On Grandparents day , 28th January, we had some special visitors to our classroom.  Some of us shared our memories of special times with our grandparents and others asked questions about school in our grandparents time. We were amazed to learn that our grandparents never did Science, Art or Pe  and seemed to have almost no special equipment in their classrooms.  They seemed to learn a lot of Maths, English reading and writing, Irish and Religion or Cathecism. They were amazed to see all the maths equipment we had on our Maths Table.  We finished up by singing Trúp, Trúp  a Chaipillín for them. It was lovely to have such special visitors to our classroom. Here are some pictures and watch out for a special one of a grandad and grandson . In it,Grandad is holding an enamel mug with a picture of a nursery rhyme on it . This was Grandad’s mug when he was a child. It was thrown out and he only found it again last year  when he was digging in his garden !  What a find !  Well done Grandad !

 

Today in Science we made electrical circuits and made bulbs light up. We  used a battery as a power source. It was great fun, but the longer we used the battery the hotter it got !  We found that we had to make a really good connection  between the battery and the bulb to make a good circuit and light up the bulb.It was easier to make a really good connection  when we used the bulb holder. Here we are at work…

 

 

 

 

 

 

For Art this week we looked at the Willow Pattern on crockery. We saw the temple, the bridge, the soldiers, the boat,  the island, the apple tree, the weeping willow, the lake ,the summer house and the doves.  We saw a video of the story of the willow pattern. We saw a lego stop motion film of the story too  which was very funny.  We had fun drawing our own willow pattern plates. We took care with the detail on the border of the plate. Here we are at work.

Today was a very exciting day  because lots of snow fell and the school looked like a winter wonderland.  We had just collected  our weather data for the day  ( temperature in the sun and shade, rainfall, wind direction, air pressure, cloud cover ) and were not expecting such a snow fall. We recorded cloud cover as high , white and few.  The only indicator was the outside temperature in the shade which we recorded as zero degrees celsius.  Some pupils did wonder if it might snow  but we decided it wouldn’t !  Twenty minutes later  did we get a surprise ?? The sky was grey  with snow  tumbling down to cover the school.  We added the snow to our weather data. By 2.00 the sun was beaming down and our snow was melting away.

This week in Science we worked at making fabric waterproof.  We tested vaseline, wax candle and cooking oil. It was fun rubbing in the vaseline jelly but very messy. we used spoons and fingers. It was harder work rubbing in the wax candle. We compared the wax candle to wax crayon and choose it because it had a greater wax content. We thought this would make the fabric more waterproof. The cooking oil was a disaster! We used paint brushes to apply it to the fabric. It soaked the fabric  immediately. We decided to dry the fabric on the radiator before we tested how water proof it was.  We tested the fabric by carefully pouring on 2 tablespoonfuls of water and letting it settle for 2 minutes. Everyone had to help by holding up the sides of the fabric. Then we checked the paper underneath to see if it was wet or dry.  Dry paper  showed that the fabric was waterproofed. Vaseline worked best of all.  Here we are at work …….