Thursday 30 April 2009

Daedalus and Icarus

Thursday, April 30th, 2009 We are having fun learning about stories from around the world. At the moment we are hearing lots about the story of Daedalus and Icarus from Greece. We learned that Icarus didn't listen to his Dad and he flew too close to the sun. This caused the wax on the wings he made to melt, and he fell into the sea. Today we painted nice pictures of Icarus too close to the sun. We are learning lots about flying these days. We made kites on Monday and tried flying them. It is harder to fly kites than it looks, but we had lots of fun with them.

Mathematical Bugs

Thursday, April 30th, 2009
We had a great maths lesson on sorting, using our collection of bugs. We sorted the bugs into lots of different groups according to

  • type of bug
  • colour of bug
  • good or bad bugs
  • live in Ireland or not
  • whether they are plain or multicoloured
  • whether they are insects or not
  • whether they can fly or not
It was a great chance to talk about bugs, and to practice our sorting, all at the same time.

Senses - Touch

Thursday, April 30th, 2009
Today we tried using our sense of touch. Teacher had a feeley bag, into which she put one of these items: a rubber, carpet, cardboard, sandpaper, wood, a balloon, sponge, cling film plastic and fabric. The class got to ask questions about whether the object is rough/smooth, hard/soft, warm/cold, where we could find the object and what the object could be used for. The child holding the feeley bag answered the questions and gave hints if it was too hard to guess. It is hard to guess objects using only our sense of touch.

Wednesday 29 April 2009

How well can we tell smells

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009
Today teacher challenged us with a smelling test. Yes, it was a smelling test and not a spelling test! She had three containers. We had to smell each and tell teacher what we thought was in each. Here are the results:
Of the 21 children in our class, 8 correctly guessed one smell (not the same smell was guessed by each child though). No one correctly guessed either two or three of the substances though.
In container 1 there was vinegar. (6 correct guesses). Some of the incorrect guesses were: sour, oil, lemon.
In container 2 there was vanilla essence. (No one guessed this). Some incorrect guesses were: medicine, chocolate, coke, juice, coffee, syrup.
In container 3 there was lemon wash-up liquid (2guessed correctly). Some incorrect guesses were: pear, oil, fizzy orange, juice, soap, orange juice, vinegar, perfume.
It's amazing how hard it is to correctly identify smells that are so familiar if you can't see its original container!

Tuesday 28 April 2009

Literacy Games

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009
We are playing lots of literacy games. Some of the games use phonics (phonic bingo and twist and check phonics),
some focus on reading (red folder games) and some are language games (look and find lotto and the shopping game). They are all great fun.

Monday 27 April 2009

Kite Flying

Monday, April 27th, 2009
We spent lots of time today and on Friday making kites. First we had a look at some kites from around the world, then we made our own. We each got a big piece of white paper and folded it into triangles and rectangles.

We cut off the unwanted rectangles with our scissors. Next we folded our triangle in half again, making a smaller triangle. When we opened this out we had a fabulous diamond!


Designing and painting came next. That was an interesting job. Before this all the kites looked identical, but now each kite was unique.

Tails had to be made too. Teacher gave each of us a plastic strip and we used the spare rectangle pieces to make triangle shaped bows for the tail.
Since the weather was nice, we did the constructing outside. We used bamboo skewers, string and sticky tape to finish off the kites. They looked great.

Now for the testing. The weather was perfect - sunny but windy, so we headed to the field next to the school for the flight trials. The kites needed a good run to get them flying. Some of them flew so well. Unfortunately not all of them survived so well - some needed repairs.

Making and flying kites is a wonderful experience. Why not try it out for yourself?

Caterpillars and Butterflies

Monday, April 27th, 2008
Our caterpillars arrived by post this morning. We are thrilled. We noticed that they came with their own food, so we don't need to gather leaves and flowers for them. The food looks like a brownish grey lump of hard jelly, it looks awful but the caterpillars must like it! We named our caterpillars Colourdy, Crawly, Floppy, Patch and Poppy. It is hard to tell which one is which. We can't wait to see them grow. We will leave them at school where it is quite warm, and we will take great care not to shake their container.One week later: Tuesday, May 5th. Haven't they grown a lot in a week. They have also make lots of webs in the container, and we can see at least 10 (2 each) skins that they have discarded as they grow bigger.
One week later: Monday, May 11th. The caterpillars are so big now. We are wondering when they will make their cocoons.
Exciting News: Today, Thursday, May 14th, our caterpillars have begun to hang off the top of their pot. We think they will be in their cocoons very soon.
Friday, May 15th. One of the caterpillars is in his (or her) cocoon. We think the others will change very soon. Not sure about one caterpillar who is just lying on the bottom of the container and not trying to change.
Monday, May 18th. All 5 caterpillars are in their cocoons (although one is not hanging from the top). Teacher cut them into individual parts and stuck them onto some card. She made a special holder for the cocoon that wasn't stuck to the top. Now they are all safely in their pop up butterfly garden. We wonder how long it will take for them to turn into butterflies? Our first butterfly emerged yesterday, on Sunday, May 31st. We think that it is Poppy. Today, Monday, June 1st, 3 more butterflies emerged (Colourdy, Crawly and Patch). We are now just waiting for one (Floppy).They like to drink sugared water (which we left on a tissue for them), and eat fresh flowers (we have given them dandelions). In case they are really hungry, we also left a slice of orange, banana, nectarine and kiwi. We think they will really enjoy the fruit. Now we have to wait for about 2 or 3 days until their wings grow stronger. Then we will release them to go and start their own families.





























Saturday 25 April 2009

Drama

Féile Náisiúnta Dráma
Comhairdeachas
Congratulations on the Success
of the Drama in the All-Ireland finals!

Teach Ró-Bheag
A very hearty congratulations to Ms. McLoughlin's Senior Infants (Room 5), who did our school proud in all 3 levels of the Féile Scoildrámaíochta. They participated in the All-Ireland finals of the drama festival, in Mullingar on Thursday, April 23rd, 2009. They were superb, and a fantastic day was had by all. Well done too, especially to Ms.Cunningham for all her help with the music, to Len for the fantastic sets, to Anne for our great make up, to Ms.Carleton, Ms. Long, Ms. Hynes, Maura and Mrs. Smith for your help and support, and to all our parents for the wonderful costumes. It was truly a magnificent team effort. Míle buíochas díbh go léir.

Tuesday 21 April 2009

Setting up a wormery

Teacher found 18 worms in her garden last night, and she brought them to school to show us. We got a wormery ready for them. We put layers of soil and sand in the wormery, then added the worms (they were all sizes, shapes and colours), then some grass and leaves for them to eat.
We know that worms don't like light. We saw them trying to get to the bottom of the wormery as soon as we put them in. (The bottom is safer for them, further away from birds). We hope that the worms will make tunnels through the soil and sand, so that we can see what way worms live in the soil. We might even try making our own wormeries at home.

Strange sounds

Tuesday, Aril 24th, 2009
We were talking about sounds today. We found out about sound waves, and how they travel through the air. We tried making some strange sounds. One of our girls showed us how to make strange sounds with a balloon. By pulling the neck of the balloon when the air is escaping, the sound it emits is very funny. Teacher showed us how to make strange sounds with plastic, paper and grass, and we all tried making sounds with straws. We found out that if you cut a straw when you are blowing it, that the note it makes gets higher as the straw is cut.
Next the teacher had a cup with a piece of string coming out. If we pull the string it sounds as if there is a woodpecker in the cup. The noise of the string being pulled is amplified when the string is atttached to the cup.
Last of all we got to use string telephones. They are very easy to make - all you need is string and 2 yoghurt cartons. One end of the string is put through a hole in the carton, and tied. The other end of the string is tied through another carton. If you want to talk through the telephone, you must keep the string tight. Otherwise the sound waves can't travel from one yoghurt pot to the other. We really enjoyed learning about sound today.

A huge spider in our class

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009
We found a huge spider in our class. She has made a web in an old water cup, and doesn't want to come out, so we put a bug finder lid on the cup, and we have been having a good look at our spider. This is what we found out: Our spider has 8 legs, so she is not an insect. She has spots on her back and hairs on her legs. Each leg seems to be made of 4 segaments. She has two hairy feelers and big black hairy eyes. She has a black and grey body, but her legs are brown. She mostly likes to sit still on her web.