Fáilte go Rang a hAon (2)

You are all very welcome to our class page. Make sure to check in regularly to get a glimpse of some of the fun activities that we get up to in First Class 🙂

Important Notes:

Science Week will run from 4th – 8th April. Keep an eye out for the fun events that will take place.
Our class will be getting our Easter holidays on the 8th April at 11:40am.
We will return to school on the 25th April at 8:30am.

February 2022

Storyteller, Niall de Búrca:

On the 15th of February we had a storytelling session with Niall de Búrca. He told us lots of fun stories about Ireland and life long ago.

January 2022

Wellbeing Week:

The Magician –

Board Games Afternoon:

Mindfulness Colouring:

Zumba with Audrey:

December 2021

Our Christmas Performance!

Dash to the North Pole:

On December 20th we took part in a Dash to the North Pole to raise money for charity. We ran as many laps of the astro that we could in 20minutes. In total our class rang 127 laps. Well done to everyone!

Wellbeing Hip-Hop Session:

On December 14th we had a Hip-Hop session with Mel the Hip-Hop teacher. We were really good at showing off our hip-hop skills!

Tinsel, our class elf:

Tinsel arrived to our classroom on December 1st and spent the month causing mischief. He was found on day 1 dangling from our class clothes line. Over the course of the month he has been caught feeding some bears marshmallows, writing on the classroom door, playing with the photocopier, messing with Mr. Glynn’s stickers and stampers, playing with the hand sanitiser, reading books and one morning he was even found snoozing underneath slices of toast! We hope he has been reporting back to Santa on all of the hard work that we have been doing…

Art/Science:

Winter Silhouettes:

We explored tone by mixing different shades of blue with white. We then used black paint to create a winter silhouette scene. We had been learning all about silhouettes in science where we were learning the words opaque, transparent and translucent.

Frosty the Snowman:

Have a look at our snowman portraits that we drew of Frosty the snowman. First we sketched our snowman. Then we outlined them with a black sharpie and we painted them using watercolours. We were delighted with how well they turned out.

Scratch Art:

We used oil pastels to colour in a picture of a jumper and a Christmas Tree. After we finished with the pastels, we used acrylic paint mixed with washing-up liquid to paint over our art. After this we will scrape grooves/designs into the acrylic paint to allow the colour from the oil pastels to come through.

Gaeilge:

Ag imirt Nathracha agus Dréimirí. Chuamar suas an dréimire agus síos and nathair!

November 2021

Maths:

In November we finished Numeracy Power Hour and started Literacy Power Hour. Our last topic with Mr. Glynn was weight. Here we are estimating, measuring and recording items of different weight.

Picker Pals:

We started the Picker Pals programme which involves a different person bringing home the ‘Picker Pack’ each week. The ‘Picker Pal’ gets to choose an area to carry out a litter clean up in. The picker pal completes a report on their litter picking adventure. Mr. Glynn is delighted when he gets some photographs of the children carrying out their litter picking adventures. Here are some pictures of our very first ‘picker pal’ getting ready for her adventure.

Art:

In art we were looking at print. We used different printing tools to create patterns. We had to apply different levels of pressure to make the various prints.

Art/Music:

In preparation for our Christmas performance we have been learning the words to Frosty the Snowman. We created our very own versions of Frosty which we sketched, outlined in sharpie, and then painted in watercolours.

Music: In music we have been looking at how different sounds are made. We used out percussion instruments to explore loud, quiet, high and low sounds. This tied in closely with work that we completed in science on the strand unit of sound.

PE: This month we are continuing to explore the games strand of the PE curriculum. Here we are practicing our underarm throw and aiming for a target.

We also took part in Irish Dancing lessons with Eimear.

October 2021

Halloween Antics: On the day of the mid-term break we got to dress up in our Halloween costumes. How spooky do we look?!

Earlier in the week the PTA organised some really fun Halloween games which we really enjoyed taking part in. We got to practice mummy wrapping, ghost skittles, hoop tossing, pumpkin target shooting and pin the nose on the witch/tail on the black cat/heart on the skeleton 🙂 Many thanks to all of the parents who helped to make the day so much fun!

Here we are taking part in some spooky Halloween art activities.

PE: This month we finished our block of tennis lessons as part of the games strand in PE. We learnt all about the serve, the toss, the return and the backhand and forehand movements. We practiced the rally and played a fun game called the Graveyard. Stephen got a shock on the last week when he found us all kitted out in out tracksuits! This was part of a fundraiser that was organised by the Student Council.

Maths Week: Here are some photographs of us taking part in a Maths Trail that was organised by Ms. Moriarty. It tied in really closely with work that we were carrying out on outdoor and adventure in PE and on mapping in Geography. Many thanks to Ms. Moriarty for organising the maths trail.

Science: We focused on the scientific skill of ‘observation’. Each group was given a toy and had to observe carefully what they noticed about their toy. They had to identify what materials they were made from and note what they could observe about their toy. We had to identify what makes these toys popular and identify how they could improve on them.

SPHE: The first week of October (4th – 8th) was ‘Friendship Week’. Each day over the course of the week we completed activities on the topic of friendship. On Monday we were given a ‘secret friend’ who we kept a really close eye on over the course of the week. On Thursday evening for homework we noted what positive things we noticed about our secret friend and we identified ways that we showed kindness towards this person. The whole idea was that we got to know other classmates better. On Friday we had the ‘big reveal’ where we found out who had us as a secret friend.

We listened to poems and sang songs about friendship and also be looking at the traits of a good friend. Below please find a brainstorm of what we feel makes a ‘good friend’. Our whole school also took part in creating a monochromatic display that you can see in the school lobby.

Gaeilge: This month we explored two different themes. These were the ‘Sa Bhaile’ theme and Oíche Shamhna as part of the ‘Ócáidí Spéisialta’ theme.

Maths: Numeracy Power Hour continued this month. With Mr. Glynn we continued to explore money and we also focused on length. With regard to money, we played a dice game where we rolled the dice and took the appropriate amounts of money. The winner was the first person to get to 20c. We made the game harder by introducing two dice. We also looked at ensuring we took the minimum amount of coins. We also looked at exchanging our coins for those of the same value. We looked at shopping activities to see if we had enough money to buy particular items. If we didn’t, we looked to see how much more money we would need. We explored the concept of change to ensure that we didn’t pay too much for any given item!

English: This month we focused on the comprehension strategies of ‘visualising’ and ‘Making Connections’. We also continued to revise ‘Predicting’ from September. We listened to a poem called ‘My Neighbours Dog is Purple’ by Jack Prelutsky. As Mr Glynn read each stanza, we had to draw what we visualised. We weren’t allowed to go back to our previous drawings once we moved onto the next stanza. Here is a selection of our work. The dog turned out to be a painted crocodile! We also listened to a poem called ‘My Sister’s Friend is Purple’. Can you guess what my sister’s friend was?

September 2021

(and what a busy September it was!)

Our new classroom: This year we are on a different corridor. Our classroom is Room 5.

Numeracy Power Hour: Numeracy Power Hour started in our class on our first day back at school and will run up until mid November. During Numeracy Power Hour Mr. Glynn, Ms. Carty, Ms. Keogh and Ms. O’Meara all help us with our maths. Mr. Glynn works on the measures strand and the other teachers work on helping us to develop a deeper understanding of the number strand. Power Hour takes place every day from 9:10-10:10. During the month of September we worked on ordinal number, the days of the week, the calendar and we began looking at money with Mr. Glynn. Here are some pictures of us working hard in Power Hour.

Gaeilge: In Gaeilge we focused on the ‘Mé Féin’ theme for the month of September. We learnt the phrases ‘Dia duit!’, ‘Dia daoibh!’, ‘Dia is Muire Duit!’, ‘Cé tusa?’, ‘Is mise _’, ‘Cad is ainm duit?’, ‘_ is ainm dom’ and ‘Conas atá tú?’, ‘Tá/Níl mé go maith’, Cé hé/hí sin?’, ‘Sin é/í_.’, ‘Cé atá sa phictiúr?’, ‘Tá _ sa phictiúr’ and ‘Cén lá atá ann inniú?’, ‘Inniú an _’. We also learnt a selection of rhymes and songs that included ‘Taidhgín Turcaí’, Cé atá sa Phictiúr?’, ‘Ceann, Gualainn, Glúin ‘is Cos’, ‘Teidí Tinn’ agus ‘An Luan, An Mháirt’.

English: We revised our senior infants sight words and have been looking back through our class readers from last year. We made sure we know all of the words before starting our new first class reader, ‘Finn’s Dream’. We started Reading Groups and they take place each day from Monday to Thursday. Each group lasts for seven minutes and during these we practice our sight words with Ms. Morris, read aloud to Mr. Glynn and engage in free-writing activities. Sight word lists can be found here: ‘The Big Horse’, ‘What a Mess’ and ‘Stop that Dog’ and ‘Finn’s Dream’ and ‘The Four Friends’. We used the words to write sentences as part of our homework. Mr. Glynn has been checking to make sure our sentences make sense. Some of us even got stickers for our fantastic sentences!

We have also been working really hard with our cursive handwriting. We started straight back at our first lowercase cursive letter which was ‘c’ and we have been working our way through each of our letters. Here is the exact wording that we have been using when practicing the formation of each of our lowercase letters.Some of the writing has been so good that Mr. Glynn had to check that there were no parents hiding under the tables doing the work for the children! We are very proud of the time and effort that we have been putting into our cursive writing.

Each week we explore a new spelling pattern as part of the Jolly Grammar programme. On a Friday we have a spelling test based on the weekly spellings. During the month of September we looked at the following spelling patterns: /sh/, /ch/, /th/ and /ng/. Spellings can be practiced at the following website – https://www.spellingcity.com/users/JollyGrammar This website has loads of fun games that can help us to revise our spellings and we can even take a practice test before the actual one! Why not check it out if you get time?

Digital Learning Skills: We have been practicing our iPad skills over the past few weeks ensuring that everyone can lock, unlock the iPads, making sure that we know how to clear and move between different screens and have been exploring the different functions of the camera and video recorder. We also learned how to access a coding app called ‘Sprite Box’ and an app called ‘Lightbot’.

PE: Our PE days are Wednesday and Friday. So far we have been playing lots of fun games, we have started to cover the Outdoor and Adventure strand and have been doing tennis on Fridays with Stephen. Check out the pictures of us in action!

Games:

Outdoor and Adventure:

Games – Tennis:

10 minutes additional Physical Activity:

In an effort to work towards our Active Schools Flag, every week we try to do at least 10 minutes of additional physical activity. Here are some photos of us taking part in a ‘Go Noodle’. They help to keep us fit and active and also let us have a bit of a movement break in between our learning. A class favourite has been ‘Fabio’s Meatball Run’!

SPHE: The children listened to an interesting story called ‘Have You Filled a Bucket Today?’ We discovered that everyone has an invisible bucket that can either be filled or dipped. We brainstormed ways that we can help to become ‘bucket fillers’ and we looked at how people can also be ‘bucket dippers’. How can you help to fill someones bucket?

We are delighted to be back to school but we also know how important it is to keep everyone safe. With all that has been happening with COVID-19, we know what it is really important to ensure that we keep germs at bay. We have been revising how to wash and sanitise our hands correctly and have been making sure that we follow all COVID procedures. Here is a link to the YouTube video we watched to help us learn how to wash our hands properly – Handwashing – WHO

Art: We discussed how individually we are all unique, but collectively we all make up our awesome class. We have also be focusing on portraits. Have a look at some of the fun activities we have taken part in so far.

Jigsaw Art:

We all drew a self portrait and wrote our names on individual jigsaw pieces. When we put them together we were a able to see how, combined, we are a winning team! It’s displayed outside our classroom for all to see.

Name Tags:

We explored different types of line and created our own labels for our art folders. They looked so impressive we decided to display them in the corridor before we stuck them onto our folders.

Monochromatic Portraits:

As part of a whole-school art project in advance of Friendship Week we created monochromatic portraits. Each class in the school will create these portraits using the colours of the rainbow. Ms. Moriarty will display these in the lobby at the start of October. Lets see if we can spot ourselves in the whole-school display!

Geography/Science: This month we have been looking at the green schools theme of litter and waste. We have been identifying what materials can be recycled and those that cannot. Did you know that soft plastics can now be recycled along with hard plastics? We listened to a story about a magpie called Maurice who struggled with recycling and we helped him to classify items into those that can and cannot be recycled. We have been using our own classroom bins to help us remember what items can be put into each bin. Our bin monitor checks our bins daily to ensure that only the correct materials have been put in each bin. We have been working hard to ensure that we bring home our lunch waste. On the 16th we took part in a webinar and learnt all about ‘Picker Pals’. We look forward to working on the initiative later in the term. Here are some photographs taken during the Picker Pals webinar.

History: We have been looking at our family and our school in history. We have been looking at who makes up our family, the things we used as a baby that we don’t use now and the things that we use now that we didn’t use as a baby. Recently we have been looking at the history of our school. Harold’s Cross NS dates back to 1831 when it was located at the entrance to Mount Jerome. At this time parents had to pay lots of money to send their children to school and very few children were lucky enough to get to go. Our current school building was built in 1937, and as old as Mr Glynn is would you believe he didn’t work here at the time! The new school was built as there was a huge demand for places. At the time there was a separate boys and girls school. Our school building was originally the boys school and Scoil Mológa was the girls school. In 1988 the boys and girls schools amalgamated due to a decline in pupil numbers. The girls section was left unoccupied for a number of years until 1993 when Scoil Mológa opened in the original girls section. If you look over the hall you will see the date that the original school was built. Only a few years back there was only one of every class and now we have two of each class. Have a look at how our school has changed over time.