Good morning agus Lá Fhéile Bríde faoi mhaise daoibh go léir!
It is Saint Brigid’s Day, and as the song tells us… Brigid brings the Spring!
Síona, Edyta, Amy, Ms. McCarthy and I were delighted to see some of our wonderful pupils and parents on our An Choill Bheag Zoom call last Thursday morning!
To those who couldn’t make it, we missed you and we hope that you are all doing well. 😊
We would like to say a huge thank you to each and every one of you and a huge well done, once again, on another great week of home learning last week!
We know that it is not always easy, but we also know that you are all doing your very best!
Some days will be more difficult than others, but try to remember that that is ok and to just take each day as it comes. Different flowers bloom at different times… that is the beauty of life!
Keep up the great work everyone! 😊
Below you will find some suggested activities for the week ahead. As ever, do whatever you can, and whatever suits your home situation.
As always, please don’t forget to check out the work allocated by your child’s mainstream class teacher, as there may be some suitable activities that you could blend with the activities that I have suggested below.
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Morning Routine:
Tina is back this week with a wonderful yoga video especially for the pupils of Ballymitty N.S.
Yoga with Tina
The Infant Classes are being encouraged to take Nature Walks this week.
After your morning yoga session why not take a walk outside and see how many signs of Spring you can spot along the way?!
Don’t forget to listen out for sounds of Spring too!
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Action Song of the Week:
Calling all Spring Chickens!
This week’s Action Song of the Week is called the ‘Chicken Dance’ and is one of the activities suggest on the Infant Choice Board for this week.
It is so much fun!
Chicken Dance
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Screen Free Learning Activities:
Many children and young people are using screens for learning and fun as they spend more time at home in the current circumstances.
It can be difficult to tempt them away from the screens, but other activities are important in developing social and communication skills, motor skills and emotional regulation.
Middletown Centre for Autism have created a lovely resource to help with this.
The ideas provided here can be used to prompt children and young people to engage in other activities or to offer them choice using the visual supports. You could add them to a schedule to guide participation, or put on a choice or ‘Bored Board’ and offer a range of options. Remember that some of the activities may need some structure to support engagement.
To download the full resource please click here!
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Activity Sheets:
Please continue to dip in and out of this wonderful resource. There are lots of lovely activity sheets here, free to download.
Orchard Toys Activity Sheets
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Listening to Stories:
Here are the stories that the infant classes are listening to this week. Once again, there is a different story/video for each school day…
‘Paula the Vet’ by Julia Donaldson
‘The Night I Followed the Dog’ by Nina Laden
‘The Odd Pet’, by Julia Donaldson
‘Pete the Cat – I Love My White Shoes’ by Eric Litwin
‘The Tale of Peter Rabbit’, by Beatrix Potter
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Sensory Break:
Let’s make some Stretchy Oobleck!
This ‘Stretchy Oobleck’ holds together better than water and cornflour and stretches a bit like slime!
It smells lovely and cleans up easily with water.
To make your own batch of stretchy Oobleck, mix a 2:1 ratio of corn flour and washing up liquid. It’s not an exact science, so if your Oobleck seems too crumbly, add more washing up liquid, if it seems too runny, add more corn flour.
Most importantly – have fun!!
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Fine Motor Skills Development:
The picklebums.com website has some really lovely and adaptable resources for fine motor skills!
You can use whatever you have around the house (eg. pasta, buttons, pipe cleaners etc) and these activities can be combined with colour recognition, matching, pattern making and counting.
If you don't feel like printing it out, just draw the pattern on a plain piece of paper making it as simple or complex as you like!
Click below for some printable ‘pattern pages’ for practising fine motor skills. Or alternatively, create your own patterns on a blank page and use loose parts from around the home to re-create the patterns.
Loose Parts and Pattern Pages
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Get Creative:
Paper Plate and Cupcake Liner Fish
Don’t forget to send me on some photos!
If you’d like to learn how to draw Nemo or how to make a lovely Gold Fish Bowl, you will find the relevant links on this week’s Junior & Senior Infant choice board.
Or click here to learn how to make your very own Saint Brigid’s Cross!
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Gross Motor Skills:
Please continue to engage with PE with Joe, which takes place every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 9 a.m.
PE with Joe
If you haven’t done so already, don’t forget to sign up for ‘Gym INC’, a free online programme, which started last Wednesday.
You will find all of the relevant details on last week’s An Choill Bheag article.
The videos are fab and I also really liked their Activity Calendar!
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Fresh Air
As always, please add this to your daily schedule!
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Lámh Signs:
Before the Christmas holidays we were very busy in An Choill Bheag learning new Lámh signs!
How many of these 20 school-related signs can you remember??
20 Beginner Lámh School Signs
Please continue to practise your Lámh signs every day.
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Aquarium Lessons on YouTube
Don’t forget to tune in again to this Friday’s Aquarium Lessons.
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Cooking/Baking Ideas
Below you will find a couple of nice recipes that you might like to try out this week…
(Please remember to email me if you are having trouble viewing any images)
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Indoor Games
I really love this ‘Straw Pick Up Game’ – fun for the whole family!
Simply cut 5 cm squares of various coloured construction paper, assign a colour to each player, spread the squares out on a table and use straws to have each player ‘pick up’ their colour squares.
The person to collect the most squares in a minute wins!
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Evening Routine:
To get your body and mind nice and calm for bedtime, choose from the menu of calming activities below.
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Don’t forget to check your email inboxes on Wednesday and Friday again this week, as I will be sending on storytime videos from Síona and Geraldine, as usual.
Parents, please email me if you have any questions - ballymittybcasey@gmail.com, - and I will get back to you as promptly as I possibly can.
To Jake, Larry, Harley, Ben, Conn and Tommy – please continue with all of the great work that you have been doing at home, try to keep that ‘Spring’ in your steps, and we hope to see you all again very soon!
Kindest regards,
Ms. Casey
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IMPORTANT UPDATE
Parents, please see message below from Ms. McCarthy..
Dear Parents,
If you get a chance we would love if you could fill out our online survey to give us your feedback about Home Learning at the moment.
You can access the survey by clicking: http://ballymittyns.ie/Forms/Home-Learning-Survey/101262/Index.html - This survey will be available until next Friday Feb. 5th. An error has been fixed so you do not have to leave your email address.
You can also fill out this survey on your phone: Click on the top three lines in left hand corner of your app home page. Click Forms and you will see the Home Learning Survey.
The survey is available until Friday February 5th.
I thank you for filling this out. Your feedback is very important and allows us to know how best to support you and your children at this time.
Regards,
Audrey