With the Ploughing Championships coming up, minds were on all things agricultural, so in the middle room we had a general farming theme for September.

In history we looked at the Sumerians in Mesopotamia and the beginnings of farming. We wove our own pieces of cloth as the Sumerians would have. Everyone really loved the weaving. As you can see, a distinct colour pattern was evident!

We also created our own coil pots, one of the methods used for creating pottery by the Sumerians; the potter’s wheel was not available to them at this time.

We learned what is needed to grow plants successfully, and that the Sumerians, in order to get water to their crops, developed technologies such as canals to irrigate their farms. We have planted our own lettuce and radishes in the classroom. We will keep some without light and some without water, but hopefully the plants getting water and light will grow and we can add something extra to our lunchboxes in a few weeks!

We all know that a favourite topic of the farmer is the weather, so we have also been studying the weather. We measured various aspects of the weather, wind force, cloud cover, rainfall and temperature. We even made our very own rain gauge using a plastic bottle and ruler. It’s been fairly dry since we began our class records; let’s hope it stays that way!

In SPHE we have been looking at farm safety using a resource provided by the Health and Safety Authority, accessible if you click here . The children had great fun finding the hazards in each of the presentations.

Earlier in the month, as part of our start of year discussion on hand hygiene, we conducted an experiment to find out the difference in the amount of germs on

1. Unwashed hands
2. Hands cleaned using sanitiser gel
3. Hands washed with soap and water.

We wiped a hand of each of the above categories across a piece of bread and placed them in a sealed bag in a dark press for a week.

Unwashed hand

Hand cleaned with sanitiser

Hand cleaned with soap and water

As you can see in the photos, sample A, the unwashed hand sample was rated ‘EEEEWWW’ – with many types of growths of many different colours being present on the bread. Sample B, contrary to our predictions, had a significant amount of growth of a single colour/type. Sample C, had minimal growths. Overall we learned that you really can’t beat good old soap and water when cleaning your hands!

In RE we looked at beginnings and endings and in keeping with this made our very own ‘Alpha and Omega’ stained glass window in the classroom. We made the paper translucent by adding oil after it was coloured in.