Welcome to Ms. Wadding’s class!
Hi everyone and welcome to our Senior Infants blog for the 2025–2026 school year! We’re so excited to be back together again. This year is going to be an absolute blast — from learning new things to getting stuck into fun projects, games and all sorts of surprises along the way!
As Dr. Seuss once said, “You’re off to great places, today is your day! Your mountain is waiting, so… get on your way!”
Let the fun begin!
May
April
April has been a busy month in Senior Infants. We began learning all about the Zoo and the many different habitats animals live in. We paid particular attention to the animals of the African Plains and explored their features, diets, and environments. As part of our literacy work, we learned about report writing and each child proudly created their own report booklet all about the lion, using facts and information they had researched in class. In Art, Senior Infants created a landscape inspired by everything they had learned about the African habitat.
We also explored the different types of houses people live in. The children enjoyed going on a “house hunt” around Clonegal where they identified and discussed the different homes found in our local area.
In Maths, we focused on money and understanding change. Senior Infants had great fun taking part in our classroom “Smoothie Shop,” where they took their friends’ orders, added totals, and worked out the correct change using real-life maths skills. It was a busy and exciting month!
March
March was a fun-filled month in our classroom! We celebrated World Book Day, where students dressed up as their favourite book characters and enjoyed sharing stories together.
In Art, we focused on using chalk and learning how to blend colours, which helped us create beautiful St. Patrick’s Day artwork. We also got ready for St. Patrick’s Day by practicing for the school Céilí. The children had great fun learning the dance to ‘Shoe the Donkey’ and practicing their song-singing skills to the ‘Rattlin’ Bog’, which I’m sure will stand to them in years to come!!
Senior Infants also took part in this years ‘An Post’ Handwriting competition. We had a class discussion around how we can keep our Earth happy and healthy and what we can do both in and outside our classroom to help our village ‘Go Green’. We also had a Teddy Bears’ Picnic in our classroom to mark friendship and time together in our class. It was a great opportunity for Senior Infants spend time together and see the lovely friendships they have made.
As Easter approached, we created little Easter baskets, which we then used during our egg-citing Easter hunt on the last day of school before the holidays. We were very lucky to have Ms. Byrne bring in a lamb on this day. Senior Infants had the chance to observe, play and carry the lamb while Ms. Byrne gladly answered all their inquisitive questions!!
February
February was a busy and exciting month in Senior Infants! We were learning all about germination and how plants grow. The children sowed their own cress seeds and enjoyed observing the changes as the seeds began to sprout. We even got to taste our cress on hot meals — a big hit with many of the children! In History, we were learning about historical landmarks in our local area. Senior Infants had lots of questions about Huntington Castle. A big thank you to Freddie, who kindly visited our classroom and answered all of the children’s questions about Clonegal’s local landmark. We also celebrated Pancake Tuesday and had great fun choosing and adding our favourite toppings to our pancakes. In Maths, we were learning about 3D shapes. Senior Infants loved exploring different shapes and worked together to build an impressive 3D Shape City using cubes, cylinders, spheres and cuboids!
December
December was a fun-filled and festive month in Senior Infants! We enjoyed creating our own Christmas decorations and proudly hanging them on our class Christmas tree.
In Maths, we were learning about length and developing our understanding of estimating, measuring and comparing different lengths using everyday objects in the classroom. The children had great fun predicting which objects would be longer or shorter and using informal measures to check their estimates.
In Literacy, we have been exploring new and engaging ways to learn our tricky words through games and hands-on learning. The children especially enjoyed practising their words in fun and creative ways with their classmates.
After reading and learning all about igloos, the children took part in a fun STEM activity where they worked together to design and build their own igloos using fruit pastilles and cocktail sticks.
Wishing all of our families a very Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!
October
October was a busy and exciting month in Senior Infants. We started the month by learning all about nature. We went on a fun nature trail around the school grounds where we searched for leaves, trees and insects. The children really enjoyed exploring and spotting signs of Autumn.
We also had two special birthdays to celebrate, Lee and Robin. We loved singing Happy Birthday and making sure both of them had a wonderful day.
In Music and Drama, we worked hard to prepare for our assembly performance. We proudly performed our song/poem “It’s a Hard Knock Life in Senior Infants” and “The Fat Old Witch.” Everyone sang and acted so well – it was fantastic.
During Maths Week, we became real mathematicians. We carried out surveys and visited other classes to collect information. We then used our results to create data charts showing answers to questions such as “What’s your favourite holiday?” and “What’s your favourite ice cream?”.
To finish off the month, we celebrated Halloween in spooky style. We dressed up in our costumes and walked to and through Huntington Castle. Back in class, we played traditional games like bobbing for apples, wrapped each other up with toilet paper to make our own mummies and even tasted some delicious Halloween barmbrack. Lucky Lucy found the ring this year.
It was a month full of fun, learning and laughter.
September
What a busy and exciting first month back we’ve had in Senior Infants. The boys and girls settled back into school life so well and have been working very hard already.
We started the month by celebrating Ava’s birthday, our very first birthday of the school year. Everyone loved singing and celebrating together.
In Art and SPHE, we explored the theme of “All About Me” by drawing our own self-portraits. We used mirrors to look closely at our features and tried our best to include all the little details that make us unique.
In Maths, we learned all about patterns. We made colourful patterns using lollipop sticks, working carefully to make sure our designs repeated correctly. It was great fun spotting patterns all around our classroom too.
Our fine motor skills got plenty of practice this month. One of our favourite activities was using our jumping frogs to land on their lily pads. We also worked hard on our cutting skills, snipping along long, wiggly and zig-zag patterns.
In Art, we learned about the colour wheel and experimented with mixing primary colours to make new ones. Our colour wheel art turned out beautifully.
One of our favourite stories this month was Zog by Julia Donaldson. We had great fun acting out the story through drama, pretending to be dragons learning new skills and we even created Zog-inspired artwork for our classroom display.
In SESE, our topic was “School.” We learned all about what school was like long ago and compared it to our school today. We also designed our own dream schools, complete with swimming pools, sweet shops and rocket playgrounds.
It has been a wonderful start to the year, and we can’t wait to see what October brings.
