The Féile competition in Mullingar

We had a wonderful time in Mullingar. We did our best on the stage and did fantastically. We were given a lovely plaque for getting to the finals. Well done to everyone involved, and especially to Lauren's dad Eddie, grandad Len, Darren's mum Bridie and Michael's dad Brian and Ms. Lally for joining us on the bus and helping us in Mullingar.

Lions and Prisoners behind bars

A lion/prisoner behind bars
Tuesday, 22nd April, 2008
Teacher printed out pictures of empty cages, lions and
prisoners.
We cut out a cage each and then stuck either a lion or a prisoner on the back.
We can put the lion/prisoner behind bars by spinning the cage very quickly. This confuses our eyes into thinking that the lion/prisoner is actually behind bars and not on the other side of the page.

Our new school aquarium

Our School Aquarium
Thursday, 10th April, 2008
Our school has got a new aquarium. It has lots of sea water creatures in it.
The fish and animals are fed a cube of frozen squid every 2nd day. Delicious!
If the food is not eaten at the end of the day we take it out of the tank so that the fish are not over-fed.
We have two hermit crabs, a starfish, a sea anemone, an edible crab, 2 butterfish, 2 prawns, a plaice, a blenny, a rock goby and a 2 spotted goby. We spend lots of time looking at our sea creatures and watching them in their new home.

Congratulations again to Room 5!

We have just heard that Sleeping Beauty (Codladh Céad Bliain) is heading to Mullingar! Well done to Ms. McLoughlin's senior infants for their great teamwork in getting to the All Ireland Drama finals in Mullingar on Friday, April 25th at 12:30! Go néirí an t-adh libh.

Bending Light

Bending Light

Monday, 7th April, 2008

We got a bottle, painted half of it black, put a hole in it and stuck a straw out of the hole. We filled the bottle with water and put on the lid.
We noticed that when the lid was on the bottle, no water came out the straw but as soon as we took the top off the bottle, the water came spurting out.

We shone a torch at the back of the bottle. We could see the light from the torch in the water that was bending into the container. Our experiment didn’t work very well. We think this is because the room was too bright. We will try again some darker day.

Caterpillars and Butterflies

Caterpillars and Butterflies
Friday, 4th April, 2008
Our caterpillars arrived by post today. They are tiny. They are in a container with their food. There are 5 of them. We hope we will have 5 healthy butterflies in about 3 weeks. We are keeping them out of direct sunlight. They don't need food or water yet.
Friday, 2nd May, 2008
Two of our caterpillars have cocoons around them. When all 4 are in cocoons we will transfer them to their butterfly garden.
Wednesday, 7th May, 2008
All our caterpillars are now in their cocoons so teacher transferred them to their new home - a butterfly pavillion. We wonder when the butterflies will emerge?
Tuesday, May 13th, 2008
Our butterflies are hatching out of their cocoons. When we came in this morning we had one butterfly. We called him "Snappy". When we came in from the yard another butterfly had emerged from his cocoon. We called him "Flappy". Our other 2 butterflies are still in their cocoons. We will put flowers and a little water into the butterfly pavillion so that the butterflies have something to eat and drink.
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
Flappy has died. We don't know why. Snappy is looking very strong so today we let him go. We hope he is happy in the bushes by our school.
Thursday, 15th May,2008
One more butterfly came out today. We called him "Swoop". His wings look a little strange. We hope he's ok. We won't release him until his wings look stronger.
Friday, 16th May 2008. Swoop is looking a little stronger today so we let him free. Here is a picture of the kinds of foods butterflies like. They particularly like flowers, sugared water and soft fruits like oranges, melon and bananas.
Monday, 19th May, 2008
Our last butterfly "Happy" had hatched when we came to school this morning. It was a lovely sunny day and so we let Happy go before we went home. Now the only cocoon we have left is one that we have been minding since September. We don't really think it will ever hatch but we will mind it until the end of the year, just in case. Here is a picture of Happy enjoying his last meal in captivity.

Bugs and Insects

Bugs and Insects

Friday, 4th April, 2008

We had a great talk about bugs and insects. We found out that insects have only 6 legs. Now we know if a bug is an insect or not.

We decided to sort out our box of bugs. We put the insects in one group and the other bugs in the other group.

Then we sorted all our bugs according to colour…..
...whether they have wings or not…..…..whether they eat grass or other insects/animals...….whether they have one colour or more than one colour... It was a very intersesting activity.

A slug in our classroom

A Slug in the Classroom

Thursday, 3rd April, 2008

A slug came into our classroom. He was so interesting. We had a good look at him. We were talking about snails all day. We even made some racing snail art.
We think the slug felt left out so he paid us a visit.

April Art

We are talking a lot about bugs and mini beasts. We have made a wormery. Rory told us that in France people eat snails. I wonder would we think they are delicious?
For art today we made racing snails. We made them out of paper and material. They are having a race across the wall of our classroom now. They look great.
Inspired by our 5 healthy caterpillars, we have made wonderful caterpillar paintings. We can't wait to watch the caterpillars turn into butterflies.

We have made lovely bug pictures by painting a pond, a tree and some healthy looking grass. Then we coloured lots of different types of bugs, cut them out and gave them new homes in our paintings.

Connacht Final

Our class got through to the Connacht final of the Féile Drámaíochta. We spent a very enjoyable day yesterday travelling by bus to Castlebar and performing in the Linenhall Arts Centre. We are thrilled that we got another chance to perform. It was a lot of fun.

Our Wormery

Wormery, Monday, 31st March, 2008
We set up a wormery in our class. Our wormery is made up of layers of sand and soil. There are lots and lots of worms in it.

Look at the worms teacher collected.

This is the patch of soil where teacher dug up the worms last Sunday. We hope to take good care of our worms, to feed them grass and to give them some water from time to time. We hope they are happy with us.

Friday, 2nd May, 2008
Teacher is going to release the worms back into her garden today. Look at the wormery. All the layers of soil and sand have been mixed up by the worms. They have made lots and lots of tunnels in the soil. They have been happy in our classroom.

Our growing potatoes

The potato we planted on February 29th has started to grow. We water it about once a week and it started to sprout over the Easter holidays. Here is a picture of it on Easter Saturday (March 22nd). We can see that it has three shoots.

Here is a picture of the three shoots (8cm, 6cm and 6cm) on Monday, March 31st, the first day back after our Easter holidays.

By Friday April 4th, the shoots have grown to 19cm, 17cm and 15cm.

Thursay, 5th June, 2008
Our potatoes have three lovely white flowers. The stalks are about 100cm tall. We can't wait to harvest the potatoes on June 10th.

Friday, 6th June, 2008
Today we decided to harvest our potatoes. We needed weighing scales, a basin of clean water, a towel, plastic gloves and the potato plant. We looked to see how tall our plant is by comparing it with the tallest and the smallest child in our class. When the potato plant was pulled out of the ground we could see all the little potatoes growing out of the roots. We collected, washed, dried and weighed the potatoes. We harvested six, and together they weighed 2 and a half ounces. If we had left them in the soil longer we think they would have grown much bigger and heavier.