Welcome back to Seniors! We have had a wonderful two months getting settled back. We are delighted to have two teachers this year – we think we are getting twice as many rewards!

We have started our first reader of the year, ‘Ella Goes to the Airport’, and love talking about our characters and the adventures they get up to. We love writing in our copies and our books. Our writing has become much more mature, and we enjoy taking care when we are writing.

We are lucky enough to have a couch in our classroom! We use it when we have carpet time. The teacher chooses different pods or children to use the couch. We also use it when we have free play. It becomes part of the ‘house’.

We love having DEAR time where we get books from the library. We share our bean bags and cushions and get comfortable with a book. We love following the pictures and telling the story ourselves.

We love ‘Show and Tell’ on a Friday. We are allowed to bring something special from home, that we can show to our friends. The teachers like to challenge us to bring something other than a toy!

We really enjoyed ‘Math’s Week’. We did lots of different and creative Math’s activities during the week. We were each awarded with a certificate for taking part in Math’s Week. We have been playing lots of Maths games – Buzz, Higher and Lower, Blast off – which feel like too much fun to be learning! We love using concrete materials in our Maths lessons and we count every day. Our favourite, most recently, was the ‘Story of 6’ told through the Magic Muddy Puddle.

We learned about Autumn and went on a nature walk around the school. We collected fallen leaves and used them to make an Autumn wreath.

We love having Chloe join us from Music Generation. We have learned lots of songs together and she even brought a huge, big drum once and let us all have a turn playing it.

The build up to Halloween has been great fun! As part of a science experiment using magnets, we made paper ghosts which could hover in the air. We have been reading “Spookley, the Square Pumpkin” and “Room on the Broom”. We have been learning about the spider and we created beautiful prints of Halloween spiders. They were spooky!

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We have learned all about the dentist and our teeth. It was great timing as some children had a visit with their dentist. We learned songs from ‘The Singing Dentist’, and loved watching him – he was very popular with everyone!

We have been participating in the Food Dudes initiative. We were so lucky to get to taste a portion of fruit and a portion of vegetables daily for 16 days. We got stickers and rewards each time we tasted something. Now we are going to try our best to continue bringing some fruit and vegetables to school as part of our lunches because we want to be fit, strong and healthy just like the Food Dudes!

We celebrated Science Week. We did lots of experiments. We enjoyed behaving like scientists. We made predictions, observed the outcome and recorded our results. We examined the effects of certain liquids on our teeth and now we have more of awareness of tooth decay and the importance of brushing our teeth. We completed an experiment called Walking Rainbow Water and a Rainbow Milk experiment. They were great fun!

We have enjoyed a seasonal History lesson on toys. We examined toys from the past and even watched an old episode of ‘The Late Late Toy Show’, when Gay Byrne was the presenter. It was so funny to see the types of toys that were popular when our parents were small!  

In Literacy we are all doing wonderful reading everyday. We are all getting more confident and fluent with our reading. We also did some persuasive writing as part of our literacy lessons. We had to persuade Eddie the Elf to come to live in one of our houses.We all did such a good job with our writing that poor Eddie couldn’t pick! He ended up having to pull a name out of a hat. We got to display our writing in our classroom for Eddie to see and we are so proud of it.

In Maths Senior Infants enjoyed learning the Story of 7 through the story, The Naughty Bee. We loved acting out the story on the carpet and pretending to be the bee! We have also been learning all about 2D shapes using lots of hands on materials and activities in groups and pairs. First Class have been using lots of concrete materials too to help with addition up to 20 and money problems. We found it easier to solve the problems when we were using real money!

Sa Ghaeilge, we learned a lot of vocabulary for An Nollag! We played Biongó, made cartaí Nollaig and read stories. Bhí a lán spraoi againn!!

During Anti-Bullying week we discussed how we should all be kind to one another and what to do if we feel we are being bullied. We did activities such as “Cup of Kindness” and “A Helping Hand”. We really enjoyed listening to the story Simon Sock and on the last day of Anti-Bulling week we got to wear odd socks!

We celebrated Christmas Jumper Day in honour of the Children’s Health Foundation. The school raised€600 in total. It was a lovely way to raise money and remember those less fortunate than ourselves.

Our class was lucky enough to be visited by Santa’s Scout elves. Mrs. Gleeson and Mrs. Conway were relieved that they were good elves and behaved themselves for the most part!

We went to the LimeTree Theatre in Limerick to see the panto, Aladdin. We had a great time! Some of the characters were so funny and we really enjoyed dancing and singing along to the songs. We were thrilled to get to bring Treat Bags with us full of lots of goodies. We want to say a big thank you to the Parents’ Association forgiving us these!  

We have had such a wonderful time preparing and performing our Christmas Shows! We loved our singing lessons and had such fun adding dances to each song. It was a great experience being on stage and we were delighted to have all our families in the audience. We are so lucky to have such a wonderful facility as the community hall.

Nollaig Shona daoibh go léir!

Welcome back to Seniors and First Class! We have had a wonderful two months getting settled back. We are delighted to have two teachers this year – we think we are getting twice as many rewards!

In Seniors, we started a new Phonemic Awareness programme, which helps us with our reading. We had lots of new actions to learn, but we love it! We have also started our first reader of the year, ‘Ella Goes to the Airport’, and love talking about our characters and the adventures they get up to. We love writing in our copies and our books. Our writing is getting better every day.

In first class we had to get used to staying in school until 3pm. It was hard at first, but our teachers gave us lots of incentives and made it easier. It is a lovely part of our day now.

We are enjoying reading our new readers and having time for DEAR (Drop Everything And Read)time. We share our bean bags and cushions and get comfortable with a book from the library. Our writing has become much more mature and we enjoy taking care when we are writing. We have really impressed Mrs. Gleeson and Mrs. Conway with our neat writing!

We love ‘Show and Tell’ on a Friday. We are allowed bring in something special from home, that we can show to our friends.

We really enjoyed ‘Maths Week’ in October. We did lots of different and creative maths activities during the week. We were each awarded with a certificate for taking part in Maths Week. We have been playing lots of maths games – Buzz, higher and lower, Blastoff – which feel like too much fun to be learning! We love using concrete materials in our maths lessons. Our favourite, most recently, was the ‘Story of 6’ told through the Magic Muddy Puddle.

We also celebrated Climate Action Week in October. We tried our best to have a ‘No Waste Lunch’ one day and we had a ‘No Power Hour’ on another morning. We always recycle everyday in school and try our best to recycle at home too.

In September we went on a nature walk around the school. We saw lots of amazing things like a horse chestnut tree with conkers, blackberries growing on the bushes, some snails and even a dragonfly! When we got back to our classroom we drew some beautiful pictures of everything we saw. We have enjoyed learning about trees (we celebrated National Tree Day by planting a Hazel tree in the front of the school) and taking notice of how the nature around us is changing with the arrival of Autumn. We love saying the poem “Falling Leaves” using actions. We learned about the hedgehog – he is nocturnal and needs to hibernate during the winter.

We printed and painted beautiful ducklings, made beautiful rockets and Autumn trees. We also made a creatlach and a púca to decorate our room. We made a 3D hedgehog using wool to make a pom pom for his spikes. We then added a nose and eyes to the pompom. We made a habitat for our hedgehog and filled it with autumn coloured leaves. We use paint palettes with sixteen different paint blocks on them. It took some practice to get used to using the paint blocks, but they give us lots of different colours and are easy to mix. We love drawing too. We all got a chance to draw Arnie the Doughnut and we did a stunning job!

We have been relishing Music Generation. Aoife and Nora (a past-pupil) come into our room every Wednesday and teach us songs and games. Nora brought her harp one day and played music for us. It was really special.

The build up to Halloween has been great fun! As part of a science experiment using magnets, we made paper ghosts which could hover in the air. We have been reading “Spookley,the Square Pumpkin” and “Room on the Broom”. In pairs we did a cut and paste sequencing activity for each story. We used the finished product to help us to retell the story aloud. We have been learning about the spider and we created beautiful drawings of Halloween spiders. They were spooky!

Juniors to First Class enjoyed a super School Tour on Tuesday 30th May to Stonehall Visitor Farm and Wildlife Park. Our neighbours warmly welcomed us to their beautiful farm and gave the pupils a fun and very educational tour of the farm and wildlife park. The pupils loved learning all about the animals such as ostriches, emus, rheas and owls. They also had lots of fun in the play area with the bouncing castle, co operative games and many bikes, scooters and trikes. As the weather was so beautiful, we called into Curragh Chase on the way home and had fun in the playground with a picnic. A great day was had by all! Check out the gallery for more photos of the day.