Learning about the Basque Country

We had a wonderful lesson about the Basque country in Spain with Mikel.

He was so interesting, and he had lots of interesting slides to show us.

 We saw the red green and white flag.

 We saw the Basque country on a map.  It is shaped like a heart and is situated in the north of Spain and in the south of France.

 The country looks beautiful, with lots of gorgeous scenery.

 Mikel is from a town called Onati (he had to help us pronounce it).

 Mikel's town looks so pretty with all the pink roofs on the houses.

We would love to try the dancing.  It looks so much fun! 

 Lots of sea food and delicious nibbles. Yummy!

We saw lots of unusual sports.  Most of us would like to try lifting stones or chopping wood the best.

Mikel likes handball.

Thanks so much Mikel.  Your lesson was so interesting.

We would all love to visit the Basque country!

The Water Cycle

We had a wonderful session with Lara today.

She helped us learn all about the water cycle.

First of all we heard a story about raindrops and we had to pretend we were raindrops and say what was happening all around us.

We had a chance to draw our ideas and we used interesting materials which we had found in Lara's lucky dip to make our pictures really realistic.

After our lunch we helped Lara make a rainbow by cutting out coloured raindrops and sticking them to the rainbow.  We finished our session making lovely mono-prints with oil paint.

They look fabulous and each one is so different from all the rest.

Thank you so much Lara for all your work with us today.

Walk to the Christmas markets

We walked into town along the railway line. We had to fill in a questionnaire about what things we saw. It was so much fun. We walked around the train and bus station then walked into the Christmas markets. We posted our letters to Santa in the special post box. Then we played for a while in the playground.  We walked around the stalls and the baker gave us a free coconut bun, he was very kind.

Then it was off to the carousel. We loved it. It was so fast and we had an extra long spin. We were so well behaved and had such fun!

Learning about Poland

Today we had a wonderful talk about Poland from Zbigniew and Malgorzata.

We learned lots of things about Poland.

It sounds like a nice country to live in.

We were thrilled when we all got to try some Polish chocolate and Polish juice.

They were delicious.

We have a new student in our class.  She is from Poland too.

We have called her miś (which means Teddy Bear in Polish).

We learned how to say "Hello" "Goodbye" and "Thank you" in Polish.

We will work hard to try and remember these new words.

We found Poland on the map.  It is much much bigger than Ireland.

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We saw the crest of Poland.  It is an Eagle with a crown.  This eagle is on Polish money too.

We liked looking at animals and birds of Poland

and we especially liked hearing "Happy Birthday" being sung in Polish.

Thank you so much for such a wonderful talk today!

dziękuję

Space and rocket display day

We had a wonderful Space Day.

We invited our parents, our friends and the other classes in the school.

We were able to explain all about our solar system, the planets and life in space.

Afterwards we went outside to launch the big air and water rockets.

Here are some short videos of our space day:

Balloon rocket race.

Foam rockets in action.

Straw (paper) rockets.

Fizzy rockets.

More fizzy rockets.

Air and stomp rockets.

Fizzy rockets.

Balloon rocket race.

The big ones: Air rocket launch.

Water rocket.

More water rockets.

Still more water rockets.

Last rocket.

What Ms. Connolly's class said about our day:

We went to see Ms. McLoughlin's class launch rockets in the junior yard today. It was so exciting. We had to countdown from 10 to blast off!! We thought a rocket might land on our heads! It reminded us of senior infants when Ms. McLoughlin was our teacher. Even though Ms. McLoughlin was so busy , she still had time to wave at us and say hello.

Our space day

Visit to the bottle bank

We have been learning all about re-using and re-cycling in class this week, so today we went to visit the Bottle Bank beside our school. We had to help teacher decide the correct bins to put clear or brown glass bottles/jars into. We also saw the can bank, which we can use to re-cycle our tins/cans. There was also a Clothes Bank where we can bring clothes which are too small for us or we don't need any more. The proceeds from these clothes help many charities. We know that it is really important to re-cycle things(both at home and at school) and every day in class we sort out our rubbish and we use the green bins to put paper, card, clean plastic and newspaper into. We bring any left-over food home (there is usually not very much of this!!!), so that it can be put into the correct bin at home for food. It is very important for our world to re-use and re-cycle. 

Junior Achievement - Saving money

We are really enjoying our Junior Achievement lessons with Siobhán.

Today we heard an interesting story about saving to buy a present.

We had a nice sticker task which we very much enjoyed.

Then Siobhán gave us all a lovely money saving box.

Now we can save for Christmas!

Space

Click on this picture of the planets to go to our space and rockets page.  The links there are great!

We are learning all about our solar system and the planets around us.

Today we made some wonderful straw rockets.  They fly really well.

Have a look at some of the marvelous films we are watching.
These videos help us learn lots about space.

We are learning all about the 8 planets in our Solar system.  There is a great song about our planets which we are watching on 

Have a look at the planets on