Georgia O'Keeffe Inspired Art in 3rd Class

Inspired by the flowers outside our school and the art of Georgia O'Keeffe, 3rd class were very busy creating these beautiful pieces of art!

"If I could paint the flower exactly as I see it no one
   would see what I see because I would paint it small
   like the flower is small. So I said to myself - I'll paint what I see - what the flower is to me but I'll paint it big
     and they will be surprised into taking time to look
        at it – I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.” Georgia O’Keeffe

Colour Dash Run to end Active Week 2021

Today on our final day of Active Week 2021, we finished the week with a colour dash run with all classes taking part. So much fun was had by students and teachers alike. We have enjoyed an absolutely fantastic week where many memories were created with our friends. We would like to say a huge thank you to Ms Bennett and the Active Committee for making this week one which will stay in our memories for a very long time.

Senior Soccer at the GAA pitch

Our senior students visited Ashford GAA pitch as part of our Active Week activities on Thursday.

The Nuns Cross Grand National

Over the past two days the children have been participating in the Nuns Cross Grand National which brought huge excitement to the school. We would like to say a massive Thank You to Cooley farm who kindly provided the jumps. We also received a surprise message from Katie Walsh, Irish Grand National winner, where she offered us encouragement along with a lovely message. Take a look below…

Junior Infants …

Senior Infants…

1st & 2nd class …

3rd class…

4th class …

Tom Crean Projects in 5th & 6th

Take a look at some of the work done by our 5th and 6th class students during their period of studying the arctic explorer Tom Crean.

Active Week at Nuns Cross

This year Nuns Cross are going all out to celebrate Active Week. Our Active Committee have been working tirelessly to make this Active Week the best one yet and it has been going down a treat with all classes.

We started off on Monday morning with a Wake Up and Shake Up which was led by some of our senior pupils. No sooner were we arrived in school before we were dancing along to their tunes and trying to keep up with their actions. It was great fun!

All week we have continued our final week of the run around Ireland challenge, each day reaching a new target location. Monday finished off with relay races. These consisted of three-legged races, wheelbarrow races, sprints, piggy back races and potato and spoon races.

Monday was finished off with some good old tug of war which brought out a competitive streak in everybody, even the teachers decided to join in!

On Tuesday…

We welcomed a familiar face back to the school. Aidan our rugby coach worked with all classes to check in on how our skills have developed since his last visit in December. He was very impressed by all he saw.

On Wednesday…

We started our day off with a healthy breakfast morning. The children brought in a healthy breakfast they had prepared, inspired by a very helpful parent whose cooking tutorial was shared on SeeSaw on Tuesday afternoon. We are conscious that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and in order to keep our minds and bodies functioning to their best, we need to be fuelling our bodies accordingly.

During the day, each class had a 30 minute circult training class with Ms Pearse and her Active Committee helpers. This was a great test of our strength and stamina, as we completed a wide range of stretches and High Intensity exercises.

Later during the day our junior classes visited Ashford GAA pitch where they enjoyed a soccer tournament. Tomorrow our senior pupils will be getting their turn to showcase their skills on the big pitch.

The day finished off with a Teachers vs 5th and 6th class Students doddgeball challenge. Chants could be heard from far and wide in the run up to home time, as excited onlookers chose their side to support. The teachers emerged victorius thanks to some great skill shown by Ms Smith. a re-match must be had as the game had to be called to a premature hault due to collection time being upon us.

Tomorrow we look forward to our senior classes soccer tournament at Ashford GAA pitch as well as the Nuns Cross Grand National which will be held over the coming two days for both junior and senior pupils. Here is a sneak peak of what is in store…

On Friday, our week culminates with a colour dash run, with our run around Ireland drawing to a colourful close.

Easter at Nun's Cross

Easter is a very special time and we were so lucky to be treated to a wonderful production of the Easter story by Ms Smith and her 4th class students! They retold the story of Holy week in a whole school outdoor assembly and the whole school was enthralled by their performance!

All classes have been learning all about Easter and have created some beautiful Easter art and crafts creations! From Easter baskets, to chicks and egg pastel pictures the children have been very creative!

Our Easter Egg Hunt

Following our Easter Assembly today, our classes enjoyed an Easter Egg Hunt. The Easter Bunny noticed all the great work going on in school and paid a visit with some Easter eggs for the children to enjoy. They were absolutely everywhere but with our crew of searchers it didn’t take long before we had the place cleared out. We would like to say a huge thanks to our Parents Association who worked very hard in helping to make today possible. We would like to wish our entire school community a happy and safe Easter break.

Our run around Ireland

This week we took on the Run Around Ireland challenge. All of our classes have been taking on his challenge and running every day with our combined distance totals taking us to some wonderful landmarks around Ireland. We are using coloured thumb tacks to show where we have reached and we have been having lots of fun talking about the places on this map which we have visited.

Back in school in 5th and 6th

5th and 6th class have been loving being back in school again with all their friends. They have enjoyed getting to play with our new GAA posts, making the most of having some Golden Time each day. The main topic we have been learning about this fortnight has been ‘the Famine’. They made some really interesting coffin ships and they ended this week off in style with their wonderful ‘sock friends’. Check out some of their work below.

Spring Is In The Air

We are so lucky in Nun’s Cross to have such a beautiful outdoor space for the children to explore. We appreciate in more than ever in spring, when we can take full advantage of learning in the outdoors.

The infants have been busy hunting for the signs of spring and watching the life cycle of the frog unfold before their eyes. They have been busy sequencing the life life of a frog and have produced some wonderful frog pictures during one of their art lessons!

Junior Infant Patterns

The children in Junior Infants are experts at making patterns! Look at some of our creations this week!

New Additions to our Green-Schools Flagpole

In Nun’s Cross, we are delighted to be a Green-School and fly our green flag with great pride at the front on the school.

We are currently working towards our sixth green flag, but we thought it was very important to acknowledge the great effort that has gone into achieving our 5 previous flags.

As soon as we came across the pennant flags, we knew that they would be a brilliant addition to help show the great achievements we have had in the Green-Schools programme to date. Each pennant represents one of the Green-Schools themes that we have completed.

Green: Litter and Waste

Yellow: Energy

Blue: Water

Maroon: Travel

Mint: Biodiversity

We are going to continue working hard over the remainder of this school year and will hope to continue the success and add another pennant to our flagpole.

Creative Schools voting

In Nuns Cross National School we are incredibly fortunate to be taking part in the Creative Schools Initiative. This initiative in association with the Arts Council is aimed at fostering and harnessing the creative potential in all children.

So far this year we have been working with our Creative Associate, Eamon Sweeney. We recruited two creative councils within the school, a Junior Council and a Senior Council who meet regularly to discuss progress. Our teachers have had a staff meeting to introduce them to the initiative and we are all very eager to jump aboard this adventure. So far we have sent out our feelers to the whole student population to collect ideas for activities each and every student enjoy doing or would like to do more of in school. This week we are hoping to put a list of themes/options based on these findings out to vote. We will need every child in every class to vote on this and the most popular project or idea will be completed.

Additionally, this year we have a 6th class council. As it has been quite a fractured year for them and with it being their last year in the school, we are eager for them to have their say in their own project.

New GAA goalposts

This week we were delighted with the delivery of our GAA goalposts and 10 GAA footballs. We have been patiently waiting for this special delivery for a long time. Earlier this year, following our hugely successful Nuns Cross GAA Class Blitz, it was brought to our attention by both Student Council and the Active Committee that a set of GAA goalposts would be hugely beneficial to the children who became very inspired when training for our blitz with Kevin our GAA coach. We are looking forward to having 3rd - 6th class pupils back in school to test them out for us.

The Tiger Who Came To Tea

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!

Green-Schools Remote Day of Action

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.

Week 1 of remote learning in Junior Infants

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!

Christmas Mini Olympics at Nun's Cross

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.

Santa Visit

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!