This week we welcomed a new teacher into our classroom. Miss Salter will be with us for the next 7 weeks and the children have been their lovely welcoming selves. We began the week with a whole class mass, we were learning all about Saint Agnes who gave her life for her faith. We loved staying at the end to see the beautiful Christmas crib as it will be taken down soon. The children said special prayers for new babies that had been born this year and asked God our Father to keep them safe.

In maths we moved on to our new topic of measure. We looked at non-standard units and attempted to measure length in cubes which turned out to be quite tricky when it came to longer objects! The children worked brilliantly in groups and could all understand that we needed a better system to help us to measure accurately. We then moved on to focus on weight and again used cubes to help us to balance the scales. We counted the cubes and decided which objects around our classroom were the heaviest and lightest. Again we understood the need for a more accurate way to measure how heavy or light something was. We ended the week by creating quite a mess! We focused on volume and were experimenting to see whether certain amounts of water would fit into different sized containers. Despite causing some minor flooding, we had lots of fun and began to learn how to read a scale.

In science this week we continued to look at the human body and worked on labelling different parts of our bodies. Fintan was our outline and we worked to label the different parts of his body before taking part in a carousel of activities learning about bones, muscles and body parts.

We finished our week by beginning our new PE unit of gymnastics. We focused on balance this week and remembering 3 S’s: Still, Stretch and Stay. Ask your children if they remember what these meant. The children worked on 3 different types of balance increasing in difficulty and finished our lesson with some well thought out performances of these in front of the rest of the class. Next week we will be moving on to partner balance.

We joined together to look at our fantastic home study projects all about the seasons. We chose our favourite season and created different pieces of artwork, models and information packs about this season. The children had the chance to view the different projects and ask the creators questions about these projects.

The new home-study project information has now been sent out with the children. Title – My Favourite Animals, children could produce a poster of their favourite animal, a model of it, video, a piece of artwork showing their favourite animal or any other means of their choice. This list is of some possible ideas but is not exhaustive. It is your child’s chance to show their creativity and imagination to then be brought in to celebrate their achievement. A separate guidance sheet has been given to the children to bring home.

What an exciting morning! We arrived to find a pirate flag hanging outside our classroom! We all made predictions about what could have happened and the plot thickened further when we arrived back from phonics to find a message in a bottle! After reading the letter we discovered that we had to answer rhyming riddles to collect clues.

The clues led us around the school picking up different objects as we went. We thought that the pirate Captain Jack must have dropped some of his items on the way. The final clue was a treasure map! The children went off on an adventure seeing if they could find an X around our school anywhere hoping to find treasure.

We then received another letter to say one of the pirates was missing and still around our school! We wrote fantastic descriptions to describe the pirate hoping that we will be able to make missing posters with information about the pirate.  Let us see what next week brings…

A huge welcome back after our Christmas break! We are still focusing on the Christmas story within our classrooms as Christmastide is still ongoing as we look further into the true meaning of Christmas. We started by role playing The Annunciation when the angel Gabriel arrived to tell Mary she was having the most special baby. We all had a go at playing both parts and we have definitely got some aspiring actors and actresses in our midst!

What a wonderful trip! The rain held off for most of the day and we were even blessed with a little sunshine. We fed animals, met brand new baby piglets and stroked chicks that were only 3 days old, we held on to some ‘junior’ chickens that all wanted a closer look at our faces, met Santa’s reindeer, took part in a Nativity with a real life donkey (!), went to Santa’s house and received a lovely gift, ate lunch next to an open fire. We all had the chance to stroke a 20 year old tortoise who was more than friendly, stroke a very happy snake, met a HUGE Shire horse that took a liking to our coats and hats, saw various birds of prey that had been rescued by the centre and got to bounce away on a bouncy castle (despite our wet feet). It was a busy, fun-filled day and we all had a great time! Enjoy looking at our pictures below.

Today the children enjoyed their Christmas dinner. Dressed in their Christmas jumpers, the children sat down to enjoy their Christmas meal served by their teachers. The children pulled crackers, bopped along to Christmas classics and enjoyed some delicious turkey with plenty of vegetables. The children were all beautifully mannered and all enjoyed their Christmas meal together.