January 2023
The first thing that strikes me when we return after Christmas is the flurry of activity visible throughout the school. Extra-curricular activities recommence and suddenly preparation and organisation become the norm. We organise our timetable to accommodate the gymnastics element of the P.E. programme. The Choir and Ensemble prepare for the Córfhéile, Seachtain na Gaeilge and Engineering week are spoken about. This year on St Valentine’s Day 5th Class will lead the school in a fundraiser for the Irish Heart Foundation. As the ground firms up we will begin preparations for Santry training. We will also look at the maintenance work which will be required this term and throughout the Summer. Last but not least the Roman Catholic children will conclude their preparation for the sacrament of Confirmation.
6th Class
6th Class have returned to school after the Christmas holidays with gusto. We have had the pleasure of welcoming Ms Forde to our classroom for four weeks. She engaged the children with topics such as Ancient Greece in history, debating in English, decimal fractions in maths and clay in art.
The gymnastics equipment made its annual appearance in the hall for two weeks with the children in 6th class being called upon regularly to set up and dismantle it. As usual, the tackled this task with their usual goodwill and reliability. They too got to use it and practice their skills on the monkey bars, balance beams, vault and mats.
Each week, 6th class participated in Yoga – this was a lovely change from sitting in the classroom and an opportunity to stretch, move and relax.
Science Blast is in full swing- we have carried out our experiments and gathered all the data and research. It will be showcased in the RDS on March 1st and we are excited to meet the judges and see what other children around Ireland investigated.
We had the privilege of visiting the DIAS in Merrion Square where we learned everything about earthquakes and volcanoes. We had a wonderful day and are very thankful for the opportunity we had to visit.
In January, we welcomed Paula O’Connor form ‘Don’t Be Mean Behind the Screen’ to our classroom. She spoke to the children about Internet Safety and I can safely say she taught the teachers more than the children at times.
As we approach mid-term break, we would once again like to thank all the parents for your ongoing support and wish you all a lovely long weekend.
Ms Shaw
5th Class Blog
The New Year has brought new goals, challenges and plenty of interesting topics to explore in 5th class. The students have been relishing our new novel ‘Holes’ by Louis Sachar. The characters and plot twists have had 5th class itching to turn the pages and move to the next chapter. A thoroughly enjoyable novel that we would whole-heartedly recommend.
Art has been crafty and creative this term. We explored the strand fabric and fiber and the pupils created a large abstract jigsaw that proved to be difficult to make. Nevertheless, we had lots of fun working together to get the job done.
5th class were very lucky to have had the opportunity to take part in Yoga for a period of 6 weeks. Each Wednesday we practiced Yin Yoga in the school hall, which left us cool, calm and collected for the remainder of the day and certainly made us feel very Zen... Namaste!
As January came to a close, 5th class welcomed Ms. Rothwell to the classroom. She has been working hard with the students. Some of the activities include; writing pen pal letters to a school in Sutton, Co. Dublin, constructing working lighthouses with electrical circuits and batteries, learning about the Renaissance, playing traditional Aboriginal games in the school hall and painting sunsets using water-colour paints. We have enjoyed having her teach in 5th class and we will miss her very much when she leaves in February. Thank you, Ms. Rothwell.
Perhaps one of the highlights this term thus far has been gymnastics. Every year when the gymnastics equipment is taken out, there is a buzz of excitement around the school. For two consecutive weeks we explored the PE strand of gymnastics and practiced balances, jumping, monkey bars, hang tight and much much more. 5th class had so much fun!
Lastly, we are ending this half-term with a very special event. Next Tuesday the 14th February, 5th class will hold a fundraiser in the school hall to raise money for the Irish Heart Foundation. The pupils will perform ‘All you need is love’ by the Beatles, with Ms. Murphy on guitar and Thea on the clarinet. It is sure to be a very special day. We will also hold a raffle with many excellent prizes. It is sure to be an excellent day.
Have a great mid-term break.
4th Class
This has been another successful term in 4th class.
We had the pleasure of doing our assembly in January. We talked about The New Year, and some New Year's resolutions. We were able to showcase our lovely Lighthouses that connected with a song that we learnt called My Lighthouse. It was great fun!
In the classroom, we have been very busy! In Maths, we have been doing some hard topics, including fractions and even learnt how to do long multiplication! We learnt how to paint with watercolours. We created a backdrop with watercolours. We then created cherry blossom trees using cotton buds. In English, we were learning about letter writing. Each pupil class wrote Ms Tennant a letter persuading her to add some things to the classroom. Some of the suggestions included a goat class pet, a vending machine, additional yard time, extra PE time and even robots to do all of our work!
We were very lucky to visit the Museum of Literature. We had wonderful tour guides. They did a workshop and showed us around the museum. It was very interesting.
It has been a lovely term so far and hope you all enjoy the break.
Warm Regards, Ms Tennant.
3rd Class
We have been very busy in 3rd class!
So far this year in 3rd class, we have made recycled plastic into new things. We also made Valentine trees in art with fingerprint heart leaves. In geography, we learned about rocks and soil. We did a project about the Chinese New Year and learned loads of Chinese facts. We based our assembly on a traditional Chinese tale and tasted Chinese sweets. In history we learned about the Ancient Romans & Irish Saints. We had lots of fun in PE doing fun gymnastics and we really enjoyed going on the monkey bars. Mr Murray did relay races with us and taught us all about endurance. In maths, we have been learning how to multiply bigger numbers and learning our division tables. We have started using Duolingo at home to improve our Irish. We have completed our Positive Emotion Potions in our Weaving Well Being books and have been learning all about our feelings.
Wolfgang, Eve, Lara, Clive, Lochlann, Elena, Thomas, Maximilian & Kate B
2nd Class
Second Class started the New Year by thinking of their hopes for the coming year and talking about the importance of setting goals and choosing the steps to take to reach those goals. They also made beautiful fabric 2023 pictures to decorate the corridor. We continued on the New Year theme throughout January and learned all about the Chinese New Year. The children read the story of how the Chinese calendar is planned and made it into an assembly. Everyone in the school saw how each year is dedicated to an animal and that 2023 is the Year of The Rabbit. We had great fun practising and making red and gold decorations for the celebrations [ while chewing on a few White Rabbit sweets].
We really enjoyed the visit from Dog’s Trust and learned how the charity help to rehome dogs safely into happy and safe homes. We are big dog fans in Second Class and loved hearing all the stories and looking at the photos. The children got a great tip on how to react if you are approached by an over excited dog … X-FACTOR! You stand still, cross your arms over your chest and look up and away. That way the dog sees you are not interested and will get bored and go away.
Gymnastics was a big hit and the children loved it. All of the large gym equipment was set up in the hall and the children got to take it in turns to use each station. Some of the activities were really quite difficult and took a few attempts but every single child rose to the challenge and really enjoyed it. They are still talking about it!
We are lucky to have 2 more activities this term. We have a yoga class on Wednesdays and we learning the importance of stretching, relaxing and being grateful and of course the power of sharing your smile. We started learning Irish Dancing last week with Kimberlee. It is great fun and we are lucky to have a number of dancers in the class to help with instructions. We are going to be practising a dance to perform on for the school during Seachtain ns Gaeilge. It is a super start to our Tuesdays and gets us ready for a day of leaning.
Of course there is lots of learning taking place in between all of the fun activities! We researched and learned the story of Florence Nightingale and the importance of following your dreams. We followed the length of the river Shannon through Ireland and learned how important it is for the communities that live near it and the animals and birds and insects which depend on it. Second Class have been focussed on money in Maths over the past 2 weeks. It is really important that the children practise using real money in real life so the next time you are going to the shops maybe take some cash and get the children calculating!
Y Davies
1st Class
Senior Infants
Senior Infants have had two themes so far in Term 2: ‘The Weather’ for January and ‘Looking after our Earth’ for February. In literacy, Term 2 is an exciting time for Senior Infants as we have begun to learn when to use and how to write our capital letters! In Maths, we have been hunting for 3D shapes and we will soon know all of our sums for the numbers up as far as 10!
In January, we enjoyed dressing up in the Sandford Clothes Boutique and playing with the small world toys. Our small world area was a polar region scene. Sometimes it was the Antarctica because it had a lot of penguins and sometimes it was the Arctic because we had arctic hares, foxes and polar bears. We learned about which animals lived where and how they keep warm in the cold weather. We also had a visit from Dog’s Trust. We learned rules for being safe around dogs and took part in role play to help us remember how to behave around dogs. Audrey showed us some very cute pictures too! We especially loved our gymnastics PE lessons in January. We practiced our balancing, jumping, rolling and stretching while exploring the space around us. With the help of some of our SET teachers we took part in station teaching and obstacle courses too and as you can imagine we LOVED it!
Ms.Farrar, our student teacher, joined us in February. We have been learning all about looking after the earth. We have a Farmer’s Market in our role play area and we are learning a lot about where some of our food comes from. We have a farm scene for our small world play and we are learning about farm animals and their young too. We are also making an effort to be more green in our classroom, learning about what materials we can reduce, reuse and recycle. We collected lots of recyclable goods and made ‘junk art’ too. We enjoy carefully watching, watering and looking after the seeds we have planted too!
We are looking forward to our tour to the zoo and to Seachtain na Gaeilge in March too!
Ms.Smyth
Junior Infants
Junior Infants have been very busy since Christmas. We came back to school and jumped straight into learning about caring for animals in the vet’s surgery. We had a lot of animals with broken bones but luckily they had an excellent team of professionals to take care of them. The highlight of January was getting to use the apparatus in PE. Junior Infants were practising their crawling, swinging, jumping and rolling on all the equipment we have in the hall.
With the arrival of Spring came our new coding train. Junior Infants were so excited to test out the train with all of the action buttons. Last week, we introduced the iPad and the children are now using it to direct the train around the tracks. It’s wonderful for the children to learn new skills while playing and having fun.
Our Italian restaurant opened in February too with the children making pizza and pasta dishes for their customers. The chefs are very generous, and no expense is spared when putting the toppings on the pizzas. In art, we paired up with sixth class to design some winter hats using fabric and we made hearts for our families for Valentine's Day.
We have had a great start to the year in Junior Infants and we are all excited for our trip to the zoo at the end of February.
Ms Rogan