Valentine's Day Themed Lessons

Children love having 'themed' days in school and Valentine's Day offers a brilliant opportunity to link a wide range of subjects under one big theme. Here are some ideas that I have tried out in the past!

English: Creative Writing/Reading

I made out a big card for the class with the word 'love' on the front in a heart. I left it out on the morning of Valentine's Day and told the children that it had arrived in the post for them. First of all, we predicted what might be inside the card. We then opened it up and played a game of I Spy. We spied words with capital letters, words starting with ___, the word love, etc . We then read the card together. Following this, I covered the words on the card with blank sheets of paper. We had to match some words written on flashcards to the card, where they were missing/covered. We wrote a new card as if we were writing it to Mammy and Daddy, as a class (LEA). They children then created their own cards using our class card as an example (To ___, I love you. Love Mary.) 

English: Sight Word: Love

We learned this song during the week leading up to Valentine's day:

                        
We also used the word in our writing and read stories with the word in it.

Maths: Counting to 20 and Estimation
I gave the children out little bags of sweets and they had to estimate how many sweets were in the bag. We then counted them all together emphasising moving them to one side as they were counted. When we counted 20 sweets, I asked them to eat one and tell me how many they think they have left and then to check this number. I then got them to make me little groups of sweets: 3, 5, 10, 15, etc.

I handed out a template containing various heart shapes (see below). We looked at each heart on the IWB and talked about how many sweets they thought would fit into each heart size. We noted them beside the hearts on the IWB. They had to test how many sweets would fit into each heart after this and they wrote the number underneath the heart. We compared answers with estimates.

Art: Jim Dine Hearts:

I chose this activity as the children could complete it in a short time without much help, perfect for a mini theme based art lesson! We looked at some examples of Jim Dine's heart art and talked about the colours he used. We discussed words to describe the marks he used and the shapes of the colour blocks. They drew a big heart on a piece of paper. They coloured inside the heart with warm colours (using similar shapes) and outside the heart with cool colours. They then painted the pictures with a little olive oil to create a stained glass effect. I blotted them before leaving them to dry. When they had dried I added paper borders (using mounting paper that I had measured and cut into a border with a blade). I rolled them up and tied them with a ribbon. I attached a little heart shaped pink notelet to the ribbon on which they wrote a message (to their Mum or Dad).

Religion/History: The Story of St. Valentine
We looked at this video and talked about it afterwards. They each recreated a scene from the story on a piece of paper. I selected some pictures to display along with sentences about the story, on the wall.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Christmas Last Minute Art Ideas

If you are in need of some last minute inspiration for crafts the children can make during the somewhat easy going, final week of school before the holidays, here are some I have used in the past!

1. Sock Snowmen: I have explained how these are made in my Winter post, but I just love them so much, they are getting included again! They are really easy to make and the children love them because they are like teddy bears! This is a craft that can be adapted for any age level too.

2. Reindeer Christmas Cards: I have also made these cards with my students and they were very effective, but super simple! I have no sample of my own but here is one I found at: http://madeinthedessert.wordpress.com/2012/12/10/handmade-childrens-christmas-cards/ 

3. Christmas Brown Paper Stockings: I also have made Christmas stockings with the kids, which do require a lot of preparation (hole punching and gluing the sock together before you get the children to sew the edges together), but they look great when finished and decorated! They also were useful for putting some chocolate Santa lollies in for each child on the last day of school, as a Christmas surprise. I got the idea from Enchanted Learning.

4. 3D stars and angels to hang from the ceiling: 

5. Christmas Wreaths: I have tried these out with Senior classes before, however I think they would possibly work well with Senior Infants also: 

This particular example is from http://rockmybabynewzealand.com/tag/arts/

6. Gingerbread Houses: This is not one for the faint hearted and that is why I saved it until last! It will probably be more useful as an activity if you have more time on your hands than a week. The children brought in shoe boxes, painted them brown and then we finger painted 'smarties' on the walls and roof. We cut out sweets that they made and stuck them onto the house and then added cotton wool to the roof, along with a chimney. The most difficult aspect of this project was attaching the roof the the house, it took up a lot of teacher's time unfortunately! It's one of those painstaking projects which you feel very proud to have accomplished and vow never to do again, all at the same time! 

Merry Christmas everyone!

Winter

Winter has well and truly arrived (Met Éireann says it is safe to say so at last!) so here are some lessons for the winter season!

Geography/Science:

We looked at an image and discussed how they knew it is winter in the picture. We then played a game of Cluiche Kim using the following PowerPoint:

Winter things seen in winter from SeniorInfants

In their workbooks, they crossed out the things that you would not see in winter and circled the things you would see. Early finishers had to draw more things you might see in winter. Over the course of the week, the children were asked to bring in new things for our winter nature table from home.

Science:

We discussed the ways that birds keep warm in winter and looked at pictures of birds using feathers for insulation (after feathers were mentioned as one particular way to keep warm).

We explored how birds also use migration to keep warm, through this PhotoStory about Wally the Swallow, which I questioned them on afterwards:

 

The children then drew two pictures side by side of the two ways that birds keep warm in winter.

Geography:
We helped teddy get dressed for the winter weather using items from the magic bag and explained why he would wear these things. We then discussed how teddy would keep warm if he lost his warm winter clothes (e.g. food, heating, exercise). The children mimed different things you could do to keep warm and the class guessed what they were miming. We drew all of the 4 things that would keep teddy warm in winter in separate boxes on our sheets.

History:

We read and discussed the book: ‘Snow Bears’. After this, we sequenced events from the story on the IWB, discussing the vocabulary of: beginning, middle, end, first, second, third, last. The children also drew their own storyboard for the story.

                                     Snow bears sequencing activity from SeniorInfants

We also discussed winter in the past. We talked about ways that people lit and heated their homes in winter in the past and also how they heated their food during the winter. We looked at laminated pictures and sorted the old pictures from the new pictures. We then completed this worksheet, labeling each as either old or new:

Art: 
We filled a white sock with a large ball of newspaper and then a small one. We twisted the top of the sock around a good few times and folded it down on top of the snowman’s head to make a hat for him. We added buttons, eyes, a nose and some children added cardboard (cereal box strength) arms to his sides.

 

Music

I showed the children two winter themed pictures of an inside and outside scene. We talked about sounds you might hear in each scene. I played Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons: Winter’ for them and asked them to choose which winter scene they hear in each section of the music i.e. the blizzard picture or the indoor picture by the fire. Following this, they pretended their fingers were falling snow and moved them in time with the music as they listened again. 

Winter vivaldi from SeniorInfants

We also sang the song ‘Winter Clothes’ as a transitional activity.

Halloween's a comin'...

http://goo.gl/AY6J4L

I'm in the midst of planning my Halloween art projects at the moment and have come across an amazing blog called 'Artventurous'. It has loads of great art ideas for those moments where the creative juices just aren't flowing!
Check out the blog to see some nice Halloween art lessons, including my personal favourites: In a Dark, Dark Wood and 3D Witch Faces.

http://artventurous.blogspot.ie/2012/10/in-dark-dark-wood.html

If you are looking for more Halloween lesson ideas and have not checked out my post Halloween Havoc!, I'd love you to have a look and let me know how some of them work out for you!

Halloween Havoc!

So it's coming close to that time of year again - personally one of my favourite times of the year - Halloween!   For those of you planning some Halloween based activities in your classroom, here are some ideas to help you along!

Gaeilge: Oíche Shamhna

Our mála draíochta for Halloween presented us with some Halloween costumes to dress up in. Included in this was a ghost mask, a witches hat, a pumpkin mask and a cat mask. The children pulled out an outfit and put it on them as we named the 'character'. They all lined up and I asked the rest of the class things like: Cé hé an chailleach? Cé hé ___? Cad é seo? srl. We also played the usual games of Cluiche Kim, éist agus dáthaigh and the like!
We also sang the song 'Oíche Shamhna' to the tune of Fréres Jacques!

History/English: Halloween Games:

I read them the story with accompanying video, 'Today is Halloween'. (If you had the hard copy or Big Book of this/a similar story you could integrate this with English!)

 We talked about things the children in the story did at Halloween and things the children in the class usually do/games they play at Halloween. The children then went home and talked to their parents about games they played at Halloween when they were young. We discussed these the following day (Apple Bobbing and Snap Apple) and we watched sections of these videos and discussed whether they ever played them/saw them being played and which they think they would prefer to play. (We played versions of these games during our Halloween party on the last day before midterm!) 

We talked about which games they preferred - today's games or games their parents played. They then folded an A4 page in two and on one half drew a picture of games 'Today' and on the other half, games their parents played.

Religion: Light and Darkness

We sang the Alive-O song about Halloween. I then showed them a little teddy and a shoebox with a hole in the top, big enough to fit a torch in. I shone in the flashlight (as the sun in the sky) and asked how they thought Teddy would feel in the box (Happy - he can see, feels warm etc). I then dimmed the flashlight and stuck it in, telling them it was the moon. I asked how Teddy would feel now (maybe cold, but at least he can still see, so he is happy enough). Then I stuck in the torch a final time, but off this time. We talked about how he felt sad as it is dark, he is scared, cold and can't see. We discussed what makes us feel better if we find ourselves in the dark. We talked about the good things about having the sun and electric lights to brighten up the darkness and thanked God in a 'Prayer of Light' for giving us these things. This provided a good introduction to stories and activities on this subject of 'Light' in religion during the week leading up to Halloween.      

                       Music: Halloween's Coming!

We talked about Halloween sounds and what makes them. We used body percussion and our voices to copy these sounds. Each group got a different sound to portray and decide how they were going to do it. I created a Halloween Music Composition chart using symbols for the different sounds (cat, ghost, door creaking, windy cloud etc) and we performed the sequence of sounds with each group waiting until I pointed to their symbol to perform their sound. We created some pretty spooky music!

We also learned the song, Halloween's coming, from the Right Note, Senior Infants which featured some more fun Halloween sound effects! 

Art: Cotton Wool Ghosts

Nothing too strenuous this time on the art front for this theme I'm afraid! One of the Halloween art projects we undertook was making these ghosts with cotton wool. We talked about scary faces and how to make our ghost's face look. We drew a ghost shape onto a sheet of card, drew a scary face on it, cut it out and stuck on little bits of cotton wool, front and back. We then hung them up around the room for a spooooky atmosphere!

Crazy about Clothes!

Hi everyone, I'm back again with another thematic unit, this time based on the topic of clothes. Hope you find it useful in your planning! I have tried to include as many useful resources as possible!

Geography: Clothes from around the world
We talked about clothes we wear for special occasions and when and where these occasions might be. We then talked about the clothes they wear in other countries for special occasions. We followed Teddy on Tour to some countries to check out what they wear:           
                

Some children tried on a sari, a furry coat and a kilt and we all tried to see if we could remember which country they are worn in!

We then wrote in the country names under these pictures (with help from the board!) and coloured them in beautiful bright colours!

History: Growing and Changing

We talked about how different the clothes we wear now are to when we were babies. We talked about why we can't wear the same things babies/adults wear. We dressed the paper dolls on the board (baby, child, adult) using clothes I got online, printed and cut out. Here are pictures of the paper dolls and their clothes.

Baby clothes      Child's clothes

Baby paper doll             Child paper doll

Adult paper doll       Adult dolls clothes

We then drew pictures of a child, baby and adult and the clothes they would wear and labelled them appropriately.

Science: Materials
We played a game where we had to run around the hall and touch different materials I called out. (Wood, plastic, metal, glass, cloth, touch something smooth, soft, rough, that can tear, that won’t tear etc). We then looked at some materials I had collected: Woolly jumper, leather runner, cotton t-shirt, furry collar, feather filled jacket and discussed whether the material was hard, soft, rough, smooth, would it tear, was it waterproof? Then I got them to walk to the picture of the animal/plant (laid out on the floor of the PE hall) that the material was made from.  After we had discussed all this and they had identified the correct animal/plant for all objects I held up the items one at a time and they had to run to the correct picture. If they went to the wrong one they were out. We played this game about three times. It was really fun and a great end of the day activity!

Art: Paper Dolls
We discussed what kinds of clothes we wanted to draw/stick onto our paper doll templates. We designed trousers, t-shirts, jumpers, dresses etc for our paper dolls. We stuck on buttons and hair also to bring them to life. Here are our creations!

English: Poem: Put on your Coat

Stuff an arm 

into each sleeve,

put on your coat

before you leave.

Zip the zipper

right to the top,

and cover your head

whenever rain drops.

James Hörner

Gaeilge: Éadaí agus an Cóchailín Dearg
We did píosa drámaíochta about an Cóchailín Dearg. I got children to dress up in costumes (red cloak, wolf ears on a hairband, showercap, axe, apron, hat) to get in roll as the various characters in the story. They acted out the script as I read it. I made sure every child got a chance to act it out. (We also used this for practice on 'cé hé seo?'). Gradually they started to join in and understand various words in the script.

http://students.ou.edu/J/Curtis.N.Johnston-1/red_riding_hood.jpg

Here is the script I read out:

An Cochailin Dearg:

Bhí an Cocailín Dearg sa bhaile. D'fhag sí slán le Mamaí agus le Daidí. Chuaigh sí go dtí an choill. Bhuail si leis an Mac Tíre. Bhí scanradh uirthi roimh an Mhac Tíre. Rith sí go dtí teach a seanmhathair. Chonaic sí a seanmhathair. (All join in) Oh, feach ar do shuile! Feach ar do chluasa! Feach ar do fhiacla! An Mac Tíre a bhí ann! Rith si amach an doras. Tháinig an gearrthóir adhmaid agus maraigh sé an mac tíre. Bhi an Mac Tíre marbh agus bhí áthas an domhain ar gach duine eile!

(If you see any grammatical errors/misspellings in this let me know as I wrote it out myself!)

There are just some ideas about teaching subjects around the topic of clothes, if you've got any others I'd love you to comment below! Happy Teaching!

Homes and Houses

Back to some thematic unit resources and ideas for anyone teaching a unit on the Homes and Houses theme! Hope you find these useful!:
History: Homes in the Past
First the children drew a picture of their house on one half of a sheet and told their partner (and a few told all the class) what their house was like, how many rooms it had, what it was made of etc. 
We then looked at houses people lived in long ago, when our Great Granny and Grandad were little. I laminated pictures of old thatched houses and they used whiteboard markers to circle parts of the house that were different than their own. Each group got a different style of old house. 

These images do not belong to me. They are used for education purposes.

We then talked about all the things we saw and I got them to point them out to me in their picture. (Show me the straw roof! Show me the little door! Show me the stone walls! Show me how many rooms they had on your fingers etc.)
They then drew a picture of a house from the past to complete their drawing.

Science: Electricity at Home

We discussed why our class CD wasn't working (it wasn't plugged in - silly teacher ;) ) and this led us into a discussion on electricity, plugs and switches. We played 'I Spy': we spied things in the classroom that use electricity and I pulled some items out of the magic bag and they told me whether they used electricity or not. (Useful tip: They need a wire and a plug if they do!) We coloured things in our workbook that used electricity and crossed out the ones that didn't.

The following week we discussed electrical safety and read the story:

 ‘Lil’ Plug and lil’ Red Safety Adventures'   

We made stop signs and held them up anytime the characters in the story were doing something dangerous with electricity.

Following the story, to sum up the learning, we played this brilliant game to revise and test the children's learning:

 Spot The Danger Interactive Game

Geography: Homes

We discussed and played matching games with the rooms in the house and what they contain. We then created these (one house made at each table):

 Each member at each table got a room to design and decorate and then the group put the 'puzzle' together and stuck it into the house frame.

http://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/01/33/25/
1332594_fed6200e.jpg

The following week we learned about the various types of homes locally and internationally. We performed actions to learn these home types (e.g. apartment - stand on toes, igloo - make a circle with arms on knees, tepee - make a triangle with arms over head, terraced - link hands with lots of people, semi- detached- link hands with one partner) (I got this idea from another website, but can't remember where sorry!) We then made one of the house types from lollipop sticks (each group got a different type to make). This was loads of fun for everyone.

Art: The House That Grew:
We talked about the story of the house that grew:

    “A husband and wife moved into a house in the middle of the forest. At first this house was very small, but, as time went on and the couple had more and more children (go into detail), the house got bigger and bigger. The husband and wife kept thinking of new and exciting things and rooms to add to their house, things that no one had ever thought of before. If anyone saw the house they would think it was the strangest house they had ever seen. They tried to make every room they built have something to do with things that the child liked to do. It was the most funny looking house that there ever was, with all kinds of strange things sticking out of it, lots of different shapes, things made from the funniest of materials, furry things, shiny parts, wooden things, holey parts, all stuck onto it from every direction!”
We made collage houses using various material types with lots of 'funny' extensions!

Music: Building Composition
We talked about things you would do on a building site when building a house. We mimed some things we could do (using sounds) and the rest of the class guessed what activity it was. We created a building composition with each group taking a particular working tool to do the sound and action of. They all drew a picture of the tool they were making the sound of and we stuck these onto a long sheet of paper to form a composition sequence. We performed this following the composition chart (using dynamics also). 

English: Poem:     

Chores

http://hookedonthebook.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/kids-chores.jpg

‘"Do the dishes,
Clean your room,
Use the vacuum,
Then the broom,
Wash the laundry,
Fold the clothes,
Clean the fridge,
Then the stove,
Wipe the counters,
Mop the floor,
Scrub all around,
Your bedroom door,
Clean the bathroom,
Toilet and all.
Get all your things,
Out of the hall,
You listening, Tom?"

I have to go,”
“What’s that Mom?

I wasn’t, no.”’ 

 from http://zelmo13.easycgi.com/childrenspoems/poempoetry43957.htm

Our Homes and Houses Noticeboard:

The Sun, Moon and Stars!

Sorry I haven't blogged much recently, but things have been busy enough in school over the past while - not that that's a bad thing in terms of content coverage!
We have been learning all about the sun, moon and space over the past couple of weeks and the kids enjoyed this immensely! Here is our current classroom display: (Apologies for poor lighting, it is directly under a window!)

Geography/science: 

We discussed features of daytime and nighttime (sun, moon, stars, light and dark colours, people who work during the day and those that work at night, etc) and completed the above poster as they named the various features. We discussed how the sun is still around during the day even when it is cloudy. We discussed how we are never in total darkness because of the moon and stars. We also created night and day pictures. 

The following day, we learned about how the earth rotates and how this causes night and day. We pretended we were the earth as we all held hands in a circle. One child held the Irish flag (they were Ireland) and the other children were other countries in the world. One child held a flashlight (facing the child holding the Irish flag) and pretended to be the sun shining on the earth. They started by shining it on Ireland and I got everyone to rotate around, as the earth does as the day passes. I told the girl playing 'Ireland' that when she could see the sun, she would shout out daytime. When she could not see the sun anymore, she would call out nighttime (as it is now dark in Ireland, with no sun). We then did the same thing with a globe to check whole class understanding. We stuck a sticker on Ireland on the globe and we all shouted out daytime when the sun was shining on Ireland, and nighttime when it wasn't. 

History:
We discussed the first moon landing. We brainstormed things we knew already. We then looked at a PowerPoint which told us about the first people on the moon. 

First walk on the moon! from SeniorInfants

We watched some Youtube videos of the moon landing and talked about how the moon was different to earth. They then wrote about one thing they had learned about the moon landing.

We also read a story the following week on Neil Armstrong's life. We discussed this and created timelines of his life (What Armstong was doing as a child, as a teenager and as an adult).

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0618152393/ref=rdr_ext_tmb

Art: 

We created blazing suns. We talked about colours in the sun, how it is too hot to land on (unlike the moon), and general sun safety (you can't look at it in the sky, you need to protect yourself from the sun, etc). We used crayons in yellow, orange and red to create the suns on A4 pages. We used a squirty container to squirt yellow paint around the center and then repeated this by mixing more yellow paint with PVA glue and glitter. 

Literacy:

We focused on the sounds: 'igh' and 'oo' and following various activities and a lot of practice in reading words containing these sounds, they were included in our morning messages each day e.g. we are talking about the moon today, we are learning about day and night, we are making a moon today, we are dancing to high and low music etc.

                           

Music: 

We sang the song See-Saw (The Right Note) and pretending we were on a see-saw, we went up and down  to accompany the high and low notes in the song. We then listened to pieces of music 'The Elephant' and 'Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy', talked about the music, whether it was high or low pitched and responded to it through dance. I sang high and low notes to them and they showed whether it was high or low by bending down low or going up high on their tip toes. I asked individual children to do this also. 

Geography 2: 

We created a KWL chart of what we had learned about the moon so far and what else we wanted to know about it. 

We played an interactive game on http://www.earthsunmoon.co.uk/. We discussed through our playing of it, how craters are made, how mountains are made, how the moon moves around the earth and how the moon changes shape and what shapes it makes. We noted what we learned on the KWL chart and then created mini-moons from playdough.

English: 

We used what we learned about the moon to write a class non-fiction book about the moon. We looked at some non-fiction texts and talked about things that make a non-fiction text different to a storybook. They then drew a picture of the moon on a template and wrote some facts about the moon that they had learned over the past couple of weeks. We numbered the pages, created a contents page and added a coverpage to our book to complete it. It was then placed in the class library for reading.

So that's what I've been up to for the last two weeks, happy teaching!