Senior Infants had great fun celebrating World Book Day today. We read ‘The Tiger Who Came To Tea’ and thought of someone that we would love to have tea with. After that we went on an outdoor book scavenger hunt. We had to search through the books to find clues. It was great fun!
This year Nun’s Cross National School held a remote day of action which was organised by the Green-Schools Committee. We are currently working towards our 6th Green Flag and decided to use this lockdown as an opportunity to take action in protecting our planet and to learn about our role as global citizens.
On 11th February, the school community took action from their own homes. The children and their families chose activities that interested them most. We had many families go on recycling and Fairtrade symbol scavenger hunts, and others noticed the save water symbol so added that to their scavenger hunt. It was amazing to see all of the different items that can be recycled and very interesting to learn about the different Fairtrade products that we might have in our homes.
Other families decided that with the cold weather approaching, it would be a good time to build bird houses, bird feeders and bug hotels. Others used this opportunity as a reminder to refill their bird feeders. Some families managed to take photos of the birds exploring their new bird feeders.
Another activity that many families took part in was creating recycled crafts or fashion. We had old tops being upcycled into bags, hair bands and chicken clothes, while others turned recyclable materials into castles, monsters and so much more. We even had someone upcycle a chair into a table.
We had litter pick-ups around our local areas which gave us some very surprising and sad findings in some cases. We had some very full bags of rubbish after tidying a small area which was a bit upsetting, but we are glad to know that the waste has been disposed of properly now. We even had members of the school community sending messages out to their family to pick up any rubbish they might see when walking. As global citizens, it is very important to know that our actions can have an impact on others and an action like this can have a positive impact on the environment.
We had lots of fun on our day of action, but we will remember that every day is a day that we can take action in caring for our planet.
Thank you to everyone who was involved and sent in the wonderful photos.
Mrs Gannon has been blown away, and had her socks knocked off many times this week by the phenomenal work done at home by all the Junior Infants!
They have been busy working away on their literacy skills by listening to stories, sharing their news and developing their oral language.
They have kept busy in phonics revising their sounds through a variety of activities and games!
Their maths skills are incredible and they spent this week revising their numbers 1-5 - check out at how good they are at forming their numbers now after all their hard work!
And of course they have kept up their practice of their Gaeilge shouting so loudly at Mrs Gannon in some lessons that she could hear them through the screen!
We have also had lots of boys and girls exploring our SESE topic of dinosaurs, getting outside for lots of exploring and exercise, some children have created their own games, learned a new skills like sewing and riding their bike without stabilisers as well as creating some beautiful works of art!
An incredible start to our remote learning by an incredible bunch of little people! Well done everyone!
Today, after much planning and preparation, our Active Committee held the Winter Olympics in Nuns Cross NS. Our committee have worked on this for the past month, deciding on games which could be played with the Christmas theme and then shortlisting these games by allowing all classes to vote on which games were included.
Our Active Committee prepared three stations and a fun timetable full of fun and games for all classes. This morning started off with a ‘find the elf’ treasure hunt to get the classes warmed up this morning. The children had to locate elves around the school yard who then provided them with the next clue until they collected 8 Christmas baubles. It was super fun!
Our four stations consisted of ‘tinsel tug of war’, ‘snatch the Santa’, ‘rob the presents’ and ‘Santa’s sack race’. Great fun was had by all. Take a look at some of the action on the day.
Today the children at Nun’s Cross had a virtual visit from a very special visitor. It was Santa!!! The children were so surprised and delighted to meet with Santa through zoom. All children also received a present from the man himself.
We would like to say a HUGE thanks to our wonderful PTA for helping this happen. We had a lot of very happy children in school today!
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.
