The Green-Schools Committee has been very busy the last two Fridays cleaning out our pond.
Each year we need to spend some time cleaning out the weeds, leaves, PE equipment and much more from the pond to make space for the frogs who will return in the new year to lay their frogspawn.
It was cold and muddy, but we had a lot of fun. Our new members from 1st and 2nd class enjoyed joining the committee for the first time this year and being allowed walk in the pond.
1st and 2nd Class worked in groups to create their first project of the year-Space Explorers.
Each group was given a different explorer and some information about the explorer. The children then used this information to create their projects. Each of the groups approached their project from a different angle, but all carried out great work.
Once complete, the children presented their project to the rest of the class. We learned a lot about our explorers, but even more about working in groups.
Have a look at our projects on:
Helen Sharman
Edward White
John Glenn
Yuri Gagarin
Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin
Senior Infants are currently working on the theme of the Post Office in Aistear. As part of their learning the class wrote some letters for their loved ones. Today they put these cards into their envelopes onto which they wrote the addresses of their loved ones to ensure the post man knew where to drive with the letters. They were also careful to put a stamp on their envelopes. When this was all complete, they walked to the village to find our nearest post box outside the post office where they put these in the post. They are all very excited to see how long it takes to be delivered and to hear how their loved ones felt when they received this surprise in the post.
We would like to congratulate our 3rd class have made it through to the final of Audiology Medical Services Christmas Carol School Competition with their rendition of 'Bumpy Journey'. We were informed that there were hundreds of entries for this competition and we are delighted to be one of 15 entries on the shortlist. We would like to say a huge thanks to Ms Turner, Ms Smith, Ms Doyle and Vyvienne for supporting the class with their entry.
The following link https://bit.ly/2K5tSvC can be shared via text or email, this will bring you directly to the voting. The above link went live yesterday evening and voting will remain open until 4pm on the 17th December. To vote you will be asked to enter your email address first, then select the school you wish to vote for – with voting restricted to one vote per email address.
Over the course of today and tomorrow, each video will be posted on their social media, please feel free to share our posts to encourage colleagues, family, and friends to vote for your school. Every vote counts!
Today 5th and 6th class posted their postcards to the residents of a care home in Greystones which they were paired with through An Post. We hope these postcards can brighten the lives of the residents this Christmas.
Junior Infants have been working really hard over the last few weeks learning their numbers 1-5. We have had loads of fun working in groups ordering numbers, forming numbers and counting objects to match numbers! Have a look at some of the fun in our classroom during maths this week
In 5th and 6th class we have been focusing on the theme of ‘Australia’ with Ms Lawlor. We studied some different scenes and settings and incorporated some local wildlife into our pictures. We really enjoyed this activity.
There is no time more exciting than the run-up to Christmas, especially for Junior Infants! And there is more than enough excitement to go around in our Junior Infant classroom as it has turned into Santas workshop as part of our Aistear this month!
It is a a busy area filled with opportunities for the children to draw, write, count, sort, wrap and build!
Our topic is ‘Toys Old And New’ and while we will be comparing lots of toys, talking about our favourite toys, looking at the materials that toys are made from and how toys have changed from years ago, we are also enjoying playing with some new toys in our classroom!
And of course, its not Christmas without some Christmas art creations thrown in there too!
The Junior Infants are very busy getting excited for Christmas this year and are really enjoying learning about the story of the First Christmas.
We are exploring a number of versions of the Christmas Story and have a crib in our classroom which the children are enjoying playing, and using to retell the story themselves, with during Aistear
We are adding our advent candles to our wreath and we have also added some nativity pictures which we coloured in beautifully.
We are delighted to be taking part in the initiative of sending postcards to nursing homes this year. This is a campaign to encourage people to send messages to our elderly community, who are unable to have their usual visitors in nursing homes at the moment. Our senior classes have been allocated a buddy in a local nursing home, whom they will write individual postcards to and our junior end have been given a card to write at home and send to a nursing home or care home of their choice if they wish. Perhaps you might have a relative or a friend in a nursing home who might be grateful to receive a nice message? Write them a postcard and send it to them for free!
The Junior Infants have started learning their phonics sounds this week. They were working so hard this week that they even got to start their phonics book so there was great excitement in the classroom! We have been busy workers making our letters with play-doh and searching in books with our special finger lights, to name but a few of our activities!
Our amazing caretaker, Michael, is always kept busy keeping our garden looking its best and this week he was delighted to have some little helpers lighten the load!
We have just begun our novel ‘The Diary of a Killer Cat’ by Anne Fine and are thoroughly enjoying it. We use our finger lights to help us follow along while other individuals are reading.
We have heard some very expressive reading of the words by Tuffy the cat, and between all of the laughter, we have even managed to make some connections to the story. We are definitely looking forward to continuing the book and would highly recommend it so far.
We have been working on problem solving in 1st and 2nd class. The children are split into pairs or small groups. The groups are comprised of children from both 1st and 2nd class who work together to solve each of the problems.
During problem solving, we follow the RUDE strategy.
Read the question
Underline the important information
Draw a picture to help us solve the problem
Estimate what our answer will be before solving it
Problems are much easier to solve when we work in teams, and the children really are working well in their teams.
Happy Science Week!
In 1st and 2nd class we have been learning about space which provided so many opportunities for science week.
We started this week by looking at astronauts and their spacesuits. Spacesuits are designed carefully to help the astronauts survive their space adventures. Having learned about primary life support systems, control modules and much more, the children were challenged to design their own spacesuits for travelling.
We also learned about space travel and looked at the distinctive shape rockets have. We discovered that rockets are aerodynamic and the cone or point at the top of the rocket allows the air to flow more easily around the rocket to help it fly. The children then designed a spacecraft in groups that they thought would be suitable to get to space. Some of the groups found that their lego did not allow them to create an aerodynamic shape, so they designed alternative spacecrafts.
We also spent some time learning about Neil Armstrong and will learn about some more space explorers this coming week. Stay tuned for space explorer projects coming soon.
As part of science week 4th class carried out a range of fun science experiments but the one which wowed us the most was their outstanding bubble making contraptions.
In case anyone wants to make one of these fantastic bubble blowers, you can follow the procedure below:
Cut an empty drinking bottle in half.
Get a clean sock, and wrap it around the open end of the bottle.
Soak the bottom end of the sock-covered bottle in bubble mixture.
Take the bottle out of the bubble mix and blow.
Who knew design and make could be so much fun.
Nun’s Cross is filled with even more kindness than usual today as we celebrate Kindness Day. Each class has put in extra effort to be kind, to think of ways to be kind and to celebrate kindness as we believe that kindness makes the world a better place! In all of our classrooms you can see so much kindness happening from the actions of the kids and teachers to the creative displays on the walls and everywhere in between!
The Student Council proposed painting the window ledges in our school to add more colour to our beautiful garden!
Today they got to work and each window ledge was brightened up with a colour from the rainbow!
We are sure you will agree that they certainly brighten up the place! Well done and thank you to our wonderful student council!
The Junior Infants are learning all about light and dark this month and included in our topic is colours! As part of science week we have discovered that if we mix the primary colours they make new colours and these are called secondary colours. We had great fun experimenting with the colours and created colour wheel caterpillars in our classroom!
And of course it wouldn’t be science week if there wasn’t some exciting experiments along the way too!
We did the skittles experiment. Our teacher told us that she was going to add water and we had to predict what we thought would happen. Our guesses ranged from chocolate bursting out of the skittles to the water changing colour! We added the water and observed for a while and we discovered that the colour from the skittles dissolved in the water and the water turned all the colours of the rainbow!
And we had to have an explosion! We made our very own volcano. We learned about acids, which taste sour, and bases, which make bubbles! We added vinegar, which is an acid, to baking soda, which is a base and the chemical reaction made our volcano erupt!
The Junior Infants have been exploring colour as their science topic this week. They have learned about the three primary colours and today they made a colour wheel by mixing the primary colours to make secondary colours! They turned the colour wheels into a colour caterpillar for each group and they rea;;y brighten up our classroom!
