News from Mr. Dunne’s Third Class!
We have been so busy since the last time you heard from us! Last week, we went to the National Heritage Centre in County Wexford. Down there we got a really interesting tour through different settlements throughout Irish history, including Viking settlements which we have been learning about. We got to see how these people used to live, and even how they used to cook! We got to eat meat cooked from a fulacht fiadh – and see how the meat was cooked also. The fulacht fiadh works by placing roasting hot rocks into a bath of water built into the ground. It was a great trip enjoyed by all!
News from Ms. Black’s Junior Infants!
School Tours in Ms. Kett’s Sixth Class!
Another busy month in 6th class – we can’t actually believe how quickly time is flying by.
The highlight of the last few weeks has to have been watching the girl’s team battle courageously and determinedly in Croke Park and our school tour to Henrietta Street and The Hugh Lane gallery.
We are so proud of the girl’s team and we really respect them for getting out there, staying active, giving their all and representing us and St.Anne’s in such a positive way. Team sports are such a brilliant way of staying fit and healthy but also, committing to a team teaches us to work together, respect and support each other and handle life’s ups and downs and highs and lows in a way that we can’t be simply told about or taught in a classroom. It is invaluable experience that teaches us resilience and important life lessons.
Our tour to Henrietta Street was another day of learning and fun. We arrived at the building in the heart of Dublin city and immediately upon entering, were transported to another time and place. We had really interesting guides who explained to us the history of the building and gave us a good understanding of the lives of the families who lived and sometimes sadly died there. We learned about the different stages in it’s history, which reflected the history of Dublin through the years. It’s journey from a prosperous and flambouyant townhouse during the Georgian Era in Dublin to the slums and tenaments of Dublin’s darkest days, to an example of a family’s home during the 1930s until its last occupants left in the late 1970s. It was a facinating and nostalgic tour that opened our eyes to life in our city in the past. We would highly recommend it to everyone – young and old.
We had a fantastic last day before mid-term with dress up and cake eating fun and we are looking forward to the run in to christmas now 🙂
3…2…1…BLAST OFF!
During the month of October we learned all about Space! In English we read the story ‘Whatever Next!’ by Jill Murphy. In this story, Baby Bear finds a space rocket in the cupboard under the stairs. He finds a space helmet and space boots in the kitchen and then he zooms up the chimney and lands on the moon, all before bedtime! Whilst reading this story, we practised our comprehension skills of predicting, visualising, questioning and summarising, we learned new vocabulary, wrote a list of things that Baby Bear would need to bring with him to have a picnic and even dramatized Baby Bear zooming up the chimney in his box rocket!
In Maths, we continued to partition and combine for 6 but we also learned all about 2D shapes – squares, rectangles, triangles, circles, ovals and hexagons. We enjoyed going on 2D shape hunts around the school, playing guessing games with the shapes, drawing pictures using 2D shapes, playing with tangrams, using BeeBots to find 2D shapes and constructing 2D shapes out of cocktail sticks and marshmallows. In Gaeilge we learned lots of songs and phrases surrounding the theme of ‘An Scoil’ and of course ‘Oíche Shamhna’.
In History, we learned all about Neil Armstrong and created a timeline of his life. In Geography we learned all about our Solar System. We came up with a great mnemonic to remember the names and order of the planets – My Very Excited Mother Just Served Us Noodles – Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. We even pretended to be the planets orbiting around the sun! In Science we learned all about rockets and how they blast off into space. We made our own balloon rockets and launched them along a string.
In Music we learned lots of songs for Halloween but we also had to prepare for our assembly performance. We learned a song that retold the story of ‘Whatever Next!’ that we had been learning in English. We performed it at assembly to all of Junior Infants, Senior Infants and First Class! We did a fantastic job! In Drama, we played some fun drama games and read the story ‘The Way Back Home’ by Oliver Jeffers. The little boy in the story crash lands on the moon and befriends a Martian. Together we had to come up with a solution to help the boy and the Martian find their way back home! This month, we are busy preparing for our Christmas play, we are very excited to perform it in front of all our families.
In Art, we made some fantastic space rockets made out of plastic bottles and papier mâché. We also made some puffy paint planets. We had great fun making the puffy paint out of shaving foam, PVA glue and paint! Finally to talk about our favourite time of the day… Aistear! We loved playing in our space centre role play corner this month. We had to do all our safety checks before counting down and blasting off into space. We then had to put on our space suits and walk around the moon! We hope you enjoyed reading our blog post. Check back in a month’s time to find out what we have been up to in November and follow us on twitter @MsOlsonsClass to keep track in the mean time!
Mr Hackett’s Second Class
Welcome to Mr Hacketts Second class. Last term our theme was Autumn and our Locality. We have been busy Maths bees using all our new Maths equipment to help us visualise our maths sums and problem solve. We’ve had loads of fun and learned lots.
We have also been learning and gathering lots about Autumn as we see the signs all around us. The children have made a nature table with leaves , berries, nuts and conkers. Our art work has focused around this and we have done leaf rubbings and chalk/pastel pictures to capture the wonderful colours of Autumn.
In science we have been examining the effects of gravity and we carried out some tests making our own helicopters. We were even able to use sycamore seeds to see the original helicopter at work. The end of term was very exciting and spooky. Check out some of our Halloween decorations and costumes.
1st Class News – November 2018 – Ms McManus
We are back in first class after a wonderful midterm, we hope everyone enjoyed a well-deserved break! We were kept busy in the weeks leading up to our week off with lots of Halloween activities and new topics to learn about.
One of our favourite weeks last month was ‘Maths Week’! Throughout the week, we focused on problem solving and using our maths eyes. Every day, we would use our problem solving skills to solve some tricky maths riddles. For example: Stephen, Liam, Carla and Sadhbh meet up. Each person shakes hands with every other person once. How many handshakes are there in total? As well as solving riddles, our class became mindful of all the wonderful mathematical shapes, lines and problems hidden around us in our everyday lives. We used pictures of lots of everyday items to create and solve mathematical problems, for example: Can you estimate how many smarties are on these gingerbread men? Some people in the class even used their maths eyes at home, and brought in pictures that we stuck on our maths wall!
Throughout October, we also focused on learning a little bit more about where Halloween comes from. We discovered that Halloween actually originated in Ireland and comes from a festival called Samhain, which was celebrated by the Celts. As some of the children in the class would be in different countries for the Halloween break, we decided to learn a bit about Halloween traditions around the world. We looked at different ways the festival is celebrated in China, Belgium, Canada, England, Spain and Mexico. Did you know that in Hong Kong, Halloween is known as the ‘Festival of Hungry Ghosts? Some people even burn pictures of money or fruit on this day, as they believe the images may reach the spirit world and bring comfort to the ghosts!
In art, we wanted to put our knowledge of Autumn to good use. We created these autumn scenes, using paint and cotton balls. We made sure to include all the usual colours we see in Autumn, and even added some falling leaves!
Mischief Managed in Ms. Kett’s Class!
We have gone Harry Potter mad in Ms. Kett’s 6th class and we’re currently starting the 2nd book in the series. Although some of us have read them before, lots of us haven’t and we’re all thoroughly enjoying reading and disecting them. We are using the novel to inspire our art, teach us about story and character development and of course how to improve our own writing by using rich and descriptive language and a variety of adjectives and adverbs, a speciality of J.K. Rowlings.
As 6th class is our last year in primary school we began the year by writing a letter to our teacher with some requests and hopes for the year ahead. We are very excited about confirmation preparation and of course getting ready for the big move to secondary school. With this in mind we’ve been having lots of conversations around SPHE topics such as – friendships, looking after ourselves and making good choices. We’ve also been discussing healthy eating and good habits and began our studies of the human body by looking at the heart and lungs. The brain is next – we can’t wait. In history we are currently learning all about the Georgian Era and looking at architectural evidence round our great city. We are drawing and constructing Georgian building and doors and are becoming increasingly impressed by the magnificient buildings from the past. We are going on our first tour next week to Henrietta Street museum and the Hugh Lane Gallery. We are excited and looking forward to many more educational (and fun) tours throughout the year.
This month we also produced a ‘Passion Project’. We researched and prepared these at home and presented them to the class on completion. The variety and standard of the projects was excellent and it was facinating to learn about each others passions in such detail. We learned a lot from each other; some baked brownies and cookies (very popular indeed) and explained the process, others chose football as their passion (surprise, surprise), other projects included the World of Disney, Harry Potter, Horses, Hockey, Parties and even The Immune System, to name but a few. They were all fantastic and very informative. We are looking forward to doing many more projects throughout the year ahead.
We’ve also been keeping our eyes peeled for signs of Autumn and in particular the amazing changing colours in our environment. We’ve learned about photosynthesis and the Season s at a global level. The wonderful autumnal colours have inspired more art.
Overall we’ve had a great start to the year and are looking forward to Halloween and the mid-term break now but also learning much more as the year unfolds. Slán.