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The girls in room 14 have been very busy in Art over the past two weeks painting Spooky Silhouettes and constructing 3D Haunted Houses for Halloween.

 Spooky Silhouettes

Haunted Houses

We have also been very busy in English learning about Procedural Writing.

After we made our haunted houses, the girls took some time to write up the procedure.

Anyone can follow these simple instructions to make their own haunted house!

 

How to Make a 3D Haunted House

by Alicia Clancy Roche

Materials

• card
• scissors
• pencil
• ruler
• oil pastels

 

Steps

1. Fold the card in half.    

2. Use your ruler to draw two lines coming up from the crease in the card.

3. Cut along the lines and then bend the rectangle to the back and to the front.

4.  Open it up and push the rectangle into the inside of the card.

5. Get your ruler and pencil again and draw two lines coming from the crease like in step number 2.

6. Cut the lines on the front fold but don’t cut the bottom fold, and bend the new rectangle to the front and back.

7. Open it out and push out the rectangle you’ve just cut.  This is your house shape.

8. Draw in all of the details and don’t forget to make it scary!

9. Colour your house in using spooky colours and you have your haunted house!  

  

 

This week we celebrated Hallowe’en by doing a number of fun activities!

We had Spooky Story time. We hid on the stage with the curtains closed and the lights turned off. We lit the candles in our pumpkins and read The Witches! Mr. Gately was very surprised to find us up there!

We made Spooky Jelly! We melted orange jelly in a big bowl. We put a spooky treat in the bottom of our cups. Then we poured in the jelly and let it set in the fridge. We gobbled it up today!

We carved out our pumpkins, learned scary songs, did bingo as Gaeilge and painted our faces.

Happy Hallowe’en.

The Junior Infants would like to tell you a joke about Halloween.

We think it is really funny!!!

How do witches keep their hair in place while flying on their broomstick?

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….

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With scare spray!!!!

The Junior Infants would like to say a big THANK YOU to Mr. King’s 6th class for their visit on Friday.

We picked out our favourite books and they read the stories to us.

We told the older girls what we liked about the stories and talked about the pictures.

We hope they come again soon.

GO RAIBH MAITH AGAIBH CAILINI

Reading with 6th class  

Click on the link at the top of the screen “School Garden/Outdoor Classroom” and find out about our garden.

Today we learned all about what it is like to be the President of Ireland.  We took a virtual tour of Áras an Úchtaráin on the interactive whiteboard.  Did you know that the President Mary McAlesse gets up at eight o clock every morning?  The President also keeps two dogs one called Homer and the other called Lucy!

We talked about the Presidential elections that will take place on the 27th of October and discussed the names of all the candidates going forward for the elections.  The girls all wanted a girl president and surprise surprise the boys all wanted a boy president. 

Who is going to win?

We are having a fantastic response to our newspaper collection day.  Today our school filled three wheelie bins with newspapers.  By recycling your newsapers in the school you are helping to maintain jobs in Co Wexford.    Please remember to put your name and school on your bundle of newspapers.  Fingers crossed that the x box comes our way!

Keep up the good work everyone.

PS Dont forget to enter your suggestion for the name of our new school garden.  Suggestion box is located at the Green Flag noticeboard.  Closing date is coming soon.

Following 3 great victories over Tagmon, Scoil Mhuire (Coolcotts) and Crossabeg/Ballymurn our girls have reached the County Semi-Final of the Rackard League. The team has been improving with every match and the mentors, Ms. Mc Kiernan, Ms. Whelan and Mr. Gately are very pleased with the performances so far. In the semi-final on Wed. Oct 19th we play Bannow/Ballymitty in Tagmon at 3.45pm.

Best wishes to all the girls, go n-éirí libh.

Panel:Clodadh Bruen, Allanah Corcoran, Sinéad Cuddihy, Rachel Curran, Aoife Dwyer, Kate Frayne, Aoife Kelly, Jodie Kent, Hannah Malone, Emer Mc Cormack, Sarah Murphy, Clara O Doherty, Caoimhe O Sullivan, Kate Redmond Browne, Julia Dempsey, Eve Hession, Emma Jones, Josephine Lonergan, Anna Marsella, Johanna North, Sadhbh Cullinane, Sinéad Rafter, Sally Walker, Sally Bruen, Liadh Dwyer.

Please support our hard-working Parents’ Council committee by attending the AGM on Thursday Oct 20th at 8pm. You will hear short talks on “Reading With Your Child” and  “Children’s Health” and you will get an opportunity to view our school garden by night. Full meeting should be over by 9pm.

Over the past few weeks we have been learning all about our lungs and how we breathe.

The Lungs

by Megan O’Reilly

We learned about all the body parts to do with breathing. Your nose, your windpipe, your lungs, and your brain.

We breathe in the air through our nose. Did you know your nose has mucus? Mucus is used to
capture dirt and dust. It is a very good thing to have in your body because it helps to keep you healthy.

The windpipe is like a tube that brings the air from our nose to our lungs.

There are ribs in our body too. They are there to protect your lungs.

Your lungs are bigger than you think. If you put one hand on your collar bone and the other on the
very bottom of your ribs, that’s how big your lungs are! Your lungs are in
charge of taking all the oxygen from the air and sending it around your body.

Your brain controls your body. It tells you when you are hungry or when you are sleepy. And it
reminds your body to breathe!

 

Click on the link below to see a video of the girls describing how we the breathing process actually works!

http://vimeo.com/30391309

We also carried out an experiment to test our lung capacity.

Science Experiment

by Naomi Griffin Sweeney

Today we were doing an experiment to test our lung capacity.

First we had to fill a jug with water.

Then we had to put the jug in a basin and turn it upside down without any water getting out.

Then we put one end of tube into the basin and blow as hard as we could into the the other end of the tube.

We measured how much water we were able to blow out of the jug and that was our lung capacity.

Tara and Alicia had the biggest lung capacity. They blew out 1.7 litres of water!

We had so much fun!

We have been learning about Autumn. We gathered up Autumn materials such as leaves. pine cones, acorns and conkers. We examined them closely then we sketched what we saw.

All week our class have been writing a story. We put in great effort and finally finished it today. We enjoyed the process and everybody’s ideas were brilliant. We are absolutely delighted with our story and we hope you enjoy it.

An Unusual DeTour

We learned lots of interesting facts about New Zealand and The Maoris.

Did you know? 

• The Maoris were the first people to discover New Zealand. They called it “Aotearoa”, which means “The land of the long white cloud”.
• The Maoris arrived in New Zealand in canoes called wakas.
• Each tribe has its own haka.  The haka is a war dance. They use their hands, feet, eyes, mouths and tongues to try and frighten enemies.
• The Maoris introduced sweet potatoes to New Zealand. The Maori name for them is kumara.
• New Zealand is made of two large island(North Island and South Island) and several smaller islands.
• New Zealand has over 50 active volcanoes.
• Mount Cook is the tallest mountain. The Maoris called it “Cloud Piercer”.
• The kiwi bird is nocturnal and it can’t fly.
• The New Zealand rugby team are called The All Blacks. They perform a haka before they play a match.
• Rugby is the most popular sport played in New Zealand.
• Captain Cook was the first European explorer to set foot on New Zealand.

We learned the poem “Cats” which was written by the poet Eleanor Farjeon. We painted cats sleeping in different places. Can you find our cats? Can you guess where they are sleeping?

“Cats” by Eleanor Farjeon

We have been learning to add S.A.L.T. to our problems. When we have a problem with our friends or others we try to sort our problem out ourselves first by adding S.A.L.T.

S.A.L.T. means we:

STOP and ask ourselves do we need to cool down, can I talk to this person and do I need to ask them to cool down.

ASK questions ~ what has happened?, what is wrong?, are you alright?

LISTEN to each other, don’t interupt, listen for the feelings.

TALK to each other, take responsibility for my actions, apologise if you should, find a good solution to the problem.

We wrote some anger poems. These poems tell how we feel when we are angry.

Anger Poems

In our class reader we read about Betty’s banger. We drew a map of what we think Hillside Green looks like.

Map of Hillside Green

This  is our class blog for 2011/2012.

This year we are in 2nd class and we are in room 14A. We are looking forward to learning lots of new things this year, celebrating our First Confession and First Holy Communion.

Please visit our blog regularly to see what we have been learning and to read all our news.

Recycling 2000 is running a Christmas competition between all the schools in Co Wexford.  Recycling 2000 is a Wexford based company that recyles newspapers.  To enter the competition the children must follow the steps below:

Tie a bundle of 8 newspapers together

Put their name, class and school on a A4 sheet of paper and attach it to the front of the bundle before it is tied.

Put the bundle into the blue bins located at the green flag noticeboard every Tuesday.  Bins are also located at the front of the school every other day.  Enter as often as you want.

1st prize Xbox

2nd I pod

3rd Digital camera

4th – 10th €20 Tesco vouchers

Good luck everyone!

Time to get your thinking caps on everyone.  The Green Flag committee are currently looking for suggestions of names for our new school garden.  Suggestions can be popped into the box located at the Green Flag noticeboard.  Please ensure that your name and class is also written on your suggestion.  We hope to select a name over the next couple of weeks.