To celebrate Science Week we have been super lucky to have our very our Professor Science Pants (impromptu name) visit us every day! Each day, Professor S for short comes bursting through the door after morning break looking mad as a hatter and ladened down with all sorts of science equipment... strangly Ms Murray is nowhere to been seen for the next hour and a half??? probably enjoying a well earned extended coffee break we think...  ​

So once the children and calmed after overexerting themselves with excitement here what Professor S has been doing with us in our class over the last week...

This experiment involved some  steady hand and a little messy work... ingredients included corrosive acid and exploding powder with a little drop magic potion...

Another day's experiment was a group one. The children watched as Professor S add a magic ingredient (table salt) into the steaming solution (very hot water add some green food colouring to make it more potion like)... we have to be extremely careful because one drop too much and we would be blown to smithereens... but too little and the crystals wouldn't form right. So the children watched in suspense as bit by bit we made the correct solution without resulting in explosions.

The next experiment was more hands on for the children... colour dissolving using skittles. I used blotting paper in this one but any paper would work. The fun part here was using lots science equipment like tweezers and magnifying glasses. Everyone felt like a mad scientist! ​

To start us off I played this... you don't get more inspiring than Wintergatan Marble Music Machine! the children found this fascinating. 

Exploring different fillings in our own sound machines... shell maracas (originally invented by our very own scientist Maci)  we talked about loud and quiet sounds. 

Most of these experiments were suitable to add to their Aistear play... although at the end of aistear all the skittles had disappeared and there were no colours on the paper sheets???... perhaps it was an invisible potion? ​

Working together to plan our own robots! You can never have enough junk according to Wendell! 

How many caretakers does it take to fix a chair? lol!

We are coming to the end of our school topic next week and the children have learnt so much about their school and the people who work in it. I got a super hero cape in this one! 

Lots of number work in maths this week.

Well done to these three super stars who designed their own beautiful leaves! And well done to all the girls and boys who did such lovely colouring on their sheets. They also did a beautiful rendition of Little Leaves but unfortunately I ran out of space on my phone to record it! Next week we will be starting wordless readers, I will send a note home about how to read them with your child. 

Enjoy the weekend and we look forward to having Ms Costello with us from Monday for four week while she completes her teaching practice. 

Kind Regards,
​Ms Murray

We are in the process of building a new area in our classroom. I'm not sure what it's going to be yet but it's going to be cosy, magical and fun! Already the children are making themselves at home! They decided that they didn't want to wear their shoes in this area because they wanted to keep the fur clean. Thank you so much to Saoirse's mammy for bringing us in some beautiful material to use, That was very kind of you. Also thank you to Lillian's mom for the crystal snow spray! I can wait to use that!

We used this video of Wintergatan's Marble Machine to inspire all the musical instruments you may have noticed your child bringing home. Have a listen... I think you'll agree it's pretty cool!

Great homework by everyone this week! Hope you enjoyed the poem.

This week we celebrated our 50th anniversary as you know! We managed to get a quiet moment in the hall to look at some of the photos and projects.

To finish off this week's blog I would like you to enjoy this wonderful compilation video of the anniversary celebration day! It was absolutely magical and the children has so much fun! Thank you to all involved. 

Have a great weekend everyone,

Ms Murray!

This week has been a hive of activity in room five as our Aistear stations got underway, and boy did we have fun! Through our play we are learning about sound experiments in science and discovering our inner composer at the piano station. Our school community expanded to include the caretakers workroom and Gwen's office for role-play. And Junk Art was full of enthuastic music instrument creations. Check out this article about play and learning, I think you'll find it very interesting and something I feel very passionate about.

This week's Book Fair was a big success! I hope everyone got a chance to pick up something nice. 

Our maths rhyme this week was five little ducks. Check out the video below and enjoy listening to your child sing along. 

I just caught the end of Ms O'Brien's five little ducks lesson. Very cute!

The children had great fun during their art lesson today using marbles to create our very own Jackson Pollock influenced paintings. Make sure you check them out on the display boards outside our classroom next week.

Language Towards Literacy groups are teaching all the language assocoated with the school community. We have also been taking lovely tours around the school and getting to know our school surroundings. 

I hope everyone enjoyed their homework sheet this week. There is a super Jolly Phonics App you can get for smart phones. It can be downloaded from your app store on your phones. The kids love it and it has all the songs and actions we do every day. Below is just a few samples of the great work children did for their homework. Also a fantastic rendition of their Autumn Leaves poem with lots of creative actions! 

Well done everyone... have a great weekend! And don't forget to encourage the children to chat with you about their favourite part of the week and then you can help them to write it in a comment on the blog... and of course earn themselves a gold star!! 

This week saw the start of our Jolly Phonics program. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday your child will learn a new letter. If they could practice them each night in their little phonics book that would be great. In Jolly Phonics the 42 main sounds of English are taught, not just the alphabet so if you are unsure of any of the letter sounds click here to hear the sound . 

Each night their sounds copy can be filled in as shown below. Please make sure they practice writing the correct letter formation once in pencil and don't colour it in. They can join the letter to the pictures beginning with that sound and colour the pictures with colouring pencils or crayons. Not markers as they can show through the page. 

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Lost Property?
This jumper has been in the classroom a while now, is anyone missing one?