Oh the beautiful cherry blossoms!

We painted these cherry blossoms recently. We got a chance to practise our colour mixing by mixing a little white paint to red paint to make pink. We discovered that we could make various shades of pink depending on the amount of white paint we added to the red. If we wanted a very dark shade of pink then we only added a little white paint and if we wanted a light shade of pink we just kept adding more white paint and mixing it with the red until we got a shade we liked.

Lever boys and girls

____________________________________________________________________
We have been learning about push and pull forces. We had lots of fun deciding if it was a push or a pull force which caused something to move. We even had a giant tug of war game and we all had to pull with all our might!! Aftrerwards for our art lesson we made cool lever boys and girls. We can move their arms and head up and down by pushing the lever upwards and pulling it downwards.Cool or what!!!

Planting Beans

Yesterday we planted some Broad Beans, Runner Beans and Dwarf Beans (we remembered the famous Birdseye add on TV and when our beans have grown we will finally be able to eat them and then we can see if we will turn into runners, dwarfs or become broad as a result of eating them!!

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

____________________________________________________________________________________

We have been learning a lot about the lifecycle of the butterfly and as a perfect accompanyment to this we read Eric Carle's fabulous book 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar'(we also watched the video of this). We loved the story and even though the caterpillar was a very greedy little fellow we decided that he was a very likeable character nonetheless!! We also made a data chart of all the things the caterpillar ate on each day and then we finger painted our own very hungry little caterpillars.

Five very hungry caterpillars have arrived in Room 3

Our caterpillars arrived on Tuesday 18th May. We were so excited to see them. They were really tiny when they arrived but in just over a week they have grown so much already. They came in a special container with air holes at the top to enable the caterpillars to breathe. They are feeding on special food which was prepared in the lab so we don't have to feed them ourselves. We have given each caterpillar a name;
Wingbing, Jackstar, Casper, Buttercup and Honey. We hope that they will have a very happy stay with us in Room 3!! We will keep you posted regularly to let you know how our five friends are doing!

Our Potato plants are coming along nicely!!

Have a look at how much our potato plants have grown since we planted them a few weeks ago.

A puppet comes to visit us!!

Recently a lady called Judith came to visit us and she very kindly brought along her puppet Musheen. We all LOVED the puppet and had great fun watching him dance around the halla and he came over to each of us to say a special hello to us. Thanks a million Judith and Musheen and do call to see us again!!

Water Rocket launch

___________________________________________________________________

This morning teacher took us over to the pitch to try out the new water rocket. We weren't sure what to expect but we were truly AMAZED at the results!! First we filled about a quarter of our plastic bottle with water (air occupied the rest of the space!) and then we attached the bottle to the pump using a special valve. Then we began to pump more and more air into the bottle (it was hard work!!) causing huge pressure to build up. Eventually the pressure built up so much that it popped the valve out and the rocket flew up into the air. We had to run far and wide to catch the rocket and couldn't believe the distance it travelled. We really enjoyed this activity.

___________________________________________________________________

Intensive Literacy Lessons

____________________________________________________________________

We commenced a special Intensive Literacy programme a few weeks ago and we are really enjoying it. The programme involves a team of teachers doing different Literacy activities with groups within the classroom each day for half an hour. At the end of the lesson each day the children will have completed five different Literacy activities (reading a familiar book, reading a new book, letter identification and word families using magnetic letters, writing activities and sentence construction and various literacy activities on the interactive Whiteboard. A big thank you to Miss Linnane, Mrs Daly and Miss Joyce from all of us!!
____________________________________________________________________