February was another fun-filled month in the Junior and Senior Infant classroom!
We started off the month by learning all about Saint Brigid on her feast day, 1st February. We particularly enjoyed the story of 'Saint Brigid's Cloak' which outlined how Brigid's cloak grew and grew until she had enough of the King's land to build her monastery. Afterwards, we designed our own colourful cloaks for Saint Brigid and made charitable donations in exchange for Saint Brigid crosses made by local woman, Delia.
We were delighted to welcome our grandparents into the school to celebrate Grandparents Day as part of Catholic Schools Week. In preparation for this, we learned the poem 'Grandparents Have...', drew/cut and pasted pictures of our grandparents into picture frames and conducted interviews with our grandparents based on their own experiences of school. We really enjoyed sharing the interview answers with our classmates. We discovered that some of our grandparents had to walk long distances to school and others only had bread and butter for their lunch!
As Shrove Tuesday took place during the mid-term break, we celebrated it early by treating ourselves to some delicious pancóga on the day of the holidays. In groups, we took turns flipping the pancake in the pan, reciting our pancake poem and selecting some healthy toppings to try.
One of our new Jolly Phonics digraphs this month was the sound /ng/. We read the story 'Rapunzel' as the main character has really long hair and brainstormed words that contain the /ng/ sound. We also practised the action each morning which involves pretending to lift a heavy weight while saying the sound. Thanks to one of the Senior Infant boys who brought in his wrestler figurines to help us with this- we won't be forgetting our new sound anytime soon!
February was also Creative Schools month. Having learned about the signs of spring in our SESE lesson, we participated by getting stuck into lots of spring art. Guided by the heading 'Spring is in the Air', we painted daffodils, chicks, ponds, frogs, lambs, calves etc. and added them to our spring display. We also painted cherry blossom trees using the famous Japanese cherry blossoms as a stimulus.
Friendship Week took place during the last week of February. We had a class discussion on the qualities of a good friend, wrote an acrostic poem on friendship, learned the beautiful song 'You Can Count on Me' by Bruno Mars and we each picked one of our classmates names from the hat to act as our 'Secret Friend' for the week. There was sharing, kindness and compliments galore! We read the popular story 'The Rainbow Fish' which conveys the importance of sharing. We took part in a conscience alley during the story to help the rainbow fish with his dilemma. We also designed jigsaw pieces to show what friendship means to us as part of our whole-school mural.
On the very last day of the month, we got the opportunity to take part in a Zoom call with the education officer of the DSPCA, Anne Hogan. Anne talked to us about how to take care of, and be kind to, our animals. We also got to meet some of Anne's furry friends including two African pygmy hedgehogs, and ask her some specific questions regarding our own pets.
