Religion in Senior Infants

Due to the fact that I had my Diocesan Adviser/religious inspector last week, I was inspired to post a few religion resources that I have built up and a few ideas for what to revise with the children prior to a visit. Hopefully, this will  be useful to those of you in your first year of teaching who don't know what to expect from the visit!

Resources

1. I often create PowerPoints of the various Alive-O stories in an effort to make them more interesting and more memorable to the children. Along with doing this, it is a good idea to use some of the children's names as characters in the story or even set it in their environment/town etc. 

Here are some of the PowerPoints I have created. Keep in mind that you can write the text of the story if you like in each slide but my aim was to keep it simple and just choose a few key pictures to flick through as I read the story.

Lesson 10 dunbeg story from SeniorInfants

Lesson 13 two cousins from SeniorInfants

Term 3 lesson 2 the pond from SeniorInfants

Term 3 lesson 1 granny’s garden from SeniorInfants

Lesson 12 david cares from SeniorInfants

Lesson 1 term 2 the old snowoman from SeniorInfants

Lesson 5 term 2 special things from SeniorInfants

2. I have downloaded some very good PowerPoints to tell the children about the story of St. Patrick and St. Brigid. 

From Seomra Ranga:

St brigid powerpoint seomra ranga from SeniorInfants

From Pauline O'Shea:

Story of st_patrick_01 (1) from SeniorInfants

3. I used these actions when I taught the children the Our Father. I got them off www.worship.ca but I can't seem to find them now so I will just repost them below. Click on the link beneath the picture to see and download the document in full. 

Download Our Father Actions

How should I prepare for the Diocesan adviser? 
1. Make sure you have taught all prayers for the class level. Along with the prayers taught in Junior Infants, they should know the Our Father and Hail Mary.

2. Make sure you have read them all the bible stories in Alive-O. They might be asked to tell these stories in their own words. You can find a brilliant list of Senior Infant stories, songs and prayers here: http://education.dublindiocese.ie/2012/02/21/senior-infants-alive-o-programme/ 

3. Make sure they know about Jesus' Resurrection and birth. 

4. Make sure copies/workbooks are corrected and they can pick a favourite page and talk about it.   

5. Practice a song from the programme by heart (preferably one that also taught them something!).

6. Make sure you have a Sacred Space in your classroom. On mine I have: a candle, pictures of Jesus, Mary, etc., prayers, rosary beads, flowers (May), a cross/St. Brigid's Day cross, a children's picture bible, holy water (there is a lessons about this in senior infants) and some children's work (the new religion curriculum will apparently involve the children decorating/creating the sacred space themselves).

7. I picked out some questions I think they should be able to answer below also:

• Why is Christmas a really important time of the year for us/ Why do we celebrate Christmas?
• Where was Jesus born?
• Who came to visit Jesus when he was born?
• How did the three kings find Jesus?
• What gifts did they bring? etc.
• How did Mary find out that she was going to have baby Jesus?
• Before Jesus was born, Mary went on a journey to visit her friend. Do you remember her name?
• Who was St. Patrick?
• What did he use the shamrock for?
• Why did he become a priest?
• Who was St. Brigid? What did she use to teach people about God?
• What did she do with her cloak?
• Why do we have Lent?
• What happened to Jesus at Easter? etc.
• What is peace?
• Where do you find peace?
• Who were Samuel and David? 
• Why was Samuel not happy? 
• Who did God want to be the leader of his people? Was it the strong older son?
• What job did David do? Why would a shepherd be a good leader? What makes a good leader?     
• Tell me about Moses.                                                

I hope you find this useful!

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!

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!