For today's play session the children made individual play plans which they recorded on paper. It was much quieter than yesterday but equally valuable! 

This week we are sorting and making subsets. For example we made a set of bears and a set of counters, then we took a closer look at the bears and made a subset of baby bears. We are using sorting trees to help sort items. Ms Hourican comes into help with our Maths lessons twice a week and this morning while half the class were sorting with teacher the rest were playing great counting games with Ms Hourican.

Here are some pictures of today's integrated play session. You can see how much learning is happening. There is measuring out sand to fill buckets, writing signs in the role play corner and lots more.

This might just seem like a noisy classroom but this short video is a great example of the language opportunities our play sessions provide. Here the children can be seen in their groups planning their play. They know what area they are going to be playing in and are spending a minute planning before beginning to play.

This week's homework is as follows:
Handwriting: 1 line of h each night
Reading: practice sight words every night and add the new words to the bag.
Grow in Love: Talk about page 6 with your child.

I hope you enjoy looking at our pictures and finding out what we are up to in Room 7. Feel free to comment but please be aware that all comments have to be approved so it make take a while for your comment to appear. Also please note that I won't be able to approve any comments that identify any children in the class so please do not name them. Thanks!

Having read the beautiful story of Elmer the elephant the children enjoyed creating their very own patchwork Elmers.

A brief overview of some of what we have covered in our class over the past couple of weeks.
Letterland: Dippy duck and Harry hat man.
Sight words: In addition to Danny, Mum, Zeb, Emma and Josh we are now learning and & hello.

Maths: number rhymes (5 little monkeys, 5 little ducks etc)
lots of counting games and making sets.
Gaeilge: lámh, cos, béil, srón, smig (body parts!) Cad é sin? Sin lámh etc.
Oscail agus dún ( open and close)

We also discovered all the people who work in our school by walking around on a "job hunt" to find people at work and we have been learning about our families and what they do to care for us.

I wonder if anyone would be able to help me with resources for the Aistear areas in the classroom??

Each month or so we will have a different theme for the different areas and I will let you know in advance what the theme is. For example it might be The Vet or The Coffee Shop. Some resources can be used for a variety of themes such as a dolls house or farm animals. If you have anything lying around at home that is no longer used and you think it could be of use then please contact me or send it in with your child. Or if you would be in a position to lend us anything relevant to a particular theme then please let me know.
I will also be setting up a junk art area and would appreciate clean old boxes and cartons.
As you can see from these pictures a few old hats and bags went created great excitement and plenty of play opportunities today.

We had a great day in school today showing our support for Dublin. We made Dublin flags and everyone wore lots of blue.