Citywest & Saggart

Community National School

Junior Infants Room 3: Green Fingers!

We have had the Garden Centre in our role-play area since the beginning of February and have been learning lots about plants and flowers.  We have learned how to grow plants so last week we decided to try and grow some sunflowers and pumpkins.  This is how we did it: Put lots of soil in a pot and press it down with your fingers. Water the soil using a watering can so that it is moist. Place the seed in the middle of the pot. Cover the seed with some more dry soil. Water the seeds everyday. We are hoping to see little green leaves grow soon.  The sunflowers should come out in July or August and the pumpkins should be ready to pick in September or October.  The boys and girls will take their pots home at the summer holidays and continue to take care of them. We also planted some cress seeds which grow much quicker.  The boys and girls were very excited to see some little green shoots appearing from these this evening. To see more photographs of us planting please click...

Junior Infants Room 3: Brain Breaks

In Room 3 we use a website called GoNoodle to take brain breaks throughout the day.  Every time a group is working hard, helping each other, tidying up well, or displaying some other type of good behaviour, they get a marble in their jar on the teacher’s desk.  When a group gets 10 marbles they are allowed to pick a video from GoNoodle for the whole class to exercise to.  This exercise could be dancing, running on the spot, zumba, yoga or lots more.  They get an opportunity to get their bodies moving and give their hard working brains a little break.   Today in Room 3, we maxed-out our mascot, Flappy Tuckler, because we have been taking so many brain breaks (and working very hard!).  We picked a new mascot called Tiny O’Flexem by majority vote.   You can create your own account at home if you want, simply by clicking the link...

Junior Infants Room 3: A Day with Dylan

The boys and girls in Room 3 were very lucky to have Dylan spending the day with them today.  Dylan is a local Transition Year student who is gaining some work experience in Citywest & Saggart CNS.  Dylan helped the boys and girls to practice their sounds and writing, played some games with them in PE and even read them a story before home-time.  Thank you...

Junior Infants Room 3: Tactile Learning

We have been learning how to write lots of different letters in the cursive font in Room 3.  We do lots of different activities to help us become really familiar with how to form the letters.  We trace them on each others back (it tickles!) and trace them in sand trays before we begin to write them....

Junior Infants Room 3: Handprint Snowflakes

To celebrate winter and the cold weather that has arrived, the boys and girls of Room 3 are making snowflake decorations using their handprints.  They had lots fun covering their hands in paint before using them to print in a snowflake shape.  Next they will add some glitter to make sure their snowflake shimmers in the light!  This beautiful poem will be printed on the back: My handprint’s like a snowflake Unique in every way Keep it close to your heart I’m growing every...

Junior Infants Room 3: The Balloon Rocket

It’s Science Week this week and we are all celebrating in Citywest & Saggart CNS by taking part in lots of science related activities.  Today in Room 3 we completed The Balloon Rocket Experiment.  The boys and girls had lots of fun predicting what would happen when the air was left out of the balloon.  They counted down from 5 and we left our balloon rocket blast-off! BUT the rocket didn’t reach the end of the track! We had lots of discussion and varied the experiment in lots of different ways to try and make our rocket go even further.  In the end, the boys and girls came to the conclusion that the more air that was in the balloon, the further the rocket reached.  This was because the air was pushing the rocket forward when it was escaping from the balloon. https://cscns.ie/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/My-Movie.mp4 If you would like to carry out this simple experiment at home, the instructions are...