School Closure: Menu of Literacy Activities for Junior and Senior Infants

Dear Parents/Guardians, 
Here we will outline a menu (choose the activities that suit you and your child) of Literacy activities for our Junior and Senior Infants to complete during this school closure starting tomorrow, Friday 13th March. 

Activities to develop fine motor skills/writing: 
Cutting and sticking: Cutting out pictures, letters and words from newspapers, catalogues and magazines. Sticking the pictures/words to create collage, words or sentences. Cutting in straight lines, zigzag lines and curved lines - templates can be found here: https://www.twinkl.ie/resource/spring-aistear-lines-cutting-skills-activity-sheet-roi-t-20162637 (twinkl is free for parents and teachers to use for the next month) 
LEGO/construction toys: Can you build a tower? a ramp? a bridge? a person? a castle? a house? 
PlayDough: Using playdough to create food, to make letters, to make numbers. PlayDough workouts on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JaF0mjG4e8 
Tracing: Tracing letters/patterns/shapes/pictures. Templates can be found here: https://www.twinkl.ie/resource/t-l-4792-pencil-control-activity-cards 
Colouring: Colouring in colouring books, pictures drawn by the children, creating artwork. 
Writing: Writing sight words, writing known letters, writing their names, creating simple sentences using sight words and drawing a picture to match the sentence. Copying sentences/words/letters written by parents/guardians. Copying sentences from class reader/library books. 

​Reading: 

• Jolly Phonics Letter Sounds - an excellent app for revision of phonics 
• YouTube: All Jolly Phonics songs are on YouTube. 
• Sound Cards: Junior and Senior Infants should continue to revise all known sounds, list words that start with each sound, draw the sound in sand/rice, find items in the house that start with that sound, find the sounds in the newspaper and cut them out and revise writing letters as much as possible 
• ​Blending: The children have blending activities such as blend and match card games and blending lists in their homework folders. It is important that the children keep working on this skill during this time. Twinkl have a great activity called 'Roll and Blend' which the children in both classes are familiar with, these games can be accessed here: https://www.twinkl.ie/search?term=roll+and+blend 
• Sight Words: Revise all sight words covered to date (in homework folder), play sight word bingo, make sentences using sight words, write sight words, search for sight words in the newspaper and cut them out, set up a sight word hunt in the garden/around the house. 
• Syllables: Using toy food/animals sort the toys by the number of syllables they have. 
• Rhyming: Finding pairs of rhyming words in library books. Parent/Guardian gives a word and the children must reply with a rhyming word. 
• Library books: All Infants choose a selection of library books to take home with them today. Please read regularly with the children. 

Oral Language Development: 
- Playing Simon Says, I Spy, Memory games (I went to the supermarket and I bought ____)
- Talking about picture books and movies, making predictions, retelling the story, sequencing stories 
- Acting out stories from picture books 
- Playing dress up, having a talent show or a fashion show 
- Saying poems, nursery rhymes and singing songs 
- Following instructions and recalling instructions (helping out around the house, completing a list of jobs) 
- Making phone calls to family members - working on greetings, conversation starters and sharing news 
- Playing in the home/outdoors, participating in make believe play with toys/costumes 

Apps/Computer Games: 
- Jolly Phonics Letter Sounds (app)
- Teach your monster to read (app) 
- Khan academy kids (app) 
- Twinkl - Lots of resources here that are free this month. Worksheets, colouring, games, sight words, bingo! 
- YouTube: Jolly Phonics songs, picture books read aloud, sight word songs, nursery rhymes and songs