Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Our Favourite Christmas Things

We have been talking about our favourite Christmas things. It wouldn't be fair to include Santa (because everyone loves him best), so we chose between: carols, Christmas story, Advent, Christmas trees and snow. Here is what we decided. We had great fun talking about how many liked each and how many more or less were in each group.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Making our Own 3D Shapes

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
We tried making 2D and 3D shapes out of marshmallows and cocktail sausage sticks - very sticky. We made a square, cube, rectangle, cuboid, triangle, triangular prism, a pentagon and a hexagon. It wasn't possible to make a cylinder or sphere. We could see that the shapes made using triangles were the strongest - that's why you see so many triangle shapes in bridges and cranes. Next we made our own 3D shapes: with 3D jigsaw pieces, beads and connectors, flat triangles and squares, flat window shapes and with magnetic pieces. Each group had a different activity, and we will swop around for the rest of the week. We managed to make squares, triangles, rectangles, cubes, cuboids, a pentagonal prism, triangular prisms, triangular pyramids and square pyramids. We really are good at making and naming shapes.

Monday, November 16, 2009

Maths Barrier Game: Beads

Monday, November 16th, 2009
We played a necklace game. One person had a necklace made from a combination of beads - cubes, cuboids, spheres, ovals and barrels. We had 5 colours to choose from - red, yellow, green, blue and orange. The other person had to make an identical necklace without being able to see the original one. We used lots of language skills to explain to our partners which bead went where. It was quite hard but we were good at this.

Friday, November 6, 2009

Shapes Games

Friday, November 6th,2009
We are talking a lot about shapes. Today we played some shape and colour games. They are played in small groups and are a lot of fun. We played Jack and the Beanstalk 2D shape game, Make or Break 3D block game and Number Rumba which focuses on colour and number patterns.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Maths Game

Senior Infants, Room 5
Monday, November 2nd, 2009
We played a good maths game where we had to match up numbers of spots with numerals and number words. Each table had to try and race the others. It was very exciting.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Shapes 2D & 3D

Friday, October 16th, 2009
We are learning the names of the 2D and 3D shapes. We have lots of them in the classroom, so we have been playing with them, and naming each as we use it. Here are the 2D shapes we know: square, rectangle, triangle, circle and hexagon (we also know ovals). The 3D shapes we know are: cube, cuboid, sphere, cylinder, cone, triangular prism, hexagonal prism, square pyramid and triangular pyramid. We are now looking for these shapes all round us.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Hallowe'en Data Chart

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009
It is nearly Hallowe'en. We were talking about our favourite Hallowe'en things. We could choose pumpkins, bats, skeletons, ghosts or witches. We couldn't see what anyone else was choosing. We made a chart of our favourite things.
Witches and Bats were most popular, skeletons were least popular (I hope the skeleton hanging in our classroom doesn't get insulted!)

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Data Chart

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009
Today we looked at the weather chart we recorded for September. We made a data chart of the weather record. We looked at the days that were sunny, cloudy, windy, wet, snowy and cold. We counted how many of each kind of day there was, and we compared the number of each kind of day. From this data we decided that September was a nice month - mostly cloudy or sunny days.

Classifying bugs

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009
We have a big container of plastic bugs. They look really real. We looked closely at them and tried to spot similarities and differences between them. We organized the bugs into different sets. The first time we did this we organized the bugs into two sets - bugs that fly and bugs that don't fly. Next time we organized them according to whether they are insects or not. We did this by counting their legs because we know that all insects have six legs. Next we classified them into their colours, and lastly we classified them according to whether they have one colour, two colours or many colours in them. We also talked about what they eat, where they live and whether they are good for plants or not. We know lots about minibeasts now.

Monday, October 5, 2009

Number games

Monday, October 5th, 2009We are practising our number work. Now that we are in Senior Infants we are good at our counting, and we are good as using our numbers. Today we played games where we compared cards, dice and dominoes to see who has the biggest number. The winner was the player with the biggest number. Other tables played number dominoes. They were great games.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Number Fans

Senior Infants
Thursday, September 24th, 2009
We were using number fans today. We each have a white number fan. Teacher has a big yellow fan.
Teacher would call out instructions like "find the number 6" or "find the number before/after 8" or "find the number between 2 and 4" or "find a number smaller/bigger than 5". We had to find a right number and then when teacher says "show me" we all show our numbers and we can check if we are right or not. It's fun playing with numbers!

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009
Senior Infants, Room 5
We are learning all about shapes and colours.
We know all our colours in English and in Irish, and we know the names of squares, triangles, circles, rectangles, ovals and hexagons. We can say them for you at home if you like. We played a loop game with the shapes and colours. We tried to do it as fast as we could but we need to practise some more to be very fast at this loop game.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Maths Challenges



Tuesday, September 15th, 2009
We do lots of maths in class. Sometimes we use the whiteboard, sometimes we do interesting activities and sometimes we use our books. Sometimes we do them all! Today we did all of them. We did some pattern activities: links, pegs, counters, pattern blocks and beads. We also used our digit cards and our counting stick. Our counting stick has no numbers on it but we know where the numbers are. We follow teacher (or one of the kids) as they move up and down the stick. We call out the numbers that her hand lands on. It is challenging but fun. When teacher gives out the digit cards we have to make a human line from 0-9. Then teacher lets us swop round - she tells someone who is sitting down to go to "the number 6" or to "the number before/after 8" or to "the number between 2 and 4" and if we get it right we can swop with the person holding the number. That way we all get lots of turns.