Chinese New Year

In class we have been learning about Chinese history and culture. We talked about China as a country, its traditions, and how people celebrate special festivals. One of the festivals we learned about is Chinese New Year, which is coming up soon. This year is the year of the horse.

To go with our learning, we created some beautiful art. We designed porcelain style vases and used blow painting to make blossom trees on them.

We also tried writing some Chinese symbols. This was challenging but exciting, and it helped us understand how different the Chinese writing system is from ours.

We really enjoyed learning about Chinese culture and celebrating Chinese New Year through art! 🧧🎨

Make, Bake, Cupcake!

On Friday we all deserved a little treat and some fun so we rolled up our sleeves, popped on our bakers’ hats and got to work! We baked delicious vanilla cupcakes, then iced and decorated them. Some of them had more decoration than cupcake, but they were yum. Have a look at how we got on!

Bronze Age Crannógs

Recently we have learned all about the Bronze Age. The Bronze Age started approximately 5000 years ago but it took a long time to spread to Ireland. During the Bronze Age, life was very different. People made bronze by mixing copper and tin together and this was used to create tools, weapons, jewellery and more! During the Bronze Age, people started to farm and to try to live in one place rather than following a nomadic lifestyle. People lived in roundhouses or crannógs during the Bronze Age in Ireland. A crannóg was a home that was built on a lake. We used some recyclable materials to create our own crannógs in groups. Check out our fantastic construction work below!

The Sistine Chapel and Michelangelo

In History we have been learning about The Ancient Romans and their incredible Roman Empire. In Geography we have been learning about Italy. We learned about The Sistine Chapel and how Michelangelo was tasked with painting its wonderful ceiling (which was 6 storeys high!)

Rumour has it that Michelangelo lay on his back, high up in the chapel and painted the ceiling lying on his back. We learned that this actually wasn’t the case and instead he built a series of steps, ladders and scaffolding so that he could stand just under the ceiling to paint. This gave him more control over his work.

We decided the rumour sounded far more fun though, so here we are, painting upside down, lying on our backs! Apologies to all the parents and guardians who maybe had to do a little extra clothes washing – it was a bit of a messy task!

Science Week!

This week is Science Week! We spent some time earlier in the week discussing ‘matter’ and we learned that matter is the ‘stuff’ that makes up everything in the world, even the air we breathe! We also learned that the three states of matter are solid (like ice), liquid (like water) and gas (like water vapour)!

We also took part in a Science Week Kahoot quiz. Our quiz was full of scientific questions based on topics we have learned about this year, in previous years and even some general science knowledge that we haven’t even covered in school. It was lots of fun and we learned a few things doing the quiz too! Did you know there are 206 bones in the average adult’s body? Or that a shark has 0 bones?

Tag Rugby

This month we have been given the opportunity to play Tag Rugby in school with a visiting coach. We’ve had lots of fun taking part in the games and skills. Check out our very happy faces in these photos. We can’t wait for our next two sessions! Thanks to our coaches for making tag rugby so fun!

The Skye Boat Song

This week in music we listened to and learned to sing the Skye Boat Song. This is a song all about Prince Charles Stewart (or Bonnie Prince Charlie) fleeing from Scotland after the Scots lost the Battle of Culloden to the English army. He left Scotland to go across the sea to the Island of Skye. We really enjoyed the slower rhythm of this song and once we knew the tune pretty well, we added an accompaniment of our own to it using bells and chime bars in the notes C, G and D. We had a great time being musicians!

You might like to listen to this song at home too. Here’s a lovely version of it:

Multiplication and Division

Recently in school we have been practising our multiplication and division skills. We have been using concrete materials, whiteboards, drawings, and the multiplication and division algorithms to work out our sums and to show our thinking in lots of different ways. It’s amazing to see how differently our minds work! Here we are working away on our maths skills…

A Trip to Raheny Library

Just before mid-term, we were lucky enough to be invited to Raheny Library to meet children’s author Natasha Mac a’Bháird. Natasha wrote the Sycamore Hill books and she has just released a new one called The Vanished Girl. Natasha was a wonderful author to meet. She told us all about how she started her journey as a children’s author, where she gets her ideas from, about the writing process, as well as how long it takes. Her books are often very mysterious.

After Natasha told us all about her work, she asked us to solve a mystery involving the murder of a singing contest judge. Some children were given a role to play and the rest of the class had to figure out who was guilty from the clues the characters would give us. It really was a brilliant visit and a good few of our class came back with a copy of her book checked out of the library!