We all dressed up for Hallowe'en. We had lots of witches, a fairy, a bat, a spiderman, a batman, a robot, a wolverine, a vampire, darkness, a pirate skeleton and lots of other great costumes. It is such fun to dress up. 
After our Witches Walk and a small party we played some party games. We love playing musical chairs, musical statues and musical bumps!
We had our Hallowe'en walk today. Most of the children and teachers in the school dressed up in fancy dress clothes. Our walk is a sponsored walk - it is not too far but it is great fun. 
We hope we didn't scare anyone going by. A huge "Thank You" to all who participated, made costumes, got children dressed up, and especially to all who sponsored us in today's walk.
We had a few good speakers telling us how to stay safe on the roads and in cars. Well done to all who gave a speech.
We had a visit from a garda today. He was really nice and he explained that gardaí are there to keep all of us safe. He talked about road safety and keeping ourselves safe at Hallowe'en. He showed us his belt that had a walkie-talkie, notebook, ticket book, torch and handcuffs on it. He explained how he uses each of these things when he is working. 
We also got a good look at his uniform. The garda uniform is navy trousers, navy tie, navy jacket, navy hat and a light blue shirt with the place he works and his number on his shoulders. He also had really strong black boots. 
We like his uniform. It looks very smart. Thank you so much for coming to talk to us.
Our Hallowe'en spiders are done. We made them out of clay, google eyes and pipe cleaners. We painted them black and varnished them with glue. They look great.
We did some Hallowe'en prints with sponges. We printed black bats, orange pumpkins and white ghosts. Booo!
Today was very exciting. We held an open day in our classroom, to display the science we have done so far this year to teachers from our school and from another junior school in Ennis.
It was a great day, and each pupil got the chance to man a table with an investigation of their own. Of course, we will do many more investigations before the year is over, so look out for our next open day in January or February. 
The investigations we demonstrated were: fingerprints, minibeasts, weather stick, model lungs, strawberries, helicopters, colour wheels, colour fans and acetates, smartie science, lions in cages, eggs-how to tell raw from cooked, in vinegar, how to get an egg into a bottle, dancing raisins, racing colours and string telephones.
Thanks so much to the Galway Education Centre for always showing so much interest in the science we do in class. Thanks to them too for the T-Shirts and goodies they sent as a reminder for us of our great day.
Teacher blew up the balloon and taped the balloon to the straw. We counted down 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 Blast off! and let go the balloon. It zoomed across the classroom. We were wondering if the balloon could fly uphill, so one of us sat on a chair, holding the thread, while the other stood (carefully) on the table. Sure enough the balloon was happy to fly uphill. 
We noticed that the air coming out the end of the balloon causes the balloon to fly in the opposite direction. We really loved this investigation!
Friday, October 16th, 2009
Web pages are joined together with links, just as spiders webs are joined together with cobweb strings. Pauline helped us design our own web pages for Room 5, and let us choose all the background colours. Our pages looked great. Thanks to Pauline for explaining it all to us. We use the computer and the web so often that it is great to hear a little bit about how it all works. 
More eggs! We are having so much fun with eggs these days. Teacher had 2 bottles with small necks. We were wondering if there is any way we could get a boiled egg into the bottle, even though the egg was bigger than the neck of the bottle.
Teacher had to do these investigations herself because the water in the bottles was boiling hot - too dangerous for us to touch. First she tried to push a boiled egg, with the shell on it, into the bottle. It didn't fit. Next she peeled the egg and tried again. With water in the bottle, the egg just sat happily on top. The action started when teacher poured the boiling water out of the bottle, and then put the egg on top. Once the bottle started cooling down, the egg began to be sucked into the bottle. 
It got sucked in a little, but we think the eggs we tried were just too big - the rim of the bottle cut the egg so the egg broke (but half of it ended up in the bottle).
We tried again with another egg. This time teacher lit a candle and put the egg on top. The candle went out (because there was no more oxygen in the bottle). When the bottle cooled, the egg was sucked into the bottle. Again the egg got stuck in the neck of the bottle. The seal was so good that we could turn the bottle upside down, and the egg stayed put.
We started our speech giving sessions today for the first time. This week's topic was: Seasons. One of our boys gave a great presentation, he even had pictures ready to help him with his speech. Well done, you were great! Lots of us had a turn too, we were not as prepared but we did very well. Next week's topic is: safety - at home, around water, with fire, on the roads or in cars/on bicycles. We will have great presentations next Thursday.
Here are the 2D shapes we know: square, rectangle, triangle, circle and hexagon (we also know ovals). 
The 3D shapes we know are: cube, cuboid, sphere, cylinder, cone, triangular prism, hexagonal prism, square pyramid and triangular pyramid. We are now looking for these shapes all round us.
