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Oral Health

We had a visit in school today from one of our parents, Elaine Morton, who is a Dental Nurse with the HSE. Elaine visited each classroom and spoke to us about the importance of looking after our teeth. She showed us how to brush our teeth correctly, and gave each of us a toothbrush, dental mirror and some disclosing tablets to bring home and check how well we are brushing at the minute!

Elaine also spoke about the amount of sugar that is in different foods and treats – we will be avoiding the Nutella from now on! Thank you so much Elaine for a most interesting and informative visit, and thank you also for everything you left us to help us look after our teeth.

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World Milk Day

To celebrate World Milk Day which is coming up on 1st June, Lakeland Dairies very kindly delivered lots of flavoured milk to school today for us – we enjoyed some at break and lunch times, and also had some left over to bring home! They also left a great selection of dairy products for the staff to enjoy. Thank you so much to Lakeland Dairies for their generosity!

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Music on Wheels

We had a fantastic morning today when we were joined by the band from Music Generation for our Music on Wheels event. The Junior and Middle Rooms have been working with Aishling all year and today was their chance to show off all they have learned.

The band played a few songs and accompanied the children for the pieces we have been learning over the year. We sang Funga Alalfi (an African welcome dance), Is Mise Fear an Cheoil, True Colours and The Rattlin’ Bog. We also did a couple of dances. Some of the songs were well known and everyone joined in (even Noah!)!

A huge thank you to Aishling and everyone from Music Generation – it was an amazing experience to have a live band in our yard! Thank you also to all the parents who came in to join us this morning, we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!

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Visit to Cully’s Bakery

The Junior Room went to Visit Cully’s Bakery in Arva today.

When we arrived we had to put on aprons and a hair net. Even Noah had to wear them!

We went into the bakery and we got to make our own bread which was baked in the oven.

While our bread was baking, we went out to the store and we saw all the ingredients used for baking the bakery goods. We saw big bags of flour and we even got to smell the blocks of yeast!

Then we had a look at all the different machines used when making bread. We saw the mixers, moulding machines, the proving oven and the cooking ovens.

The last part of the bakery we saw was the packaging area. We saw the machines that cut and package all the baked goods.

Finally, our bread was baked and we got to take this home with us. It smelled delicious and we were so excited to taste it.

Thank you so much to Barney, Brían and Elaine for having us today and teaching us so much about how the bread and baked goods are made and for the goodie bags! We will be looking out for Cully’s bread in the shops from now on!

We also presented our Reader and Handwriter of the Month trophies for April in assembly last week. Well done to all our winners!

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Music Generation

We had our last Music Generation session with Aishling today. Over the last few weeks, we have been busy putting the finishing touches to our performances for the Music on Wheels event on Wednesday 17th May at 9.30am. We are really looking forward to this special event when we can show off all we have learned!

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Active School Week 2023

We celebrated Active School Week this week – we were very fortunate with the weather and enjoyed an action-packed few days!

We started every morning with a Wake Up, Shake Up! We used our spin the wheel activity board to get us moving and warmed up, then had fun with some dances.

We enjoyed playing some team games each day – dodge ball, saucers and domes, Farmer’s Land and Rob the Nest.

We also continued with our Mile a Day.

It was fantastic to be able to use our new hockey sticks and balls for the first time.

We also enjoyed playing tennis one afternoon.

We played a few very competitive matches of basketball and soccer!

We had great fun competing in different relays in our teams.

We went for a walk to the park and completed laps of the track around the pitch.

We finished our Active School Week with some challenges on Friday afternoon – cross the river, throw the welly, tug of war and gutter ball. What a great way to end a wonderful week!

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Happy Easter!

Before we finished today for the Easter break, we had an Easter trail around the yard – we had to find Easter pictures, mark their location on the map and record what we found. Everyone enjoyed a chocolate treat to finish!

We also presented our award for Reader of the Month in March – well done!

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Energy Projects

We have been completing our SESE Projects on the topic of ‘Energy’ over the last number of weeks. All classes have been learning about different aspects of energy and have enjoyed carrying out lots of investigations and practical activities.

The Junior Classes investigated the effect of heat on chocolate and looked at renewable and non-renewable sources of energy. They made and tested land yachts as well as estimating how much water is used in daily activities such as washing our teeth and clothes.

Third and Fourth Classes looked at the things plants need to grow and designed and constructed greenhouses from recycled materials. They also measured and recorded the weather over a period of time, investigated the effects of different types of insulation and completed an energy audit of their homes.

The Senior Room learned about the advantages and disadvantages of renewable energy sources and compared renewable and non-renewables sources. They made windmills to investigate wind energy, learned about steam power and the work of James Watt and made solar ovens to investigate conduction, convection and radiation. They also completed an energy audit of the school (reading the electricity and water meter) and considered ways energy can be saved at home and school.

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JEP Showcase Event

Congratulations to 5th and 6th Class who hosted a wonderful showcase event today. They showed all the different steps involved in making their wooden slices and had lots of their finished products on display.

Thank you to all who came to support their event and who have purchased their Wooden Wonders.

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Hockey

Today we had a visit from Kenny from Hockey Ireland for some Hockey coaching.

Each classroom had a session with Kenny – we learned lots of skills and played games to practise holding the stick and controlling the ball. We also played some matches which were great fun!

Thank you to Gordon Patterson who arranged this coaching session for us, and to Hockey Ireland who left us a set of hockey sticks for the school.