Spring Is In The Air

We are so lucky in Nun’s Cross to have such a beautiful outdoor space for the children to explore. We appreciate in more than ever in spring, when we can take full advantage of learning in the outdoors.

The infants have been busy hunting for the signs of spring and watching the life cycle of the frog unfold before their eyes. They have been busy sequencing the life life of a frog and have produced some wonderful frog pictures during one of their art lessons!

Junior Infant Patterns

The children in Junior Infants are experts at making patterns! Look at some of our creations this week!

New Additions to our Green-Schools Flagpole

In Nun’s Cross, we are delighted to be a Green-School and fly our green flag with great pride at the front on the school.

We are currently working towards our sixth green flag, but we thought it was very important to acknowledge the great effort that has gone into achieving our 5 previous flags.

As soon as we came across the pennant flags, we knew that they would be a brilliant addition to help show the great achievements we have had in the Green-Schools programme to date. Each pennant represents one of the Green-Schools themes that we have completed.

Green: Litter and Waste

Yellow: Energy

Blue: Water

Maroon: Travel

Mint: Biodiversity

We are going to continue working hard over the remainder of this school year and will hope to continue the success and add another pennant to our flagpole.

Creative Schools voting

In Nuns Cross National School we are incredibly fortunate to be taking part in the Creative Schools Initiative. This initiative in association with the Arts Council is aimed at fostering and harnessing the creative potential in all children.

So far this year we have been working with our Creative Associate, Eamon Sweeney. We recruited two creative councils within the school, a Junior Council and a Senior Council who meet regularly to discuss progress. Our teachers have had a staff meeting to introduce them to the initiative and we are all very eager to jump aboard this adventure. So far we have sent out our feelers to the whole student population to collect ideas for activities each and every student enjoy doing or would like to do more of in school. This week we are hoping to put a list of themes/options based on these findings out to vote. We will need every child in every class to vote on this and the most popular project or idea will be completed.

Additionally, this year we have a 6th class council. As it has been quite a fractured year for them and with it being their last year in the school, we are eager for them to have their say in their own project.

New GAA goalposts

This week we were delighted with the delivery of our GAA goalposts and 10 GAA footballs. We have been patiently waiting for this special delivery for a long time. Earlier this year, following our hugely successful Nuns Cross GAA Class Blitz, it was brought to our attention by both Student Council and the Active Committee that a set of GAA goalposts would be hugely beneficial to the children who became very inspired when training for our blitz with Kevin our GAA coach. We are looking forward to having 3rd - 6th class pupils back in school to test them out for us.

The Tiger Who Came To Tea

Senior Infants had great fun celebrating World Book Day today. We read ‘The Tiger Who Came To Tea’ and thought of someone that we would love to have tea with. After that we went on an outdoor book scavenger hunt. We had to search through the books to find clues. It was great fun!

Green-Schools Remote Day of Action

This year Nun’s Cross National School held a remote day of action which was organised by the Green-Schools Committee. We are currently working towards our 6th Green Flag and decided to use this lockdown as an opportunity to take action in protecting our planet and to learn about our role as global citizens.

 On 11th February, the school community took action from their own homes. The children and their families chose activities that interested them most. We had many families go on recycling and Fairtrade symbol scavenger hunts, and others noticed the save water symbol so added that to their scavenger hunt. It was amazing to see all of the different items that can be recycled and very interesting to learn about the different Fairtrade products that we might have in our homes.

Other families decided that with the cold weather approaching, it would be a good time to build bird houses, bird feeders and bug hotels. Others used this opportunity as a reminder to refill their bird feeders. Some families managed to take photos of the birds exploring their new bird feeders.

 Another activity that many families took part in was creating recycled crafts or fashion. We had old tops being upcycled into bags, hair bands and chicken clothes, while others turned recyclable materials into castles, monsters and so much more. We even had someone upcycle a chair into a table.

We had litter pick-ups around our local areas which gave us some very surprising and sad findings in some cases. We had some very full bags of rubbish after tidying a small area which was a bit upsetting, but we are glad to know that the waste has been disposed of properly now. We even had members of the school community sending messages out to their family to pick up any rubbish they might see when walking. As global citizens, it is very important to know that our actions can have an impact on others and an action like this can have a positive impact on the environment.

We had lots of fun on our day of action, but we will remember that every day is a day that we can take action in caring for our planet.

Thank you to everyone who was involved and sent in the wonderful photos.

Week 1 of remote learning in Junior Infants

Mrs Gannon has been blown away, and had her socks knocked off many times this week by the phenomenal work done at home by all the Junior Infants!

They have been busy working away on their literacy skills by listening to stories, sharing their news and developing their oral language.

They have kept busy in phonics revising their sounds through a variety of activities and games!

Their maths skills are incredible and they spent this week revising their numbers 1-5 - check out at how good they are at forming their numbers now after all their hard work!

And of course they have kept up their practice of their Gaeilge shouting so loudly at Mrs Gannon in some lessons that she could hear them through the screen!

We have also had lots of boys and girls exploring our SESE topic of dinosaurs, getting outside for lots of exploring and exercise, some children have created their own games, learned a new skills like sewing and riding their bike without stabilisers as well as creating some beautiful works of art!

An incredible start to our remote learning by an incredible bunch of little people! Well done everyone!

Christmas Mini Olympics at Nun's Cross

Today, after much planning and preparation, our Active Committee held the Winter Olympics in Nuns Cross NS. Our committee have worked on this for the past month, deciding on games which could be played with the Christmas theme and then shortlisting these games by allowing all classes to vote on which games were included.

Our Active Committee prepared three stations and a fun timetable full of fun and games for all classes. This morning started off with a ‘find the elf’ treasure hunt to get the classes warmed up this morning. The children had to locate elves around the school yard who then provided them with the next clue until they collected 8 Christmas baubles. It was super fun!

Our four stations consisted of ‘tinsel tug of war’, ‘snatch the Santa’, ‘rob the presents’ and ‘Santa’s sack race’. Great fun was had by all. Take a look at some of the action on the day.

Santa Visit

Today the children at Nun’s Cross had a virtual visit from a very special visitor. It was Santa!!! The children were so surprised and delighted to meet with Santa through zoom. All children also received a present from the man himself.

We would like to say a HUGE thanks to our wonderful PTA for helping this happen. We had a lot of very happy children in school today!

Cleaning the Pond

The Green-Schools Committee has been very busy the last two Fridays cleaning out our pond.

Each year we need to spend some time cleaning out the weeds, leaves, PE equipment and much more from the pond to make space for the frogs who will return in the new year to lay their frogspawn.

It was cold and muddy, but we had a lot of fun. Our new members from 1st and 2nd class enjoyed joining the committee for the first time this year and being allowed walk in the pond.

Space Explorer Projects in 1st and 2nd

1st and 2nd Class worked in groups to create their first project of the year-Space Explorers.

Each group was given a different explorer and some information about the explorer. The children then used this information to create their projects. Each of the groups approached their project from a different angle, but all carried out great work.

Once complete, the children presented their project to the rest of the class. We learned a lot about our explorers, but even more about working in groups.

Have a look at our projects on:

• Helen Sharman

• Edward White

• John Glenn

• Yuri Gagarin

• Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin

Posting Letters to our loved ones

Senior Infants are currently working on the theme of the Post Office in Aistear. As part of their learning the class wrote some letters for their loved ones. Today they put these cards into their envelopes onto which they wrote the addresses of their loved ones to ensure the post man knew where to drive with the letters. They were also careful to put a stamp on their envelopes. When this was all complete, they walked to the village to find our nearest post box outside the post office where they put these in the post. They are all very excited to see how long it takes to be delivered and to hear how their loved ones felt when they received this surprise in the post.

Vote Nuns Cross!

We would like to congratulate our 3rd class have made it through to the final of Audiology Medical Services Christmas Carol School Competition with their rendition of 'Bumpy Journey'.  We were informed that there were hundreds of entries for this competition and we are delighted to be one of 15 entries on the shortlist.  We would like to say a huge thanks to Ms Turner, Ms Smith, Ms Doyle and Vyvienne for supporting the class with their entry. 

 The following link https://bit.ly/2K5tSvC can be shared via text or email, this will bring you directly to the voting.  The above link went live yesterday evening and voting will remain open until 4pm on the 17th December.  To vote you will be asked to enter your email address first, then select the school you wish to vote for – with voting restricted to one vote per email address.

Over the course of today and tomorrow, each video will be posted on their social media, please feel free to share our posts to encourage colleagues, family, and friends to vote for your school.  Every vote counts!

Postcards with Love

Today 5th and 6th class posted their postcards to the residents of a care home in Greystones which they were paired with through An Post. We hope these postcards can brighten the lives of the residents this Christmas.

Number Fun In Junior Infants

Junior Infants have been working really hard over the last few weeks learning their numbers 1-5. We have had loads of fun working in groups ordering numbers, forming numbers and counting objects to match numbers! Have a look at some of the fun in our classroom during maths this week

Australia in 5th and 6th class

In 5th and 6th class we have been focusing on the theme of ‘Australia’ with Ms Lawlor. We studied some different scenes and settings and incorporated some local wildlife into our pictures. We really enjoyed this activity.

Christmas Fun In Junior Infants

There is no time more exciting than the run-up to Christmas, especially for Junior Infants! And there is more than enough excitement to go around in our Junior Infant classroom as it has turned into Santas workshop as part of our Aistear this month!

It is a a busy area filled with opportunities for the children to draw, write, count, sort, wrap and build!

Our topic is ‘Toys Old And New’ and while we will be comparing lots of toys, talking about our favourite toys, looking at the materials that toys are made from and how toys have changed from years ago, we are also enjoying playing with some new toys in our classroom!

And of course, its not Christmas without some Christmas art creations thrown in there too!

The Story Of Christmas

The Junior Infants are very busy getting excited for Christmas this year and are really enjoying learning about the story of the First Christmas.

We are exploring a number of versions of the Christmas Story and have a crib in our classroom which the children are enjoying playing, and using to retell the story themselves, with during Aistear

We are adding our advent candles to our wreath and we have also added some nativity pictures which we coloured in beautifully.

Postcards For Nursing Homes

We are delighted to be taking part in the initiative of sending postcards to nursing homes this year. This is a campaign to encourage people to send messages to our elderly community, who are unable to have their usual visitors in nursing homes at the moment. Our senior classes have been allocated a buddy in a local nursing home, whom they will write individual postcards to and our junior end have been given a card to write at home and send to a nursing home or care home of their choice if they wish. Perhaps you might have a relative or a friend in a nursing home who might be grateful to receive a nice message? Write them a postcard and send it to them for free!