First Class

online learning games

Here is the link to our which contains all of our First Class Padlet which contains learning games. We update it regularly so that it is relevant to what the children are learning in class.
padlet.com/mariabarr2/first-class-padlet-2024-2025-ltmp4vaix36i0upl

Happy Valentines from Miss Kearney's First Class

We had a busy Valentine's Day in school making special art for our loved ones! We drew 'Love Bugs' using oil pastels and crayons. We also made Valentine's Day cards and said a special poem at assembly about love and friendship.

CELEBRATING 100 DAYS OF SCHOOL!

On the 100th Day of First Class, Miss Kearney's class had a great day celebrating all things 100! We made Rice Krispie Buns and decorated them with hundreds and thousands, took a photo in the shape of 100, played Races to 100 boardgames, and made 100 day crowns! We also predicted where 100 steps would take us from the classroom, designed 100 shape monsters, and played 'would you rather' 100 edition which had some very controversial results!!

WHAT WE'VE GOTTEN UP TO RECENTLY IN FIRST CLASS

We have been busy in Miss Kearney's First Class recently! We learnt all about Saint Brigid and we visited the special artworks in our school dedicated to Saint Brigid (the boys and girls decided to make crosses together using their hands showing great teamwork and creation!). In Maths, we've been looking at bigger numbers, counting to 100, and estimating/predicting using lots of fun materials to help us. We have also been busy preparing to present for Junior Assembly this week and we are very excited to tell all the boys and girls about what we've been learning about!

100 days of school

In Maths we have been learning about numbers up to 100 so we decided to count 100 days in 1st Class. On our 100th day of 1st Class we celebrated by doing some 100th day themed writing and colouring activities, playing 'Would you Rather?' based on 100, making 100th day crowns and 100th day bookmarks, predicting where 100 steps would take us (and then actually measuring where we ended up ... some people ended up outside!!!), we played a crack the code game in the halla using multiples of 10 and we made some Rice Krispie buns too! We had a great day! You can see some of our activities from our 100th day in the slideshow below.

PICKER PALS ART COMPETITION

For our entry for the Picker Pals art competition we decided to work on the theme 'We are all Picker Pals Around Here' and we created a whole class display just inside the front door of the school so everyone could see it on their way in and out of school. We used recycled materials to create our display and we created litter picking machines, new Picker Pals characters as well as Craig the Crab and Pickerupolis Island (both from the Picker Pals stories). We are very proud of our work and of ourselves. In the slideshow below you can see our final display as well as some of the individual pieces created for it.

Friends 😊

When we were presenting at assembly we recited the poem 'The Best of Friends' as part of our presentation. We are all kind, caring, thoughtful and helpful friends in 1st Class and we have lots of fun together as you can see from the selection of photos below from our time so far in 1st Class.

SCIENCE

In Science we have been learning about forces. We experimented with ramps and timed our toy cars going down ramps of different heights. We found out that the higher we made our ramps, the faster our cars moved. We also explored friction and covered our ramps in different materials to investigate if that would impact the speed of our toy cars. We timed our cars coming down ramps of different materials and found out that our cars travelled fastest on tinfoil ramps and slowest on cloth ramps. We also visited the playground to explore pushing and pulling forces there!

GRANDPARENTS' DAY

For Grandparents' Day we made special cards for our grandparents and special people and then we went to the post office, bought our stamps and posted our cards. We know our grandparents and special people will feel very special when they receive their cards.

fidget board

We really enjoyed exploring the new fidget board made for our school by the Men's Shed when it visited our classroom for the day. We are so lucky to have such a wonderful resource in our school.

December

CHRISTMAS SHOW

All our 1st Class children from Ms. Barr's, Ms. Kearney's and Ms. Murphy's did a wonderful job performing their Christmas show and we are incredibly proud of them. Well done 1st Class!

ART

We had great fun sewing and decorating our Christmas stockings and we also enjoyed making our personalised Christmas trees.

Picker Pals

Our Picker Pals board is beginning to fill up with reports on all the wonderful litter picking adventures that have been happening!

PJ AND MOVIE DAY

We had a great day decorating (and eating!) buns, drinking hot chocolate and watching Christmas movies.

MATHS

In Maths we have been exploring the topics of capacity and place value.

Festive Art

We have been busy making lots of festive art in Rang 1. Look at our warm, wooly hats and our festive personalised Christmas trees! Merry Christmas from Ms Kearney's Rang 1!

Hot chocolate & Movie day

To get in the festive spirit, Ms Kearney's Rang 1 had a really fun afternoon watching 'The Muppet Christmas Carol' wearing cosy pyjamas and having cuddly teddy bears! We also had hot chocolate & marshmallows and decorated cupcakes with chocolate & sprinkles!

Our toy show

In Miss Kearney's 1st Class, we had a lovely afternoon presenting our toys for our class toyshow. We showed each other a toy that we play with currently and also a toy that we played with when we were younger! We had great fun comparing our toys & playing with them during playtime.

Toy Show

We did a great job presenting our toys to our classmates and answering their questions about them. We had lots of fun playing with them afterwards too!

History Interviews

We carried out wonderful interviews with older people we know about homes and toys in the past. It was really interesting to hear about each other's interviews and the different stories people were told during their interviews.

November

Gymnastics

We really enjoyed our block of gymnastics!

Drama

In Drama we used the 'flashback' technique to explore why the Three Little Pigs left home to build their own houses. There was great teamwork, fantastic creativity and lots of fun on display!

Zippy's Friends

In Zippy's Friends we have been exploring the themes of communication and friendship.

Autumn Walking challenge certificates

We were thrilled to receive our gold certificates after walking 25km in the Autumn Walking Challenge.

IRISH

We have been doing great work on our Irish conversational skills with our partners. You will find some samples of our conversation work below if you would like to try them at home.

Homes

We learned about different types of houses and we went on a walk in the local area to see how many different types of homes we could find. We learned about homes in the past and discussed the similarities/differences between homes in the past and homes now. We completed fact files about our own homes, we interviewed older people we know about homes in the past and we created snow villages and also cityscapes after learning about the artist James Rizzi. We also created paper bag houses and linked this with our learning in Science by creating a town using our paper bag houses and driving our magnetic cars around our town stopping to visit our friends' houses along the way!

Learning about Houses today, houses in the past, and artist James Rizzi
In Ms. Kearney's first class, we have been learning about the different types of houses, comparing our own homes, and discovering what houses looked like long ago. We learnt about artist 'James Rizzi' & were inspired to create our own cityscapes! We are very proud of our colourful cityscapes!

Well done to Clíodhna for coming first in the Credit Union Art Competition!

Look at our extremely cute penguins! We designed the background using crepe paper and water. We then used black and white card to create our penguins. We added pom-poms and buttons to add more detail to them. We are so proud of how they turned out!

Well done to Seán for earning Mr Gibbons’ first Principal’s Award.

October

Best wishes to Mrs howard on her retirement

First class wrote all about what Mrs Howard could get up to on her retirement. We had great ideas for what Mrs Howard could do. She could spend time with her grandchildren, clean the house, and even visit the Mona Lisa! Thank you Mrs Howard for all of your hard work. We’ll miss you so much but we know you’ll come back to visit us!

Pumpkin patches

Our halloween cake

HALLOWEEN ARt

Leaf lanterns, masks and haunted houses made using the outline of our hands!

Happy Halloween from rang a haon

Thank you so much to our parents for helping us dress up for our spooky Halloween party! Ms Barr and Ciara even got on board with dressing up!

Wildlife

In our English reader we have been reading reports about different kinds of wildlife. One of the reports was about owls and we were so lucky that one of our classmates brought in a barn owl for us to see.

Four Seasons in one day

First class have been a story called Four Seasons in One Day. We did some beautiful art to represent this!

taking part in the walking challenge

Taking part in the October Walking Challenge. We went for a lovely walk down by the River Bride! We also went for walks around the Community Field and we were thrilled when we achieved the gold distance target of 25km!

SPACE WEEK

For Space Week we read Chris Hadfield's story 'The Darkest Dark', we watched videos made by Chris Hadfield when he was on the ISS, we learned about the planets through The Planets Song, we learned about Neil Armstrong and the first moon walk, we read the story 'Aliens Love Underpants' and we created our own aliens. We also learned how to draw a rocket through a directed drawing activity, we created pictures of ourselves as astronauts on a moon walk and at the end of the week we wrote reports about space. We had a great Space Week!

MAGNETS

In Science we have been learning about magnets. We tested a variety of objects to see if they were magnetic or not and then we explored our classroom to find items that were magnetic...

We checked if magnets could work through different materials and we completed mazes using magnets to guide our paperclips through the mazes. We created obstacle courses/mazes for our magnetic vehicles and used our magnets to repel the vehicles through the obstacle courses/mazes. We also created fishing games using string, magnets, laminated paper fish and paperclips!

september

lEARNING ORDINAL NUMBERS

In maths we have been learning about ordinal numbers. We made origami cats by listening to instructions that started with 'first, second, third, etc.'

Singing in the rain

In Ms Barr's class we learned all about the colours in the colour wheel. We made secondary and tertiary colours from the three primary colours- red, blue and yellow.

Schools in the past

In History we learned about schools in the past. We visited the old school bench in our school and then we took a trip across the road to visit the old school building. We visited the old staff room and we also visited Ms. Murphy's old classroom. We found out that when there was a fire drill in the old school the fire escape was the classroom window and so the children (and Ms. Murphy!) had to climb out the classroom window! When we returned to school we wrote wonderful reports about schools in the past.