February 2024
Science:
We are learning about acids and alkalis on the ph scale. We used red and blue litmus paper to identify which liquids were acids and alkalis.
GAA Coaching:
We are enjoying our football and hurling coaching sessions with Emer.
Run around Europe:
We began our Run around Europe activity, as part of the Active Flag programme. Italy is our chosen country. We have a lot of kilometres to run!
Maths:
We are learning about the relationship between fractions, decimals and percentages.
Birdwatch Ireland Garden Bird Survey:
We had a very interesting and informative workshop with Pat Foley from Geashill Tidy Towns’ Committee, showing us how to make a variety of bird feeders with a variety of birdseed and peanut butter. The pupils made a vast array of feeders which we are using in our school playground.
Safer Internet Day:
We designed posters to give advice to others on how to stay safe online.
St. Brigid’s Day
We made St. Brigid’s crosses on the 1st of February, St. Brigid’s feast day.
January:
Our New Wormery:
We have installed a wormery on our schoolgrounds. The green school committee helped Craig Benton, a composting expert, with the installation. We then had a workshop with Craig teaching us all about worms and how to look after them. The teachers after school, learned about how to care for the worms and the wormery. Offaly County Council have funded this wonderful facility.
Tag Rugby:
We are really enjoying our tag rugby sessions with John.
Maths:
We have been learning about length, area and perimeter. We found the area and perimeter of regular shapes in the classroom and playgound. We designed gardens using different materials to represent the perimeter.
PE:
We really enjoyed our yoga sessions over the past few weeks.
Science:
We investigated and recorded how different surfaces affect friction between objects. We measured how far a toy car travelled on the floor after running down a ramp. We used a variety of different surfaces on the ramp and ranked the surfaces according to the highest level to the lowest level of friction.
We learned all about seahorses on an online workshop with the Seahorse Man in the Meet the Scientist series.
Art:
We used soft pastels to represent New Year fireworks across the night sky.
May 2023
STEM Workshop:
We really enjoyed a STEM workshop about engineering. We built towers and made catapults.
Art:
We made summer-themed chalk pastel pictures.
We painted beautiful cherry blossom trees!
Bike Week:
Lots of children came to school on their bicycles during Bike Week!
PE:
We have been using our map skills to find different landmarks on the school grounds. We have enjoyed rounders too!
Drama:
We are having great fun during our Drama lessons.
April 2023
National Spring Clean:
We took part in the National Spring Clean. We did not find a lot of rubbish this year, which is very good for the village!
School Garden
We have prepared our school garden for planting on Friday, April 28th. We really enjoyed weeding and digging the soil. We hope to plant some vegetables and flowers. We have also entered Tullamore Credit Union School Garden competition.
Active School’s Week:
We really enjoyed our week of extra activities!
Green Schools-Marine Week
We really enjoyed the daily webinars on different aspects of marine life. We asked questions and researched different sea creatures.
March 2023
During Seachtain na Gaeilge we organised a Lá Glas. We held a céilí in each classroom and pupils of every age came together to dance. We practised Shoe the Donkey, Military Two Step, Walls of Limerick, Siege of Ennis and lots more for weeks. It was great fun showing off our dancing skills. We sang together too!
We really enjoyed Wold Book Day! We dressed up as characters from our favourite books. We visited 1st and 2nd Classes. We read for them and they read for us.
February 2023
Mental Health Week
Every day this week we have taken part in extra activities for good mental health. These included yoga, walks, reading, music and art activities.
Athletics
Over the past few weeks we have been working on our fundamental movement skills with Liam. We have focused on different elements of Athletics each week.
Science
In Science we have been learning about acids and alkalis. Using litmus paper, we tested a range of household liquids and sorted them into acids and alkalis. There were some interesting results.
Credit Union Quiz
Well done to Clodagh and both of our quiz teams who came first in each of their competitions. It was a very exciting evening! The Senior team go forward to the All-Ireland final in a few weeks.
January 2023
Grandparents’ Day
We celebrated Grandparents’ Day as part of Catholic Schools’ Week. We had great fun playing cards. Some grandparents sang, recited poems and showed us their crafts. We performed for them too; on our tin whistles, doing sign language and singing.
Gymnastics
In PE we have been working on our gymnastic skills. We enjoy doing yoga too!
Tag Rugby
We are having great fun at tag rugby!
Athbhliain faoi mhaise daoibh go léir!
We are looking forward to a wonderful year of learning, fun and friendship!
December 2022
We have been preparing for Christmas in our classroom.
In Art we have made Christmas decorations using pipe cleaners and pom poms. We made paper angels too. We also printed wrapping paper and gift tags.
Geashill Christmas Tree and Crib:
We attended the Geashill Christmas tree lighting and crib unveiling ceremony on Friday, December 9th. We sang Jingle Bells and Silent Night in English, Irish and Ukrainian.
We had a presentation by Barry and Donna about Moanvane Wind Farm. They showed us how a wind turbine works. Some children demonstrated how pedal power can create power. We also learned about safety on a building site.
Author Visit:
We had a visit by the author Olive Mooney, who read for us from her books in ‘The Chronicles of Cadaver College’ series.
Science:
We are learning about the effects of friction on objects as they move. We designed and carried out an experiment to find out the surface which causes the most friction.
November 2022:
Our Team Hope shoeboxes were collected recently. Well done to everyone who participated in this very worthy cause.
Winter has featured in many of our Art projects this month. We used charcoal and paint to create wintry scenes.
October:
We celebrated Hallowe’en in school on Friday, the 28th of October. Some very strange and scary characters came to school that day!
We went on a Hallowe’en themed scavenger hunt through the Glebe Walk.
September 2022
Welcome back everyone!
We drew Joyful Jellyfish using soft pastels. We focused on the composition of our pictures and we wanted them to show perspective.
June:
Art:
Here are our Mexican Huichol Yarn inspired creations.
We completed ‘Pride of Place’ drawings of Geashill which are now displayed in the telephone box in the centre of the village.
We are really enjoying our class novel ‘Street Child’. We engaged in role play involving the main characters!
May:
School Tour:
We really enjoyed our Let’s Go school tour in TUS Athlone. The activities included karting, zorbing, climbing, archery, lacrosse, relay running, air mountain and slides!
In Science we measured forces using a Newton meter. We investigated which surface created the most friction and slowed down the moving objects. It was very important to make it a fair test.
English:
We have learned about similes, metaphors and personification this month. We looked at famous poems and then wrote our own!
We are really enjoying reading the novel “Street Child” by Berlie Doherty. It is about Jim Jarvis and his quest for survival on the dangerous streets of London in the 1860s. He eventually meets up with Dr. Barnardo who gives him somewhere to call home.
Art:
We used the outdoor classroom in the Glebe Walk to see the different layers in the woodland environment. We sketched what we could see!
Amber Flag:
On May 19th we took part in a Wellbeing Walk as part of the Amber Flag initiative and fundraising for Pieta House. We also did some yoga and meditation.
Geography:
We have completed and presented projects about Italy. We made jamboards in pairs and shared them with our class.
Active School Week:
The favourite week of the school year for some, we tried out lots of new activities and we really enjoyed the experience!
April:
Science:
We have been learning all about bridges. We folded paper and card in different ways to make it stronger. We experimented with single span, double span and arched bridges to see which could take the heaviest load.
We also investigated which material is the best conductor of heat. Using butter and warm water we recorded how long it took for the butter to melt.
PE:
We had fun finding lots of different items in our Scavenger Hunt. We ran as fast as we could around the school grounds!
Our Easter chicks!
We visited Lady Muc to say ‘Hello’.
For Mindfulness Monday, part of the Amber Flag initiative, we did some drawings outside.
Geography:
We are working on drawing plans of differeent spaces: our desks, classroom, school, village and homes. We designed a family home on our chromebooks and shared them with the class.
January:
Catholic Schools’ Week
On Monday, January 24th we decorated our ‘Gratitude Jars’ and listed as many things that we are grateful for, as we could.
On Wednesday, January 26th we celebrated Grandparents’ Day as part of Catholic Schools’ Week. We recorded messages for our grandparents, wrote about them and drew pictures of them. We love our grandparents!
Tag Rugby:
We have really enjoyed our Tag Rugby sessions every Tuesday.
Art:
We painted snowy scenes during the cold days in January.
We have learned about owls in Science so we drew Barn Owls, Long eared Owls and Short eared Owls with soft pastels.
We did pencil drawings of our footwear too!
Science:
We made lots of different electrical circuits, using batteries, bulbs, buzzers, motors, switches and variable resistors. We made parallel and series circuits too.
Dance & Drama
We have enjoyed doing different hiphop dances and drama games this January.
Athbhliain faoi mhaise daoibh go léir!
December:
We really enjoyed our video call with Ms. Loquet’s Class in Jaux. This was part of the twinning project between Geashill/Ballinagar/Ballycommon and Jaux in France. We sang Christmas songs for each other. We did some sign language too. We chatted and admired each other’s Christmas jumpers!
Art:
We made Christmas cards, wrapping paper, 3-D Christmas trees and decorations!
PE:
We enjoyed running games!
English:
We wrote persuasive letters, poems and rhymes.
Maths:
November:
Art
We painted pictures inspired by Ted Harrison. We learned about the Inuit people in History too.
We represented the Northern Lights with chalk pastels.
Continuing the theme of winter, we drew penguins with charcoal and painted a frosty background.
SPHE:
We are learning all about staying safe online. We loved sharing all our favourite online activities.
Science:
October
For National Tree Day we recorded the trees on our schoolgrounds by mapping them, taking leaf and bark rubbings and photographing them.
We wrote Autumn poems too!
In PE we focused on Athletics.
Student Council Elections:
Fourth Class were very enthusiastic about the opportunity to represent their classmates on the school’s Student Council. They wrote persuasive speeches explaining their vision for the year ahead. A secret ballot was held and two representative were chosen.
Art:
We made pencil drawings of the Old School.
We framed the drawings with leaf prints in autumn colours.
Some Hallowe’en art!
History:
We learned about toys in the past. We interviewed our older relatives about their favourite toys. We also designed new toys we would like to play with.
We dressed up on Friday, October 22nd for Hallowe’en. We went on a Hallowe’en Scavenger Hunt in the Glebe Walk.
September 2021
We are all settled back and ready for a great year!
In Science we learned about the lungs and made 3-D paper models.
We experimented with magnets and we magnetised other metal objects like nails and paper clips.
Ag imirt cluichí as Gaeilge.
In PE we had great fun playing different games like Dodgeball and Cups.
Geography:
We took a walk around the village and photographed our favourite buildings and places to visit in Geashill. We drew plans of the village too.
History:
We learned about ‘Tiddalick the Frog’, an Aboriginal legend and we studied the Sumerians too.
English:
We used our dictionaries to look up tricky words.
We wrote beautifully!
We used our chromebooks to present our poems and stories. We made jamboards too.
Maths:
We represented data on pictograms, block graphs, bar charts, bar-line graphs and pie charts.
Visual Arts:
We were very creative this month- self portraits, Uluru in oil pastels and Georgia O’Keeffe-inspired flowers in chalk pastels.
We painted pictures inspired by Ted Harrison. We learned about the Inuit people in History too.
We represented the Northern Lights with chalk pastels.
Continuing the theme of winter, we drew penguins with charcoal and painted a frosty background.
SPHE:
We are learning all about staying safe online. We loved sharing all our favourite online activities.
Science:
In Maths we are working on the topic, Money.
