Third class welcomed five new children to their class this year. We welcome Michelle, Alona, Disara, Judy and Gisanna. Here they all are beaming with excitment about being back at school together for the new year.
The children in third class began learning the Ukulele with music teacher Karl mid September. After only three weeks, the children can play number of songs such as ‘A Sailor Went to Sea’, ‘Hey Ho’ by the Lumineers and ‘What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor’.
3rd Class were delighted to be able to learn how to play an instrument this year. With teacher Karl, the children mastered how to perform many pieces of music on the ukulele. On June 4th in the ATU arena, the children performed on stage for their parents, children of other schools and their parents and families. This is an achievement the children should be very proud of. Well done boys and girls!!
What a wonderful start we have had to third class. We are one of the lucky classes to be receiving Music Generation lessons this year with music teacher Carl. We are learning how to play the Ukulele. So far we have learned the names of the parts of the Ukulele.
These are:
We have also learned that there are four strings on a Ukulele and their names are G, C, E and A. We can’t wait to learn more about the Ukulele and continue learning how to play it!!!!!
We all really enjoyed our afternoon of celebration in the hall on Thursday May 30th where we marked the end of the Music Generation programme in our school for 2023/2024. We were thoroughly entertained by a group of Music Generation tutors who got us so sing along with their performance of some catchy hits. They were followed by our amazing ukulele group from 3rd class who performed 6 pieces that they have learned this year, guided by their tutor Karl and teacher Ms Downey. Our audience watched, mesmerised, by our Violin group made up of 5th class girls who play violin each week in a social group, led by our very own Ms Reilly. We also marked the retirement from our Board of Management of Patricia Robinson and Kenneth Loftus who have given many years of commitment and loyalty to our school. Our Green School committee, along with our proud coordinator Ms McHugh explained what they did this year in the lead up to our Green Flag Award for Global Citizenship- Energy. Our school choir rounded off the afternoon with 2 songs which left us all singing on the way home. Thank you to all involved for a wonderful afternoon.
We have been so busy in Senior Infants across November & December. Have a look at our video collage of us in action – we learned all about houses and homes, became architects & builders, played as different roles in the family home and designed homes for the three pigs.
We had so much fun as scientists during science week, predicting and experimenting with gummy bears, vegetables and salt density in water and coding with BeeBots. We also made rainbows too!
We were very busy in December preparing for, practising, recording and editing our Christmas concert – We had so much fun! We also got a surprise when Santa arrived in our classroom!!!! And we got to eat some smarties in Maths – we created a block graph to show the data of the smarties in our box – everyone’s block chart was different in the end.
Senior infants have begun a music programme with Anna from Music Generation Sligo about Discovering Music. We have only had a couple of lessons so far and we are loving it. Every week Anna introduces us to a new instrument. So far we have seen Anna play the cello and violin. She taught us the name of the parts of the instruments too. Both the cello and the violin are string instruments – the music is played on strings, Here is Anna playing the violin for us:
We have learned that Italian words are used to describe the speed that music is played at. Presto means fast and Largo means slow. We sang a song ‘Up the ladder, down the ladder’ using the different speeds. We also used ribbons to play the speeds accompanying a piece.
Anna has also started to teach us some music literacy – that means that we will be able to identify the beat and rhythm in music. She introduced us to a crochet note which accounts for 1 beat. We used a duck to symbolise this and the word ‘Quack’. We stomped along a row of ducks to create a rhythm – quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack. We clapped along as someone stomped to create the rhythm. We then used the same beat as we created a train and stomped to the beat of a song called ‘Engine Engine on the track’.
We are looking forward to the next lesson already!
Last week the Ark finished Music Generation with Julia and we had so much fun! The boys and girls enjoyed the sounds and feel of the Violin, Cello and the Flute. They also played the drums and lots of percussion instruments. Every lesson had a different instrument and we also played lots of musical games. Music Generation is so much fun and we cant wait to see Julia again. Thank you so much Julia!
This year in Senior Infants we were very lucky to have been chosen as one of the classes in our school to get the chance to take part in Music lessons with Anna, from Music Generation. We enjoyed 12 weeks of a variety of music lessons in Discovering Music.
During the music lessons, Anna taught us about a variety of aspects of music.
Italian words are used to describe music: pitch (high and low), tempo (speed) – largo (slow) and presto (fast)and volume – piano (quiet) and forte (loud). These are used in relation to singing and playing instruments. We played a variety of percussion instruments and sang songs using this vocabulary as the decider for how we would perform.
We played instruments in our groups and in instrument groupings: bell like instruments, wooden instruments and tamborines. We responded to different excerpts of music playing our instruments and used our instruments to represent different sounds – for example: clicking sticks as raindrops, chime bars and tamborines as bells on Santa’s sleigh.
We learned lots of new songs to sing, and listened to Anna play some instruments for us. We also listened to and responded to a variety of music excerpts, such as The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and The Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky.
We thoroughly enjoyed our music lessons!
The children in Junior Infants enjoyed having their Grandparents visit their classroom on Friday. We had a lovely prayer service in the hall first. Jovana from Junior Infants lit the candle for the prayer service as she is the youngest in the school. After the prayer service, the Grandparents visited the classrooms. We were excited to see our grandparents as we had prepared a card for them. We prepared an invitation for them last week, then made a card with our hand print and a poem attached to it. When the grandparents came in we sang them a song and a poem, we asked them questions about their childhood in school and we loved listening to the stories they told us. Poppy Marie’s Grandad brought in a tables book from when he was in school many years ago! We thank all the grandparents for visiting our classroom and we hope to see them back again soon.
Christmas was a very exciting time in Junior Infants. We had a lot of fun activities in our classroom and we also went on a few exciting outings. We went to the Hawkswell at the beginning of December along with children from Senior Infants, 1st and 2nd class and the Ark. We watched a Christmas pantomime called Santa’s Fairytale Christmas and it was very enjoyable. It was a great way to get into the Christmas spirit!
In our classroom, we dressed up as Santa Clause, the Elves and the Reindeers and got into role in our Santa’s Grotto Role Play area. We made a list of presents we wanted, the Elves made the toys in their workshop and wrapped the presents. Santa and the Reindeers delivered the toys. We found Christmas words in our snow area outside. We made letters to Santa by cutting out pictures from catalogues and sticking them down on letters. We decorated Christmas trees, Christmas stockings and painted Santa hats. We made Santa beards and shark fins for our Christmas concert.
We made Christmas cards for our own families, we put a real stamp and address on the envelope and then we walked down to the post office in town and posted them. We thank Ms Marron for joining us in our walk to the Post Office. We met a postman in his post van delivering parcels. On our way back we stopped off at the playground and played on the swings and slides. This was a great day!
We enjoyed making Christmas Rice Krispie Trees in the Kitchen. We each got a turn to mix the ingredients into the bowl and put sprinkles on the mixture when it was placed in a baking tray. We enjoyed eating our Christmas Tree. It was yummy!
In our last week, Destiny put the baby Jesus into our crib in school. We thank Johnny for making this lovely crib for us. We also said prayers at our own crib in our classroom and in the crib in the church. We had a visit from Santa. We got lovely treats from him and enjoyed singing Christmas songs. We had a visit from Milo, a therapy dog. We enjoyed giving Milo a rub, he was very soft and fluffy. We thank Mr. Murphy for letting us meet Milo. We had a party in our classroom and we got to eat nice treats and dance to our favourite tunes.
We hope everyone had a lovely Christmas and Happy New Year.
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