Bird watching with Tom Cuffe

Tom came to visit us today in class.

It was such an interesting morning.

We were shown some cool origami (paper folding) birds and animals.

We heard all about different birds (the biggest, tallest, longest wingspan, smallest egg, smallest bird, fastest diver, best at hovering etc.).  We learned lots about different Irish and non Irish birds.

We learned some bird songs and we even went outside bird watching.

Tom showed us an easy way to draw a bird.

Our drawings are fantastic!

New Notices

Rhythm games

We are playing rhythm games in Music.

They are a lot of fun.

We tried cats and kittens before, but today it was the turn of the ducks and ducklings!

Snakes and Ladders

We played a giant game of Snakes and Ladders.

It is a fun game and it is good for our Maths skills.

Reading games

The rainbow fish

We have been reading this story in class.

Please check out http://storylineonline.net. It is terrific!! The screen Actors Guild Foundation presents Storyline Online, which is an on-line streaming video program featuring SAG members reading children's books aloud. Each book includes accompanying activities and lesson ideas. We loved Ernest Borgnine's reading of 'The Rainbow Fish' and can't wait to see the others!!! Happy Viewing!!!

Yoga with Michelle

We had a lovely yoga session with Michelle this morning.

We learned lots of nice yoga positions: the cat, the mountain, the snake, the frog, the butterfly, the bumble bee and the moon.

We liked the stretching and we loved the quiet gentleness of the session.

We look forward to our session next week too.

Pop up flowers

We have made some pop up flowers.

They can grow even without water!

They also look gorgeous!

A talking bottle: What happens as air is heated?

We can get a bottle to talk to us:

Here's the trick:

Fill a bottle with very cold water.  Put the (wet) lid upside down on the bottle.

Then get someone with really warm hands to hold the bottle.

The lid will pop up and down as if talking to us.

Why does this happen?

The cold air in the bottle heats up when you put warm hands beside it.

Warm air takes more space and rises, pushing the top off the bottle.

Some of this air escapes and the lid falls down again, but as you heat up more of the air in the bottle, the lid continues to pop up and down.

This is a really fun investigation.

The un-burstable balloon

What happens when you put a pin in a balloon?

IT BURSTS!

Not always.

We have a trick that allows us to put a pin in a balloon and still have the un-burstable balloon.

How does this work?

When a pin normally goes into a balloon, the rubber next to the pin pulls away and the balloon bursts.

We put strips of sticky tape on the balloon and then we stuck the pin into the balloon just where the tape was.

The rubber under the tape couldn't pull away so the balloon didn't burst, and in fact we could push the pin in and out of the balloon where it acted like a stopper.  When the pin was taken out a little air could escape through the hole, but when the pin was pushed back in the air stayed in the balloon.

AMAZING!

Vases of flowers and candle holders

We were very busy at art today.

We coloured some lovely vases of flowers and we made very cute candle holders which we have yet to paint.

I wonder is there any occasion coming soon?

Fun with reading

Here are more of the reading games we play:

 Matching word families

 Word Rubix cubes

 Building words

 Story Strips or Silly Sentences

 Beginning Blends

 All these games are fun and they help us practise our reading skills.

Our new class garden

Kay came to help us with our new class garden.

We have a box of our own.

We planted it with flowers, vegetables and fruits.

We will water and weed our garden.

We can't wait to see our plants grow.

Spring data

We are noticing signs of spring all around us.

Today we had to choose our favourite sign of spring.

We made a data chart of this and had fun comparing the different things.