How does your garden grow?

LEGO sailboats

Penguins

We read this book and learned alot about penguins.

Here is some of the penguin art the children made. 

The penguin is a flightless bird. There are many different types of penguins. We learned all about Emperor penguins. We found penguins to be very interesting birds.

The Emperor is the largest of the 17 penguin species.

Emperors are the deepest divers of any bird.

They are also very strong birds.

The mummy lays her egg in mid-May, then leaves to spend the winter at sea.

The daddy spends the next 65 days looking after the egg which he rests on his feet.

In mid-July, when the mummy returns, she finds the daddy by having memorised his call. The daddy penguin carefully gives the egg to the mummy. The egg hatches soon after.

Emperor chicks grow quickly because they have only five months (that is just from when we started school to now) to reach the stage where they can fend for themselves. (we dont think we are quite ready to leave home just yet)

Penguins eat Antarctic silverfish Pleuragramma antarcticum. They also eat other fish, Antarctic krill and some species of squid

Gardening in junior infants

We were learning what plants and seeds need to help them grow.  They need sunshine, oxygen water and soil to grow.  We all planted seeds in our mini garden.  We planted sunflowers and baby carrots.  We have to look after them and make sure they get enough water to help them grow.

We even found some creatures in the garden.  We found "an itsy bitsy fuzzy wuzzy worm" from the song we learned recently. 

Painted lady baby caterpillars

Looking at roots

 Thursday, April 26th, 2012

We planted seeds last Thursday.  Today we took off the front panel of our Root View container, and sure enough we can see the roots, stems and leaves of the radishes and the turnips.  The other seeds have not begun to grow yet.

Using our senses in senior infants

More about our senses

Using our sense of sight, we saw the lovely goldfish "Nemo" that Thomas from Room 8 brought in for us to see.

We are learning lots of nice songs about our senses. Have a look at these interesting links that we use in class.
http://sciencewithme.com/learn-about-five-senses/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5CHfLP71T4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSoZHfwSyOQ

Broadbeans in senior infants

We have been reading the story 'Jack and the Beanstalk' and really loved the story. As we have been learning all about planting seeds in Science lately, we decided to plant some broadbeans (just like Jack did!!!). We are not sure if they are magic broad beans yet, so we will just have to wait and see!!! Firstly, we got a pot and put some soil in it. Then we made a little hole in the soil with our finger and popped a broadbean in. Next, we covered the broadbean with more soil and we watered it. We will take good care of our broad beans and we hope to see them shooting up over the coming weeks. Keep an eye out for their progress!!

Ants in Room 5

Our senses: Senior infants Room 5

Our sense of hearing.  We played a game whereby we had to find Dino (our class dinosaur) by listening to whether our classmates clapping was soft and slow (we were really cold) or fast and loud (we were very close)

Using a microscope in senior infants

Sowing seeds

Worm hotel and ant farm

Thursday, April 19th, 2012

Today teacher got the ant hotel ready for us.  It is filled with sand and soil.  Teacher will bring some ants from her garden at home, and we should be able to see the ants digging tunnels.  We know a nice song about ants.

We also got our wormery ready.  We filled it with layers of soil, sand and compost.  It looks so nice and comfortable for the worms that we call it a worm hotel.  All we need now is to fill it up with worms!

The Gang's Garden

Today teacher introduced us to the gang and their garden. Each member of the gang has a favourite fruit or vegetable and, just like us, they all have different interests such as archaeology, playing rounders and recycling. The gang sent us on some containers, soil and packets of seeds which we could sow and grow in our classroom.
Today we sowed some basil, cress and tomato seeds. We had to fill the containers with soil and then make a hole with our finger in the middle of it. Next we placed the seeds into the hole, covered them with soil and poured some water over it.
The seeds are now in their pots sitting on the window sill in our classroom waiting for the sun to come out to help them to grow. We will have to keep a close eye on the germinating seeds and make sure they have plenty of water too.
We hope to sow some vegetables outside once the weather improves - we can not wait!!

Junior infant gardening

This week we had fantastic weather and we were out and about. Kay came to see us from St. Brigid's Garden and she helped us to plant all our garden boxes. We  dug up all the weeds, scattered some fresh compost. We decided we would plant peas in our box. We each planted a pea. Then we watered them. Kay asked us to water them until she comes back to visit us again. While out in the garden we saw a ladybird, three worms and spiders. Lots of insects are out and about.