Welcome back everyone and a special welcome to pupils and parents from Senior 3 who we will be working with this term for online learning activities. We will be sharing learning activities on our respective class webpages on alternating weeks, This week Senior 3 will be visiting our class page for activities and next week we will visit the Senior 3 class page. Siobhan,  the class teacher, will be hosting daily zoom calls where pupils in senior 3 and senior 4 can meet up to say hello and enjoy a variety of different activities like cooking classes, story time, etc.…

  Even though we won't be together in the classroom for the start of this term, we look forward to  seeing you all online. Staff in Senior 3 and Senior 4 will  be posting, zooming and uploading lots of fun activities for you to work on. Have fun and remember to send us lots of photos  of what you are getting up to while staying safe at home. It's always great to hear from you.

We'd like to share some of our favourite Apps for learning and having fun at home. This week's App is called Chatterpix. It is free to download from Google play or Apps store. It can be used on an Ipad, iphone, or Android phone or tablet.

The App is easy to use. You  take photos of your pets (  teddys, toys, flowers, or anything else you like.). Next you draw a mouth on your photo and then record a simple message. You might like to say hello to your friends, say your name, do some counting etc,,). You can add text, borders and clipart to your photos. 
​Here's one I did earlier with my cat , Ruddy.
​I hope you all try it out. You will have a lot of fun and don't forget to share your Chatterpix !
Claire has put together some photos from our first term in Senior 4.
We hope you enjoy looking at the photos and remembering the fun we had.  
We really miss you all and hope to see you all again very soon. 

Our book this week is perfect to read when it is raining outside and you are feeling nice and cozy sitting in by the fire. Maybe you are feeling a little sleepy. The characters in the story are feeling sleepy. They were having a nice nap when something suddenly woke them up. Take a look inside  The Napping House by Audrey Wood.
Picture

​
​Time to get out your mat and practice some relaxing yoga poses from our story. Anibal will show you how to do the poses.

Time to have some fun designing your own emoji. Click on the image to print and design your own  emoji. 
What colours do you need?
​Are you going to use crayons or paint?
What emoji will you draw?
Here are a some of our favourites:
  • Margaret: 🤣
  • Claire: 🤩
  • Anibal: 😋

Distance Learning

 A social story for you to  read together to help develop an  understanding  of distance learning and about why we are  learning at home at the moment. If you prefer, you can listen to Claire reading the story by pressing  the read to me button. Click here to bring you to our class library.

Some online activities we enjoy in school

We all enjoy playing this virtual piano on the interactive whiteboard. First go to the drop down menu and select the tune you want to play. We have been learning Twinkle, Twinkle and Happy Birthday. Next press the Teach button( hat) and follow the keys as they light up. You can play on a tablet or your laptop. ​Access this lesson using pin
 Code:EC0859
at Twinkl Go
This is another class favorite for practicing our fine motor skills on the whiteboard. Drag the car around the race track and across the finish line. Be careful not to crash into anything along the way! Access this lesson using pin code: JS9205
at Twinkl Go
We all really love listening to music. This week we have a choice of two songs for you to choose from, Three little Birds by Bob Marley or You've Got A Friend in Me by Bobby McFerrin. Pick the song you like and enjoy!
Time for one of our favourite activities, a GoNoodle dance. Anibal has made a video to teach the dance steps for  Banana, Banana Meatball. Do you remember the moves? Take a look.
That was great. Are you ready to dance along with Anibal? Let's go!!
We are all having a lot of different feelings because we have to stay at home all the time and we can't go to see our friends and other family members. Sometimes we feel happy, other times we might feel sad. We might  feel angry or maybe  even afraid  and or worried. It's ok to have a lot of different feelings.
Here's a poem called Joe the Emoji that reminds us about all the different feelings we can have.

Preparing for work

As part of our Junior Cycle curriculum we all took part in  a class enterprise to make and sell handmade Christmas cards. We choose designs we liked and got to work using Christmas paper punches, ink stampers, colours, card stock, glitter cut-outs and glue. It was a lot of work but we all took turns in different roles. Using the paper punches to make different Christmas shapes was probably everyone's favourite job. Once the cards were made, we counted and sorted them into packs and made a poster to let everyone know about our cards.  

Here we are hard at work on our class production line


We had great fun in cookery class this week!
They made individual pizza's, choosing the toppings and of course the best part was eating them.
We also made Spaghetti Bolognese and there was great concentration shown serving up a portion.

Music

On our camping trip with Baboro, we had great fun singing Twinkle Twinkle  as we were gazing into the night time stars overhead. When we got back to the classroom, we decided to have a go at playing it on our online piano. We did really well, take a look. 

Drama

P.E class with Karen
We had our first class birthday this month in Senior 4. We'd all like to wish Conor a very, very Happy Birthday! Thank you for the delicious cake and the fun birthday party.

ART

Now that Autumn is in full swing, we  have been getting out and about investigating the changes that the season brings. We have used the season's colourful display to create some beautiful artwork. Take a look.


​This week in the kitchen we cooked delicious blueberry muffins. If you'd like to try the recipe at home and  have some cooking fun, the recipe is available in your Google drive cookery  folder. Take a look at our work in the kitchen.


October is nearly here already so we are starting to get into the Halloween spirit with one of our favourite seasonal books, The Little Old lady who wasn't afraid of anything.  We are working on telling the story on the whiteboard and on our worksheets. Click to the right to listen to the story. 
Picture
Personal Care
During our first few weeks back at school, we have been paying a lot of attention to our personal care especially to how we wash and clean our hands. Sometimes we use soap and water and other times we use sanitising hand gel. We created some class books to help us remember the materials we need to use and the steps we need to follow.

Art and Craft
We had great fun making our very own soap. We picked our own colour for the soap along with some essential oils to give it a nice smell. Everyone liked  orange and lemon. We also added some honey and dried lavender from the garden. It turned out great, take a look.
​​