3rd Class have been having great fun using our green fingers recently. We have sowed sunflower seeds, garden peas, lettuce, onions and radishes. The seeds and peas were very easy to plant and we will be keeping an eye on them as they grow over the next while. We are very excited to see how big our sunflowers get and how tasty our vegetables will be! Looking forward to having an entire salad grown by us before the summer!

Having learnt all about 3D shapes in maths, 3rd Class brought this knowledge into their artwork this week.

Using a menu of our likes, dislikes, personalities and backgrounds, this helped us choose which colours and shapes our sculptures would include.

We loved this 3D project and really like how unique all of the sculptures ended up looking!

Tayto, the barn owl came to visit us last week. We learned all about the different types of owl in Ireland, their habitats and what they like to eat. Tayto’s visit inspired us to create fantastic owl fact files and beautiful chalk pastel owl drawings. Keep an eye out for our fantastic art work..It’s coming soon!

We have been learning all about the importance of trees and also about the different types of trees there are in Ireland. Last Thursday we went on a ‘tree walk’ and challenged ourselves to identify and catagorize as many different types of trees that we could find. We are becoming experts at identifying trees by examining their leaves and berries.

Niall de Burca had us in stiches when he visited Ballinteer ETNS to tell us some stories. He has inspired us to become fantastic storytellers ourselves! Watch this space…There will surely be some masterpieces to follow!

As part of the maths curriculum, Third Class have been getting to grips with all aspects of the concept of time. We have been learning through active, hands – on, collaborative activities and have been having lots of fun in the process!

We are having lots of fun exploring science, technology, engineering and maths in active and collaborative ways. We have been constructing towers using spaghetti, string and tape, creating the longest possible length from a paper plate and building paper plate baskets strong enough to hold an entire container of plastic teddy bears! Take a look at how busy we have been…

As part of Space week, we had a visit from a scientist from Astronomy Ireland. It was so interesting to learn many new things about Space and this visit inspired us to create our very own Space related projects. We presented our projects to the class in many different ways. We watched videos and Powerpoint presentations. Some people made fabulous models of the Solar System. We were encouraged to  explore many different aspects of Space and we all learned so much from each other! Take a look at examples of our wonderful projects below!

In addition to our Space projects, we also did fabulous ‘Falling Into Space’ art pieces. We learned about perspective and had great fun putting our new found artistic skills into practise!

We have been learning a lot this term in Third Class. We are becoming accomplished writers and are learning about all the different writing genres. We have published Student Council speeches, fact files about whales and many creative writing pieces including a spooky story and an imaginative piece about our very own alien! We are also developing our creative writing skills in Irish. Have a look at some of the wonderful pieces of writing we have done.

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 talented individuals, along with some equally talented teachers and children, drew illustrations of subjects which the audience suggested (our suggestion was ‘elephants doing ballet’).

The two teams, the Pirates and the Sharks fought it out to see who was the fastest and best illustrators and we as the audience decided their fate.  You can see from the photos just how amazing the pictures were!

When we got back we decided to have a go ourselves and chose our favourite subjects of the day to interpret in our own unique ways.  We could choose from ‘a two-tailed monkey surfing’, ‘a dinosaur drinking a milkshake through his nostril’ and many more besides.  Here are just a few of our pictures and as you can see we are extremely talented illustrators too.

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 at break times!

Here are a few action shots of us thoroughly enjoying ourselves during the lessons.

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 famous castle.

We studied the structure of the Motte and Bailey Castles and the reasons behind their Norman engineering and then produced our very own replicas.  We think you’d agree they are indeed quite magnificent!

We were lucky enough to have Aisling’s class come and visit us too!  They loved hearing about the construction of our castles and were full of questions about drawbridges and moats.