How much sugar?

We are trying to eat healthy lunches in school.

Can you guess how much sugar is in each of these foods?

Growing seeds

We have just signed up for what looks like a wonderful project.

We can't wait to get started!

Bridges

Today we talked about all sorts of bridges.

We tried making bridges to see which kind would be the strongest.

We tried one sheet of paper, two sheets of paper, a folded page, a page like a fan and a page with an arch underneath.  Can you guess which was the strongest?

Barnaby Bear is off to Israel!

Dr. Anne Dolan from Mary Immaculate college in Limerick heard that we are learning all about Israel so she came to visit our class today.

She took Barnaby Bear with her.

Barnaby Bear is heading to Israel on Saturday.

Before he goes to Israel he came to our class to get some questions from us.

We want to learn lots about Israel so we made a list of questions and Barnaby will try and find the answers when he is in Israel.

Everyone in the class had a question for Barnaby.

Teacher had lots of questions.

We look forward to Barnaby Bear visiting us again when he had come home from Israel.

Our owl was delighted to meet someone that will be visiting his home country.

We proudly showed Anne our drama and she gave us some really useful drama tips.

Thank you so much for visiting us and helping us learn lots of interesting things!

A visit from Kevin of the Irish Fisheries Board

As part of the work we are doing for our school's next Green Flag, we had a visit today from Kevin.

He works for the Irish Fisheries Board.

He gave us a wonderful talk.

He talked to us about the water cycle, about conserving water and about how people animals and fish like clean water rather than polluted water.

We learned all about different kinds of animals, fish and insects that make the Irish waterways their home.

We also learned all about how salmon lay eggs and the wonderful job that the fisheries board do in  helping keep the salmon numbers in Ireland constant.
We are going to continue to take great care not to waste water and not to throw our rubbish anywhere except in bins!
Thank you Kevin for such a great talk.

A Japanese good luck custom

In Japan on February 3rd each year there is a festival in all homes to banish bad luck

and to welcome good luck into your homes.

Teacher brought in the masks and the soya beans so we could try to banish bad luck from our classroom and to welcome in some good luck for 2014.

Each person had some beans and they had to throw them at the bad guys shouting 

"bad luck out" and then throw some into the class shouting "good luck in".

Bad luck out and good luck in.

Here are the masks and the beans that we used today.

It is a lot of fun learning about traditions from other cultures.

Visit from Grandad Pa

Grandad Pa O'Connell came to visit our class today.

He gave us a marvelous talk about being a school boy in the 1950s.

Pa had some wonderful photographs with him so we could see what children wore back then.

We were surprised that all the little boys wore shorts, even in winter.

You could only wear long trousers after you made your confirmation.

We think that little boys must have been very cold!

Here is a picture of Pa on his confirmation day.

Pa showed us some of the games that he played when he was small.

We really liked the sound of the bottle top game and the marbles games he played, and we were surprised that Pa was allowed to play on the road (he explained that that was because there were so few cars then).

Pa was really good at sports when he was younger, and he was captain of his rugby and football teams.

He told us all about having to wash everyone's jerseys (without a washing machine or dryer) so that they would be clean and ready for the next match!

We think life back then sounds fun but quite troublesome....lots of good games but no electricity so no TV, WII or Nintendos!

Well done Pa, you were so interesting.  Thank you for your wonderful visit.

We will take your advice and try hard at school and at sports!

St. Brigid brings the Spring

We learned all about St. Brigid and how she was so good and kind to the poor. She wanted some land to build a church, so that the people would have somewhere to go to, to talk to God. She approached the Chieftian to ask him for some land to build a church on, but he was rather mean (he had never heard about the love of God) and he decided to play a trick on poor St. Brigid. He said that he would give her the amount of land that her cloak would cover. St. Brigid placed her cloak on the ground and at first it didn't cover much land at all!!! The Chieftian began to laugh and laugh. Poor St. Brigid didn't know what to do and her heart sank. Then suddenly something miraculous began to happen - her cloak began to spread out and grow and grow!!!. Now it was Brigid's turn to laugh!!. The Chieftian went as white as a ghost and begged her to shout 'stop.' She did, but only when she had plenty of land to build the church on. 

We learned a lovely song about this story and we also made up our own poem about the story. We made a St. Brigid's cross using 4 strips of paper and we filled in her cloak using coloured paper to create a patchwork effect. 

All about Africa

We learned about Africa recently, particularly about a country in Africa called Zambia. We looked at various powerpoints about African animals, food, clothes, schools, homes, farming, water and customs. We read some African stories. We made some African huts in Art and they turned out great!! We also made the Zambian flag.