Garda visit

Garda Declan came to explain his job to us today. He has a very important job keeping all the people in our community safe. He showed us lots of interesting tools he uses in his job. We asked him LOTS of questions and told him LOTS of things, some of which our teachers thought were very funny. Mammy and daddy, remember to wear your seatbelt a now ;)

Laughing policeman song

St. Brigid's crosses

Today is the last day of winter... not that you can tell with the weather! Tomorrow is the 1st of February and   the first day of Spring. St. Brigid brings the spring and tomorrow is also her feast day. 

In preparation for tomorrow we learned about St. Brigid and why we have a St. Brigid's Day cross. We watched a short cartoon about one of the stories about St. Brigid and her cloak.

We made a cross out of paper but St. Brigid made hers out of rushes as she taught a chieftain about God. 

Check us out:

We used four different coloured strips of paper to make our crosses. It was tricky but we all had a cross made in the end!!

If you would like to learn to make one by yourself, follow the instructions on this page:

Visit from Grandpa Paddy

Two of us (a boy from Ms. McLoughlin's class and a girl from Ms. O'Connor's class) have the same grandad called Paddy Ryan.  He is 70 years old, and he came to talk to our classes today about what life was like when he was young.  Paddy is a terrific speaker, and he gave us a very entertaining and informative talk.

We saw photos of Paddy as a baby in his pram (actually, we thought it looked like a boat rather than a pram), and we saw pictures of the thatched cottages in the Claddagh where Paddy grew up. Paddy always wore shorts as a young boy (even in winter) and lots of his friends had no shoes growing up. They played outside all summer on the grass and on the roads. Sometimes they even got tar on their feet and legs. Paddy played lots of great games with his friends. One of Paddy's favourite games as a young boy was "Cowboys and Indians" which is not played at all now.  Paddy and his friends used to enjoy going to the woods to find sticks to make their own bows and arrows.  We also heard about football, camogie, hurling and marbles.
It was safe to play in the roads in those days, because there wasn't so much traffic.
In bad weather Paddy and his 7 sisters and 2 brothers played games with garters (elastics for holding up your socks).  It was played in the dark and sounds so much fun.
We think that Paddy had a very happy childhood, eating yummy soup, bread and jam and drinking water, milk or buttermilk by the heat of his turf fire.
Thank you so much Paddy for telling us all about your childhood.  We really enjoyed your visit!

Stay Safe

We are doing the Stay Safe programme at school.

We are learning all about feeling safe & unsafe, bullying, touches we like & don't like, secrets & telling and strangers.  Click on the link bar above to find out more about the Stay Safe programme or click on the picture below to download the Stay Safe Parent's Guide booklet.

Visit to the Teddy Bears' Hospital

Today we went on a very exciting trip. We all brought our sick teddy bears into school. We went on a bus to NUIG. When we arrived there, there were lots of medical students who met us and our teddy bears. They took us in groups and spoke to us and asked us about our bears. We told the doctor what happened to our bear and they put on bandages and plasters and then we went to visit the x-ray department where our teddy bears had an x-ray. Then we went to the pharmacy with our prescription and we got a piece of healthy fruit. We ate it and then we went playing on some bouncy castles. It was a fantastic day. Thank you to all the medical students for helping our bears to get better,

Traveling Ted's trip to the hospital

Ted had good fun visiting the Teddy hospital with all the sick teddies. There were x-ray machines, a teddy surgery, a pharmacy where the children filled teddies prescription and two bouncing castles where the children played as their teddies rested!

Dolls from around the world

Today we looked at dolls from all around the world. We looked at dolls from; France, England, Scotland, Denmark, Spain, Germany and Russia.