences.

This month we have been reading lots of Fairy Tales and this has led to our theme for Aistear. The children have been building castles from blocks and drawing beanstalks that disappear into cotton wool clouds at the art table. The role play corner has featured king and queen thrones, has turned into the three bears cottage and I have also spotted a big bad wolf in there. Our small world area has a castle and lots of finger puppets to make your own fairytale and we also explored the story of the Little Red Hen through music and with puppets. We will continue this until the end of the month so check back for more photos of the fun.

While learning about plants and planting seeds in school we carried out a science experiment. We wanted to prove that plants really need three things to grow - water, sun and food from the soil. To prove this we planted seeds without soil, hid some in a press with no light and didn't water the others. As a control we also had one pot that we looked after very well. 
Initially the children made some predictions as to what would happen to pots 1,2,3 and 4 and then we checked back to see how accurate our predictions were.

We have been learning about plants and their lifecycle and also about healthy foods so we decided to grow some of our own food in Room 7. The children planted spinach and peas recently and watched them germinate. They have gone home now for the children to continue to care for them at home and hopefully they can plant them in their gardens or in a bigger pot and eventually get to taste the fruit of their labour!

It was lots of fun and quite messy!

March was very busy in Room 7. We went out to the school garden with the other Junior Infants to see the Irish Flag being raised over our school. We danced the Walls of Limerick and Shoe the Donkey at the Ceilí Mór during Seachtain na Gaeilge. We also did lots of Easter and St Patrick's day art.

In February we were learning about Spring. Our Aistear areas included a garden centre where the children could plant flowers, sort them and sell them. They also identified the different types of flowers and created information cards telling the customers how to care for the flowers. 

There was a farm in the small world area and there were lots of hens, chicks and eggs. The children sorted the eggs by colour, counted them, compared and recorded how many eggs of each colour they found and matched the eggs to the baskets of the same colour.

The class made flowers from straws in the construction area and they also labelled the different parts of the flower. 

As part of our maths lessons this month we were learning about capacity and the sand tray provided lots of opportunities to use the vocabulary the children had learned during the lessons. 

As always the children also spent lots of time chatting while planning and reviewing their play. This is a very valuable part of our Aistear sessions. 
Take a look at all the learning through our play that happened in February in Room 7.