Seachtain Na Gaeilge

There was great excitement around the school last week as we celebrated our annual Seachtain Na Gaeilge.

Each class took part in various events and projects which culminated in a special Gaeilge performance for assembly.

Junior Infants treated us to a little show of the story of An Buachaillín Sinséir (The Gingerbread Man)

Senior Infants told us a poem all about Teidí Beag Álainn.

1st class learned the Haca as Gaeilge and not only performed it for us but taught the whole school how to do it too!

2nd ad 3rd, who is never afraid of a challenge. learned and performed the song ‘Tar Liom Go hÁrainn‘ from start to finish!

4th and 5th class showed us their musical skills by performing Faolán Faolán with chime bars.

5th and 6th class treated us to a spectacular performance of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs through Irish!

All of the classes put in so much effort to each of their performances and should be incredibly proud of themselves!

We finished the week with a very exciting leprechaun hunt in the garden! The infant classes hand to hunt out six leprechauns and match them to their numbers but it was a little more difficult for the bigger boys and girls who had to find 12 hidden pictures in the garden and use the information found on each to crack the secret code! Great team spirit was in the air and the children were all good sports!

Collection of Aid For Ukraine

A huge thank you to all who donated to our collection of Aid for Ukraine. We facilitated a collection of aid which was added to the overall community collection organised by Ashford GAA! We are delighted to have been able to contribute over 3 car loads of supplies and we thank you all for your generosity!

Creative Schools

Last week we began our Creative sessions with local artist Jane Groves. She spent the day working with our 4th, 5th and 6th classes where they focused on the local natural environment and drew maps of the area. The children really enjoyed the interactive session and it really got them thinking about their surroundings which can at times be taken for granted. Take a look at some pictures from our session.

New Raised Bed

We are delighted the first addition to the front part of our garden as part of our over plan to make it a sensory garden for our school.

At Nun’s Cross. we are fully inclusive and it is important for us to ensure that all our children are able to fully enjoy all aspects of school. For some children, running around, playing ball games and being loud with their friends is not their idea of enjoyable playtime. This space will serve as a quieter space for children to spend their outdoor time in a calm space, away from the fast running and loud noises of traditional playtime.

This colourful raised bed has been filled with beautiful flowers which will continue to bloom over the coming month as we add more to this area of our playground. It will help us to keep this area of the playground at a slower and quieter pace than the rest of the outdoor space. We would like to thank all of the parents who contributed to the fundraising efforts last year in order to enhance our outdoor area and we are excited for the rest of the additions to come! Bi thank you, also, to our amazing PTA, without whose efforts none of this would be possible!

Bird Friendly Garden

We absolutely love our school garden and we love all the wildlife we share it with too! From frogs in our pond to bird and bat boxes around the school grounds we enjoy all the opportunities we can to help look after our wildlife friends! This week we were delighted to have the addition of bird feeders to the garden. Ellie, who is a keen garden bird fan, was the instigator in this addition and she very generously donated a large number of feeders and nut free bird food. All of the feeders have been carefully placed around the school grounds and filled with yummy treats for our small friends to enjoy! Watch out if you’re in the garden to see what birds you might spot at the feeders!

The Three Little Pigs

The Junior Infants have been looking at the story of The Three Little Pigs this month. They wanted to see if the wolf was really able to blow down their houses so they made their own. They worked in groups to create a straw house for Horace. He moved in, but unfortunately, his house didn’t stand up to the Big Bad Wolf.

Horace and his house builders moved to the wooden house where Borris lived and they worked hard to try and make a stronger house for the two pigs. Unfortunately, it still wasn’t strong enough!

Horace and Borris ran to Percy’s house and they worked hard to build a strong brick house. Thankfully, no matter how hard that wolf tried, he couldn’t blow down the brick house as it was the strongest house by far!

The Junior infants had to engage in lots of problem-solving and creativity to complete this activity and they did a wonderful job!

World Book Day 2022

The whole school was filled with great excitement today as we celebrated one of our favourite days of the year - World Book Day! All of the children dressed up as their favourite book character and brought in their favourite book to share with the rest of their class. Take a look at some of the amazing costumes on display!

We had lots of story time throughout the day! Junior Infants enjoyed the book Elmer by David McKee and explored how we are all different. The children all worked hard to make their own individual Elmers afterward which are proudly displayed outside their room!

Mrs Pearse’s Literacy group ahve been enjoying Tom Palmers book ‘Spitfire’ and have used it as a theme to decorate their classroom door. Doesn’t it look incredible?

A very special story session was shared between our 6th class students and our Junior Infants. The Juniors loved being read to by their big buddies and it was extra special this year as we haven’t been able to do it for the last few years! Thank you and well done to all the big buddies for their care and patience with the little ones!

4th and 5th class have been studying the book ‘The Battle Below Giltspur’ by Cormac Mac Raois and they have worked really hard to design their own book cover. We have some budding illustrators on our hands!

5th and 6th class took part in a blind date with a book. Each child brought in a book from home. They wrapped it up, keeping its title a secret, and gave a few clues for the person who chose it as their date. They spent some time reading the book they chose and then had to ‘rate their date’ afterwards! It was a fun activity and also showed the true meaning of the phrase ‘never judge a book by its cover’!

Because you’re never too old for some ‘Where’s Wally’ the 5th and 6th class children enjoyed a Wally hunt around the school garden! They managed to find them all!

We saw some more fantastic illustrating in Senior Infants as the children got creative and designed their very own book covers!

We know that you can read a book anywhere, but have you ever thought of the strangest places to read a book! Check out some of these strange spots some of our children found!

Spring Has Sprung!

The Junior Infants are learning all about spring this month!

We have had a flower shop added to our classroom to help use explore the new words we are learning and to reinforced our learning on plants and flowers. We also have opportunities to practice our writing by creating gift tags and are really enjoying playing with money!

We are exploring how plants grow and what they need to help them on their growing journey. One of our tuff trays is a planting station where we can explore the soil, the minibeasts that live in it and we are having a messy time filling and emptying pots to plant our seeds!

Because we have been learning about how plants grow and the different parts of a flower, we have planted our very own giant sunflowers and we can’t wait to watch them grow! We took great care planting them, and we even made a wish on our seeds before carefully sowing them in the soil. As our flowers grow, so too will our wishes!

We are a very creative bunch, and we love to make and do! In our creative tuff tray we are making flowers from egg cartons! Its great fun and we love upcycling too!

This is only week one of our new topic! We have a lot more to explore in our topic so be sure to check back here for more exciting updates!

Paper STEM challenge

2nd and 3rd class were given a scissors and a piece of A4 paper and they were challenged to make the page big enough so that they could fit their bodies through the middle of it. They tried lots of different strategies (some hbing to resist temptation of using glue or selotape) until it was solved. One child even managed to make one big enough so that all 2nd class boys could fit through it at once. This was using just one piece of A4 paper and a scissors!

Wednesday Coding Club

Our students in the Wednesday Coding club were developing stencil art using the Python Turtle Graphics library. Turtle Graphics is a great way for introducing students to game development or creating Graphical User Interfaces

Press play on the window below to see the code in action

Monday Coding Club

Our students in the Monday Coding Club recently built a password generator using the Python 3 coding language. The user can enter how long they would like their password, the code then generates a random sequence from the list of characters.

You can test out their code below by pressing the play button

Pancake Tuesday in Nun's Cross

Today our wonderful Student Council surprised the whole school with pancakes to celebrate pancake Tuesday. Our wonderful committee met and planned the day, organising supplies and delegating roles to allow this day to run smoothly. We had our 5th and 6th class students cooking the pancakes on their crepe makers. We also had our team from 3rd and 4th mixing the batter. We had representatives from 3rd and 4th also helping to bring the students from their classes, keeping a steady flow of traffic. When the children visited, they chose their pancake and decorated it using honey, lemon, sugar, marshmallows, strawberries, cream, sprinkles, chocolate and strawberry sauce. The pancakes were so yummy!

All pupils also took part in our pancake flipping contest which was very hotly contested. Take a look at some of our photos below:

STEM shoes in 2nd and 3rd class

Yesterday 2nd and 3rd class faced the challenge of designing and making a pair of platforms for their shoes made from paper alone (and some selotape of course). To make this as fair of a test as possible, we began by limiting our efforts to just using 2 sheets of paper but we soon found that that would not be enough.

We discussed different 3-D shapes and which shapes are the strongest. We concluded that cylindrical rods were a strong shape to support someones weight with using paper alone. We also had a discussion about how our weights could effect the trial of our boots.

The predominant design was a cylindrical cog and we found that we needed to have these cogs placed closely together and taped strongly in place in order to work. If there was one weak cog in the boot, the whole lot came towering down when we tried to stand. Our work from day one resulted in no successes, but we are determined to continue working on this until we are succeed. This has by far been the most challenging project yet.

Exploring length in 5th class

This half term one of our favourite topics to explore in 5th class maths was length. We enjoyed using our skills of estimation before using a variety of materials to measure various lengths in our classroom and on the yard.

We found it a challenge when using our maths books to get our heads around the different concepts, and as the week progressed, once we had some hands on experience it got alot easier. Some important points we have learned the importance of are:

• When using a ruler or metre stick, in order to be accurate in our measurements, we need to remember to begin measuring the item at 0 and not at the beginning of the instrument.

• When using the trundle wheel, bumps and hollows challenge the accuracy of the instrument - at times hopping ahead and over measuring and at other times disconnecting from the surface and not measuring accurately.

Six Nations Tag Tournament

Our Active Committee were at it again this week, organising another amazingly fun day. Yesterday they arranged the tag rugby six nations for 2nd - 6th class, where mixed teams participated in a tag tournament. There was fierce determination and grit on show, as 2nd class pupils stood toe to toe with 6th class pupils, stealing their tags and earning points for their respective teams. At the end of the day, Ireland emerged victorious, with Wales coming second and France coming in 3rd place. Here’s hoping the national team can take a leaf out of our book and up their game to overcome their competitors in this years tournament.

On another note, this week we received the fantastic news that Cumann na mBunscoil tournaments will be returning, so yesterdays tournament will have helped us to build our team spirit and work on our fitness.

Irish readers have arrived

We are delighted with our new Irish books which arrived at our school this week as part of An Bosca Leabharlainne. We are enjoying using the amazing illustrations in these books to help scaffold our understanding of these books which are written in the Irish language.

Designing and making a chair for Teddy

Today 2nd and 3rd class were tasked with designing and making a chair for teddy. They were only permitted to use 10 sheets of paper, glue and selotape. Before we set into designing and making, we discussed the properties of chairs that make them chairs - we agreed that chairs have 4 legs and a seat and that when Teddy is sitting on the chairs he must have his feet off the floor.

We had a choice between two different teddies, a ladybird which was heavier but more compact and a teddy bear which was lighter but which had long legs and arms which would be more difficult to keep off the floor. We agreed that we would use the teddy bear. We gave ourselves 30 minutes to complete this challenge.

The children worked in groups with a minimum of one and a maximum of four and great team work was on display. Have a look at our test videos below:

As you can see, from our pictures and videos, we ran into some difficulty:

1. chair legs would split and move about unless we either selotaped them to the table or

2. stuck them to a full sheet of paper below or

3. joined them together using strips of paper

One of the groups explains their plan for this challenge. It was noted that the cylindrical chair legs were very popular among the groups. When we tested our chairs, we tested for 20 seconds to ensure the chair was sturdy enough to pass the test. Take a look at our resulting videos. Below the 2nd class boys were impressed with their creation which was able to hold a half-filled lunch box.

One of the groups also decided to use rectangular prisms for the legs, noting the strength and stability the square base provided.

Well-Being Week

All the children recently enjoyed a week of focusing on their Well-Being in Nun’s Cross! Each class found creative ways to try and explore the various different areas of well being.

We thought about the things that we are grateful for. Some things that we are grateful for might be big things, but we also talked a lot about the little things that we are very grateful for too! Senior infants gathered their thoughts and made gratitude chains as a visual representation of all they are grateful for.

Each classroom designed a well-being themed door to their classroom with the children taking the lead in the design and creativity.

Each class found ways to demonstrate how important it is to cooperate with others. A wide range of cooperative games and activities happened throughout the school and we all learned that things can be much easier, and always more fun, when we work together!

Helping our community is helpful to our own individual well being too! We extended our efforts to our community to help by doing a litter pick from our school to the village! We collected lots of rubbish and we disposed of it properly, helping to keep our local environment clean. We also took some time to think about the people in our community who might be a little lonely this January and we made Happy New Year cards to send to them.

We learned about healthy eating and how important it is to ensure that we are eating a healthy and balanced diet. We had some fruit tasting sessions in school during the week to help encourage us all to try new things!

We hope that all the children picked up some well being ideas that they can practice for the rest of the year!

Space STEM in 5th & 6th class

New Year Scratch Art by 5th & 6th class

5th and 6th class were busy this week brightening the corridors to welcome the new year into the school. We would like to send our wishes of a fantastic new year ahead to the entire school community.