Book Week 2012

St Catherine's was a very exciting place to be last week as we celebrated World Book week. We discussed our favourite books, enjoyed bilingual readings, designed book covers and book marks and we dressed up as our favourite characters on Friday! We had such fun and we will continue to read and talk about our favourite books in room 2. Many thanks to all the parents, teachers and of course the super children for making this week so special and exciting! Well done everybody!

The Sam Maguire comes to St Catherine's!!!

Monday was such an exciting day for us all in St. Catherines, a day that the children will always remember I'm sure! We are huge supporters of the Dublin team and we were delighted that Eamonn Fennell and Michael Daragh McCauley called out to us to show us the Sam Maguire cup. We were able to ask the two players questions and we made sure they realised how delighted we are to have Sam back where he belongs! :)

Maths Stations

Every morning, we now have maths stations. Our theme for this week was 2-D shapes. Four children from Mr McGrath's class are helping us to learn more about 2- D shapes. At one station, we have a feely bag and we are blindfolded. We pick out a shape and have to describe it and then draw it on the chart. We are really quick at doing this so then we play shape bingo!

The second station involves us looking at 2-D shapes and learning about the larger shapes we can make from 2- D shapes. We then arrange the shapes to make a picture and when we have our shapes positioned the way we want them, we trace around them. You would be amazed at the pictures we have created!

At our third station, we use elastic bands to create 2- D shapes on geoboards. The children start off by making basic 2- D shapes and then they go on to make more difficult pictures. We have had some great boats, houses and robots so far!

The final station is the maths trail. There are a number of clues on classroom doors around the school which the children have been trying to guess the answers too. Nobody has gotten every answer right but there is still one day to go and then we will do the trail together on Friday to find the right answers together.

This has been a great way of revisiting a topic we have already learned about. We will be revisiting a different topic every week!

Symmetry

Second class have been learning about symmetry in maths. The children had great fun trying to draw mirror images of the pictures shown. Some of these pictures were quite tricky to complete but we took our time and the end results were fantastic! These photographs show our practice run but you can see the finished products on the door of Room 2.

Gaeilge

Tá muid abalta abairtí a chur le chéile anois!! Ansin, scríobh muid na habairtí sin in ár gcóipleabhair. An-chliste ar fad!!

P.E.

We have been practising our kicking skills for the last two weeks. This week, we had fun shooting penalties. David and Tee-Jay were excellent goalkeepers and the children found it tough trying to get a shot past them.

Working Together

We read the story 'Oh Boris!' during the week, a story about a bear starting a new school. We began to think about how someone would feel if they joined our class. We all agreed that they would need to understand the school values to make sure they would know what is expected of them. Mr McGrath's 5th and 6th class came down to our room to help us understand each of the values and they also helped us to design cool posters. We had such fun working with the older children and we have agreed to work together again very soon! Hopefully next time, I will be able to get more photos but I think this one photo sums up the patience and kindness shown by 5th and 6th class towards the children in Room 2. Thank you to Mr McGrath and all the boys and girls in Room 13- we really understand the school values now!