April

Our boys and girls were hard at work for the month of April taking care of all the patients in the doctor’s surgery. The boys and girls took turns playing doctor. As the doctor they had to take the patient details, find out their symptoms and suggest a treatment. Some patients were so sick we had to set up a hospital to deal with all the broken bones. We even had some patients who had a heart attack!

We were very fortunate to have a visit from Rory and Mike McElroy’s grandmother who worked as an ambulance nurse. It was a great opportunity for us to hear how an ambulance works and what kind of work the paramedics do. It was very interesting to hear the differences between the ambulance long ago and now.

As our next Aistear topic is the pharmacy, we are going to keep the doctors surgery and hospital going. We look forward to hearing from Moms who work in the health care services and have offered to come in to talk to us.

 

March

For the month of March our Aistear room was transformed into a smoothie bar. There were many different smoothies available in a variety of sizes. We had great fun acting as customers and smoothie makers.

Our Aistear themes provide a great opportunity for pupils to explain real life scenarios. It is a key tool in exposing children to and giving them practice in important life skills such as making an order, paying for an item, giving and getting change etc.

 

 

February

Our Aistear room was a hive of activity for the month of February as it was transformed into an insect laboratory. Some children were hard at work as scientists identifying and classifying the different types of mini beasts. They had to make sure to wear protective gear as some of the mini beasts can be poisonous. While the scientists worked away the other boys and girls were brought on a tour of the insect laboratory.

We all had great fun on or mini beast hunt in the yard. We found many mini beasts including spiders and ladybirds.

 

We were very lucky to have another visit from our local farmer, Michael Bateman. Michael brought in three beautiful calves, which had only just been born. It was a great chance for us to see calves in real life we even got to rub them!

 

Aistear is a great opportunity for all of us to learn how to work together. It is a chance to share our ideas and build things as a team.

Take a look at some of the things we have built together!

 

 

 

 

 January

The Aistear room was transformed into a post office for the month of January. Our role play area was a hive activity with many customers looking for stamps, envelops and parcels. Once the customers had all they needed they headed to the writing table to write their letters to others in the class. As our letters were posted a diligent postal worker in the sorting office made sure that all the post got delivered to everyone.

 

The post office explored the different types of stamps with many boys and girls bringing in stamps from home. We examined stamps from Ireland, the United Kingdom and even Australia!

 

We were very lucky to have a postman visit. Mike Sheehan, the father of Ciara and Adam, works as a postman and came in to tell us all about his work. He explained many different things, such as why we need stamps and how all the letters get delivered. He also very kindly brought us in a package for us to send. It was great for all the boys and girls to get a chance to talk with a postman and get answers to all their tricky postal questions.

 

 

December

Our Aistear room was transformed into a winter wonderland for December. The role play area was set up into a Christmas shop. The shop assistants were very busy with customers who were buying decorations, Christmas clothes and lots more.

The construction area was very busy building Santa’s workshop. They made sure to have different rooms for the elves to do their special work in. They also created a landing pad for Santa’s sleigh!

The boys and girls in the sand area made lots of snowmen and snowballs, they managed to resist the urge to have a snowball fight!

Take a look at our pictures to see all the fun we had.

 

November

Boom……crash…….buzz…….don’t get a fright that’s only the noise coming from our construction site! For the month of November we all became builders! We had great fun learning about the work of builders and the materials they use. With our hi-visibility vests and hard hats we felt like real life builders.

Not only did we explore the life of the builder but we also stepped into the shoes of an architect. Each “architect” made a sketch of their building and then set about constructing the buildings using all recyclable materials.

A very exciting new area of kinetic sand was added to our Aistear room. Kinetic sand is a fantastic new type of sand which sticks together and is much easier to shape compared to traditional sand. This made our play a lot more fun and productive. Everyone has their own tray so that each person can work on their own or can put their boards together and work as a group.

 

October

Our Aistear Adventure for October was all about Hallowe’en. We had great fun in the role play area acting out the Hallowe’en shop. We had very important jobs as the sales assistants. The sales assistants had many jobs such as helping the customers pick a costume, organise the shop and make sure there was someone at the cash register.

At our creative table we made some spooky x—rays and spider webs while our playdough area made some ghastly ghosts.

We put on our witches and wizards hats and made some potions. We mixed some water with icing sugar and then added some food colouring. Check out our pictures to see what happened!

 

September

We began our Aistear adventure on the farm. We explored all aspects of the farm and farm life. We learned about the farm through the different learning stations.

In role play we acted out life on the farm. We pretended to look after all the animals and crops on the farm. We used masks to get us into character and made signs on our writing table to set up our farm!

Our small world comprised of a play house which acted as our farm house. We had great fun sorting the animals.

In construction we explored all the buildings on the farm. First we planned what we would build and then built many different buildings such as the farm house, the milking parlour and the chicken coop.

We were very lucky to have a visit from two farmers. The first farmer to visit us was Ray Lynch who told us all about his beef farm. We learned all about his cows Aberdeen Angus and what it takes to look after them. We also had a visit from Michael Bateman who told us all about his dairy farm. He even brought in some milking equipment to show us.

We hope you enjoyed reading our adventure on the farm!

Check back to see what adventure we go on next!