Local Visits

The school is situated ideally to take full advantage of the Castlecomer Demesne and Discovery Park. This is a fantastic woodland park with a wonderful variety of nature species, including tadpoles, fish, birds and many different species of trees. Sometimes after a nature walk we play for a while in the “Timber Tumbles” playground situated beside the Discovery Park.

April fun in the Junior Room!

Date posted: 13th April 2019 | Category Blog, Class Work, Drama, Easter, Geography, Junior Classroom, Local Visits, Our Work on Display, Science, Visual Arts |

It has been a busy few weeks in the run up to Easter with Junior and Senior Infants. We learned all about the hairdressers in play. Here we are role playing in the Wandesforde Hair Salon, making items from play doh and junk art and building our own mini salons in small world.

Ms Power and Ms Byrne got their hair styled by the hairdressers at the Wandesforde Hair Salon!

We were up bright and early on April 4th to make an appearance on Ireland AM! We had a lovely morning in the Discovery Park.

In Art we made colourful Easter Eggs using paper doilies and coloured card.

Finally this month we learned all about the weather, we monitored the weather and drew different weather we learned about.

Date posted: 13th April 2019 | Category Blog, Class Work, Drama, Easter, Geography, Junior Classroom, Local Visits, Our Work on Display, Science, Visual Arts |

Spring has sprung in the Junior Room!

Date posted: 2nd April 2019 | Category Blog, Class Work, English, Geography, Junior Classroom, Local Visits, Mathematics, Our Work on Display, Science, SPHE, Visual Arts |

Junior & Senior Infants learned lots about the season of Spring this month. In play we discovered all about Spring weather, baby animals which are born and plants and flowers that grow.

We made Spring nests and plants from play doh

In the sand we found cards and put them in the correct order to show what happens in Spring

We also created our own Spring Garden in our classroom with daffodils, snowdrops, primroses and hyacinths.

In Art we made St Patrick’s Day crocks of gold and used clay to make daffodil candle holders for Mother’s Day.

Continuing with our Spring theme we made colourful rainbows which we often see at this time of year from the sunshine and showers. We also created fluffy baby lambs, born at the moment as well.

We wrote sentences about Spring and drew pictures to illustrate them in English.

We learned all about water in our world in SESE, looking at places we find water like the sea, rivers, canals, lakes etc. We also experimented to see if materials were waterproof and recorded our results.

Senior Infants learned all about measuring length this month and we measured pencils but used sharpeners instead of a ruler!

In SPHE we discussed and explored feelings we have through reading various Mr Men and Little Miss books. We drew some of the feelings we’d discussed.

We enjoyed two nature walks this month, first of all we went to the river and explored around the river bank and woods with Eileen Canny, although it was raining we had fun!! At the end of the month we went to the Discovery Park and tried to spot as many signs of Spring as we could. Thankfully the sun shone and we had time to visit the playground at the end!

Ready with our clipboards to spot signs of Spring!

Date posted: 2nd April 2019 | Category Blog, Class Work, English, Geography, Junior Classroom, Local Visits, Mathematics, Our Work on Display, Science, SPHE, Visual Arts |

Spring Fun and Games in 1st, 2nd and 3rd Class!

Date posted: 14th March 2019 | Category Blog, Class Work, English, Geography, Local Visits, Mathematics, Middle Classroom, Religious Education, Science, Visual Arts |

February has flown in the Middle Room! We have been very busy learning lots of new things and now you can have a look at all our work!

To mark the start of February, we read about St. Brigid and her life as a Christian. We coloured in pictures of her cloak…..

Chinese new Year was on the 5th February and this year is the year of the pig! We read a story about how all the animals were picked to be part of Chinese New Year and made dragons, as these are a huge symbol in Chinese culture.

We read a poem called “Daffodils” by William Wordsworth. We discussed the many verbs, adjectives and nouns in it and then decorated it!

In Maths, the 2nd class are learning all about 3D shapes and had to design hotels using all the shapes that we learned about!

We created colourful peacocks in art using metallic colours…

The children in all classes completed projects based on topics of their choice. They did a wonderful job presenting them to the class. Here are some pictures of their work!

To mark Pancake Tuesday, we enjoyed a few pancakes with our favourite toppings, kindly made by Mrs. Dooley and distributed by the Senior pupils. Thank you all very much! They were delicious!

We also welcomed Eileen Canny to the school to do a River Study Workshop with the children last week. The children explored the river bank and woodland area at the end of the school property and despite the rain, had lots of fun!

Well done on all your hard work boys and girls!

Date posted: 14th March 2019 | Category Blog, Class Work, English, Geography, Local Visits, Mathematics, Middle Classroom, Religious Education, Science, Visual Arts |

February Fun with the Juniors

Date posted: 4th March 2019 | Category Blog, Class Work, English, Geography, Junior Classroom, Local Visits, Music, Our Work on Display, Physical Education, Science, SPHE, Visual Arts |

Our play topic in February was ‘The Jungle.’ We had great fun making jungles in the sand, creating jungle animals and explorers equipment in junk art and play doh. We also went on a jungle trek around our class spotting various jungle creatures. Finally we played in our water station with jungle animals which live in rivers.

We created some of the animals from the book ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ Here’s a leaping gazelle………

One jungle explorer’s trek ended when bitten by a snake!!

In art we created lots of jungle themed work including parrots made from our handprints and colourful chameleons. For Valentine’s Day we made frames of our hands for our families.

In SESE we looked at the animals we find here in Ireland and the different animals which live in jungles, we sorted the animals accordingly and later drew a selection of jungle animals we’d learned about.

We also learned about forces and focused on what is moved by pushing and what is moved by pulling. We sorted some things which are pushed and others which are pulled. We experimented with some things in our classroom to see how they move and pushed paper fish along by blowing them. We had to see which surface they travelled on best.

In SPHE we continue to do our mindfulness each week, we take some time out to relax, close our eyes and just breathe deeply and calmly.

We also discussed all the things which make us happy in school and drew pictures to show these things.

We have had great fun in January and February learning to dance with Michelle 🙂

In music this month we learned the names of various percussion instruments and learned how to play them.

Finally we had a lovely time in the library where Mary read some stories all about eating healthy food and then we had to guess which healthy fruit and vegetables she had in her bag!

Date posted: 4th March 2019 | Category Blog, Class Work, English, Geography, Junior Classroom, Local Visits, Music, Our Work on Display, Physical Education, Science, SPHE, Visual Arts |

Happy New Year from the Junior Room!

Date posted: 1st February 2019 | Category Blog, Class Work, Drama, English, Geography, Junior Classroom, Local Visits, Mathematics, Our Work on Display, Science, Visual Arts |

It has been a busy start to 2019 in the Junior Classroom. We’ve learned about lots of new and exciting topics. In play we learned all about School and The Pet Shop.

We made school items in Playdough.

We built classrooms and schools in Small World and Construction.

We made items in Junk Art.

We also had fun in Role Play acting out in the classroom.

We also explored the theme of Pet Shops this month. We made Playdough animals and pet related items.

In Construction we made pet home like aquariums, rabbit and gerbil hutches and dog and cat baskets.

In Junk Art the boys and girls made pets and pet toys.

We found various pets in the sand and matched them to their homes.

Finally we made our own pet shop in the classroom and enjoyed acting out going to the shop in Role Play.

In Art we looked at the topic of Winter and made snowflakes using oil pastels and then painted over them with water colour paints.

We made winter mittens from tissue paper and contact and put them on display on our classroom window.

In Gaeilge we have learned all about ‘An Aimsir’ and made these colourful umbrellas.

Finally we made Winter Penguins using ‘cold’ coloured paints for the background.

In SESE we learned all about the topic of Winter, we sorted some winter clothes and drew pictures of Winter Scenes.

Also in SESE we were learning all about our sense of sight and hearing. We went on a walk outside to listen for different sounds and played games about what we could see around us. Then we coloured in pictures of things we like to look at and listen to.

Junior Infants have been revising the number 2 in Maths, while Senior Infants were learning ordinal numbers, ordering stories from what happened 1st to last.