Gone Fishing!!!

We got a cool new fishing game for play time. We all take turns playing with it. The person who catches the most fish wins. It's a bit tricky as the fish are constantly moving as we're trying to catch them but we are getting very good at it!!!!

• More Play time photos

Shape

We have been learning a lot about 2-D shapes this week in Maths. We looked closely at rectangles, squares, circles and triangles. After we learned how to identify each shape we got busy counting the number of sides and corners of each shape. We discovered that a circle has no corners. Afterwards we made some shape pictures.

Beautiful Robins

• Have a look at the beautiful robins we painted. To make the robin's distinctinctive red breast we tore up pieces of crepe paper and rolled them into a ball and then we stuck them on. It took some time but the end result was super. Here is the poem we are learning about the robin;
  
  The Robin
  Little Robin Redbreast,
  Hungry as could be,
  Flew around the garden,
  Crying 'Tree,tree,tree.
  Have you any water?
  Can you spare some crumbs?
  For a hungry Robin,
  Until Springtime comes.

Preparing for Christmas

• We are busy preparing for Christmas in Room 3. As well as getting ready for Santa's visit and counting down the days to Christmas on our Christmas calendar we are also preparing in a very special way for the birth of Jesus. This morning we all worked together and put up our crib on the altar in our classroom. It looks great! We also put up our Advent Wreath and Advent Calendar. We will be praying for a special intention for each day of Avent and we will try to be extra good, kind and helpful to everyone we meet as a special birthday present to Jesus.
  
  
• Advent Wreath

The candles are lit to symbolise the light of God coming into the world through the birth of Christ. On the first, second and fourth Sundays of Advent a purple candle is lit (each sunday the candle from the previous sunday is re-lit). The colour purple as used during the period of lent, reminds us to prepare a welcome for Jesus during the Advent season. On the third Sunday of Advent a pink candle is lit. Pink is the colour of joy to remind us that we should be ready to welcome Jesus at Christmas. On christmas Eve the white candle is lit to celebrate the birth of Christ - The light of the World.

Book Fair Week 1st - 5th December 2008

This week is Book Fair week. Our class will get a chance to visit the halla this week to take a look at and purchase some of the wonderful books on display there. To celebrate the Book Fair Pete Mollineaux came to visit us today. Pete is a poet and author. He told us some great stories and we got plenty of opportunities to use our imaginations. We acted out the story 'Going on a Bear Hunt' which was terrific fun. Pete even sang a song to us about going to the Zoo and we all joined in the chorus (teachers and all!!). Well done Pete and please come back to see us soon!

Junior Achievement

Mike is a volunteer with Junior Achievement and he has been visiting our class every Friday for the past couple of weeks and has been telling us all about the world of business. So far we have learned about Robbie's trip to the farm. We discovered how individuals make choices and we drew pictures of our favourite animals. Mike told us a story about Angie and her plans to earn money by making and selling crafts at a carnival. Another great story was called 'Charlie Plants a Garden'. In this story the characters work together to plant a community garden. We learned about the importance of working together and discovered rewards other than money. Afterwards we got to 'plant' our own garden using assorted plant stickers. It was great fun. We can't wait for Mike to come back next week!!

Magic Bubble Show

As part of science week our class went to see an amazing bubble show yesterday in the Teachers' Centre. We walked there and back so we got plenty of exercise and we had yet another opportunity to use our safety rules for crossing the road. We got a chance to look at giant bubbles and we observed that all the colours of the rainbow (red,orange,yellow,green,blue,indigo and violet) are visible at first in the bubble. When all the colours disappear the bubble is about to burst. We had great fun predicting when the bubble was going to burst. Interestingly the bubble always formed the shape of a sphere. The man used different shaped hoops and they were different sizes also. If the hoop was very big then the bubble was very big also. We also saw a bubble filled with smoke, a bubble within another bubble and several bubbles joined together to make a caterpillar. To make the bubble mixture you will need a fairly large container filled with water. Add 1% glycerine and 4% washing up liquid. Mums and Dads will need to give a hand making the mixture!

Witches' Walk

Today the children in room 3 looked a little different! We all dressed up for Halloween (even teacher!) and had great fun altogether. We had Spidermen, a police man, skeletons, pirates, princesses, vampires and loads of friendly witches. The walk was great and lots of people came out to see us and gave us friendly waves and cheered us along. When we returned we had a big Halloween party. Aaliyah got the ring in the brack. We hope that everyone enjoys their Halloween break and we will be back at school again on Monday, 3rd of November.

Baboró- Pequenos Paraisos (Tiny Paradises)

We recently went to see Tiny Paradises in the Town Hall Theatre as part of the Baboró International Arts Festival for children. It was absolutely amazing and is simply a stunning dance production.We were all enthralled for the duration of the show. Well done to the dance company from Madrid!

The smarties experiment

We have been learning a lot about colour lately. As well as sorting and classifying objects according to the criteria of colour we decided to do some investigating. We worked in pairs and were given a transparent cup of water, a lollipop stick and a variety of different coloured smarties. First we had to sort and classify the smarties into sets according to colour. Then we wondered what would happen if we dropped a red smartie into the plastic cup? We made our predictions and then the exciting stuff began at last!! As we stirred the smarties around with the lollipop sticks we began to notice that the colour of the water changed to red. This was interesting stuff so we emptied out our cups , filled them with fresh water and began again, this time using a different coloured smartie (we were all glad that the blue smarties were back!!.) After repeating this with lots of different colours we wondered what would happen if we mixed two different coloured smarties together? Would it make one colour? Would our knowledge of mixing different paint colours together help us?? By George it did!! We also mixed different coloured paints together. Here's what we discovered.

• red+yellow=orange
• yellow+blue=green
• blue+red=purle
• white+black=grey
• white+red=pink
• black+blue=navy
• orange+black=brown

Here is our poem for mixing colours:

Mixing colour

Mix red and blue for purple,

Mix red and white for pink,

Mix red and black and yellow,

And you'll get brown, I think.

Why don't you mix some colours?

Mix two or three or four,

You might just mix a colour

No one's ever mixed before.

Halloween Maths

As we have been talking a lot about Halloween lately we decided to make a picture graph of our favourite Halloween things. Witches turned out to be the most popular with 11 children picking them. Surprisingly ghosts and skeletons were the least popular. Have a look to see the rest!

Halloween Art

We are busy at the moment getting ready for Halloween. So far we have made bats, pumpkins and dancing skeletons. We have learned two songs about witches. We accompany the songs with our instruments and it is great fun. Once again this year Bertha the witch has come to stay with us for a while before Halloween but she is very friendly and we don't mind having her around! We are looking forward to the Witches' walk next Friday when the whole school will dress up for Halloween (even the teachers!!) and we will go on a long walk to help raise money for our school. Here is our poem about skeletons:

My skeleton, my bony, bony skeleton,

Keeps me standing tall.

Without my bony skeleton,

All my parts would fall!

We love to play!!

We love play time and making things. Have a look at some of our constructions.