Newsletter

Lots of space creations were made to celebrate space week. JI made craters on the moon, SI launched their rockets on a balloon across the room, 1st created their star sign, 2nd made and launched their paper rockets. Then in 3rd class we estimated the size of our moon with balloons and also the distance from earth(9.5 times the circumference). We also estimated the size of our planets using fruit. 4th class made foam rockets that we tested outside and they really travelled quite far while 5th made super satellites and 6th class a space buggy that had to move.

Congratulations to our girls on the celebration of the sacrament of Holy Communion this Saturday, it was a beautiful day and the girls were wonderful!

We are delighted our new girls in Junior Infants are settling in so well.

Our 6th class girls helping to promote the new campaign to reduce gum on our streets.

Congratulations to Áine and Ruby who were presented this year with the Loreto award.

We had two days of sports activities with Ms Vavasseur-JI to 2nd class on Tuesday and 3rd-6th on Wednesday and then the ice-cream van on Thursday with an outdoor disco-so much fun!

On two lovely dry days this month we walked into St Stephen’s Green with our teachers. We saw the five cygnets with their Mum & Dad and then we examined trees using tree dials that Ms Kelly gave us to match the leaf of the tree. We saw Ash, Maple, beech, Sycamore and Horse Chestnut. We used magnifying glasses to look at webs, wood lice, mushrooms, moss, bark and even a caterpillar!

We had so much fun every afternoon, the week before the May bank holiday, to celebrate all we can be positive about this year with our school friends. We started with yoga on Monday then every afternoon we had a fun activity-teddy bears picnic, fun sports outside, board/computer games and we finished with the 6th class bake sale!

Classes 2nd to 6th had an extra computer class as part of Tech week to code. This was new for 2nd class who started with Kodable while the other classes tried new games to code depending on their comfort level competing with each other and sharing their games created.

As park of Tech Week we had fun with our school beebot in JI, SI and 1st Class. We learned how to program the bee to move around the map of colours and also the solar system. Sometimes we sent him the wrong way! Programming is fun.

Our week of engineering projects was delayed until our school re-opened after the Midterm but that did not stop the girls from designing and constructing at home. There were some amazing things made from rockets in Senior Infants to spaghetti bridges in 3rd to castles in 4th. When we returned to our school we each had a session with Ms Kelly that included helicopters in JI, Spinning cup flyers in 1st, boats in 2nd, catapults in 5th and electrical circuits in 6th.

First class had so much fun participating in our chick project. 

Shortly after the midterm break 25 eggs were put in an incubator for 21 days. On the 8^th day we used a candling torch to look inside the eggs and see if their heartbeat had started. 

On St Patrick’s day we watched one of the eggs hatch to be followed by 19 other happy healthy chicks.

We had so much fun as the chicks visited our class daily for the rest of the term. We observed the fluff changing to feathers and wished them well on their return to Edmondstown Farm back to Farmer Luky.

The whole experience helped us forget about home schooling and Zoom and gave us a taste of what being a farmer might be like.

Checkmate! 3rd Class are playing chess. Some are learning while some are even teaching their friends! The girls are surprised at how much fun it is. It is a different way of thinking and they are already becoming strategic in their moves. We are lucky enough to have some girls who are teaching us Chinese Chess too!

The 5th class girls were learning about procedural writing. We decided to try and make our own smoothie recipes and had some delicious results! 

It was a very busy since back to school after weeks of remote learning. Second class really embraced Engineering Week. In class we made Daffodil Pinwheels to brighten up our gardens. They made mini paper kites and flew them in the school yard. They also made boats out of plasticine to see which would float better.
The girls were busy at home too making bigger structures and creations out of things in their recycling bins. They made windmills, dog food dispensers, dog houses and catapults. 
We watched virtual shows about building bridges and engineers through the ages.