Junior Infants have been exploring loud and soft sounds in music. We have been identifying sounds that are loud and soft in our environment, we have also been using loud and soft voices. We talked about times when we use loud or soft voices. On Friday, we took out the instrument box and read the story The King's Magical Musical Box. We identifed instruments as shakers, tappers and scrapers. The king collected up all of the sounds into his magical musical box (that Maedbh had designed for teacher a few years ago!) The volume of music depended on how much the king/queen opened the box!

Neil Larkin (Molly, Cian and Eoin's Dad) visited Junior Infants this morning to carry out some activities with the children for Engineer's Week. Neil talked to us about engineering, the steps that engineer's follow to solve problems and the different types of engineers. We coloured in some cartoons of the different types of engineers and Neil talked to each one of us about the types of work that different engineers do. After that, we paired up for our engineering activity. Each pair had instructions to follow and LEGO to use for building. The children built ninja cars, helicopters, race cars and even hotdog carts using the LEGO pieces and following the instructions carefully with their partners. Neil gave each of us a Junior Engineer certificate too! Thank you so much Neil, we really enjoyed the activities today and learned so much about working and thinking like an engineer!

First we created a list of questions and facts that we had about magnets and magnetism.

Do magnets stick to everything?
Magnets stick to the fridge.
Magnets stick to metal objects.
Do magnets stick to windows?
Magnets always have a black thing on the back.

Next, we watched a video and learned the vocabulary that is used when working with magnets. We changed from using the word 'stick' to using the words 'attract' and 'magnetic'.

The children predicted whether objects in our class were magnetic or not. After making our predictions, the children used magnets to find out what items in our class were magnetic and what items were not magnetic. It was great fun!

After the investigation the children recorded their results and fed back their findings to the class. We compared our predictions to the results.

We returned to the questions and facts that were gathered at the beginning of the lesson. We used our new understanding of magnets to answer the questions and label the facts as true or false.

Junior Infants have been learning all about healthy living. On Tuesday, we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. We used pictures to sequence the story in small groups on Wednesday. The children are brilliant at team work! Today, we looked at the fruit from the story. We held each fruit and identified if the fruit was smooth or bumpy. We discussed the shape of each fruit. The children picked their favourite fruit to make from clay. They are drying in our classroom. We can't wait to paint them next week!

This morning was great fun in Junior Infants. Our elf, Ginger left us some icing and treats for decorating gingerbread men. First, we gathered up the baking utensils and used lots of ingredients to make our gingerbread men. The children were super at mixing, rolling and pouring in the ingredients. We talked about how the ingredients changed when they were mixed together. We discussed the difference between cinnamon and ginger by looking at and smelling the spices. After that, it was time to decorate the gingerbread men. They looked delicious!

Junior Infants brainstormed how we would set up our olaytime for Christmas. The children came up with fantastic ideas. In Pretend Play, we set up a toy making station, a wrapping station, Santa's sleigh and a table for break time in the workshop. The children decided that the library would work well as the children's bedroom. In Small World, the children have elves, people, sleighs, Arctic animals, reindeer and homes. In Junk Art, the children decided that they would make their own wrapping paper. We made a list of materials that could be used to design and make wrapping paper. Well done everyone!

Question: We are going for a picnic. We have packed some ice cubes. How will we keep them frozen for our picnic?
1. The children brainstormed materials that could be used to keep the ice cubes frozen.
​2. In the staffroom, we used a pipette to fill the ice cube moulds with water. We placed them in the freezer.
3. The next morning, we used six ice cubes to carry out the experiment. We placed the ice cubes in a flask, wrapped in tinfoil, in a plastic bottle, outside, in a cooler bag and inside an icepack.
4. After an hour, we lined up the ice cubes and compared the sizes.
5. We placed the materials into order based on the size of each ice cube after an hour.

The Result:
The ice pack was the best item for keeping the ice cube frozen. Next was the tin foil, the cooler bag, the flask, the plastic bottle and in last place was leaving the ice cube outside.