Physical Education

Physical Education is taught by the class teacher for 1 hour each week. The children are very fortunate to have other coaches and experts visit the school to teach soccer and basketball. We also attend swimming for a period of 8-10 weeks in the Summer term.

Summer Fun with Junior & Senior Infants!

Date posted: 23rd June 2018 | Category Blog, Class Work, Drama, English, Geography, Junior Classroom, Mathematics, Music, Our Work on Display, Physical Education, Science, Sport, Visual Arts |

As the year ends we have been busier than ever in the Junior Classroom!

We were learning all about the garden and garden centres in play. We role played in the Garden Centre, discovered tools gardeners use in the sand, made garden related items in junk art, constructed a garden centre in small world, made garden flowers from play dough & explored the use of water at the water station.

We also sowed sunflowers for our own gardens at home. We watered them and kept them on a sunny windowsill and after a few days they began to germinate. They were starting to grow quite tall by the time we brought them home!

We had great fun at our Sports’ Day, sprinting, running over hurdles, competing in the egg and spoon race and sack race.

Before our annual Sponsored Cycle we had a Cycle Safety Workshop. We learned how to safely steer around objects as well as how to use our brakes properly.

In Art we made sailing boats, we used potatoes to print the boats onto our painted background.

Before the holidays we had a Teddy Bears’ Picnic. As a treat we had some delicious Summer food – ice-cream and strawberries!

In Maths we’ve learned all about money. Here are Senior Infants sorting out their change!

We were also working on addition skills, Junior Infants played a game ‘Fill It, Spill It, Add It’ to learn about adding.

Senior Infants played Number Dots to practice their addition skills.

We continued to work hard learning tricky words. We practiced writing them with markers and shaping them in play dough and completing worksheets for different words.

We had a great morning learning to play drums and beating different rhythms.

In Science we learned all about the life cycle of a ladybird and we made paper plate ladybirds in Art.

Happy holidays everyone, have a great summer!

Date posted: 23rd June 2018 | Category Blog, Class Work, Drama, English, Geography, Junior Classroom, Mathematics, Music, Our Work on Display, Physical Education, Science, Sport, Visual Arts |

Sports’ Day 2018!

Date posted: 16th June 2018 | Category Blog, Class Work, Junior Classroom, Middle Classroom, Physical Education, Senior Classroom, Sport, Sports |

On Wednesday, 13th June, we held our Annual Sport’s Day in Wandesforde National School! Each year we have 5 races involving all the children. The first of the races were sprints. The Infants had to sprint 20 metres. 1st and 2nd had to sprint 30 metres and 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th had to sprint 60 metres!

The next race involved sprinting over hurdles!

Following this, we all had fun doing the “Egg and Spoon Race”

After all our hard work, it was time for a break and an ice cream!!

Next up was the sack race which always is a fun race to do and watch!

Finally, our Sports Day finished up with the Three Legged Race!

Sports Day wouldn’t be Sports Day without our Annual Prizegiving!

Each child received a medal for all their fantastic efforts! They were also presented with their PAWS Swimming Certificates following all their hard work at swimming this year 😉

6 children received a plaque for being a great team player and enjoying sports throughout the year! A trophy was also presented to the best overall achiever throughout the year at Wandesforde School. Well done to you all!

Well done to all the children on great participation in all Sports Day activities.

Date posted: 16th June 2018 | Category Blog, Class Work, Junior Classroom, Middle Classroom, Physical Education, Senior Classroom, Sport, Sports |

Wandesforde gets Cycling with Sprocket Rocket!!

Date posted: 11th June 2018 | Category Blog, Class Work, Fundraising Activities, Physical Education, SPHE, Sport |

In preparation for our Sponsored Cycle, the children participated in Cycling Ireland’s fun skills programme called Sprocket Rocket!

The children all brought in their own bicycles for the workshop which taught them the 4 main skills of cycling, they being: Cornering, Pedalling, Braking and Balance.

Thank you to Seamus and Charlie for all their hard work and enthusiasm on the day. The children thoroughly enjoyed the programme and it really set them up for their big day on Saturday!

Date posted: 11th June 2018 | Category Blog, Class Work, Fundraising Activities, Physical Education, SPHE, Sport |

Exploring the Outdoors in the Senior Classes!

Date posted: 10th June 2018 | Category Blog, Class Work, Geography, Local Visits, Physical Education, Science, Senior Classroom, Sport, Visual Arts |

Since Easter, 3rd – 6th Classes have been exploring the outdoors with Jo and Richard in the Discovery Park as part of a 4-week programme being rolled out by Kilkenny Recreation and Sports Partnership.

The children have thoroughly enjoyed all aspects of the workshop which were conducted both in the school environment and in the Discovery Park.

Below are some photos of the activities which the children engaged in, all of which supported various curricular areas such as Maths, Science, Geography, P.E. and Art.

Take a look at their participation in the programme.

The children engaged in various team building games during the first week!

Parachute Games

Clumps

The Tower of Hanoi

During the second week of the programme, the children engaged in activities relating to SESE

They explored the food chain and created a food web using string and each person had to represent a different animal that lives in the woods.

As well as this, the children had to work in teams to identify the number of years it would take for various materials to decompose! This was a difficult task and no group got the correct answers but we learned so much from this activity!

Did you know that it takes a banana skin up to 2 years to naturally decompose?

A plastic bottle depending on its size, could take up to 1,000,000 years to decompose naturally!!

As a final activity on Week 2, the children were given the task of creating a nest using anything they could find naturally in the forest.

The challenge was to make sure the nest would stay together when it was lifted!

On the third week, the children explored maps, some of them were of the Discovery Park and others were from other parts of Ireland.

The children once again worked in teams to identify the source of rivers as well as where lakes and other map features can be found.

In response to their work on maps and map reading, the children then worked outdoors to create their own map of the lakes and grounds within the Discovery Park. They had to find parts of nature in the school grounds that would help show areas within the map.

Below are some of their finished maps!

Didn’t they do a fantastic job?

They once again demonstrated good teamwork in this activity

The final week of the programme was back in the Discovery Park. For this week the children engaged in the PE curriculum and had to once again perform as team players.

They did wall climbing….

and they also had to wall climb as a team which wasn’t as easy!

As a final treat, the children did Archery!

On behalf of the school, I want to thank Kilkenny Recreation and Sports Partnership for providing the children with the opportunity to engage in this fantastic workshop. They thoroughly enjoyed the 4-week programme. Special thanks to Jo and Richard who implemented the programme so well from start to finish. Well done also to the children for engaging so well in all activities asked of them and showing what it takes to be a team player! 🙂

Date posted: 10th June 2018 | Category Blog, Class Work, Geography, Local Visits, Physical Education, Science, Senior Classroom, Sport, Visual Arts |

Marvellous March in the Junior Room!

Date posted: 24th March 2018 | Category Blog, Class Work, Drama, Easter, English, Geography, Junior Classroom, Mathematics, Our Work on Display, Physical Education, Religious Education, Science, Visual Arts |

March has been another busy month in the Junior Room. In play we learned all about the hospital. Here we are making hospital related items from junk art, role playing in the hospital and making our own wards in the small world area.

We also made our own x-rays, Junior Infants learned the letter ‘x’ this month and we looked at real x-rays from a hospital.

In S.E.S.E. we discussed the instruments a doctor uses in hospital and completed worksheets about this.

As it’s Spring now we looked at the blackbird, watched a video of an adult feeding chicks and listened to their song. We then made life cycle diagrams for a blackbird.

To celebrate St Patrick’s Day we made bright green shamrocks from matchsticks, paper, fabric and buttons, then we attached rainbow colours underneath.

Easter is here and we learned all about the Easter Story in Religion. We created our own hills with 3 crosses to represent the story and painted in sunsets behind.

As well as remembering the Easter Story we also like to eat Easter Eggs and we used all we’ve learned in Maths to create colourful patterns on Easter Eggs. We used pom poms gripped by clothes pegs to do this!