We had a busy week in room 4 getting ready for Halloween. It was so exciting! We worked hard learning lots of new songs and dances and we listened to many stories about Halloween. On Friday we sang our songs for our parents, we dressed up in our favourite Halloween costume and we went to a Halloween parade in the hall. Have a look below to see our scary costumes and songs! 

We were discussing our favourite stations in Aistear this week. We told our teacher what we were making and doing at our stations. This taught us how to reflect and discuss in a group. Magsnaps were in the construction station this week. We made many different shapes and patterns like tall pyramids, flat circles and houses. We used all of the new words we have learnt to hunt in the discovery station. We played with our friends in the fire station as we used the fire distinguisher to extinguish fires and used axes to chop down doors. The fire coat, helmet and boots made us feel like real firefighters! Drawing was fun. We rolled the dice and whatever drawing it landed on we tried our best to draw it. This dice had halloween drawings. Here we were drawing Halloween pumpkins!  

A Nature Table has arrived to room 4! We were so good at going on Autumn nature walks and collecting conkers, chestnuts, acorns, leaves, berries and pine cones that we decided to display them just outside our classroom. We love exploring and learning new things about nature! Below you can see our Halloween scenes. We used red, orange, yellow paint and sponges. Then we added three bat silhouettes. They are spooky! Can you read our super sentence on our painting? 

October has arrived! We can't believe how fast our first month in big school has gone. We have learnt so much and as you can see we are working so hard. This month our topic is Autumn/Halloween. We have already set up our fire station in room 4 as part of our role play area. Halloween is a very busy time for the fire services. We can't wait to learn more phrases and vocabulary in the coming week. In our writing area we are trying to draw our new Autumn words we are learning. We love our new whiteboards. In the discovery area we brought in conkers, leaves, berries, pine cones and lots more. We play with the squirrel and the hedgehog in their small nature world. We love to learn through play as we investigate whether we can find all the things on the checklist! Leaf rubbing is cool. Its like magic! Our hand muscles are getting stronger as we construct fire engines with ladders, water tanks, hoses and many wheels. Have a look at some of what we have done so far!

This week we went on an Autumn walk. We saw red and yellow berries. There were wild birds on the wall. We recognised the black bird, the robin and the magpie. Harry the hedgehog was hiding under the tree! We felt the spikes he has on his back. There were many bird feeders. Some were hand made by the girls school. They were cool! There is a mosaic outside our school. It has the four seasons on the four sides. You will see the autumn side in the video. We found big mushrooms under the trees. Our favourite was the insect hotel. Lots of creepy crawlies live there so we didn't get too close! Have a look at our video and talk about what you see! What is your favourite thing about Autumn? 

Before we start to concentrate on letters and words Room 4 we are focussing on phonological awareness. This is basically children being able to recognise and work with sounds in spoken language. It is the foundation for learning to read. You can help your child at home by; picking out rhyming words and clapping the number of syllables in a word for example; gar (1 clap)-den (1 clap) = 2 claps. There are 2 parts in the word garden. It also involves noticing how sounds repeat themselves (alliteration). For example, “Susie sold six salami sandwiches.” Look below at some of what we have been doing in school. 
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The best thing you can do to help your child is to read to them every evening. 

"The MORE that you READ,
the more THINGS you will know,
The more that you LEARN,
the more PLACES you’ll go".
- Dr. Seuss. 

We love learning Irish in Room 4. Gaeige is taught through song, dance, drama, actions and games which makes it so fun! Here are some of our favourite songs we have learnt so far.

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