Sounds-high and low

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
We were investigating high and low sounds today. Teacher showed us how to make straws into whistles by snipping the tops with a scissors. She gave some of us short whistles, and some of us got long whistles. We discovered that the short whistles made high sounds, while the long whistles made low sounds. Teacher then showed us a sliding whistle that she has. We would all have liked to play the whistle, but that would not be too hygenic, so teacher showed us how it works. Just like the straws, when the whistle is short it makes a high sound, but when you slide the whistle to make it longer, the whistle sound is lower. Next we broke up into groups and were given a strong plastic container and 5 elastic bands of different colours and sizes. Teacher put the elastic bands in order from shortest to longest, then put them, still in order, on to the plastic container. She plucked each one in turn and we tried to sing the note that it made. We noticed that the shortest elastic bands made the highest sounds, and that the longest elastic bands made the lowest sounds. We had our own turn then at arranging the elastics according to size, and putting them on the plastic containers. We tried strumming the elastic bands, and singing the notes it made. In three different ways we found that short instruments (elastic bands, whistles and straws) make high sounds and that long instruments make lower sounds. We even used our maths skills by sorting from long to short to shortest and from short to longer and longest. We sorted too from low to higher to highest, and from high to lower to lowest. We really understand long, longer, longest, short, shorter, shortest and high, higher, highest, low, lower, lowest now.

Balancing Clowns

Thursday, January 21st, 2010
We coloured and cut out clowns. They look great. We tried to get them to balance on our fingers. They kept falling off. Then teacher gave us two coins each. We stuck them on to the clowns hands with either glue or rolled up sticky tape. With weights on each hand, the clowns balanced so well. We could get them to balance on a bowl, on our fingers, on our noses and on our pencils.
They even look great balancing on the wall display

Birds and their Nests

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
We know a little about robins and their nests. Today we went for a walk to see if we could spot any birds or their nests. We saw lots of birds in the trees - mainly robins, blackbirds and crows. We found a big nest in one of the trees. We could see that the nest is made from twigs and sticks. We think it's amazing that birds can build such fantastic nests without any hands or fingers. We know that the nest we saw couldn't be a robin's nest because it is too big.
We heard lots of birds songs on our walk. We know that robins and blackbirds are lovely singers, and that magpies and black hooded crows are not. (Maybe they sing like crows!)

January Artwork

We have made lovely robins, like the robins we see outside and at our bird feeders. Robins have little blue eggs and a brown body, with a red breast. We used rolled up red crepe paper for our robins red breasts.
We have been talking a lot about penguins too, so we painted rather nice penguins. We hope they can stay nice and warm in the scarves and hats we painted for them.

Road Safety

January 14th, 2010

We have been talking about road safety - car seats, booster seats, reflective clothes and crossing the road safely. We will try and stay as safe as we can when walking, cycling or travelling by bus or car! We are using the Seatbelt Sherrif and Hi Glo Silver programme to help us.

Diving Drops, Lava Lamp and Weights of Liquids

Friday, January 8th, 2010
We are very interested in mixing things. We wondered what would happen if we tried to mix oil and water. Find out what happened on http://scoilchaitrionajnrscience.blogspot.com/2010/01/diving-drops-lava-lamp-and-weights-of.html

A Snowy School

Friday, January 8th, 2010 Our school looks very different in winter. Have a look at our school yard, our ash trees and our school garden, all under a layer of snow.We went outside to play in the snow - it was fun, but very cold. We wore our coats, hats and gloves. We could make it snow by shaking the ash trees.

Snowmen

Friday, January 8th, 2010 It is really snowy outside, so in our nice warm classroom we made our own non-melting snowmen. They look really cheerful and they remind us that snow can be fun!

Literacy games

Friday, January 8th, 2010
We have some great literacy games in our class. We all had a chance to try each game this week. We played Look and Find Lotto, Twist and Check Phonic cards, Shopping List game, Red Folder matching words and Magnetic Rhyming Words. We are becoming really good readers in this class.