Back in April our 2nd class were keen to take a field trip to learn more about seals, what better place to go than the Seal Sanctuary in Courtown. The children thoroughly enjoyed their day learning about seals and finding out about all the great work the seal sanctuary do to look after our seal population in the south east of Ireland. We would like to say a huge thank you to the guides who gave us our tour.
The children in all classes enjoyed an Easter Egg Hunt which was organised by our amazing PTA.
Each class enjoyed hunting around the school grounds for eggs. Many didn’t survive until home time!
We are grateful to have such a dedicated and hard working PTA who are working hard to raise money for our new playground space.
Today the boys from 4th, 5th and 6th class travelled to Bray to participate in day 2 of the Coughlan Cup. The boys made us tremendously proud throughout the tournament displaying some excellent skill, determination and team work. Both teams fought really hard until the end and their determination really paid off. Today our senior team won the Division 3 title and our junior team won the Division 4 shield. This is a huge achievement for this talented group of boys and for the school. Thanks also for our travelling support on the day.
This week as part of Engineers week 3rd class complete an engineering challenge. They were challenged to create the tallest tower they could in 30 minutes using paper triangles. At the end of the 30 minutes we measured our towers with the metre stick. The winning team built a tower which stood at an amazing 35cms!
Check out our wonderful efforts below!
During World Book Day our 6th class visited their Junior Infant buddies where they read some of their favourite stories. It was a really enjoyable experience!
Today 1st class treated the whole school to a Carnival parade. They worked really hard all week making their floats for homework and today they got to show the whole school the fruits of their labour. The atmosphere was electric on the court!
The past number of weeks 1st class have been learning all about Brazil. This week during Engineers week they made some rainforest houses. Check them out!
On 31st of January our 2nd class pupils and their parents made the hike to Gossan Stones which frame the Equinox sunrise. They wrapped up and set off on their hike in darkness and were delighted to be met with a magnificent sunrise before making their return journey back to school for their day of lessons. Huge well done to everyone who completed the hike, this may become a regular hike for us here at Nun’s Cross!
During well-being week we took a break from homework and instead used our well-being wheel for suggestions for alternative exercises and activities to engage with in our evening times. Our junior classes took part in co-operative games as arranged by our Active Committee. During these games the children from all 4 junior classes were mixed into teams, where they had to work together to succeed. Our senior classes did well-being stations with our senior teachers for an afternoon, trying out yoga, art through music and co-operative games.
We would like to say a huge thank you to Felisity who kindly gave her time to do karate with all classes during the week.
Our Well-being week finished on Valentines day with a lovely church service which was led by our junior classes and attended by our parents.
Our wonderful Lily who is in 6th class swam for Nuns Cross NS in the Leinster minor schools meet. which was held on Saturday January 18th. She qualified in all 3 events for the Nationals on 30th March. These include the 100m individual medley, the 50m freestyle and 50m butterfly. We are incredibly proud of her achievement and wish her all the very best of luck in the Nationals.
Lily and Freddy also got to meet Olympic swimmer Ellen Walsh!
Last week our 3rd & 4th class boys (and girl) travelled to Bray to compete in the hurling blitz organised by Cuman na mBunscoil. We were immensely proud of the team work and determination shown on the day. The children played with great skill and confidence, winning all their matches. We would like to thank Brian along with our 6th class trainers who practiced drills with us in the lead up to the blitz.
On Thursday our wonderful Active Committee arranged a tag rugby blitz which was enjoyed by all classes. The teams included Ireland, Fiji, Australia, New Zealand and Argentina to represent our favourite rugby team (Ireland) and their opponents for the Autumn internationals. We were extremely lucky to have the weather on our side. We would like to say a huge thank you to our Active Committee for organising a fun filled day for all of us. Come on Ireland!!!
This week we celebrated anti-bullying week in Nun’s Cross. As part of our Bí Cineálta anti-bullying policy development, we decided it would be a great idea to spend the week looking into what bullying is, how if effects children, the role of bystanders and the importance of telling. Our senior classes completed the FUSE anti-bullying programme for their specific classes and Zippy’s Friends and circle time were used in the junior classes. Our student council also ran a poster competition and they announced the winners during assembly on Friday. Well done to all the children for getting involved. Posters will be displayed throughout the school to remind everyone to be kind and not to bully.
On Tuesday 32 athletes from 3rd - 6th class travelled to Avondale to complete the trail challenge. In absolutely terrible conditions with freezing temperatures and heavy rain, the children ran their hearts out to complete the 2.5km circuit. We are once again so proud of the children who showed superb grit and determination to complete the course on the day. On our return to school we warmed up with some hot chocolate as a treat. This challenge concludes our cross country season and also our running club for the winter.
Last week was science week and we enjoyed a week full of predicting, observing, investigating, collecting data, presenting, drawing and labelling diagrams, etc. The children worked really hard during the week to prepare their experiments. Our 1st class worked on volcanoes during the week which eventually erupted on Friday. Videos of the children doing their experiments were also shared with the classes where others preferred to carry out their experiments with a live audience of their classmates on Friday. We also had a special visitor who donated some microscopes to the school. 6th class and 1st class got a lesson on identifying the parts of the microscope as well as using it. They then tutored their peers in other classes on how to use and identify the parts of a microphone. Our Junior Infants were busy all week learning about light, the colour spectrum and shadows. They experimented with making colours, watching how light travelled and making shadows!
On 12th November our 1st and 2nd classes participated in a combined hurling/camogie blitz. On the day three teams who represented the school played in 4 matches each on the Astro in Bray Emmets. The children showed great skill and determination on the day, relishing the opportunity to practice their skills in a match setting. We would like to say a huge thank you to Vicky for generously offering her time to coach the children in the weeks leading up to the blitz. We really hope the children will consider playing for their local clubs because there is huge talent there!
Junior Infants have had lots of fun recently learning all about directional language. They have taken part in lots of hands on activities which incorporated directions and directional language but also lots of creativity, problem solving and engineering in the mix too!
One activity they took part in was to create mazes from our Lego boards and lego to create a clever maze for which a ball or marble needed to make its way through. The children had to work bery patiently in groups to design their own mazes and had to think with an engineering mind to over come problems such as:
-How do we get the ball to take the path we want it to take?
How do we stop the ball from bouncing over the lego walls?
what happens if we make the ball roll faster/slower?
What happens if the path isn’t wide enough for the ball?
what happens if we use a dice instead of a ball?
We took some pictures and videos to share of some of our creations! See if you can spot any of the clever booby traps that were included in some of the mazes!
We also put our directional language skills into use with some coding by exploring directions with our school set of BeeBots and BeeBot mats! BeeBots are really clever computer robots that need to be programmed to move. However, if you programme them wrong and give them the wrong directions they will get lost on their town maps and wont make it to the desired location! The children were so good at their directions in Junior Infants however that all the Beebots are accounted for and a search party wasn’t required to get any of them back to the charging dock!
Today 1st class were invited to take part in some acorn picking as organised by the Nature Trust in Ballygannon wood in Rathdrum. We began the day with a cosy bus ride to Ballygannon where we had fun chatting to our friends about the trip ahead. When we arrived we had a little snack before we were taken on a guided tour of the woods. We were given identification keys to show us some of the trees/berries/nuts we might see on our journey. We had great fun exploring the woods.
When our guided tour ended we had fun drawing pictures of our most exciting finds during the day before we enjoyed a delicious hot chocolate. The boys and girls would like to say a huge thank you to the Nature Trust for your invitation for today, we had a fantastic time!
On Friday we had our Harvest school service where the children brought in donations of non-perishable food for charity. We donated the food to the Local Lions Club. We wish to say a huge thank you to the school community for your kind donations on Friday.
The classes each made their contribution to the service, which was attended by lots of parents and grandparents, by focusing on where the food we eat comes from.
