We had an excellent time at the Iontas Theatre in Castleblaney on Friday. Snow White was a fantastic show and even the teachers took to the stage!
Well done to our own students who had a role in the show – Lauren, Erin, Neasa, Lucy, Katie, Isobel and Grace; Hollywood, here they come!
The children in our in our school really enjoyed their first session of Relax Kids on Thursday 30th January 2020 and are excited about their next class.
The sessions are aimed at primary school children and run in 6 week courses.
They involve warm up and movement, relaxing mindfulness games, stretching and breathing exercises, massage, affirmations, storytelling and visualisations.
The sessions take children from high energy to low energy and encourage them to relax while developing their creativity and imagination.
Each session has a theme which brings the child on a different adventure each week, from pirates to outer space to wizards. The sessions not only enable the child to learn the beautiful art of mindfulness but also equip them with tools to deal with stressful situations and anxiety, building their emotional resilience and self esteem along the way.
A huge thank-you to Olivia Monaghan for coming and teaching our children such wonderful skills, in such a fun and meaningful way. This is another initiative which goes hand in hand with our ongoing Health Promoting Ethos in our School.
To mark the feast day of Saint Brigid the Infants made crosses using lots of rushes, and what an amazing job they did. Happy Saint Brigid’s Day everyone!
Junior and Senior Infants were totally engaged in their Relax Kids class this week which involved meditation, postural energetics, massaging each other and much more. We can’t wait for next week’s class!!
The children in Mrs Lennon’s classveach made a cross in preparation for St Bridget’s day.
To some it was an already mastered skill, while to others it was something brand new!
Either way, every child was successful in the end!
The children in Mrs Mc Guirk’s room really enjoyed this activity, were they had to work as a team to complete a challenge set by their teacher.
The children worked in groups and their challenge was to make the highest tower possible using a set number of sheets of A4 paper and paper clips. The children had to complete this challenge in silence. It was interesting watching the children work as a team in silence to complete this task!
In January we have been discovering what ‘Forces’ are. We investigated different ‘push’ and ‘pull’ forces in a group sorting activity. The pupils played with playdough to investigate how materials can be changed using a ‘push’and ‘pull’ force. Vehicles were used to ‘push’ and ‘pull’ varying numbers of cubes. We also tried using our breath to ‘force’ varying objects of different weights to move. We investigated how friction can be used to slow things down and moved objects along surfaces with different textures to test this theory. We placed a book on pencils to investigate how much easier and faster things move when on rollers. The children recorded their results and they really enjoyed discussing reasons why various results had happened.
Amid all the excitement of Christmas the children in Junior and Senior Infants still managed to work really hard on learning and reciting their rhymes with the result that they successfully completed their second Nursery Rhyme Challenge.
Congratulations everyone!!
We had so much fun in the Infant room with our Christmas theme. We learned Christmas songs and rhymes and did a great job making Rudolf decorations for our Christmas trees. The most fun however took place in the Aistear room where the excitement of Christmas filled the air as the children engaged in an array of activities such as making Christmas playdough treats, printing wrapping paper and some even managed the difficult task of wrapping their boxes with the paper. The construction & small world stations had a hive of activity from making Santa’s sleigh and loading it with presents to delivering them all over the world. Some traffic jams were encountered along the way and would you believe there were even bad guys trying to steal the presents but the Gardaí soon sorted those guys out! At the home corner Santa’s workshop was buzzing with lots of calls to be made to ensure all the elves were on target for Christmas and most importantly there was always someone to make Santa a cup of tea!
Have a magical Christmas one and all!!
Mrs. Mc Guirk’s ‘LITTLE ELVES’ have been working very hard with Christmas activities. We have been singing ‘Tá an Nollaig Buailte Linn’, doing Christmas themed Irish role-plays, and making Christmas Cards ‘as Gaeilge’. The children have also been busy over the past number of weeks preparing for our play ‘The ABC Nativity’. Their hard work paid off and they put on a fabulous performance for all their families and friends. In religion, we learned about Advent and the Nativity Story. We watched a cartoon of the Nativity story also. Everyday we participated in an active Advent Calendar as part of our Active School’s Campaign. In English, we wrote Santa Letters and Interviews for Santa. We also played Chinese Whispers and I Spy as part of our oral language development. At maths time, we begun lessons by answering Christmas themed riddles and completed various Christmas Themed maths activities. We also learned about Christmas traditions around the world and about the importance of fire safety at Christmas time. The children loved interviewing each other and being interviewed about Christmas in the past at our ‘Interview Station’. We have created some lovely art work around the theme of Advent and Christmas. Some of our Christmas Activities can be viewed below! I would like to take this opportunity to wish all the boy and girls and their families a Peaceful and Happy Christmas and I look forward to seeing you all in 2020.
