Discovery Primary Science Award 2021

We are delighted to announce that we have been awarded our 7th Discovery Primary Science Award - an award given to schools in recognition of an outstanding commitment to the teaching of science, STEM, maths and engineering. Below is what the committee had to say on our application:

“Well done Nun’s Cross National School. A very comprehensive log of all the activities undertaken in each class in each category during the year and clearly presented and labelled. So many wonderful examples of STEM - your Viking video, your Earth Promises, your use of the new ipads, your artwork associated with projects (penguins, stained glass, lego rainforest models. You seemed to get great value from SeeSaw - particularly liked the kitchen measuring video with the little puppy looking on!
You should certainly apply for the Badge of Excellence next year. it has a slightly different focus but well within your capabilities
Congratulations on this year’s award.”

— Discover Primary Science & Maths Team

Below is a sample of some of of our work across the school which has helped us achieve our award!

Congratulations to the children and teachers on their achievement!

No Lunchbox Day

On Friday last our 6th class pupils held a ‘No Lunchbox Day’ for all pupils and staff in our school. This involved a week of planning and preparation where students did some market research - this involved brainstorming ideas of foods we could provide within our class group along with identifying foods which would satisfy the different dietary needs and preferences of all children. We also had to bear in mind how we could do this during covid. We also made up some posters to promote this day in school and we informed parents and pupils of the foods which would be on offer on the day.

Our final menu included hot dogs (including vegetarian hot dogs), salad rolls, pasta, fruit skewers and home baking which included an assortment of treats for the sweet tooth. This could be washed down with some fruit juice. Items ranged in price from 50c to 2 euro and we agreed to use the funds raised for our 6th class school tour to Splash Valley. Students completed their order forms and all classes visited the food stalls during the day.

No lunchbox Day 2021 was a huge success and the weather allowed all classes to dine for the day alfresco. The hard work and long hours put in by 6th class did not go to waste as some students paid a second visit to the food stalls until they eventually sold out. When the money was counted the children raised over 780 euro which not only was plenty for their trip to Splash Valley, we are also able to have a pizza party for them on their last full day of school.

World Ocean Day in Senior Infants

World Ocean Day took place on Tuesday the 8th and to celebrate Senior Infants learnt all about the five different zones in our oceans; The Sunlight, Twilight, Midnight, Abyss and the Trench Zones. We then took a closer look at the characteristics of each zone and its creatures. After that we picked a creature to draw and filled it in using tissue paper. Once the children were finished making their sea creature they had to place it in the correct ocean zone. It was lots of fun and we learnt so many interesting facts about our wonderful oceans!

Money, Money, Money!

It is all about the money in Junior Infants this week as the children are exploring money! We are learning o identify 1c, 2c and 5c coins, learning about their value, learning how to read price tags, how to count out the right amount of money and even calculate change! We really are a clever bunch!

The World Around Us

Junior Infants have been exploring some different countries and learning how some countries have things which are different and some similar to Ireland.

The first country we looked at is France. We found it on the map and learned about lots of things to see in France. We learned about some of the foods they eat - did you know its common to eat snails in France? yuck! We were really interested in the Eiffel Tower and we made our own towers out of paper straws!

We have also learned about a few countries in Africa. Africa is not a country, it is a group of countries that make up a continent. We read some picture books and we were most interested by the food and the animals in Africa

Some of the books we looked at got us interested in different foods and animals! One of our stories is a traditional African folk tale about how the giraffe got his long neck but we aren’t sure if we believe it!

We were really interested in some exotic fruits that grow in Africa after we read the story of ‘Handas Surprise’. We got to taste a variety of exotic fruits and decide if we like them or not!

We also looked at some different animals that are found in Africa. We learned about the Serengeti - a huge park that has nothing but nature where the animals can roam free. We looked at some beautiful pictures of African sunsets and we got to practice our colour blending and stencilling skills to create beautiful sunset pictures, inspired by the African animals and landscapes

We hope we can visit the Serengeti to see these amazing animals in real life when we are older!

World Bee Day

We had lots of fun celebrating World Bee Day on Thursday 20th May. The rain couldn’t stop us exploring the world of bees and completing so many un-BEE-lievable activities.

BEE-autiful Writing

Many classes decided to use bees as a stimulus for writing. Junior infants wrote some fantastic sentences based on a bee picture. Senior infants created some exciting acrostic poems about bees. 1st and 2nd class spend the morning learning about different bees and the lifecycle of bees before writing their own pieces about bees. 3rd class learnt lots of bee facts too and displayed them like a huge honeycomb. 

Buzzing about our Pictures

We had lots of bee artwork created throughout the school. We have some incredible artists in the school who blew us away with their creations.

Yummy Honey

1st and 2nd class became honey connoisseurs for the afternoon tasting and comparing 2 types of honey. They used their sense of smell, sight and taste to differentiate between the brands and some of the children had a clear favourite. We were spoilt to even have a piece of honeycomb brought into us on Friday.

Story Time in Senior Infants

It was a special story time in Senior Infants today. The children got to pick their favourite picture books .from our class library and take turns reading the book to the children in their group. They even managed to spot some rhyming and tricky words in the stories. The children were really proud of themselves and rightly so!

Active Counting in Senior Infants

Senior Infants are having a lot of fun this week working on their backwards counting from 20 while exercising. We have been doing some squats, jumping jacks, burpees, leap frogs, jogging on the spot and our favourite exercise of all the wall squat.

Well-Being Week

This week at Nun’s Cross our Well-being committee have been highlighting the importance of our well-being through a variety of different activities and events. Our well-being is very important to us and this week we have tried to focus on the 5 different areas that are important to support in order to have good well-being and mental health.

CONNECT

Ms Pearse very kindly spent time this week with each class to focus on a variety of stories and breathing activities. She used a variety of stories, tasks and exercises to help give the children the skills they need to develop the self confidence and awareness to deal with some tricky feelings and/or situations they might come across!

We have also spent some time this week clearing our minds and allowing ourselves to relax and be calm. We have completed lots of mindful colouring and have been listening to some relaxing music which has even made some of us sleepy!

BE ACTIVE

We are a very active school and we know how important this is for positive well-being! This week Ms Doyle very kindly took each class for a dance lesson in Bokwa! We absolutely loved it and hope she will teach us some more moves soon!

We held a school disco and all the children got to show us their moves on the dancefloor! It was so much fun and we have had many requests from children to have a disco every week - and why not?

TAKE NOTICE

Taking notice is a very important part of having healthy well-being, but its one that can sometimes be the easiest to neglect because we are busy. This week we made an extra effort to slow down and think about things we dont always have time to reflect on. We took the time to think about the things that make us happy, things we are grateful for and things that we are looking forward to in the future. We had great discussions with each other and realised just how lucky we are! We represented our thoughts in posters, gratitude jars and chains, and happiness posters.

KEEP LEARNING

We were so lucky to have Felisity Cullen-Molloy, from Greystones and Arklow Karate Kid, volunteer her time to come and teach our whole school some self defence this week. Felisity demonstrated some cool defence moves for us and we also got to practice them ourselves. It is an important skill for everyone to have some knowledge of and, as it was a new experience for most of our children, it allowed us to learn something new too! We are grateful to her and her team for their time - the children really enjoyed it!

GIVE

We held an Amber Day, where all the children were invited to dress in amber colours, and we raised money for Pieta house, a very worthwhile charity which works to support mental health. 4th class delivered a wonderful assembly to a sea of amber, reminding us that God wants us all to be a bright light and if you feel that your lamp is running low on oil, you can always turn to him for help.

We held a collection for Pieta house and we would like to thank you all for your incredible donations to end our well-being week. We were blown away by the generous support and kindness shown. Luke, one of our 5th class students, took it upon himself to bake cookies and sell them to his class mates. The efforts of Luke, and indeed his classmates for supporting his efforts, raised a huge €90 alone! Together with the donations brought in throughout the school, we have raised an enormous €491 for Pieta House this year!

France

Our Junior Infants have been learning about France this week as part of our new topic for the month. We have looked at where France is, how we get there and some of the things that are different like the language they speak and some foods they eat! Some things are very similar to Ireland too, like the money they use and the clothes the people in France wear.

We were very excited to learn about some of the famous landmarks in France and the children were particularly interested in the Eiffel tower - did you know our teacher has been right to the top? We thought that was pretty cool!

So we decided to make our own Eiffel towers, complete with red, blue and white paper straws - the colours of the French flag!

Georgia O'Keeffe Inspired Art in 3rd Class

Inspired by the flowers outside our school and the art of Georgia O'Keeffe, 3rd class were very busy creating these beautiful pieces of art!

"If I could paint the flower exactly as I see it no one
   would see what I see because I would paint it small
   like the flower is small. So I said to myself - I'll paint what I see - what the flower is to me but I'll paint it big
     and they will be surprised into taking time to look
        at it – I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.” Georgia O’Keeffe

Colour Dash Run to end Active Week 2021

Today on our final day of Active Week 2021, we finished the week with a colour dash run with all classes taking part. So much fun was had by students and teachers alike. We have enjoyed an absolutely fantastic week where many memories were created with our friends. We would like to say a huge thank you to Ms Bennett and the Active Committee for making this week one which will stay in our memories for a very long time.

Senior Soccer at the GAA pitch

Our senior students visited Ashford GAA pitch as part of our Active Week activities on Thursday.

The Nuns Cross Grand National

Over the past two days the children have been participating in the Nuns Cross Grand National which brought huge excitement to the school. We would like to say a massive Thank You to Cooley farm who kindly provided the jumps. We also received a surprise message from Katie Walsh, Irish Grand National winner, where she offered us encouragement along with a lovely message. Take a look below…

Junior Infants …

Senior Infants…

1st & 2nd class …

3rd class…

4th class …

Tom Crean Projects in 5th & 6th

Take a look at some of the work done by our 5th and 6th class students during their period of studying the arctic explorer Tom Crean.

Active Week at Nuns Cross

This year Nuns Cross are going all out to celebrate Active Week. Our Active Committee have been working tirelessly to make this Active Week the best one yet and it has been going down a treat with all classes.

We started off on Monday morning with a Wake Up and Shake Up which was led by some of our senior pupils. No sooner were we arrived in school before we were dancing along to their tunes and trying to keep up with their actions. It was great fun!

All week we have continued our final week of the run around Ireland challenge, each day reaching a new target location. Monday finished off with relay races. These consisted of three-legged races, wheelbarrow races, sprints, piggy back races and potato and spoon races.

Monday was finished off with some good old tug of war which brought out a competitive streak in everybody, even the teachers decided to join in!

On Tuesday…

We welcomed a familiar face back to the school. Aidan our rugby coach worked with all classes to check in on how our skills have developed since his last visit in December. He was very impressed by all he saw.

On Wednesday…

We started our day off with a healthy breakfast morning. The children brought in a healthy breakfast they had prepared, inspired by a very helpful parent whose cooking tutorial was shared on SeeSaw on Tuesday afternoon. We are conscious that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and in order to keep our minds and bodies functioning to their best, we need to be fuelling our bodies accordingly.

During the day, each class had a 30 minute circult training class with Ms Pearse and her Active Committee helpers. This was a great test of our strength and stamina, as we completed a wide range of stretches and High Intensity exercises.

Later during the day our junior classes visited Ashford GAA pitch where they enjoyed a soccer tournament. Tomorrow our senior pupils will be getting their turn to showcase their skills on the big pitch.

The day finished off with a Teachers vs 5th and 6th class Students doddgeball challenge. Chants could be heard from far and wide in the run up to home time, as excited onlookers chose their side to support. The teachers emerged victorius thanks to some great skill shown by Ms Smith. a re-match must be had as the game had to be called to a premature hault due to collection time being upon us.

Tomorrow we look forward to our senior classes soccer tournament at Ashford GAA pitch as well as the Nuns Cross Grand National which will be held over the coming two days for both junior and senior pupils. Here is a sneak peak of what is in store…

On Friday, our week culminates with a colour dash run, with our run around Ireland drawing to a colourful close.

Easter at Nun's Cross

Easter is a very special time and we were so lucky to be treated to a wonderful production of the Easter story by Ms Smith and her 4th class students! They retold the story of Holy week in a whole school outdoor assembly and the whole school was enthralled by their performance!

All classes have been learning all about Easter and have created some beautiful Easter art and crafts creations! From Easter baskets, to chicks and egg pastel pictures the children have been very creative!

Our Easter Egg Hunt

Following our Easter Assembly today, our classes enjoyed an Easter Egg Hunt. The Easter Bunny noticed all the great work going on in school and paid a visit with some Easter eggs for the children to enjoy. They were absolutely everywhere but with our crew of searchers it didn’t take long before we had the place cleared out. We would like to say a huge thanks to our Parents Association who worked very hard in helping to make today possible. We would like to wish our entire school community a happy and safe Easter break.

Our run around Ireland

This week we took on the Run Around Ireland challenge. All of our classes have been taking on his challenge and running every day with our combined distance totals taking us to some wonderful landmarks around Ireland. We are using coloured thumb tacks to show where we have reached and we have been having lots of fun talking about the places on this map which we have visited.

Back in school in 5th and 6th

5th and 6th class have been loving being back in school again with all their friends. They have enjoyed getting to play with our new GAA posts, making the most of having some Golden Time each day. The main topic we have been learning about this fortnight has been ‘the Famine’. They made some really interesting coffin ships and they ended this week off in style with their wonderful ‘sock friends’. Check out some of their work below.