Throwback Thursday: Spring Has Sprung

My latest adventures with Senior Infants have been based on the theme of spring.

1. Geography: Signs of Spring:
We started off by acknowledging the signs of spring by going on a spring nature walk. We discussed what we found and then had a look at a spring PowerPoint which featured lots of 'spring things'. In each slide, some of the spring things would disappear and they would  have to tell me what sign of spring (daffodils, cherry blossoms, lambs, nests, frog spawn, etc.) had gone missing each time.
We also acknowledged our new desktop wallpaper which I feel is an excellent daily reminder of the season!

Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes. 

2) History: The Ugly Duckling:

We read the story of the Ugly Duckling and talked about how he felt, how we could help him if we were there at the time and how we should treat people who are different. We then drew a picture of an event from the beginning, middle and end of the story. We cut the pictures out and gave them to our partners to sequence and stick onto some nice blue backing paper. 

Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes. 

3) English: Instructional Writing (Free Writing): 
Following on from the story of the Ugly Duckling, we created our own four step ducklings from play dough (roll a small ball for the head, a big one for the body, make a tail, stick on googly eyes and stick on a beak). After they were made, we drew a picture of each stage of the process in four boxes and wrote a sentence about each stage under each picture. We then took a picture of the finished product to stick onto our instructions at the end.

The following week we planted onions and recounted our procedure in a similar way.

4) Science and Geography: Animals and Their Young:
We focused on animals and their young. We read the story ' Baa! Moo! What Will We Do?' about some farm animals who lost their babies.                                     

                                                                   Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes. 

We helped the mother animals find the baby animal pictures that I had placed/hidden around the room. They named the baby animals when they spotted them and called out to them using the poem we are learning: 
Come My Chicks

Come my chicks,

It's time for bed,

that's what mother hen said,

But first I'll count you just to see,

If you have all come back to me,

Chick 1, chick 2, chick 3, Oh dear!

Chick 4, chick 5, yes you're all here!

We replaced the words 'chicks' and 'hen' with whatever animal we were calling out for at the time. E.g. piglets, pig, foal, horse, lamb, sheep, calf, cow, gosling, goose.

We also discussed differences and similarities between the mothers and their young in pairs using matching mothers and their babies animal cards. 

5) Science and Geography: The Frog Life Cycle:

We focused on the frog life cycle and played this fun game to learn and discuss the stages of a frog's life: http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/scienceforkids/life_cycle/frog_lifecycle.htm

                                                                           Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes. 

We then drew pictures of the stages and labelled them using key words on the board. 

6) Art: Spring Flowers:

We looked at pictures of spring flowers. We painted spring flowers focusing on different flowers we could make with different brush sizes: We dabbed big fluffy paintbrushes on the page to paint fluffy yellow flowers, red thin brushes to paint thin petals and thin dots of blue paint to paint bluebell like flowers. Then we painted in all the stems on the flowers and some grass to finish off!

                  

7) Music: Over in The Meadow:

We sang the song 'Over In the Meadow' (From the Right Note Programme: Senior Infants) about all the animals and their young and we made sound effects between each verse to represent the animal we had sung about.

Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes. 

8) History and Drama (lesson 2): The Children of Lir:

We read the Irish Legend of the Children of Lir on this website.

We linked this with drama by acting out important scenes from the story as we read through it e.g. the transformation of the children into swans, their travelling from lake to lake and their changing from swans to old people. We then drew pictures from the story and wrote a sentence to accompany what we had drawn. I chose a couple of different pictures from the class and we sequenced them to put up on the wall of the classroom. 

Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes. 

Tin Whistle Series: Teaching Tin Whistle to Beginners (Key of D)

This is the first of a series of posts based on teaching the tin whistle to children in primary school.

Over the next few weeks, I will be posting tunes to teach beginners, intermediate and advanced students, tunes suitable for a school masses, 'child friendly' songs and some extra resources you might find useful.

This week, I will be focusing on teaching the tin whistle to beginners. 

Step 1: Holding the Tin Whistle:

• It is important to show the children how the left hand is placed at the top of the tin whistle (whether the player is right or left handed) and how they need to rest their thumbs underneath the tin whistle to hold it.
• It is also important to get the children to practice covering all of the holes fully before they start playing anything. Get them to practice 'going up the stairs, and down the stairs' to practice the muscle movements of playing. 
• Emphasise the importance of blowing gently.
• Finally, tell them that when you put your hand in the air you expect silence and tin whistles on the table ('give me 5' also works for this!).

Step 2: Teaching the notes B A G:

• Without them blowing into the tin whistle, teach them the notes B, A, G (using their left hand). Point out how this makes the word 'bag'. 
• Call out a note for them to show you and get them to test each other in pairs (without blowing).
• Get them to try and play the notes, by blowing gently and covering the notes fully.
• Put various combinations of the notes on the board and get them to play these for you slowly. You could also get them to test each other in pairs too, by getting them to write note combinations for their partner to play. 
• Don't worry too much about funny sounds at this stage, as a lot of children need a considerable amount of practice before the notes sound 'right'. Make sure they are covering all the holes and blowing as gently as possible however.
• When they have spent some time practicing these notes, in your next lesson you can teach them the song: 'Mary Had a Little Lamb'.

Step 3: Teaching the notes F E D:

• Without them blowing into the tin whistle, teach them the notes F, E, D (using both hands). Point out how this makes the word 'fed'. 
• Repeat the above activities with the new notes.
• When they have practiced and mastered these notes, teach them the song 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star'.

Step 4: Teach them some more simple, repetitive songs:

• The Whole World In His Hands
• Oh Susannah
• Fáinne Geal an Lae

Step 5: Homework Sheet:

• As they start building up tunes, they can use a homework sheet to keep a record of the pieces they have played. 

Finally, if you are a little rusty on the tin whistle yourself and would like to brush up a little on your skills, tinwhistletutorials has some excellent lessons, for all ability levels. I hope you found this post useful and keep an eye out for future posts on teaching the tin whistle!

Throwback Thursday: Maths Centers in Senior Infants

     Picture source

This week, I am re-posting a very popular post from 2012. The post was based on my first experience using Maths centers in my classroom. I used these in the morning time for 20 minutes as well as teaching my regular Maths lesson later on in the day. Using different centers to teach Maths was something I had been very weary about, considering I was the only adult in the room, and worried that I would not be able to support the children enough. I was pleasantly surprised however, to discover how well it went and how much the children enjoyed the activities.
____________________________________________________

Below are some of the Maths centers I chose to use in my classroom. I chose mainly activities based around the Number strand, as I felt this was the area they needed the most extra support in.
1.) Counting counters:

 Picture source

Each child at the table had one of the above sheets with different numbers on it. There was a bowl of counters in the middle of the table. The children used the counters to add spots to the ladybird, add apples to the tree, etc. These sheets could be made using the numbers 1-10 but I felt at the end of the year that my students were well able to use numbers 1-20.

                                                                                                                        

2.) More or Less Cubes: 

The children were given a bowl/bag of cubes each. Each bag/bowl had a selection of cubes in 2 different colours. They wrote the two colour names at the top of the sheet over each column. They had to close their eyes and pick a handful of cubes out of the bowl/bag. They wrote in the amount of each colour they picked out under the colour name on the top two lines. They circled the colour number there was more of. They repeated the exercise until the sheet was completed. (Trust me, it's easier than it sounds!)

3.) Making Number Necklaces:

Picture source

I gave each child at this table a sheet of the above sample and a jar of beads. They had to line up the beads around the shapes to make a 'necklace'. You can also have the children thread spools onto string for this exercise - just write numbers on masking tape and attach it to a piece of string.                                                                        

                                            

4.) Piggy Banks:

Picture source

The children at this table each got one of these sheets of piggy banks each and they had to fill them with coins left on the table. We made quantities of 2c - 10c using 1c, 2c, 5c and 10c coins.                                                                                                                                                   

5.) Race to Ten:
This is my favourite station as it is brilliant to use as an informal way of introducing take away and revising addition with infants. Each child gets a game board and each of them take turns around the circle to roll two dice. One dice has numbers 1-6 on it and the other has a mixture of + and - signs on it. If they get a +3 they put on three counters, if they get a - 4 they take away 4 counters from the board, etc. The first child to ten is the winner.

Note: I found some of these ideas on www.kidscount1234.com. You can find lots more maths center ideas there based around topics such as colours, shapes, tessellation, etc.

These are just some ideas for Maths centers in your classroom. Maths centers provide a great opportunity for children to work on difficult topics, in a fun, hands-on way. As you get more adventurous, there is huge scope to create new centers involving bought Maths games, board games, shape hunts, colour hunts, Numicon, matching and sorting activities, etc. The most important thing is: don't be afraid of trying new things. While the concept of teaching through centers scared me at first, it was more than worth it in the end!

Thematic Unit: Italy (and the Renaissance)

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas! I'm posting another thematic unit this week, which contains lessons I have used with 5th class (and some which I have used with 3rd and 4th as well) based on the theme of 'Italy'. This theme offers a huge amount of opportunities for integration so here are a few of my ideas:

Geography: Italy:
Discuss prior knowledge about Italy (food, climate, sports teams, etc.). Go through the information in this PowerPoint and then create a booklet (in pairs) containing all the information a tourist would need to know about Italy.

Note: I have edited this PowerPoint to suit Irish classes, but you can find the original here.

History: The Renaissance:

The video below gives a synopsis of changes in painting techniques during the Renaissance. It can be used alone to focus on this specific aspect of the era (activities are included in the video), or can be used in conjunction with the PowerPoint below, to give a more rounded view of the era!

Science: Da Vinci's Flying Machines:
Discuss briefly how people get from place to place and lead the discussion towards the importance of the development of flying as a mode of transport. Brainstorm some ideas about what you need to consider when building something you want to make fly. Use the PowerPoint and video below to study some of Da Vinci's flying machines as well as other key moments in the history of aviation.

  

Give them the activity at the end of the PowerPoint to work on in small groups of 3-4. This activity involves designing a plane that will fly by man power or by gliding through the air using lollipop sticks, sellotape, blue tack, a glue stick, tooth picks, paper, elastic bands and crepe paper. 

My class  really enjoyed and engaged with this lesson and learned so much during it. It highlighted and corrected many misconceptions they had about forces, helped them to acquire new skills and gave them the opportunity to work on their ability to solve problems as a team.

Art: Mock the Mona:

The next lesson idea came from here. I adapted this idea into the following PowerPoint lesson which also includes some detail on the life of Leonardo Da Vinci and his other works.

Art: One Point Perspective:
If  you would prefer something more technical for an older class, they could create a one point perspective painting using the following PowerPoint to guide a discussion of the subject (This  also ties in nicely with the Art History video based on the Renaissance which I have embedded above).

Note: This lesson idea came from Deep Space Sparkle's website.

Music: Listening and responding:

Listen and respond to different pieces of classical, operatic or film (e.g. Romeo and Juliet, etc) music by drawing emotions, identifying instruments used or studying the various musical elements that feature in the music.

History and Drama: The Myth of Romulus and Remus:

Read, discuss and act out scenes from the story. 

Religion: St. Valentine:

If you choose to teach this unit near Valentine's day, the story of St. Valentine could be covered in Religion.

The lesson possibilities for this theme really are endless and I hope that you found some inspiration for your own lessons in this post.

Until next week!