For our annual trip to Newgrange we were able to visit the Knowth monuments. Both 3rd and 4th class traveled up in the morning to the Boyne Valley visitor centre and we were brought out to the Knowth monuments.

Our first stop was to cross the Boyne river. We talked a little about the river and its use in helping to build the monuments.

Next we were met by an excellent guide who took us around the whole site and told us all about the different tombs despite the awful weather!

She told us about the decoration stones around the Knowth main monument and how the burial mounds were older than the pyramids!

Then we got to go inside the monument to see the narrow passages.

Our guide told us that they were used as burial chambers and that unfortunately the end of the passage had collapsed. She told us where the stone was gathered from and how these ancient people used to worship the sun.

 

 

Finally we were able to walk around the area and look at all the different tombs they had as well as stand on top of the main monument.

 

                          

We all had a fantastic time, next time we hope it’s not raining!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As Easter is coming up and spring is in the air we thought it would be fun to get some eggs and hatch them. We got 10 fertilized eggs and we secured an incubator and we set the eggs to incubate and hatch.

 

We marked each egg with an X and an O so we would know what side to turn them onto. The chicks took a lot of work to mind, they had to be kept warm all the time and they had to be kept in a nice humid environment as well as be turned 3 or 5 times a day.

If the chicks were not turned an odd number of times they would stick to the side of the eggs while they are forming.

To check inside the egg to see if the chicks were forming and developing correctly. To do this we got an ova-scope to allow us to see inside the egg.  By looking at the shadows we could see the chicks progression.

Finally after 21 days the chicks were ready to hatch and break out of their shells, not all of them made it but we had 4 healthy chicks emerge out of their shells.

 

The chicks were kept in a cardboard box with a big heat lamp and access to food and water at the top of the class.

We gave them a heat lamp to keep them warm and some chick seed and water to keep the happy. The chicks were very noisy on their first day in school.

We had the chance to say hello to our new classmates and hold them.

The chicks loved their day in school as did we. We sent them off to a farm to live with come other chickens which is better then living in a box!

 

To practice our procedural writing (step by step guides) we decided to make a dragon taming manual.

First we had to make our Dragon Profiles. Here we invented our own dragons and wrote about all their abilities and attributes. Here are some examples:

We then had to make a step by guide on how to catch and train our dragons.

Finally we made a book to hold all this information, we call it The Book of Dragons!

Here’s how we made it.

We took 2 pieces of card and used papier mâché to design the front and back. We then bound the 2 pieces together and painted them.

Here is the finished product with all the dragon pages put in it.

The children love the book and reading about all the different dragons.

 

A few weeks ago we had Bru Bellew visit us in class and show off some of the Bellew Family history. Most impressive of all were the flags that he brought in.

These are the flags from the Bellew family showing their Coat-of-Arms. We also got to try out some old uniforms from the English army!

We enjoyed the Flags and Coat-of-Arms so much we decided to make our own.

First we cut out our shield shapes out of card.

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Next we papier mached the shields to create a nice surface to paint on. We mixed PVA glue and water to make a runny paste and used this to stick old scraps of paper all over the shields.

After that we had to paint a white undercoat so that none of the writing on the paper could be seen.

Next we painted on our base coat of paint. These would be the main colours of our Coat-of-Arms. We picked these colours based on their heraldic meaning and what we wanted our Coat-of-Arms to represent.

Finally we painted on our Heraldic symbols, these were chosen because they have a special meaning to us.

At last after all our hard work they were finally finished and ready to show off!