Second class have been learning all about their local area and about Ireland. As part of this theme, we are becoming familiar with our local environment. We read a story about a magpie who cleans up his environment and then we had our Science class outside to hunt for materials in our own school. We foraged out beside the tennis courts to see what materials we could spot. We found twigs, soil, rocks, flowers, feathers and we felt their texture.

In second class we are hatching chickens!! Our chicks are starting to hatch! They have a big job ahead of them, pecking a little hole, turning, pecking another hole, turning… until they have pecked the whole way around and can kick their way out into the world. If you look carefully, you can see it wobbling!

We’re off to a flying start in Second Class with visits from feathered friends! Ian brought his birds of prey for us to see, and because we were so respectful of the birds, some children even got a chance to hold them!  We had been learning all about barn owls, so we were delighted to get to meet Tyto the barn owl.

We are also learning about caring for living things, by hatching chicks at school. They are due to hatch on the 9th of October, if all goes well.

Niall de Burca dropped in to tell us a few funny stories, and we had such a good time, we didn’t want it to end!

We’re enjoying all the Autumn colours coming out, and celebrating the season through our art.

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 learned!” – Rhys

“They teach us how to play matches in rugby.”

“The coaches are nice.” – Maya

“It’s really fun! – Layla

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 a special thanks to Laragh Havelin (James’ mum) who helped us with our harvest.

Aongus’s class wrote a special report about the day that they would love to share with you :

Laragh joined us last Monday to harvest some vegetables from our vegetable patch. First we looked at the vegetables that we planted earlier this year. There were beetroots, pumpkins, brussel sprouts and leeks. Then Laragh taught us about the vegetables and we formed a line to pick the beetroots to bring them inside. We pulled and tugged them from the soil. After that we went inside to prepare them. Next we pulled off the stalks and washed the beets.

We peeled them and chopped them before we made them in to smoothies. Laragh had also made brownies for us. Finally, we ate the brownies and drank the smoothies, they were delicious!

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.

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 volcanoes using some of our new key words!

We know tectonic plates, crust, cumulonimbus clouds, vortex, magma chamber and many more!

We used colour mixing to create these tornadoes in Art, we mixed each colour with white and black to create different shades.

We made paper maché volcanoes using empty bottles and painted them! Then we added baking soda and vinegar and watched our volcanoes erupt!

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! All of the main towns and cities in Egypt are built along the River Nile. It floods nearly every year, which helps the crops grow. The Sahara Desert is also in Egypt.

Mariam told us that the word ‘Sahara’ means desert in Arabic!

Everybody was so eager to learn about Tutankhamen, so we learned all about the archeologist Howard Carter, and Lord Carnarvon who found his tomb first.

Then we wrote reports about what had happened.

Each child got a different picture depicting daily life in Ancient Egypt, and we had to imagine who was in the picture, what they were doing and write speech bubbles for the people! In this picture, two people are playing the old game Senet.

Egyptians believed that people would go to an afterlife, and so they filled their tombs with beautiful items for Pharoah’s to bring with them. We made the ‘eye of horus’ and an ‘ankh’ out of clay. Carla has given her Egyptian character ‘Ankh’ earrings and an ‘Eye of Horus’ necklace. These clay figures were called amulets.

The ‘ankh’ is known as ‘The Key to the Nile’ and the ‘Eye of Horus’ represents the protection and wealth.

The Ancient Egyptians used to build a beautiful coffin for their Pharoah. It was called a sarcophagus. In order for people to know who was in them, they would attach a name tag called a cartouche. We wrote about our cartouche and then wrote our name in Hieroglyphics!

We used salt dough to make a 3D Pharoah, and we decorated his headdress.

We also tied our work in the Egyptians into our work on Procedural Writing, and read the procedure for mummification!

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 sequence of events that led to the sinking of the ship.

What did Captain Edward Smith do?

We have been practicing morse code and we can all make the SOS signal in Morse Code. Have a look at our class sending out the SOS signal!

What would we bring onto the Titanic?

Then we thought about what we would bring if we were leaving on the Titanic to start a new life.

Why did the Titanic sink?

After that, we discussed buoyancy and discovered why some boats can float and some boats sink. We made boats out of play-dough and tinfoil.

How did people find out about the tragedy?

Finally, we wrote the first newspaper reports about the Titanic to make sure everybody knew what had happened!

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, flames and togas and took to the stage to tell us all about four of their favourite myths and some information about the gods.

Stay tuned for the video production!

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 the moon. He said the first words on the moon. “The Eagle has landed!” He also said “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Micheal Collins was the pilot of the Apollo 11. Apollo 11 was the spacecraft that landed on the moon.

Buzz Aldrin was the second man to step on the moon.

Here are some of our astronauts in Space!

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 space walk and the USA landed the first men on the moon in 1969!

We have been learning a little bit about the Beatles who were a really famous band at the time. We have learned ‘All you need is love’ and ‘Yellow Submarine’.

Stay tuned for more information on artists, fashion, toys and schools in the 1960s!

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!

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?

Welcome to our Second Class news page.

We look forward to sharing all the interesting things we do together on this page!