Friday 27 March 2009

Junior Achievement

Seán is working in Boston Scientific. He has been coming to our class to tell us all about business, money and jobs. That might sound very confusing, but he is reading us very interesting stories and helping us to do fun worksheets. We will miss him next week now that he is finished. He is very nice and we had fun learning lots of things from him.

Gardening in our class

Our broad bean plants have grown too big for their little pots so today we repotted them into bigger pots. It's lovely to see them grow so big. It was a very messy job but we cleaned up really well after ourselves. May 11th: Look at the broad bean plant now. It has lovely white and purple flowers.

Easter art

We have been talking about the Easter story. We know what happened on Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday. We are busy with our own preparations for Easter. Yesterday we made lovely Easter bunnies in art. It gave us a good chance to paint and construct.

We know that there are lots of chicks and easter eggs to be seen at Easter time, so we made an Easter chick collage. We painted the eggs, then used crepe paper to make the lovely Easter chicks. Then we cut them out and stuck them on Easter coloured backing pages. They look great!

Wednesday 25 March 2009

Learning Sign Language

In Ms. Long's class a dad called Martin came to teach sign language. We got to join Ms. Long's class and we learned how to communicate using sign language. We can now say Hello, Thank you, Good afternoon, Yes, No, Nice to meet you and many other things. We can't wait to practise all these new words. We hope they can be of great use to us for talking to lots more people.

Monday 23 March 2009

Fun with Magnets

Teacher has lots of magnets in the class. We can use them every day, but today we had a good look at the magnets. We had magnet stations - 5 different tables doing 5 different things. We got a chance to try the different stations.
At one station we had to guess, then test, what things in the classroom magnets will stick to. We recorded our results on a big sheet of paper.
At the next station we had red and blue magnets that had North and South on them. We had to guess, then try, what happens when you put North and South together (they attract each other). Then we tried North with North and South with South (they repel). We tried this on dowel rods with purple and yelllow magnets too. At the third station we had to guess, then test, what a magnet will work through. We found that magnets work through pencil cases, clothes, tables, chairs, books, paper, baskets and lots more. We recorded our results on a big sheet of paper. At the fourth station we made our own magnets with steel nails. The nails were not magnetic at the start (and if they were, we dropped them on the floor so they lost their magnetism). We magnetised each one by rubbing a magnet off the nail. We then tested to see whether it was magnetic by picking up a paper clip with the nail. This worked really well. At the last station we made magnetic car racing tracks. We drew racing tracks and put a magnet underneath each one, and a paper clip on top. We got our cars (paper clips) to run along the track by moving the magnet underneath. Such a lot of cool things you can do with magnets!!!

Friday 20 March 2009

Greenwave - Horse Chestnut

Friday, March 20th: We have a Horse Chestnut tree beside our school. We are watching it closely. The Horse Chestnut buds are just about to bloom. We can already see the leaves inside the sticky buds. Monday, March 23rd: Our buds are out and the tree looks very much alive. Thursday, April 2nd: The leaves are looking really green now.

Looking at houses

On Friday the weather was lovely so the Senior Infants from Room 5 went for a walk to the beach. We dug holes, looked at marine life, and played in the sand. On the way back to school we had a good look at the various types of houses we could find. We saw bungalows, two story houses and three story houses. We saw apartments. We saw houses that are detached, semi-detached, and terraced. We even saw a thatched house. There is a huge variety of houses in Renmore. Here are some of the houses we saw. Can you figure out which is which?

At the Beach

The weather is lovely so we went for a walk to the beach.

At the beach Seán (our Junior Achievement guest) read us a lovely story, then we went digging for treasures, finding all sort of marine life and playing in the sand.

On our way back we took a look at the old pump and the tunnel under the railway.

Mother's Day Cards

We love our Mammies. They are so good to us. We made lovely Mother's Day cards to give them on Sunday.

Thursday 19 March 2009

Bubbles galore

Today we went out to the field to have a good look at bubbles. We looked at their colours, guessed when they were about to burst, tried to catch them and tried all sorts of ways to make bubbles. We tried different sized wands, and made different sized bubbles. We even figured out which way the wind was blowing. We learned lots about bubbles, and we enjoyed the glorious weather outside.

Budding Hawthorn Leaves

The Hawthorn trees are blooming at last. We are keeping an eye on them as part of our Greenwave project.

Wednesday 18 March 2009

A geologist in the school

Ronan's (from Room 7) Dad is a geologist. He knows lots and lots about rocks. He came to our school to tell us all about rocks and about being a geologist. He showed us lots of interesting rocks and told us what things around us come from rocks. It was such an interesting talk.We found our own stones and rocks in the school yard. We love the colours and patterns in the stones.