Rang a dó, Our year so far in 2nd Class!

It has been a busy term in 2^nd class since we settled into our new class in September. We have been working hard and having lots of fun along the way. Here is a snapshot of what we have been up to. September was all about Roald Dahl in 2^nd class. We loved hearing our teacher reading his books to us. He has provided lots of inspiration for our literacy lessons as well as lots of art and crafts activities. English Station teaching started in September and we were very lucky to be joined by two other teachers and Trish or Maura daily to help us out and hear our wonderful reading.

We learned all about autumn, we went on nature walks, gathered leaves, berries, acorns and all the signs of this wonderful season. We sketched and drew foxes, badgers and squirrels. We loved experimenting with colour and printing our animal friends.

We watched a very enjoyable literacy based webinar with Sarah Webb & Philip Nolan the authors and illustrators of ‘Animal Crackers’ a book we all loved and rented out from the library. We had fun doing quizzes and drawing sloths step by step along with the authors & several other schools. We celebrated culture night in September and watched a bilingual webinar in Irish with some English too! We enjoyed drawing our robots along with Áine Ní Ghlinn and Laureate, the author and illustrator of the book ‘Boscadán’. We were very pleased with our results.

Ms.Meaghar visited throughout September and did lots of relaxing mindfulness with us. We also created an incredible class mural of a very colourful lion. We were so happy with our results when we put it all together.

We celebrated science week in 2^nd class, we made a wormery and watched how the worms are great for creating healthy soil to help crops grow. We made lava lamps and thoroughly enjoyed adding the fizzing tables to make the lava lamps come alive. We attended a teagasc webinar called ‘Cows, Grass and Milk’ and enjoyed watching different speakers and scientists explaining how important the cows are for our country.

We started our first Gaeilge readers this term too, we have worked so hard practicing our Gaeilge reading and enjoyed reading to each other as Gaeilge. Teacher is very proud of the progress we have made. We’ve been playing lots of cluichí Gaeilge too to make our Irish learning more fun; we love playing Biongó, board games as Gaeilge and of course cluiche Kim.

We have been using lots of hands on maths activities, using target boards and playing loop card games to help our maths skills. Friday mornings have been lots of fun playing enjoyable maths games with our friends using all of our new found maths skills. We’ve loved having the iPads for maths games too.

Along with all the work, we’ve been increasing our physical activity too enjoying our daily active breaks, running; skipping and chasing games are the favourites. We worked on our hurling and Gaelic skills since September with the visiting coaches each week. We’ve also been lucky to have had mindful movement with Siobhán. We loved this on Friday mornings after our weeks work.

As Halloween approached we had a writing competition, we wrote spooky Halloween stories and & created lots of weird and wonderful art. We loved dressing up and having a class party on the day of the holidays as a reward for all our hard work.

Our festive fun began at the beginning of December. As Christmas approached we were joined by a mischievous little elf named ‘Gracie’, she gave us lots of inspiration for our oral language and literacy lessons writing about her antics. We created lots of wonderful Christmassy art, creating snow globes, Christmas decorations, and paintings and even decorated Ryan’s Christmas jumpers in time to watch ‘The Late Late Toy Show’.

Friday fun Christmas day on the 17^th was so thoroughly enjoyed by all. We donned our festive gear, had drank hot chocolate while watching the Helix panto and played lots of fun Christmas games. We sang Christmas carols with the rest of our school which we thoroughly enjoyed, seeing everyone from ‘upstairs’ was a great novelty as we don’t get to meet them in school. We created beautiful arts and crafts and made lots of lovely Christmassy memories. And now as another year draws to a close we are ready & looking forward to our holidays.