5th and 6th class have been working on Limerick poems this week and have created some very clever limerick poems on the theme of Easter.
Nun’s Cross are going plastic free
Exciting news – Nun’s Cross is going plastic free and to tell you more we have Elsa and Noah from our Green Schools Committee:
Nun’s Cross has decided to become a plastic free school because it is better for the environment. 5th and 6th class went on beach clean recently and we collected a disgusting amount of plastic. We were horrified at the large amount of waste on our local beach and thought if the school went plastic free it would help our environment.
To become a plastic free school, we have 3 asks:
We ask that all children have reusable water bottles/drink bottles. 60 million plastic drink bottles end up in landfill everyday around the world. Using reusable bottles will dramatically improve this.
No plastic in lunch boxes. Don’t add plastic such as cling film to items in lunch boxes, you could use bees wax paper instead!
Don’t use plastic straws! If you really have to have a straw use paper or bamboo ones instead!
We hope that by following these 3 asks, the school will have a huge reduction in plastic waste which will help the environment for all of us
Active Week is coming up!
Speaking on behalf of the Active Committee, some students would like to make an announcement:
Active Week is to help us keep our Active Flag and its loads of fun for the whole school. It promotes active fun and active learning throughout the whole school and for all ages. This year it is taking place from Monday the 13th of May to Friday the 17th of May.
This year we have a great variety of sports taking place from basketball to active stations and jersey day. We are going to be drinking alot of water because we will be sweating lots!
At the end of the week, to celebrate the active week, we will have a celebration assembly and all children are asked to bring in any sports awards that they have won as we are eager to share our achievements. We have fitted out an exciting timetable which we will be announcing after Easter.
We hope that everyone in the whole school enjoys being as active as possible and will inspire us to start news sports!
The Garden Centre
This month Senior Infants have been doing the garden centre in Aistear. Today, Junior Infants paid them a visit during aistear to see what was going on. Take a look at some of what we got up to.
Keeping ourselves Healthy
The children in 5th and 6th class have been learning about different ways to keep ourselves healthy and have been focusing on the food we eat and the impact it has on our bodies. We were so lucky to have an amazing expert, Majia O’Reilly, come into our class and fill us with loads of interesting information, guidance and tips on what we should be eating in order to be as healthy as possible.
We learned about different elements that work together to help keep us healthy and discovered how each group of food helps our bodies, in different ways, to function well. It was interesting to see how much sugar is hidden in some foods and how some simple changes we can make to our diet can have a massive impact on our health.
Just like Skittles, (but without the sugar of course!) we should aim to eat the rainbow everyday through a variety of fruits and vegetables
We had a good look at our partitioning of our food groups and saw how important it is to have fruit and veg taking up the largest portion. We are going to try and make sure to have a variety of foods in our meals as well as paying attention to the amount of each food group we have for each meal.
Beach Clean Up!
A few weeks ago Nun’s Cross signed up with The National Spring Clean and we received some bin bags, gloves and hi-vis vests. Today 5th and 6th class, along with some of their teachers, took part in a beach clean up along a 5km stretch from Killoughter to Wicklow Town. Our aim was to help improve our environment and protect the wildlife in the area from being harmed by litter making its way into their habitats.
Our access to the beach ended up being off road so we warmed our legs up with a nice long walk before beginning our task.
We set ourselves up into groups and we set off along the beach equipped with litter pickers, bin bags and tally charts to catalogue all the litter we collected.
We worked hard and unfortunately we found lots of things to be collected – mainly plastics, which are not biodegradable and can have devastating effects on sea life! We collected as much as we could, although some of our bags got full and others gave way to the heavy load!
We left a huge pile of rubbish for the County Council to collect, but this is all rubbish that will not end up in the sea or in the mouths of wildlife!
The owners at The Brass Fox very kindly allowed us to use their toilets and wash our hands before we had a picnic lunch on the green outside their premises. And they went one step further and treated all the children to hot chocolate to reward them for their efforts. We all agreed that is was the nicest hot chocolate we have ever had! Huge thanks to the Brass Fox for ending our day on such a positive note, a whole community working together to make our planet cleaner for all!
After our litter pick, and using our tally sheets, we categorised everything we collected into a variety of material types and then analysed our results.
Our most common material, by far, was plastic. We found some odd materials too like spray paint cans, barbecue grills and a large door hinge. We found that all of our waste was collected on the Killoughter end of the beach, with very little waste being found towards the Murrough end of the stretch. We concluded that this is likely to be because, even though the Wicklow end of the beach has much heavier people traffic, it also has more people looking after it through the likes of The Tidy Towns Committee and kind hearted local residents and has bins for people to dispose of their rubbish. We also spoke about how litter can travel down the length of the beach and would have much less of a chance of being collected and disposed of correctly due to the lack of people that far down the beach and lack of bins for litter to be disposed of correctly.
We are delighted to see all that we collected and think about how we have helped to prevent it ending up in the oceans and harming wildlife
The Clothes Shop in Junior Infants
This week in Juniors we have been working on the clothes shop. We got lots of practice being customers and shopkeepers. We got to try on lots of new clothes. Take a look at some of our favourite items from the new spring/summer collection…
Outfits complete with accessories. We had some really happy girls this week. Meanwhile, with the boys….
Not only were we great at clothes shopping, we also tried our look at designing clothes for ourselves. We used a variety of textiles and fabrics to create some wonderful ensembles.
In English, we read the story of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ which gave us a great laugh. We had a class debate about school uniforms. Should we have uniforms in school? Would it not be better to have uniforms? The children argued tooth and nail and came to a decision that ……………
In SESE we looked at clothes from around the world and compared them to the clothes we wear. We discussed our ideas on why people in different countries dress the way they do.
We followed this up by studying the properties and characteristics of materials in science and we designed clothes for teddy to wear in hot weather, cold weather and in wet weather.
We looked at the clothes people wore in Ireland way back in history and the clothes we wear today. We noticed a huge difference. We prefer the clothes we wear now because they are cooler and much more colourful and interesting.
Friday treat in Junior Infants
This week in Junior Infants we decided to treat ourselves with hot chocolate and popcorn after a very productive week of work. Thankfully we had a few students who knew how to make our treats.
River studies by 5th and 6th class
5th and 6th class have been studying the topic of rivers this month.
We have linked it in literacy to our class novel, ‘Journey To The River Sea’ by Eva Ibbotson which we have thoroughly enjoyed.
We created 3D models of a river profile in art, and although they took a long time (and a bit more patience) they have turned out really well! We started with a simple piece of cardboard. We used scrunched up pieces of newspaper to create the structure and secured it to the card with masking tape. We covered the structure with newspaper soaked in PVA glue and finally covered the model with white paper. When it was dry we painted it and we labelled all the various parts of the river on our profiles.
In Geography we have been learning about the stages of a river, the features of a river and how they are formed and the journey of a river. The children were set the task of completing a river project for the end of our topic and they all presented fabulously researched and presented projects. They included information on rivers, river features, uses of rivers, river life, river pollution and more. Each child also completed a case study on a river of their choice.
The children learned so much from each other about rivers as they each had the chance to present their work to their peers. We also took advantage of the sunny weather and took our classroom outside to put on a project display for the rest of the school and all the parents.
Biodiversity talk by Tom Gallagher
The children in Nun’s Cross had a real treat this week with a visit from Tom Gallagher who is an expert in all things biodiversity, with a special interest in birds and plants. He told us lots of interesting facts about the plants and animals living in our school garden and in our local area and we picked up loads of tips on how we can help support biodiversity in school and at home.
Did you know:
The sound of the Hummingbird Moth can only be heard by women!
The swift bird fly’s non-stop for three whole years, never landing once. It eats, sleeps and drinks while flying!
In one fistful of soil, there is up to 10,000,000,000,000 micro creatures which are responsible for all things that grow!
A dragon fly has 1,500 lenses in each eye. It can see 360 degrees, can fly forwards and backwards and hover!
Woodpeckers have not lived in Ireland for many years but have recently returned and are now living in Wicklow!
A huge thanks to Tom for coming in and sharing some of his knowledge with us!
Outside classroom
Why stay inside when you can bring the classroom outside? Especially on a beautiful spring day!
5th and 6th class enjoyed doing some of their novel study outside in the garden. They enjoyed the read and the sunshine even more!
Circles of Fun!
5th and 6th class are learning all about the circle this week.
6th class have focused on finding the area of the circumference by trusting in pi. Before we trusted in the mathematical equation we explored it to test it out! We measured the circumference and diameter of various round objects and when we divided the circumference by the diameter we got pi – or close to it! Just like magic!
5th class put their problem solving skills to the test and were challenged to create a circle in the playground without the help of a compass. We had some very clever suggestions on how to achieve this but we decided the most efficient and accurate way was to draw lots of diameters in various directions through a centre point and then finally join them altogether with a circumference. This activity involved a lot of patience and measuring as well as some clever thinking!
Making Pizza in Senior Infants
This month in aistear, Senior Infants have been learning all about Italy. Today, we were treated to a pizza making masterclass by one of the dads of the class.
We are so lucky to have such kind parents in our school!
Biodiversity Action Day in Nun’s Cross
The weather looked a bit shaky but that didn’t dampen the children’s enthusiasm for our day of work in the school garden.
Following on from our fund raising cake sale, each class was given a job or task in the garden. All the jobs had the same end result, improving our schools biodiversity which is our aim for our new Green Schools Flag.
We all worked in various areas. We under took the mammoth task of refreshing all the wood work in our school garden in order to help brighten up the environment. The children did a great job and worked really hard.
Junior and Senior Infants planted wildflowers and bulbs in a new flower bed at the edge of the school ‘forest’. The topsoil was kindly donated by a parent. We also undertook some planting in order to create a wild flower area to help protect bees and other insects which love all the colourful flowers which will grow here over the spring and summer seasons.
And not forgetting out flying friends! We have been so delighted with the amazing contribution from parents and local community organisations such at Ashford Tidy Towns who have donated over 20 bird and bat boxes of all kinds. The children added some colour to them and we are very grateful to a parent volunteer for offering his time to put them all into the tress around our school. We cant wait to spot some birds making them their home! 1st and 2nd class were in charge of painting these.
Another area were jobs to help look after the insects in our garden. The bug hotel got a make over and I am sure all our little critters will be much more comfortable in their refurbished home! We also added an additional bug hotel, we are sure they will love the colours! The children in 3rd and 4th class each brought in something for the existing bug hotel and repainted it also.
5th and 6th class made sure that the pond was sufficiently clear of weeds for the frogspawn to continue their cycle as well as painting the fences, flower pots, PE shed and buddy bench that are in the school garden.
Another area were jobs to help look after the insects in our garden. The bug hotel got a make over and I am sure all our little critters will be much more comfortable in their refurbished home! We also added an additional bug hotel, we are sure they will love the colours!
We would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who has made this day possible, in any way. And all of the work wouldn’t have been possible without the hard work of all the children. We are sure you will all agree that they have done a 5 star job!
Nun’s Cross celebrates Down Syndrome Day
Nun’s Cross was a hive of activity today as all children, staff and parents took part in a day of celebrating all individuals who have Down Syndrome. The children and staff supported the day in a variety of ways. Children and teachers came to school sporting all sorts of wacky socks which is the mark of celebrating this special day.
We had an information assembly as a whole school where we all learned about Down Syndrome. The children told us that they learned things like ‘Children with Down Syndrome still have feelings like us’, ‘We just need to be a little more patient with our friends who have Down Syndrome and help them with things they find a little bit harder than us’ and ‘Everyone needs to be treated with kindness and respect, and this includes people with Down Syndrome’. We watched this amazing documentary video and we recommend you should too!
We split into mixed teams where children from Junior Infants up to 6th class were all working together in various activities to promote inclusion and working together as a team.
Working as a team to transport a piece of card across the playground using only a straw!
We had to listen very carefully and co-ordinate our moves to complete the parachute games
We had great fun, and a few falls, trying to work as a team to turn over the sheet we were all standing on!
It wasn’t as easy as it looks to be a frog (or child) and make our way across the playground on a lily pad (a hoop), but it was made easier by working with our friends!
The children all brought in a small donation each for Down Syndrome Ireland, a charity who works hard to help support Down Syndrome children throughout the country. Together we raised €160.60, many thanks to everyone involved, it was a great day!
Slime in Junior Infants
Today in science Junior Infants were studying the properties and characteristics of materials. What better way to challenge our thinking on the changing properties of materials than to make slime!!
Junk art in Junior Infants
For the past fortnight, Junior Infants have been working away on the theme of houses. During aistear we enjoyed making houses in junk art. Take a look at some of our creations.
Trees in Ireland (2nd class)
We had had great fun today in second class learning about trees in Ireland. Afterwards, we went outside to investigate how many different types of native trees we had in the on our school grounds.
Leabhar Gaeilge
The children in Nun’s Cross have been very busy all week writing individual books in Irish. Every child produced a lovely book as Gaeilge covering a wide variety of topics
The children from 5th and 6th class spent some time in the morning doing paired reading with the junior and senior infants. The children shared their books and they read together
In the afternoon we had an open school for all the parents to come and view our work. Thank you to all who came to have a look and for all your positive comments to the children. I’m sure you will all agree that they worked very hard!
!!! Important Green Schools Announcement !!!
Today we received a letter in the post telling us that we have been successful in getting our Green Schools Biodiversity flag. This is the 5th Green flag and only a small handful of schools are committed enough to achieve such a feat. This is very exciting news and I would like to say a huge well done and congratulations to Ms Heaphy and the Green Schools Committee who have been working tirelessly to achieve this status for the school. Also, we would like to say a huge thank you to the whole school community who help us to carry out our action plan and keep our school become greener each year. Without the efforts of all students and their parents this huge achievement would not be possible.
With this, a representative group of 4 will travel to the Helix, DCU campus, Dublin 9 to be presented with this flag from An Taisce on behalf of the school. This will take place on the 22nd of May.
