11 Nov · Muireann Carr · No Comments

We’re moving premises!

Ballinteer Educate Together National School is being temporarily relocated to a new site for the upcoming two school years. During this time, our new school building can be built at our current location. The campus in Notre Dame has many benefits to our children: The classrooms are 1.5 to 2 times the size of our …

27 Oct · Criona · No Comments

October in Junior Infants

During October we focused our attention on the story of The Gingerbread Man. Using lots of mathematical language we measured the ingredients needed to make and bake our own gingerbread men. We measured cups of flour to ensure that they were full, we counted the spoons to ensure we had put in the correct amount …

27 Oct · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Assembly

On Friday. October 27th, our school gathered together in the hall for our very first assembly. Junior Infants sang us a song they have been learning called ‘Five Little Pumpkins’ and First Class sang ‘Winnie the Witch’. It was great to gather together and to see our whole school in the one place. The children …

26 Oct · Aongus · No Comments

Student Council Elections

Our school has started a Student Council and we have elected two members to it. We did proportional representation (PR) voting, the type of voting used in Ireland. We had sixteen candidates, we are very proud of them and they are proud of themselves. Everyone had to make their own speech and read it …

26 Oct · Aongus · No Comments

ReelLIFE SCIENCE Videos

The whole class was recently working to make 9 different science videos. We were working in groups of 2 or 3. Each group made brilliant and interesting science videos to enter the competition organised by the National University of Ireland in Galway. The competition is called ReelLIFE SCIENCE. There were 1500 participants in the whole …

26 Oct · Aongus · No Comments

GAA

Our class has had visits from Dónal of Ballinteer St. John’s Gaelic Football Club. Every Wednesday morning at 9am we would go outside to play gaelic. We did mini-matches and passing to improve our skills and to learn how to play the game. We also played some fun games like stuck in the mud, …

26 Oct · Aongus · No Comments

The Local Gardaí Visit

On the 24th of October were all visited by Gardaí from Dundrum. Their names were Ivan and Linda. They taught us about Halloween safety. They showed some awesome gadgets. They also told us how important it is to stay away from fireworks. We also got to hold their handcuffs, they felt so cool. They …

Catherine Martin TD with Student Council Representatives

26 Oct · Aongus · No Comments

Visits From Local Politicians

On Monday the 8th and Friday the 13th of October, 4th Class were lucky enough to meet Catherine Martin TD and Senator Neale Richmond. Catherine and Neale talked about their jobs and the budget. Neale talked about being a Senator in the Senate and Catherine talked about being a TD in the Dáil. They …

18 Oct · Laura · No Comments

Autumn in 2nd Class

2nd Class have been enjoying the changes that Autumn has brought to our new school grounds. We have been out discovering all the different kinds of leaves and seeds that the beautiful surrounding trees have been dropping. We identified oak, ash, sycamore, horse chestnut, beech, birch, and more! The Autumn colours have been great inspiration …

13 Oct · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Student Council

On Thursday, October 10th, our very first elected student council met. We would like to offer our huge congratulations to the two children, one boy and one girl, from each class who were elected by their peers to represent them. Student council elections took place in all classes from first to fourth throughout the week. …

5 Oct · Criona · No Comments

News from Junior Infants

Junior Infants have been reading lots of traditional tales. While reading the story of The Little Red Hen, we talked about helping others and being a good friend. We then put our co-operative skills to the test and together we made some bread. We all helped with measuring the milk and flour and stirring the …

19 Sep · First Class · No Comments

Autumn Nature Walk

It was a beautiful bright autumn day this morning and First class enjoyed an autumn walk in the grounds of the school. We have lots of keen observers in our class and we were able to identify many of the plants, insects and trees in the grounds including the horse chestnut tree, rose hips, blackberries, …

5 Sep · Muireann Carr · No Comments

A virtual photo tour of our new school

We are delighted to be able to showcase our beautiful, newly refurbished, spacious, clean and bright classrooms that will be the home of many happy experiences and memories over the next school year. You will be able to see your child’s classroom during the parents meeting at the end of this month. Until then, here …

8 Jun · Junior Infants · No Comments

Sports Day 2017

We were very lucky to have a lovely sunny day for our Sports Day, on Friday the 2nd of June. The children had a super fun and action packed day. We split the classes into different teams for the stations activities which included an obstacle course, races, a football shootout and parachute games. Mr. …

26 May · Senior Infants · No Comments

Picnic in the Park!

Senior Infants went for a wonderful walk in the sunshine to Balally Park today. They played in the playground and had a picnic on the grass. Look at all the fun they had!

25 May · Junior Infants · No Comments

Teddy Bear’s Picnic

We enjoyed a wonderful picnic accompanied by our favourite teddy bears. After eating we played with our teddies. We sang along to the Teddy Bear’s Picnic song afterwards in class. We had so much fun!

19 May · Junior Infants · No Comments

Neola’s Class Trip to Glenroe Farm

We had a fantastic day at Glenroe Farm. Take a look at the photos to see what we got up to!

19 May · Muireann Carr · No Comments

New Science Equipment

Look at some of our new science equipment! Thanks to the hard work and fund raising by the PTA this year we have been able to order over €600 worth of new science equipment for our school! Second Class have already been exploring and experimenting with our fantastic new electronics equipment. Thank you to all …

18 May · Junior Infants · No Comments

Trip to Glenroe Farm

Junior Infants had a great time on their trip to Glenroe farm. It was our first time going on a bus together and we were so excited. When we got the farm, we left our bags in a big barn and went to play in a HUGE playground. We had so much fun on …

17 May · Junior Infants · No Comments

Let’s go to Italy

Junior Infants have been learning all about Italy this May. We made passports and took an imaginary trip to lots of different places in Italy. We went on a Gondola in Venice, took photographs of the leaning tower of Pisa, visited the Colosseum in Rome, threw a coin in the Trevi fountain and even walked …

17 May · Senior Infants · No Comments

Thank you for our ipads!

All the children and teachers in Ballinteer ETNS would like to thank the PTA for all their fundraising work on our behalf! We recently received 15 new ipads, giving us a total of 27 ipads all together. The children have been using the ipads to work on their literacy and numeracy in a fun, interactive …

17 May · Senior Infants · No Comments

Picnic Time in Senior Infants!

We love when the sun shines! Today we were practicing our GAA skills with Dónal, our coach from Ballinteer St Johns. We were hand passing the ball, catching it and kick passing. We were sprinting also. After GAA, we went out to the grass and had a picnic in the sunshine! It was fantastic!

12 May · Senior Infants · No Comments

Air Control to Senior Infants!

Senior Infants have opened a new airport in Aisling’s room. The children have been inspired by the stories of Amelia Earhart and the Wright brothers so they are inventing new methods of air travel, as well as operating a commercial airline! Flights are departing daily to Canada, Norway and Spain (among other places). Security is …

9 May · Criona · No Comments

The Beat Goes On…

We have been learning about rhythm in music. Some words like duck have only one syllable, so for this we learned to represent this with one tap. However, other words such as duckling have 2 syllables, so we represent this with two taps. Then we put our knowledge to the test and using various images …

9 May · Criona · No Comments

Picasso Portraits

We learned about Pablo Picasso in Art. We looked at some of his most famous paintings with a focus on his use of colour and shape. We discussed how he went against the conventions and traditions of the previous generations. We had a look at his ‘blue period’ and spoke about how the colour blue represented …

9 May · Criona · No Comments

Curious Curators

To conclude our Artist in Residence programme we paid a final visit to Dunlaoghaire Lexicon. In advance of our trip, Claire from the arts office visited us in school to talk to us about the concept of curatorship. Curators, like many of us, like to collect items. We talked about our collections of shopkins and stickies. …

4 May · Senior Infants · No Comments

Minibeast Invasion!

Senior Infants have been learning all about gardening and minibeasts over the last few weeks. They loved exploring nature through play when we were doing ‘The Garden Centre’ in Aistear. The children then made their own minibeats using clay. They experimented rolling, pinching, scratching and stretching the clay. They used some of our art supplies …

28 Apr · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Peace Run 2017

We were delighted to welcome the Peace Run Team to our school today. This year the Peace Run is celebrating its 30th anniversary. Galway has been chosen for the European opening ceremony as the most Western point in Europe. The runners from many countries will be represented. The President of Ireland has been invited to welcome the runners. We now …

28 Apr · Muireann Carr · No Comments

We are social activists!

We here at Ballinteer ETNS were not happy to hear about the unfair treatment of the girls soccer team by the FAI. It made us angry and cross, so we put our heads together, and every child in our school wrote a letter to the head of the FAI. We like to think our collective …

7 Apr · Junior Infants · No Comments

Learning about Passover

This week, Ciara’s Junior Infants had a special visit from Maya’s dad, Colin. Colin came in to talk about the Jewish festival of Passover. He told us the story of Passover and explained how it is celebrated. He showed us a story book about Passover and a Seder plate. We even got to taste the …

5 Apr · Junior Infants · No Comments

Junior Infant Artists

Junior Infants really enjoy making art. Have a look at some of their beautiful creations .

5 Apr · Junior Infants · No Comments

To Infinity and Beyond

We explored space in Aistear for the month of March. We learned all about the solar system, planets, space stations, NASA, galaxies, gravity and air resistance. Eliza’s dad came in to do a rocket experiment with us and we carried out an air resistance experiment on the yard .

3 Apr · Junior Infants · No Comments

The Flower Shop

Ciara’s Junior Infants have just started a new 3 week block of Aistear and our new theme is ‘Plants’. We have a ‘Flower Shop’ role play area, a creative station, a sensory gardening station, a construction station, a writing station and a playdough station. The children are loving this theme so far and are really using …

31 Mar · Third Class · No Comments

Our Trip to see ‘Ready, Steady, Draw! A Live Drawing Bonanza!’

Well we could barely contain our excitement before our trip to the Pavilion Theatre in Dún Laoghaire last Friday. We were booked in to see famous illustrators Chris Judge, Oisin McGann, Niamh Sharkey, Sarah McIntyre, Margaret Ann Suggs and Phillip Reeve do their stuff, live! It was such great fun and we watched in awe as these …

30 Mar · Senior Infants · No Comments

Shadow Puppets

Senior Infants have been learning all about the sun recently. We made shadow dinosaurs to help us discover what caused shadows. We did an experiment to see if we could make the shadow puppets larger and smaller. We used torches in our investigations. Then we went outside and used the light of the sun to …

30 Mar · Senior Infants · No Comments

The Garden Centre Opening!

The space station has shut its doors in Senior Infants. A new garden centre is opening instead. The garden centre will be selling flowers, seeds, tools and equipment so make sure to pay us a visit for all your landscape gardening needs! Have a look at our garden centre assistants and gardeners hard at work …

28 Mar · Junior Infants · No Comments

Special Visits

In March, Junior Infants have been learning lots about people who help us. We were very lucky to have some of our parents come in to visit us and tell us about their jobs and how they help people. Our first visit was from Sarah, Nina’s mum. Sarah is a psychotherapist, who works with children. …

27 Mar · Junior Infants · No Comments

Playworks

Each term we change the Playworks games on the yard. This month we have Duck, Duck, Goose, Basketball, Cookie Monster, Chalk and Crazy Races. The children are really enjoying these games and the older children are working so hard as coaches.

24 Mar · First Class · No Comments

Froggy Friday in Rang a hAon

Today we had lots of fun in First Class. In the morning we were so excited to observe the frogspawn Zach brought in to school. We have been learning about frogs and it was very interesting to see real frogspawn. We read a book about the life cycle of a frog. During Art we …

16 Mar · Senior Infants · No Comments

The Aliens Have Landed!

Senior Infants are learning all about Space this month. We have loved learning all about Neil Armstrong’s moon landing. We have been designing space aliens in art and writing about our aliens in English. We have been reading a variety of factual and fictional books about space. We have been singing songs about the planets …

16 Mar · Senior Infants · No Comments

Lá Fhéile Pádraig!

Senior Infants have been practising their Irish dancing this month. They have all really enjoyed doing their 1, 2, 3 ‘s and listening to Irish music. Today we even got to do a céilí dance ‘The Walls of Limerick’ / ‘Ballaí Luimnigh’ . Have a look at our video to see us doing some of our …

16 Mar · Junior Infants · No Comments

Spring is in the air

Ciara’s Junior Infants and Aongus’ Second Class have become super friends since starting Reading Buddies last month, so we decided to go on a ‘Spring Walk’ together. We paired up with our buddies and walked around to Balally Park, keeping a close eye out for any signs of Spring. We noticed the cherry blossoms and …

9 Mar · Junior Infants · No Comments

1, 2, 3 Blast Off

Junior Infants were very lucky to have a visit from Eliza’s dad, Justin. Justin is an engineer who loves making rockets. He showed us some of the rockets that he and Eliza made. We brought them outside and watched them blast into the sky. It was so much fun!

6 Mar · Junior Infants · No Comments

The Veterinary Surgery

Ciara’s Junior Infants have just started a new Aistear. Our theme for this Aistear is ‘Animals’ and the children are really enjoying it so far. In junk art, the children have really been using their imaginations and creating x-ray machines, medicine and other inventions that could be used to help animals. They have been having …

2 Mar · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Paired Reading for World Book Day

On Thursday March 2nd, we celebrated World Book Day! We paired up the classes and our older students travelled through the school to the younger classes. They brought exciting books along with them, nestled in beside their new partners, and the two school mates read to each other. Everybody seemed to really enjoy the experience …

2 Mar · Senior Infants · No Comments

Senior Infants Love Reading!

We love reading in Senior Infants! Today was World Book Day and we have been doing a lot of fun activities in Senior Infants to celebrate. All week we have been having visits from ‘Secret Readers’ who have been sharing their favourite books with us. We have heard stories about Rosie the engineer who made …

1 Mar · Third Class · No Comments

Terrific Tag Rugby with Avon

We were sad to say goodbye to Avon and our Tag Rugby lessons this week. We have been lucky enough to train with one of the best and have learnt a lot about tactics from him. He has also given us many skills which we can use on the pitch and in our games of ‘Build-Up’ on yard …

28 Feb · Senior Infants · No Comments

Do not feed the animals!

This month Aisling’s class have been learning all about the zoo, during their Aistear hour of play. We have been designing habitats within the zoo for animals, building rescue centres for ill or endangered animals, creating animal masks using fabric and fibre, making animals and animal food out of playdough and pretending we are zoo keepers …

28 Feb · Senior Infants · No Comments

Pancake Tuesday in Senior Infants!

The children in Aisling’s Senior Infants read the stories ‘The Runaway Pancake’ and ‘Mr Wolf’s Pancakes’ in school today because it is Pancake Tuesday! We discovered the ingredients needed to make pancakes, and we discussed our favourite toppings. Nearly everyone loved lemon and sugar! But sadly we do not have a hob to cook pancakes on …

26 Feb · Orlaith · No Comments

A Spring Walk to Airfield

First Class walked to Airfield Farm last week. We had a fabulous time. We saw lots of animals, including horses and a foal, sheep, goats and chickens. We saw a cow being milked and came across a great collection of vintage cars. We had a wonderful walk there and back, noticing many beautiful signs of spring …

26 Feb · Orlaith · No Comments

Active Athletes in First Class

We love being active in First Class! We have been doing a lot of athletics this term, as part of our P.E. lessons. We have been learning the right technique for running, sprinting and for hurdling. We have been learning how to work together in teams, participating in various types of relay races and we have been working …

26 Feb · Orlaith · No Comments

First Class are out of this world!

This month First Class have been exploring space and the solar system. We have learned so many interesting facts about space and have used our imaginations to become astronauts and to have our own space adventures along the way! We wrote fantastic pieces about the Solar System and about space travel. We created beautiful wax …

17 Feb · Senior Infants · No Comments

Helping at Home Challenge!

In Ballinteer ETNS we have all been helping out at home this month. In Senior Infants the children have been tidying up toys, emptying dishwashers, folding clothes and even helping with babies nappies! Have a look at our video to hear all about our hard work!

10 Feb · Criona · No Comments

Outdoor Pursuits

In the wise words of Elsa; the cold never bothered us anyway! Críona’s Senior Infants have been channeling their inner Bear Grylls and learning the basic principles of orienteering, as well as enjoying the great outdoors. Working cooperatively with a partner, we have been using our reading skills to solve clues and complete our missions. …

9 Feb · Junior Infants · No Comments

Fun February

Junior Infants have been doing lots of fun activities this month. We have added a new station in Aistear where we test different materials to see which one makes the best ramp for our little cars. In Maths, we have been playing a fun game called ‘The Sweety Jar Game’. Children roll the dice and …

7 Feb · Third Class · No Comments

Our Magnificent Motte & Bailey Castles

Here in Third Class we turned back the clock to the time of the Normans. We have learnt about their invasion of Ireland and the Norman influence on our cities and counties. We learnt about the beautiful city of Kilkenny and how once a wooden Motte and Bailey Castle stood in the place of its …

7 Feb · Criona · No Comments

Print Charming!

Críona’s Senior Infants have been letting their artistic juices flow for the past few weeks with the help of Tunde and Kim. This week, the boys and girls used the foam printing blocks they made previously to create their own original prints. The results were spectacular as you can see from the photos. Here are …

2 Feb · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Social Responsibility Challenge

This month, as part of our Ethical Education, the children are working really hard to be more aware of their personal environment and how they can help out at home. Our mantra for this month is “Can I help you?”. The children are completing their own social responsibility challenge at home by trying to go above …

27 Jan · Aongus · No Comments

Rugby in Second Class

Second Class have been lucky to get rugby training from Avon and Kieran of Leinster Rugby this year. They have learned the basics of rugby by playing tag games and they’ve really enjoyed the different activities. Avon has told the children they are picking up the sport very quickly. “The toughest and roughest game we’ve …

26 Jan · Senior Infants · No Comments

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs!

We have been learning all about the weather in Aisling’s Senior Infants. We have been reading factual and fictional stories based around the topic of the weather. When we read ‘Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs’ we knew it must be fictional – there was food falling from the sky! We then pretended we lived …

26 Jan · Criona · No Comments

Chinese New Year

Senior Infants have been learning all about Chinese New Year, which begins this Saturday, January 28th. We looked at the story of The Great Race and learned that this year will be the Year of the Rooster. We completed some lovely writing and pictures based on the story. Following that we enjoyed making our own …

24 Jan · Criona · No Comments

Numeracy & Literacy Games

Críona’s Senior Infants have been having lots of fun while learning through play. Through various numeracy games we have been practising our skills in counting, number recognition and our knowledge of shapes. Through our literacy games we have been reinforcing our knowledge of phonics and learning lots of new words. We are also learning important …

24 Jan · Junior Infants · No Comments

We Love To Read

We love any opportunity to read in Junior Infants. We read at our tables and in our new reading corner too.

23 Jan · First Class · No Comments

Lots of Learning in Rang a hAon

First Class have settled back into school life very quickly since the holidays and have been engaged in many interesting learning activities. In Ethical Education we explored the concept of making a difference; by listening to and discussing ‘The Starfish Story’. We thought about what we could do to make a difference in our …

23 Jan · Criona · No Comments

Letter Writing & Stamps

Críona’s Senior Infants have been looking at letter writing through our recent Stories the Week; The Day the Crayons Quit and The Jolly Postman. We looked at how language can often be persuasive and discussed the feelings of the various crayons and the characters in the stories. Then wrote our own letters and designed our …

23 Jan · Junior Infants · No Comments

Aistear

Aistear is the curriculum framework for children from birth to six years in Ireland which involves learning about a particular theme through play, discovery and discussion. Ciara’s Junior Infants have just started Aistear and we love it! Our themed for January is ‘Toys’. The children have been busy making different toys using junk art and playdough. …

23 Jan · Junior Infants · No Comments

Active Maths

We take part in fun games and activities when exploring number.

23 Jan · Criona · No Comments

Artist in Residence

Críona’s Senior Infants have been lucky to have the opportunity work with two artists; Tunde and Kim from the Dunlaoghaire Rathdown Artist in Residency Programme. We began the project with a visit to an exhibition in Dunlaoghaire library. We looked at various images and discussed the shapes that we saw. Then using oil pastels we …

23 Jan · Junior Infants · No Comments

Little Architects

We are very good at designing and building lots of different creations in Junior Infants. Please take a look!

23 Jan · Junior Infants · No Comments

Team Work and Physical Education

Last week in PE, we took part in some team building activities which also tested and developed our co-ordination and motor skills. Take a look to see how well we worked together as a team.

23 Jan · Junior Infants · No Comments

Show and Tell (Old and New Toys)

We are learning all about new and old toys for the month of January. We learned lots from each other’s show and tell presentations. Kitty brought in her mum’s old toy doll which was made entirely from soft material. Sofia’s modern doll on the other hand was made out of plastic. We learned that old …

17 Jan · Junior Infants · No Comments

Visit from Dogs Trust

This month, we were very lucky to have a visit from Fiona and Ollie from Dogs Trust. Fiona helped us to think about all the things that dogs need to be happy and we talked about how looking after dogs can be hard work. Fiona explained to us that we must always ask a dog’s …

15 Jan · Orlaith · No Comments

Catching Snowflakes

Winter is well and truly here and this month in First Class we have been embracing the cold and using it to fuel our creativity! We created fantastic oil pastel drawings of children wrapped up in winter clothes, catching snowflakes on their tongues. We got the inspiration for this artwork from the poem ‘Winter Morning …

15 Jan · Orlaith · No Comments

Arctic and Antarctic Animals

We have been learning all about the Arctic and the Antarctic this month in First Class. The weather has turned cold here in Ireland but we discovered that it is considerably colder all year round in these Polar regions! We took a look at some of the animals who live in both the Arctic and …

15 Jan · Orlaith · No Comments

Winter Festivals in First Class

During the month of December, as part of our ethical education, we learned all about some important winter festivals which are celebrated both here in Ireland and in other parts of the world. We focused in particular on the festivals of Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and Christmas. We completed many activities based around these festivals. As a …

15 Jan · Orlaith · No Comments

December Maths Stations

For the month of December we focused on math word problems during our math stations. We are becoming so good at breaking word problems up into smaller chunks and using pictures and discussion to solve them! We have loved working together for this problem solving and we are finding out that we are becoming really excellent at …

11 Jan · Senior Infants · No Comments

Senior Infant Weather Symphonies!

Aisling’s Senior Infants are learning all about An Aimsir (the weather) this month. We will be exploring different ways to measure and predict weather, reporting the current weather and recording the weather. Here are some of the phrases we are practising: Cén saghas lae é? (What sort of day is it today? ) Tá an …

16 Dec · Junior Infants · No Comments

Junior Infant Mathematicians

We are very good at counting, ordering and writing our numerals in Junior Infants. Take a look at us playing our maths games and taking part in our maths learning stations.

9 Dec · Senior Infants · No Comments

Senior Infants are Arctic Explorers!

Aisling’s class have been learning all about the animals that live in the Arctic this week! We have been on adventures finding out about the animals during our hour of play. We have seen polar bears, Arctic hares, snowy owls, seals, Arctic foxes and much more! Some penguins even came from the Antarctica for a …

6 Dec · Junior Infants · No Comments

Patterns of Two

This week, we were revising the number 2 and we had great fun making ‘patterns of two’ using lots of different resources. We used beads, bears of different sizes, tangrams, peg boards and unifix cubes. Check out our work!

6 Dec · Junior Infants · No Comments

Digging in December

Last year, the current second classes planted lots of yummy vegetables in the school vegetable patch. The brussels Sprouts and leeks were finally ready to be harvested so Junior Infants did the job. Anna’s mum Laragh helped us to dig up the vegetables and the children helped to pick all the brussels sprouts off the …

2 Dec · Muireann Carr · No Comments

UCD Sports Day

On Thursday December 1st, Senior Infants to Third Class headed off on the bus to UCD Sports Centre for a day of fun activities. We had so much fun!

2 Dec · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Winter Show at The Mill Theatre

On Tuesday November 29th, our star performers made their way to the Mill Theatre for their theatrical debut! Our theme this year was Fairytales and we had lots of excellent shows! Junior Infants dazzled us with their version of Goldilocks! We are so proud of how well they did, after only attending school for two …

23 Nov · Senior Infants · No Comments

The Thankful Turkey

Senior Infants have been learning all about Thanksgiving. We decided to create a ‘Thankful Turkey’ to show all the things and people that we are grateful for. When we wrote down all the things we were grateful for, we were amazed by how lucky we are! Our turkey looks very big and tasty! We are …

22 Nov · Senior Infants · No Comments

Math Games in Senior Infants

In Senior Infants, 7 is the magic number! We have been doing a wide range of counting games and math activities over the month of November, all focusing on the number 7. We have been making sets of 7, building number towers and using our math eyes to find the number 7 in our school …

21 Nov · Junior Infants · No Comments

Home is Where the Heart is

Our theme for Aistear in Junior Infants this month is “The Home.” We’ve learned that there’s all different sorts of families and houses but the common thing between each is love. We have had lots of fun playing home with the doll houses and role play area. We made lots of things you would find …

21 Nov · Junior Infants · No Comments

Science Week In Junior Infants

For Science Week 2016 Junior Infants examined four different types of materials to see which would make the strongest house for the three little pigs to live in. It linked in perfectly with our Aistear theme for this month ” The Home.” We had lots of fun exploring, building, discussing and predicting. The four materials …

17 Nov · Junior Infants · No Comments

Playworks is back!

We have started up Playworks again on the yard and it is already a big hit. Playworks is a programme which involves organising games on the yard for the children to play. Our 2nd and 3rd class students have been trained as coaches and they take it in turns to come out to the junior …

11 Nov · Junior Infants · No Comments

The Story of One

Junior Infants have been learning all about the number 1 this week. We had great fun searching for buttons with 1 hole in the sandbox. We decorated a number 1 template using buttons, sticks and counters. We played with board games which involved tracing the number one. We coloured in number one templates beautifully and we practised …

11 Nov · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Kelvin the Recycling Magician

We were so excited today when Kelvin the magician came to visit us to talk to us about recycling. He taught us his ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’ rap. He did so many funny things and taught us words like ‘landfill’ and ‘recycle’. We would like to thank Kelvin and Kando Arts for all the fun and …

5 Nov · Orlaith · No Comments

Perfectly Pretty Pumpkins!

We were inspired by the wonderful pumpkins grown in our very own school vegetable patch and decided to have a go at creating our own pumpkin pictures. Look at the fantastic still life drawings we have produced. We used oil pastels to really make the autumn colours stand out. We are so proud of our positively perfect pumpkins!!

5 Nov · Orlaith · No Comments

Maths Fun in First Class

We have been having a lot of fun with maths so far this term! We have been solving problems and working together to figure out the properties of big numbers! We have had great fun working in maths stations, completing loads of fun activities and creating …

28 Oct · Senior Infants · No Comments

Colourful Costumes in Ballinteer ETNS!

To finish of Book Week in style, the children (and some teachers) dressed up as their favourite character. Have a look at our video to see some of the wonderful and wacky outfits! https://youtu.be/3xKKBM9qvU8

28 Oct · Senior Infants · No Comments

Aisling’s Senior Infants was full of wonderful characters to celebrate the last day of midterm. Have a look at some of our brilliant costumes!

27 Oct · Junior Infants · No Comments

Language Stations In Junior Infants

We have been practicing reading and writing our first two ‘Jolly Phonics’ groups this school term. We are able to blend sounds together to help us read CVC words. During our station work we made the letters with play dough, wrote letters on white boards, wrote them in sand and played a matching game to …

27 Oct · Junior Infants · No Comments

Junior Infants Art Gallery Term One

We have been very busy painting, printing, cutting and sticking in Junior Infants. Our favourite piece of art was the bats we made from paper plates. We enjoyed playing with our bats in the playground

27 Oct · Junior Infants · No Comments

Maths Week In Junior Infants: The Great Outdoors

Junior Infants had lots of fun outdoors for Maths Week. We worked together in groups finding and taking photographs of 2D shapes and numbers outside in the playground. We also went on a nature walk to explore the Autumn trees. We had lots of fun counting the leaves, trees and horse chestnuts we saw. We …

25 Oct · Junior Infants · No Comments

Exotic Fruit Tasting and Pumpkin Harvest

Our theme for October is food. We’ve been learning poems about food and read “Handa’s Surprise,” which is all about exotic fruits from Africa. After reading the story the children had the opportunity to taste some of the fruit mentioned in the book. We also received our very own pumpkin to display on our Autumn …

24 Oct · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Ballinteer Book Fair

The Scholastic Book Fair has finally arrived and we are all very excited to look at all the interesting books. Each class group will visit the Book Fair during the week. We can enjoy browsing, reading and we can even buy some of our favourite books! Our Book Fair will be open to parents from 8.00 …

19 Oct · Senior Infants · No Comments

Aisling’s Authors and Illustrators

The Ballinteer ETNS Book Fair is starting next week and we are really excited about it in Senior Infants. To celebrate our Book Fair we have written and illustrated books about Autumn. We are very proud of our writing! These books will be displayed next week so make sure you have a look at them! …

18 Oct · Senior Infants · No Comments

Autumn Adventures!

Last week Senior Infants went on our Autumn walk. We had a lot of fun on our adventure with Aisling, Ann and Críona. We saw the leaves turning gold, red and orange. We collected pine cones, acorns, conkers and leaves. We even saw a squirrel! We finished off our walk with a quick trip to the …

17 Oct · Senior Infants · No Comments

Math in Senior Infants

This week in Senior Infants, we are learning all about the number 6. Have a look at our gallery to see how we are learning to partition and combine within 6. We are having a lot of fun while we learn.

17 Oct · Junior Infants · No Comments

Crazy about patterns.

For the month of October, Junior Infants have been learning lots about patterns in maths. First we copied patterns, then we extended patterns and finally, we had great fun making patterns of our own. We made patterns using different colours, shapes and sizes. Have a look at some of our amazing work.

14 Oct · Junior Infants · No Comments

Happy Tree Day!

On the 6th of October, Ciara’s Junior Infants celebrated National Tree Day. We talked about all the wonderful things that trees give us, like oxygen, fruit and paper and then we learned the names of the parts of the tree. We went on a little ‘Tree Walk’ to have a look at the lovely trees …

12 Oct · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Television Debut

Our Senior Infants have been discovered and are all set to take the world of television by storm! Ashling, Tara’s mum, works with RTE Jr. She had an idea of doing a multi lingual piece, featuring children saying ‘Get Giggly’ in many different languages. Lots of our children took part in the recording …

5 Oct · Senior Infants · No Comments

The Opticians has Opened!

Ballinteer Opticians has opened its doors in Aisling’s room. All the children are delighted to be having their eyes checked and picking new contact lenses, glasses and sunglasses. The teddy bears need eye tests as well! Thankfully our helpful opticians are testing bears as well as children! The designers are hard at work designing new glasses and …

5 Oct · Senior Infants · No Comments

Learning Through Play in Senior Infants!

In Senior Infants, we have been doing loads of fun activities to help us with our number formation. We have been writing numbers in sand and shaving foam! We have also been making the numbers out of play dough. As well as that, we have been writing the numbers on whiteboards with markers and on sugar …

29 Sep · Third Class · No Comments

Festival of Inclusion Competition

This year to mark Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council’s Festival of Inclusion, the Social Inclusion Unit are holding a Primary Schools Drawing Competition. The theme of the competition is ‘Celebrating Difference’ and we here in 3rd Class are tremendous at doing just that. Our entries for the competition are amazing as you can see. They …

29 Sep · Junior Infants · No Comments

Busy Bees in Junior Infants

Junior Infants have been very busy bees this September. Take a look at what we have been doing. We have been working very hard at our letter formation. It is great fun making the letters in sand, with play dough, on the interactive whiteboard, with crayons and with markers. We have been learning about 2D …

27 Sep · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Harvest Time!

Our Second Classes have been busy planting pumpkins, beetroot and herbs for our garden. This week our beetroots were ready to harvest! We weren’t afraid to get our hands dirty as we picked the beetroots, cleaned them, tasted them, chopped them and made them into a delicious smoothie! Our Second Classes would like to say …

15 Sep · Senior Infants · No Comments

Welcome back Senior Infants!

Senior Infants are really enjoying being back at school. We have been getting to know all our new friends and we are having great fun with our old friends too! We have been using the topic of homes and the story of the Three Little Pigs during our play for the last two weeks. In the Construction Area …

6 Sep · Junior Infants · No Comments

Our first week in Junior Infants

Junior Infants have settled in very well to school and are already busy learning, working hard and making new friends. Take a look at what we have been up to! We have great fun during activity time with our friends. We have been reading lots of books. We have been doing some matching activities in …

1 Sep · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Our First Day at School!

Our Junior Infants had a fantastic first day filled with games, songs and rhymes. We were so delighted to welcome each and every beaming face into our school community and we can’t wait to get to know them well throughout their stay here!

31 Aug · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Welcome Back

We were delighted to welcome back all of your students today! It was great to see everybody smiling and looking happy with rested faces after the long Summer break! We would like to say an extra special welcome to all of our Junior Infants who had an excellent day today and we are so happy …

28 Jun · Senior Infants · No Comments

Teddy Bear Invasion in Senior Infants!

Our teddy bears came to school today! Have a look at our video to see how they got on!

24 Jun · Junior Infants · No Comments

Sports Day

Our Sports Day took place on Friday the 24th of June. We didn’t let the rain stop us and it was a fun and active day from start to finish! We had a visit from Chuggy the Bouncy Castle Obstacle Course and it was a firm favourite with all the children. The children also …

16 Jun · Senior Infants · No Comments

The Olympics in Senior Infants!

We are learning about the theme of ‘The Olympics’ through Aistear this month. We have been really enjoying our socio-dramatic area, where we are warming up and competing in different events. We have been looking at old Olympics mascots and designing new mascots, as well as writing about the Olympics in our writing area. In our …

10 Jun · Junior Infants · No Comments

First Class Down Under

In June, Ciara’s First Class have been learning all about Australia. The children have really enjoyed this topic and worked really hard on their ‘Australia Projects’. Look at how proud they are! We always do our best to integrate our monthly themes through all the different curricular subjects. In Geography, we studied Australia’s location, population and landmarks. …

8 Jun · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Family Fun Day

On Saturday June 11th, we are proud to be hosting our very own family fun day! The fun will start at 11am, and everyone from the school community is welcome to attend. The PTA have been busy organising cake sales, a barbecue, bric-a-brac stalls, face painting and various other fun activities for the whole family …

17 May · Junior Infants · No Comments

School Tour

Last week, First and Second class went on an action packed trip to UCD Sports Centre. The trip was full of fun and excitement from start to finish. Upon arrival at the sports centre, the children were divided into four groups and introduced to the instructors for the different activities that had been planned. The …

15 May · Muireann Carr · No Comments

A Meeting with Catherine Martin, TD

On Friday May 13th, Marie, along with three dedicated members of our PTA, Amanda, Darina and Sinéad, went to the Dáil in order to meet our local TD, Catherine Martin. Catherine is very much on board and supportive of our school. They had a positive and constructive discussion with her regarding our school and she …

13 May · Senior Infants · No Comments

School Tour Video!

Listen to some of the boys and girls from Aisling’s class as they tell you about their favourite activities on the school tour.

11 May · Senior Infants · No Comments

Infants on tour!

Junior Infants and Senior Infants went on their school tour on Tuesday to UCD Sports Camp. The excitement started when the children saw the two giant coaches – one was even a double decker! When we got to UCD, they had a fantastic time doing various activities including; soccer, trampolining, dodgeball, archery, climbing, unihoc, ultimate frisbee …

10 May · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Playworks in the Playground

We have implemented the Playworks’ Program in our yard this term. Playworks provides structure to the playground and yard time. Children from the older classes act as ‘coaches’ in a wide variety of games. This encourages inclusion, participation, social interaction and also allows the children an opportunity to develop their independent problem solving skills. The …

26 Apr · Senior Infants · No Comments

Ipads in the Classroom

Senior Infants are using ipads to help us with our literacy! We love playing the phonics games, learning new sounds, writing letters and collecting monsters along the way! It is great fun!

26 Apr · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Earth Day

Second Class went out into the wooded area today to collect natural colours to create an Earth Day collage. We reminded ourselves to reduce, reuse and recycle! Then we celebrated Earth Day by listening to relaxing music and doing some mindfulness colouring.

20 Apr · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Extreme Earth in 2nd Class

Second Class have been really busy this month learning all about Extreme Weather and Extreme Earth! We have learned lots of interesting facts about tornadoes, volcanoes and earthquakes so far. We made a tornado machine in Science that showed us the shape of the tornado. We wrote lots of facts about tornadoes and …

15 Apr · Senior Infants · No Comments

Music in Ballinteer!

This week the children started learning how to play the violin with Justyna. Every child in the school was learning the rest position and the play position this week. It was really enjoyable! We are extremely thankful to all our sponsors who helped us purchase the violins. We are the musicians of the future!

14 Apr · Senior Infants · No Comments

The Garden Centre

Have a look at all the hard work children in Aisling’s class are doing! We are planting seeds, working at the cash register, designing new machines and weighing seeds during our play.

13 Apr · Senior Infants · No Comments

Spring Walk

Senior Infants went on a spring walk on Tuesday. We used four of our senses on the walk ; our sight, our hearing, our our smell and our touch. We saw birds eating worms and the bright colours of Spring, we heard the chicks chirping in the trees, we smelled the freshly cut grass and …

11 Apr · Marie Gordon · No Comments

Violin Measuring!

Justyna and Órla measured up the children in preparation for our violin lessons starting on Thursday, 14th April 2016. We are delighted that every child in the school will experience eight violin lessons from now to the end of the term.

16 Mar · Senior Infants · No Comments

Space Aistear

We were exploring Space during our play for the past three weeks. We have been building rockets, travelling to different planets, designing space equipment and spotting aliens! We really enjoyed our space journey!

16 Mar · Senior Infants · No Comments

Senior Infant Space Assembly

We had a great time practicing for our show and hope that everyone enjoyed it! Have a look at our rehearsal!

15 Mar · Senior Infants · No Comments

We are going on a bunny hunt!

Senior Infants had an egg hunt today! We heard rumors that something with a fluffy tail was hopping about outside, we also heard that this creature had dropped shiny oval objects around the playground! We had a prime suspect in mind – could it be the Easter Bunny? We had to investigate! Imagine our delight when …

14 Mar · Junior Infants · No Comments

Trip to Airfield

First Class had great fun on our recent trip to Airfield Estate. First, we got to see the farmer collecting the eggs from the chicken hutch and we learned lots about the different types of chickens. Then, we got to see the cows being milked and we were introduced to the newest calf on the farm. …

2 Mar · Muireann Carr · No Comments

A massive thank you to our parents!!

The kindness and dedication of our ever-supportive parental body has hit again! Our school now has a brand new pathway leading from Wyckham Way to the school! The children, and the parents and buggies who accompany them, can now travel safely and efficiently to the school buidling. The new path from Wyckham Way into the school …

24 Feb · Senior Infants · No Comments

Airfield Farm Video

Senior Infants went on a class trip to Airfield Farm today. We saw chickens, cows, calves, goats (or a Tribe of goats!), sheep and a very large sow! We watched the farmers collect the eggs from the chicken houses and saw the cows being milked! It was amazing! Thank you to all our parent volunteers …

23 Feb · Muireann Carr · No Comments

African Drumming

We were so lucky today when Paul from Afro – Eire came in to visit us and teach us all about African Drumming! We got to play on the Djembe and the Ishaka (maraca). An Ishaka is made from a hollow fruit! Thank you Paul!

23 Feb · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Newsletter January/February 2016

Our latest newsletter is now available for download! January February Newsletter 2016 Ballinteer Educate Together

10 Feb · Senior Infants · No Comments

Chinese Restaurant

Senior Infants have been learning all about Chinese New Year, healthy eating, food choices and restaurants through play. We made some beautiful Chinese New Year Art also. There has been a lot of drama in the Chinese restaurant. Some chefs were quite cranky, while others were clumsy and some forgot the orders as soon as they got them! …

7 Feb · Muireann Carr · No Comments

It’s Election Time! Let’s get our candidates to #BuildBallinteerETNS

It’s election time. With candidates knocking at our doors it poses a great opportunity for us to highlight our school as an election issue. Our school community has been working tirelessly to get our new school building, and it would be great to have the support of our local candidates. Marie and the PTA have drafted …

1 Feb · Aoife Flynn · No Comments

Nature Walk

We went on a nature walk around the school. We discussed why some trees don’t have leaves during winter and some, like the holly, have leaves all year round. A pine cone was found so we talked about how seeds from the trees move to other places. We saw the effects of winter including frost …

1 Feb · Aoife Flynn · No Comments

Patterns

We have been learning about patterns in maths. The children used different maths sorting materials to make their own, see if you can spot the patterns!

28 Jan · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Ancient Egypt with Second Class!

Second Class’s theme of the month has been Ancient Egypt. We have loved learning all about ancient egypt, and the interesting stories we read! Here are some of the activities we did during the month. We have a few more to come! First we learned about the geography of Egypt, and why rivers are important! …

28 Jan · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Newsletter December 2015

Our first term back in school was a great success, and we are all very excited about the rest of the year. Find out what we were up throughout November and December. Our latest one is now available for download! November December 2015 Newsletter Ballinteer Educate Together

28 Jan · Junior Infants · No Comments

People at Play

In January the theme for First Class was ‘People at Play.’ We have learned how to play lots of games from the past, we have interviewed our parents about the games they used to play and we have investigated how toys have changed over the years. We have also been discussing the importance of play and …

15 Jan · Senior Infants · No Comments

Healthy Eating Art

In Senior Infants we have been exploring the benefits of healthy eating and the advantages of having a healthy lifestyle. Our Aistear topic this month is the Healthy Eating Cafe and we are having great fun designing menus, playing in the restaurant and kitchen, creating our own restaurant small world and making sand pie! We …

18 Dec · Senior Infants · No Comments

Winter Wonderland

Senior Infants have been exploring the Arctic (and the Emperor Penguins in the Antarctica) over the past moth. We have learnt all about the Inuits, the Arctic animals and the Arctic weather conditions during our Aistear play. We have made some beautiful igloos, fantastic penguins and essential exploring equipment during our play. Here is a snapshot …

18 Dec · Senior Infants · No Comments

Jingle Bells

Senior Infants loved using the percussion instruments to accompany our song Jingle Bells. We discussed what instruments we should use, which instruments sounded soft and gentle like snow and which sounded louder like bells. We picked a variety of bells, chimes and shakers to play during our song. We hope that you enjoy it!

14 Dec · Senior Infants · No Comments

Winter Snowflake Science

Today we were very lucky to have a visit from the fantastic Grace Garde, a science expert from the Heritage in Schools Programme. She taught us all about how a snowflake is formed and we learnt a lovely song about snow! She brought us in some holly, leaves, twigs and acorns found during the month of …

11 Dec · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Sending out an SOS ; The Titanic!

We have been learning all about the Titanic. We have learned through Art, English, Science, History, Geography and Drama. What did the Titanic look like? We made beautiful Titanic paintings and learned about the four smokestacks. One of the smokestacks didn’t work! What happened on the night the Titanic sank? Then we learned about the …

11 Dec · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Watch the Greek Gods of Mount Olympus on Video!

You can now watch the Second Class Performance in full! A special thank you to Kian’s Dad for taking the videos!

10 Dec · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Coins and Colours Day for Syria

We have been learning all about the refugee crisis in Syria. Let us show you what we have learned. We are wearing our coloured clothes and bringing in coins to help where we can.

10 Dec · Junior Infants · No Comments

All About Antarctica

First class have been learning lots about Antarctica this December. We have learned about explorers like Robert Scott, Tom Crean and Roald Admunsen. We have been reading the book ‘Tom Crean’s Rabbit’ and have worked in groups to sequence the story. We have also written excellent reports about Tom Crean. We have also been learning …

10 Dec · Third Class · No Comments

Maths Marvels!

In Tamasine’s Senior Infants we have been learning about 3D patterns and the number 7. Some of us are making patterns with colour and shape and others are getting know the number 7 by making flowers with seven petals, playing ‘What’s my Number?’ and creating the numbers 0 to 7 using Play-Doh. Here we are …

2 Dec · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Anti Bullying Fortnight

For the past few weeks, all of our classes have been focusing on anti bullying. We have role played situations in our classrooms where we are kind to each other and ask each other to play. Our First and Second Classes were talking about how we can stand up to bullies and tell them to STOP. …

24 Nov · Senior Infants · No Comments

Anti-Bullying Week Senior Infants

It is Anti-Bullying Week in Ballinteer Educate Together National School. In Senior Infants we have been learning about how we can ‘Say No To Bullying’. We have been focusing on friendship and how we can be a good friend. We have been giving compliments to other people and we made friendship bracelets. Here are some …

23 Nov · Muireann Carr · No Comments

The Greek Gods of Mount Olympus

On Friday November 13th, after weeks of dedicated preparation, second class showcased their own performance of ‘The Greek Gods of Mount Olympus’. This whole play was written and performed by 2nd Class! Zeus, Hades, Poseidon, Hera, Artemis, Apollo, Hephaestus, Hermes, Athena, Zeus, Ares, Hestia and Hercules donned their finest Greek crowns, tridents, bows and arrows, …

20 Nov · Junior Infants · No Comments

Rain, Rain, Go Away!

First class have been learning lots about weather in November. We have recorded the weather each day and learned how to predict the weather by observing animal behaviour and clouds. We have made our own water cycle which we observed each day and we did some experiments to find out which materials are waterproof. Have …

18 Nov · Senior Infants · No Comments

Monet Masterpieces

Today we were looking at some of the work of French Impressionist painter, Claude Monet. Monet painted beautiful pictures of gardens and waterlilies. He often painted the same picture repeatedly in different types of weather and at different times of the day. Here are some of the images we were looking at today. What do you think you see? …

17 Nov · Muireann Carr · No Comments

The Eagle Has Landed!

As part of our work on the 1960s, we have been learning about the Space Race. Here are some facts we have learned! Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman in Space. She was from Russia. She worked with the Russian Space Agency called Roscosmos. Neil Armstrong was the first man to put his foot on …

13 Nov · Muireann Carr · No Comments

November Theme: The 1960s

We are right in the middle of learning all about the 1960s. We have learned about the artist Roy Lichenstein! He became famous for a his comic book style art. Here are our comic book style pictures! Power! We are also learning about the Space Race between Russia and the USA. Russia had the first …

13 Nov · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Matilda!

We have been reading Matilda in class over the past few weeks. We have been writing interesting character descriptions. We have designed outfits for Miss Trunchbull. We wrote book reports. This week we did a research project on Matilda! Finn wrote us all a quiz about Matilda!

13 Nov · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Newsletter September/October 2015

We have been really busy in our first term back at school and our newsletter is now available to download. You can read all about the things that are going on in our school! SepOctNewsletter2015

11 Nov · Senior Infants · No Comments

Diwali Celebrations 2015

We made Diwa lamps and coloured Rangoli patterns to celebrate Diwali. Diwali is the Hindu festival of light and we certainly light up a room with our smiles!

11 Nov · Senior Infants · No Comments

The Weather Station

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6 Nov · Senior Infants · No Comments

The Big Good Wolf

The Golden Rule that we have been focusing on this week is ‘Listen to the person speaking’. We have been doing a lot of different listening activities and our listening has really improved! Today the storyteller and author Liam Farrell came to our school. He told us a fantastic story ‘The Big Good Wolf’. He …

23 Oct · Senior Infants · No Comments

Colourful Costumes

We have had a fantastic Book Week in Ballinteer ETNS! We looked at many different books and genres in senior infants and had lots of fun doing it! To finish off Book Week in style, we dressed up as our favourite characters ( some were a little spookier than others!) Have a look at some of …

19 Oct · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Painting with Nature!

Second class were so lucky to have Caroline (Sadhbh’s mum) come in and visit us today. She taught us how to make paint using different berries, leaves and soil. First we went on a hunt in the field, some of us looked for lots of green things,some of us hunted for red things, some …

19 Oct · Senior Infants · No Comments

Math Week in Senior Infants

As last week was Math week, we had a big focus on numeracy in Senior Infants. Thanks to all the fundraising by the PA last year, we were able to buy new numeracy equipment which the children really enjoyed! Here are some of the construction activities we were working on last week; We were also playing counting games using the Ready, Set, …

16 Oct · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Our New Playground

We are delighted to be able to show your our new play area! Our PTA have been working tirelessly to provide our children with a beautiful new playground. The space is now filled with colourful, child friendly ground markings, and a lovely calm quiet area. We have an alphabet snake, a target board, a long …

16 Oct · Muireann Carr · No Comments

The Literacy Hour in Second Class

Second Class have begun their literacy hour, and are all working really hard! We have five different stations. We spend 12 minutes at each station. We work on our comprehension with Jen. We work on our spelling with Órla. We can read a selection of books in Free Reading. Muireann helps us with our reading and …

9 Oct · Gordon Cooke · No Comments

RSS Feeds for Each School Year

Do you want to keep in touch with what's going on in your child's year? Then just subscribe to one of the following RSS links below. RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content through mobile device browsers or apps. One useful app available for both Android and iOS devices as ...

8 Oct · Senior Infants · No Comments

Designer Glasses Half Price!

Have a look at some of our special offer designer glasses – all half price!

7 Oct · Senior Infants · No Comments

Optician Now Open!

The Optician is now open in Senior Infants and we are having lots of fun checking eye sight, building tonometers and designing glasses. We are experts when it comes to eye care! Here is a sample of our work.

7 Oct · Senior Infants · No Comments

Math Madness

In September in Senior Infants, we were revising number in a lot of creative and interesting ways. We were making numbers out of play dough, sticks, blocks and pegs. We have been playing lots of fun math games such as ‘Dickie Dickie Dox’, Humpty Dumpty and many more! We have also been using the Interactive whiteboard and writing …

7 Oct · Senior Infants · No Comments

Estate Agent Now Closed!

The Aistear corner is under new management and the Optician’s has moved in! We had great fun learning about homes and houses during Aistear. We were architects, builders, estate agents and interested buyers. Here is some of our hard wo rk.

6 Oct · Junior Infants · No Comments

First Class Are Artists!

Welcome to the First Class page on our lovely, new school website! We’re very excited to share with you some of the wonderful things we are learning about this year in First Class. To begin, we must say how amazing the children of First Class are when it comes to Art. We really think …

29 Sep · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Playing Card Patterns

We have been working on number patterns in Second Class. We made up our own to challenge our classmates. Some of them were really tricky! We used patterns combining even numbers, odd numbers, colours, suits and sums. Can you figure them out?

25 Sep · Muireann Carr · No Comments

A Visit from the Irish Army

We were really lucky this week to have been visited by two soldiers from the Irish Army! They presented us with an Irish Flag and the 1916 Proclamation. Lieutenant Deirdre told us all about the flag and what it is like to be in the army. They asked us would we raise our new flag …

22 Sep · Muireann Carr · No Comments

First Class News

Welcome to our First Class blog. We can’t wait to share all the fun things we have been learning with you!

22 Sep · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Senior Infant News

Welcome to our Senior Infant blog. We can’t wait to share all the exciting things we are doing with you!

11 Sep · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Second Class News

Welcome to our Second Class news page. We look forward to sharing all the interesting things we do together on this page!

10 Sep · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Welcome Junior Infants

A huge welcome to our new students joining us this year. We will be sharing what we are up to in class on this blog.

2 Sep · Muireann Carr · No Comments

May and June Newsletter 2015

Summer’s here and even though the weather has been unpredictable, May has been a jam-packed month of interesting and stimulating events and activities for the children, and June promises to be the same. May/June Newsletter Download Places in our classes have been offered, and we are now full with a substantial waiting list still active …

8 Jun · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Digital storybooks

We have been learning about the dentist in Aistear. We learned lots of new words from the wordwall, did roleplay, played the Popstar Dentist App, read ‘The Wobbly Tooth’, drew comic strips and then turned them into digital storybooks. Here are a few for you to read! The dentist.ppsx File Size: 795 kb File Type: …

3 Jun · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Practical maths activities

We are having lots of fun this morning creating sets, partitioning them and recording the number sentences!

30 May · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Our school tour

On Wednesday all the children in Junior and Senior Infants went to Airfield house. We were nature detectives for the day; finding animals in the farmyard; minibeasts near the pond; wild flowers in the meadow. We got to feed the chickens and learn about interestingtrees.

20 May · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Literacy

Senior Infants were working hard on their literacy activities today!

20 May · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Book Week 2014

We had a wonderful time celebrating World Book Week. We love books and this week we got a chance to write and illustrate our own books-we even marbled the covers!Every day we did something special. Here are some photos to show you what we did. • Monday: Jesse, Leon’s dad, will give master classes in …

20 May · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Aistear: Chinese New Year

We learned a lot obout Chinese New Year during Aistear time this week. We heard how the animals were chosen for each year; we coloured in lanterns, made Chinese New Year animal jigsaws; made chinese letters with playdoh and painted Chinese New Year animal masks.

19 May · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Watch our seeds grow!

As part of our SESE and Learn Together curriculum work we looked at how things grow and change from a seed to a plant. We decided to try to grow our own!

2 May · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Seachtain na Gaeilge

Phrasaí don Seachtain na Gaeilge Learn Irish with your child! Click on the blue links to hear the phrases, songs and poems! Dia dhuit (Hello) Dia’s Mhuire Dhuit (Hello) Conas atá tú? (How are you?) Tá mé go maith. (I am good.) Níl mé go maith, tá mé tinn. (I’m not good, I …

4 Apr · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Baby Seamus

Today we were lucky to have a visit from Lottie’s Mum and baby brother, Seamus. We were learning about babies in SPHE, so we had a lot of questions to ask!

10 Mar · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Aistear: the Doctor’s surgery

For the last two weeks the children in Junior Infants have been working on the theme of the doctor’s surgery. They enjoyed many activities. Role-play was so popular that they had two weeks of fun setting up surgeries, reception areas and waiting rooms and taking it in turns to be the different characters. For Games …

6 Mar · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Numeracy

This week the children in Junior Infants were concentrating on number. As you can see from these photographs they were very busy indeed!

4 Feb · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Numeracy activities

Look at all the fun activities Senior Infants worked with today.

17 Jan · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Construction activities

We love doing activities. Here are a few photographs of us doing maths and construction activities. Do you like our creations?

17 Jan · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Aistear: The solar system

Aistear is a national educational initiative which is focused on children learning about a theme through various types of play. We have recently started Aistear time in Junior Infants and we love it! Here are photos of us learning about space through language play, constructive play, role play and creative play.

17 Jan · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Aistear: Shopping

This fortnight we have shopping as our Aistear theme. One group makes things that you would find in a supermarket out of playdoh. Emer and Aoife have loved our scanners, trolleys, food & toys! Another group have fun role-playing being shopkeepers, cashi ers and customers. The third group work on their sounds, write shopping lists …

17 Jan · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Food tasting

All the infant classes have been working on the themes of food and our senses. We read the book Handa’s Surprise and did lots of activities about the book. Today we got to use our senses to try some fruits that we recognised and some that we didn’t!

17 Jan · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Literacy activities

We love all our new literacy activities. We have been matching letters with pictures, matching words with pictures and making words with our letter blocks.

17 Jan · Muireann Carr · No Comments

PE

In PE we are learning different ways of travelling: skipping, hopping, jumping and running. We love using the hoops, the ladder and the hurdles!

17 Jan · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Surfaces (tablets!)

We are loving using our new Surface tablets. We did some drawing on them, used them for number sequencing (join the dots!) and we did our Irish activities on them today. Here are some photos of us at work.

17 Jan · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Divali, light and colour

We have been learning about the Hindu and Sikh festival of Divali. Because it is a festival of light we have been learning about light and colour also. Here are photos of our art class today. We had made diyas using clay last week and we painted them in red, yellow or orange today, We …

17 Jan · Muireann Carr · No Comments

January 16th, 2014

These crisp, bright mornings are perfect for an ‘art walk’ to closely observe trees in winter. We sketched the trees with pencil first then drew them with charcoal, graphite pencils, ink with calligraphy pens and skinny brushes, and with black markers which have different-sized tips. We drew on white paper on which we did washes …

13 Jan · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Fun with patterns!

We are learning about colours, squares and circles. Today we made 2 colour patterns using the daisies, links, proportional bears and shapes. Here are some photographs of our work!

13 Jan · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Our first week in Junior Infants!

We have been very busy since we started school, getting to know our new friends and teachers. We have lots of fun learning songs, doing Maths and Literacy activities and playing outside. Here is a slideshow of some of the things we have been doing.

13 Jan · Muireann Carr · No Comments

We are enjoying using our new interactive whiteboard!

We got an interactive whiteboard in our classroom today and we are really enjoying doing our Irish and Maths activities on it. It is fun to watch our nursery rhymes too. You can see them too if you click here!

4 Aug · Muireann Carr · No Comments

A lovely day to end a wonderful year!

29 Jun · Muireann Carr · No Comments

What a wonderful year!

14 Jun · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Korean day

Thank you so much to Kian’s Mum and Dad for coming into our class today and teaching us about Korea. We tried on traditional clothes, played games, ate Korean treats and learned some taekwondo. It was so much fun! Here is a video of some of the things we did.

11 Jun · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Junk art

We are learning lots of things about farms. As part of our work we did junk art. It was great fun and we even managed to get the classroom clean when we were finished!

10 Jun · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Finn’s Grandad came to visit!

Finn’s Grandad is here on holidays from Yorkshire. He told us all about his work as a dentist & also about his new job showing people around Leeds rugby ground!

10 Jun · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Aistear in the sunshine

Taking advantage of the lovely weather to have Aistear time outside!

9 Jun · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Great writing!

Look at some of our writing!

5 Jun · Muireann Carr · No Comments

It really is a wonderful world!

I see skies of green…

23 May · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Aistear

Our Aistear topic this week is the farm. We have three areas: creative play, role-play and constructive play. Here are some photos of us learning through play.

20 May · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Chalk art

We were busy doing chalk art at break time today playing. Do you like our drawings?!

20 May · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Mini-beast Hunt

Off on our mini-beast hunt to find centipedes, spiders, ladybirds and many others… This is our magnifying glass Shining a light on nature Looking everywhere!

20 May · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Baha’i Festival

Vivienne’s mum, Hailey, spoke to the children about the Baha’i festival of Ridvan. She told us that Ridvan is part of a twelve-day festival and refers to a beautiful garden near Baghdad. We talked about loving and respecting other people. Hailey sang a song. We made flowers using tissue paper and coloured pipe-cleaners. Look at …

20 May · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Baby David comes to visit!

We were delighted to have baby David visiting us today. We were able to ask his Mummy and his sister Julia all about the things that he is able to do now. We found out that he just drinks milk and that he is nearly able to roll over. Every day his Mummy puts …

14 May · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Rewards!

We have been working very, very, very hard! To celebrate we watched ‘The Singing Kettle-Funny Farm and had some hot, tasty popcorn. We all had fun!

6 Mar · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Chinese New Year

We were learning about Chinese New Year. We dressed in red and decorated our room for the celebration. We made Snake mobiles because this is the year of the snake. We watched a dragon dance on YouTube. Click on the YouTube below to watch the video. Here are some photos we took on the day!

13 Feb · Muireann Carr · No Comments

We got a fish for our tank!

Leon’s Dad came to school again today. He brought a heater for the fish tank and our very first fish. These are photos of us watching all the action!

13 Feb · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Mardi Gras/Shrove Tuesday

We have had a very busy two days learning about Mardi Gras/Shrove Tuesday from Emer and Caoimhe. Did you know that Mardi Gras means Fat Tuesday and that it comes from France? Shrove Tuesday/Mardi Gras is the last day before the fast time of Lent. People all over t he world celebrate it in many …

12 Feb · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Irish poem

Listen to our new poem! Yum, yumIs maith liomBrioscaí agus scónAgus bainne do mo lón. Yum, yum,Is maith liomIm agus ubh Agus arán le subh.

6 Feb · Muireann Carr · No Comments

The cold weather didn’t stop us having fun!

6 Feb · Muireann Carr · No Comments

Leon looks very comfortable!