Getting Some Exercise in 2nd and 3rd class

2nd and 3rd class have been looking at the effects exercise has on our body. We know that exercise is good for us and it helps to keep us healthy, but how?

Firstly we measured our heart rate when we were sitting down and relaxed before exercising. We noted how many times our hearts took a beat in one minute.

After this we did some exercises like jumping jacks for a minute and then we measured our heart rates again.

Everyone found that the result was that their hearts were beating faster. Lots of the children also noticed that their breathing was quicker and their body temperature had increased too. The discussions that followed lead us to the conclusion that when we exercise, our hearts beat faster and our lungs work harder. This is because when we exercise our blood flows faster and we breath quicker and the result of this is that our lungs and our hearts get exercise. Just like the muscles in our arms and legs, our heart is a muscle too and it needs exercise! When it pumps faster, we know its getting some exercise and we need to make sure it gets exercise every day!

Teddy Experiment in Senior Infants

Senior Infants were required to come to Teddy’s rescue this week. Poor Teddy was caught in the rain and he was so sad that he got wet! So he asked for our help to find a material to make his umbrella from that would keep him dry when it rains again!

So we set to work! We gathered lots of different materials and we tested them to see if they would keep teddy dry. We tried paper, fabric, plastic, tin foil, cardboard and even cotton wool. We found that materials that were made of plastic, like cling film, kept teddy dry as the rain water didn’t go through. Unfortunately materials like paper, cardboard and fabric were not very good at keeping teddy dry as the water soaked through and made him wet!

Bug Hotels in 1st class

1st class have been investigating the bugs and critters that we share our school garden with. We took a walk around the school garden and found some insects living out there. Some of them were in dark and damp places, others were out in the open.

We had some recycling materials in our classroom so we worked together to try to create a habitat for the insects in our garden. Using our materials we made some really lovely bug hotels that we think the bugs in our garden will be happy to sleep in!

Nocturnal Animals

The Junior infants read a new story this week. It was the well known and much loved ‘Owl Babies’ by Martin Waddell and Patrick Benson.

After reading the story the children were struck by something and posed an interesting question - why were the owl babies awake at night time?

So we decided to investigate! We knew that some animals, like hedgehogs are nocturnal, because we learned about that when we were investigating autumn. So we surmised that if the owls were awake during the night time too, then that must mean they are also nocturnal. From here we went investigating, with our teachers help, to find some more nocturnal animals and we found that there are lots. From cats, to mice, badgers and deer, there are lots of nocturnal animals that share our world.

We learned a very interesting new word too - diurnal. This means animals and people who sleep during the night and wake up during the day - like us! We are diurnal, the opposite of nocturnal. To put our new knowledge into practice we completed a sorting activity.

We had some glow sticks left over from our Halloween party so we pulled down all the blinds in our classroom to make it dark, like it is for nocturnal animals. We then activated our glow sticks but we will leave understanding that chemical reaction for science week another year!

Colour Mixing

The Junior and Senior Infants have had lots of fun exploring colours this week.

The Junior infants have been learning all about the three primary colours. They have also been exploring the superpowers that these colours have - did you know that when two super colours meet they magically create a new colour? The Junior Infants had lots of fun exploring these new colours by mixing paints and creating some lovely paintings.

The Senior Infants revisited the concept of primary and secondary colours and explored colours mixing through a different medium. The Senior infants observed what happened when 3 cups of coloured water were connected to each other with sheets of kitchen roll. They observed the water being absorbed by the tissue and when two different colours met and blended, it created a secondary colour, just as it did when the Junior Infants mixed the paint. The walking water experiment proved to have super powers just like paint!

5th and 6th Class STEM Challenge

The children in 5th and 6th class were set a challenge:

Can you create a house that is suitable for a tropical climate?

From their studies of tropical climates, the children knew that these climates are very wet, so their house would need to be able to sustain high levels of rain. The children worked in small groups to try and create a house that would keep the contents inside dry. Their houses also had other features such as being raised on stilts as areas in the tropics flood regurally. The children were given no direction with materials and had to come up with materials they felt would be suitable themselves and give reasons why. There was a lot of discussion, listening and compromising within the groups as the children worked through the challenge with the aim of being successful in their task.

Each group were very excited to test their houses by simulating rain and then checking to see if the tissue inside remained dry.

Team Hope Shoe Box Collection

It’s been another great year in Nun’s Cross for making shoeboxes for Team Hope.

Team Hope’s Christmas Shoebox Appeal is an annual campaign that delivers gifts straight into the hands of children affected by poverty. Often these shoebox gifts are the only gift that a child will receive at Christmas and the joy that they bring is incredible. Since 2010, they have delivered over 2.1 million Shoebox gifts to Vulnerable Children across the world, and Nun’s Cross are delighted to take part in this effort every year.

This year we collected 87 shoeboxes filled with all sorts of essentials and treat for children in Lesotho, South Africa. Thank you to everyone who helped to make a difference this year!

If you want to take part in this year’s collections, it’s not too late! Donations can be made until November 15th, with a variety of collection points around Wicklow. Or you can make a virtual shoebox by donating money and Team Hope will put a shoebox together on your behalf! Check out The Team Hope Website for more information!

Halloween treasure hunt in 1st class

This week 1st class were delighted to follow a Halloween treasure hunt around the school. They had to work together to solve clues and complete all the tasks and activities involved. It was great fun!

Nun's Cross Halloween Celebrations

Today the students dressed up in their Halloween costumes and enjoyed lots of fun and games. We started the day off with an assembly. After that the children enjoyed playing toms traditional Halloween games including bobbing for prizes, pumpkin fun and our Halloween disco which was organised by our Parents Association. Last week the children wrote their favourite songs for inclusion in our disco playlist and Disco Dave brought the disco back to the classes virtually. We had a really great day.

Paper rollercoaster design

Today 5th class finished maths week off with the paper rollercoaster challenge.

Challenge: The group were challenged to make the tallest rollercoaster which would function without a problem. Groups were given 3- seconds to complete the challenge. Look below to see our creations.

Process: The groups explored using different shapes - looking at tunnels and open tracks. They then faced the problem of supporting these rollercoasters using paper and selotape alone. We agreed that we would use marbles at the beginning of our work to ensure it was a fair test.

Results:

When testing this we agreed that groups would be given three turns at working their rollercoaster to demonstrate how well it worked. Where rollercoasters did not completely work, we measured the descent from beginning until the marble popped out.

The winning rollercoaster to function totalled 1 metre and 10 cms with an impressive ability to support itself. We did question the independence of this structure as we queried whether the tracks did indeed touch the sink bowl for support when under pressure but as you can see in the picture below the rollercoaster was able to hold its own weight when the marble was travelling.

Conclusion:

Groups who worked concurrently on building the track and supports were most successful. Many really long tracks failed to hold the marble for its journey as they were not supported well enough.

Soccer Blitz in Ashford

Yesterday all classes from 1st to 6th walked to Ashford GAA pitch to play a soccer tournament which was arranged by the school’s Active Committee. We were blessed with stunning weather and a huge amount of fun was had by all. We are making a huge push this year to retain our Active Flag but we can already see so much improvement since our last soccer blitz day in Ashford. Some classes even got to play in the park!

Rugby this half term in Nun's Cross

This half term we have enjoyed our visits from Aidan our Wicklow Community Rugby Officer. Having our rugby on Mondays made it much easier for us to start our weeks. Thank you so much Aidan for sharing some of our fond memories of our fun and games this past half-term.

Maths Week games and Challenges

This week we are enjoying completing some maths games and challenges. This morning Ms Ward’s groups had great fun completing the emoji equations and shape memory games on the whiteboard. The resources are all available on mathsweek.ie and you can give these challenges a go for yourself by visiting their website. Our 5th class group were most fond of the emoji equations.

Meanwhile some of our senior pupils put their furniture assembly skills together in making our new flat pack furniture.

Clay crafts in 1st class

This week 1st class were making some clay creations. They worked so hard applying their skills and adding texture to create their animals. Have a look at our creations and see if you can see our pinching and rolling techniques.

Green-School Awards Ceremony

On Tuesday 5th October, the staff and students of Nun’s Cross were delighted to have the opportunity to attend a virtual award ceremony for our SIXTH Green Flag.

The children on the committee, with the help of everyone in the school community, were very excited to be involved in earning the Green Flag for Global Citizenship: Litter and Waste. We enjoyed watching the ceremony and looking out for any mentions of our school. We enjoyed joining in with the live interactive elements, sending our responses to different questions in, and seeing them appear on the screen. The organisers kept us waiting while announcing all the different schools who had earned flags, but being the second last school mentioned meant that we gave an even louder cheer.

A huge congratulations and thank you to all involved in earning this flag. We look forward to begin working towards our seventh flag which will be for Global Citizenship: Energy.

Vikings in 2nd and 3rd Class

During the month of September, 2nd and 3rd class learned about the Vikings. We explored different elements about the life of the Vikings. We learned about their clothing, armour, transport and much more.

Did you know that the Vikings used different natural items to dye their clothes? We explored the different things that we have in the school grounds that could be used to dye our Viking clothing.

We put ourselves in the mindset of a new Viking chief who had just put on all of their armour for the first time. We wrote diary entries focusing on how the different elements would have felt. Some of our chiefs were lucky and had soft woollen linings to soften the pain from the cold, sharp chainmail.

We did lots of art base on the Vikings too. We drew our own longship pictures and also designed the dragon heads that could be mounted to the stem of our longships. Finally, we designed our own Viking inspired shields that could be used to protect ourselves during raids.

We finished our exploration of the Vikings by carrying out a Viking inspired raid around the school grounds. We rowed our longship around the school grounds before disembarking and raiding the different villages to find what treasures they held. We had a lot of fun.

Marshmallows and Spaghetti STEM challenge in 4th and 5th

4th and 5th class were tasked with designing and making a tower using only spaghetti and marshmallows. The challenge was to design and make a tower to hold a copy book on top for 10 seconds, with the tallest tower being rewarded with some Cadbury Heroes. Groups were given 30 minutes to complete the task.

We were thrilled to see that 7 our of our 9 towers were successful in supporting the copy book for the 10 seconds, some for as long as 6 minutes before we took the copy off. It then came down to seeing which tower was the highest - with our highest tower measuring in at an impressive 46cm. Look at a video we made to show the last ten seconds of our tower holding the copy book.

Making weather instruments in 4th & 5th class

Today 4th and 5th class made some weather instruments to measure the weather. Among our creations we have a wind vane, a barometer and a rain gauge.

Wind vane: We used some laminated card to catch the wind and some straws/lollipop sticks to hold these on. We will place our different vanes in different areas around the school to compare parts that may be more and less windy and to see if the vane is always pointing the same direction in all locations. Will the wind change direction much during the day/week.

Barometer: We also made a barometer to measure the pressure in the atmosphere. We used a balloon, a straw, a glass jar and some paper card.

Anemometer: We designed and made an anemometer to measure wind speed and direction. We used some paper cups to catch the wind and spin. We will count the number of times the cups spin around to make a full rotation. To help us with this, we coloured one of the cups black.

Rain gauge: We used a plastic bottle with the top cut off to make a funnel. We marked our measurements on the side. We were very resourceful and borrowed some spoons from the staff room to dig a hole to sit the rain gauge into.

We will be observing our instruments carefully this coming week and recording our weather at the same time each day to ensure we are as accurate as possible.

Student Council Update

Last week our student council met to decide how best to gather the views, opinions and ideas of all students as we plan for the year ahead. We are keen to keep improving school for the students and to see where they think these improvements may be identified. We also put the feelers out there for ideas for a school fundraiser. One of our senior members developed the survey which the council approved before circulating to the children for completion. Today we collected the surveys and we got to analyse them in groups to figure out which ideas were most popular. We listed the most popular/practical ideas and tomorrow we will discuss the ideas from each class and make a further survey to decide our priorities in the year ahead.

GAA returns to Nuns Cross

Today GAA coaching returned to Nuns Cross. We were visited by Darren who will be working with us all year. This term Junior Infants and Senior Infants will be learning the basic skills of gaelic football. Today they had lots of fun!