We Are Artists

Last week, the children in Room 1 worked hard to complete a multi-step winter landscape with a fox, forest and moon. An array of skills and techniques were utilised and lots of learning happened completing this art project.

Firstly, the pupils painted tints and shades using white, blue and black to develop a moonlit sky. When this Kandinsky inspired background was dry, the class added brown branches using thin brushes. Some children opted to dab white paint in the sky to portray falling snow. Others dabbed white paint on top of the branches. Both ideas created beautiful detail!

Finally, it was time to draw the fox. The children followed a demonstration on the white board and some had visuals on their table to reference. The boys and girls were asked to observe lines, shapes and details before and during drawing. The fox was painted before being pasted onto the background.

Check out the fantastic finished products below. Ms Martin is so proud of each child's art work and loves looking at these masterpieces in 'Our Wow Corner' in the classroom. They are all incredible FUR-sure!

Wellness Wednesday

Wellness Wednesdays have been extremely enjoyable in Seomra 2 over the last few weeks. We have practiced meditation, breathing and mindfulness exercises and have really enjoyed participating in them all. We spoke about what we are grateful for and wrote down our favourites on the petals of a flower. Our Garden of Gratitude has brightened up our hallway and we are all very proud of our work. 

Science Week in Room 1

Ms Martin's class had lots of fun celebrating Science Week in school. The children enjoyed a week full of predicting, hypothesising and investigating several cool experiments. Check out what the scientists in Room 1 discovered below. 

The 'Rubber Egg' experiment taught the class about a chemical reaction between calcium in an egg shell and acid in vinegar. This reaction results in an egg becoming squishy. It was an egg-cellent finding!

The 'Dancing Raisins' experiment allowed the children to observe that raisins sink in still water, but, dance in fizzy water. They learned that this is because the carbon dioxide bubbles in fizzy water stick to the rough surface on raisins making them move up and down. 

The 'What Plants Need to Grow?' experiment highlighted to the children the conditions plants need in order to grow. The boys and girls identified plants need light, warmth, water and nutrients to grow. Check out the differences in the growth below!

Ms Martin was delighted to see all the boys and girls working and thinking like scientists over the week. 

Science Week was a blast in Seomra 4

Science week took place this week in Scoil Mhuire. 

We worked in small groups to make volcanoes using Paper Mache. We then painted the volcanoes and varnished them using PVA glue. The next step in our experiment was to attempt to make our volcanoes erupt!

Option 1: Coke and Mentos

Option 2: baking soda and vinegar

Pupils conducted the experiments and concluded that Option 2 worked better and created a chemical reaction strong enough to make the volcano erupt.

The next experiment conducted by the class was to make honeycomb. We mixed caster sugar and golden syrup together. We then added bicarbonate of soda. The bicarbonate of soda breaks down with heat to release carbon dioxide gas. The gas causes the sugar and syrup mixture to froth and bubble. The bubbles become trapped in the mixture where they set as the mixture cools. This gas is what makes the bubbles in the honeycomb. Of course we also conducted a taste test when the honeycomb had set!!

Check out our photographs below.

Science Week

Ms Malone had a class full of scientists in her room this week to celebrate 'Science Week'. The 1st and 2nd class boys and girls learned all about where Badgers and Foxes live during our SESE lessons and we also completed four different experiments throughout the week! Check out our experiments below, we focused on food colouring during the skittles experiment, carbon dioxide during our dancing raisins and coke and mentos experiments and we also made our very own tornadoes in a jar!!

Well done to all the boys and girls on a very successful science week - Maith sibh!! 😀