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Ms Galavan's 6th class used the Engineer's Week classroom pack to try and design their own dream playground using paper.

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Junior infants had a great time constructing their dream gardens out of wooden blocks! Some great imagination at play.

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Junior infants collected swabs from around their classroom and then watched the bacteria multiplying over a number of weeks. It was very interesting to see which surfaces held the most bacteria.

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Junior infants planted loads of different seeds this year, including cress, pansy, forget-me-nots and shamrocks. They have had a great time looking at all the different seeds growing.

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Judges felt that the children had a better understanding of the steps involved in the Scientific Method due to the workshops provided from Ms. Grier-Gavin. However, they also felt that at times, conclusions were drawn based on research conducted rather than the experiments the children had carried out themselves. This will provide us with our focus for next year's workshops.

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6th Class were chatting to scientists online as part of the @imascientist programme this morning! The scientists’ backgrounds ranged from microbiology to technology! @ScienceWeek @DPSM_Activities 👩🏻‍🔬🔬🧫🧪

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6th Class were chatting to scientists online as part of the @imascientist programme this morning! The scientists’ backgrounds ranged from microbiology to technology! @ScienceWeek @DPSM_Activities 👩🏻‍🔬🔬🧫🧪 https://t.co/eFhQBNBw9v

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6th Class were chatting to scientists online as part of the @imascientist programme this morning! The scientists’ backgrounds ranged from microbiology to technology! @ScienceWeek @DPSM_Activities 👩🏻‍🔬🔬🧫🧪 https://t.co/eFhQBNBw9v

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6th Class were chatting to scientists online as part of the @imascientist programme this morning! The scientists’ backgrounds ranged from microbiology to technology! @ScienceWeek @DPSM_Activities 👩🏻‍🔬🔬🧫🧪 https://t.co/eFhQBNBw9v

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6th Class were chatting to scientists online as part of the @imascientist programme this morning! The scientists’ backgrounds ranged from microbiology to technology! @ScienceWeek @DPSM_Activities 👩🏻‍🔬🔬🧫🧪

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Today Miss. Gilligan’s First Class participated in an interactive storytelling session all about space for Science Week! Thanks so much to Epic Museum for the excellent resource. 🚀👩🏻‍🚀💫#EPICMuseum

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Today Miss. Gilligan’s First Class participated in an interactive storytelling session all about space for Science Week! Thanks so much to Epic Museum for the excellent resource. 🚀👩🏻‍🚀💫#EPICMuseum https://t.co/3Lx5RSuB00

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Today Miss. Gilligan’s First Class participated in an interactive storytelling session all about space for Science Week! Thanks so much to Epic Museum for the excellent resource. 🚀👩🏻‍🚀💫#EPICMuseum https://t.co/3Lx5RSuB00

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Today Miss. Gilligan’s First Class participated in an interactive storytelling session all about space for Science Week! Thanks so much to Epic Museum for the excellent resource. 🚀👩🏻‍🚀💫#EPICMuseum https://t.co/3Lx5RSuB00

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Today Miss. Gilligan’s First Class participated in an interactive storytelling session all about space for Science Week! Thanks so much to Epic Museum for the excellent resource. 🚀👩🏻‍🚀💫#EPICMuseum

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During Science Week, we encouraged our families to take part in some science experiments at home. They sent in their pictures which you can view below.

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OLOW Scientist at Home Experiments 2021 | olow

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OLOW Scientist at Home 2021 | PrimaryScience

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As part of science week, our junior and senior Scientist at Home winners were announced today! Well done to everyone for sending in photos and videos of your experiments! @ScienceWeek 🧬🔭🧪

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As part of science week, our junior and senior Scientist at Home winners were announced today! Well done to everyone for sending in photos and videos of your experiments! @ScienceWeek 🧬🔭🧪 https://t.co/iPWGT67ZaL

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As part of science week, our junior and senior Scientist at Home winners were announced today! Well done to everyone for sending in photos and videos of your experiments! @ScienceWeek 🧬🔭🧪 https://t.co/iPWGT67ZaL

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As part of science week, our junior and senior Scientist at Home winners were announced today! Well done to everyone for sending in photos and videos of your experiments! @ScienceWeek 🧬🔭🧪 https://t.co/iPWGT67ZaL

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As part of science week, our junior and senior Scientist at Home winners were announced today! Well done to everyone for sending in photos and videos of your experiments! @ScienceWeek 🧬🔭🧪

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Yesterday we held our annual OLOW Science Fair. Well done to 4th, 5th and 6th classes on your excellent science investigations! Here are our class winners and overall winner! Thank you to our judges Ms. Gibson and Ms. Burns. @DPSM_Activities 👩🏻‍🔬🧫🧪🏆

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Yesterday we held our annual OLOW Science Fair. Well done to 4th, 5th and 6th classes on your excellent science investigations! Here are our class winners and overall winner! Thank you to our judges Ms. Gibson and Ms. Burns. @DPSM_Activities 👩🏻‍🔬🧫🧪🏆 https://t.co/nuFKkMAJ2t

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Yesterday we held our annual OLOW Science Fair. Well done to 4th, 5th and 6th classes on your excellent science investigations! Here are our class winners and overall winner! Thank you to our judges Ms. Gibson and Ms. Burns. @DPSM_Activities 👩🏻‍🔬🧫🧪🏆 https://t.co/nuFKkMAJ2t

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Yesterday we held our annual OLOW Science Fair. Well done to 4th, 5th and 6th classes on your excellent science investigations! Here are our class winners and overall winner! Thank you to our judges Ms. Gibson and Ms. Burns. @DPSM_Activities 👩🏻‍🔬🧫🧪🏆 https://t.co/nuFKkMAJ2t

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Yesterday we held our annual OLOW Science Fair. Well done to 4th, 5th and 6th classes on your excellent science investigations! Here are our class winners and overall winner! Thank you to our judges Ms. Gibson and Ms. Burns. @DPSM_Activities 👩🏻‍🔬🧫🧪🏆

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Escape the Room -Adding and Subtracting Fractions

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Escape the Room -Adding and Subtracting Fractions

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6th class took part in a digital Escape the Room challenge to revise how to add and subtract fractions. They had to add and subtract fractions with unlike denominators, mixed numbers, word problems and other puzzles. The answers were inputted onto a Google Form until they came up with the final clue answer. There were two differentiated versions.

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6th class spent some time using the IZAK-9 cubes and following the lessons. Some of the tasks included learning about square and cubic numbers, characteristics of shapes and factors and multiples.

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Before the Christmas holidays, 6th class took part in a STEM challenge to design a candy cane maze for a marble to be able to move through without getting stuck. Once they had their mazes sorted, they timed themselves to see which maze was the quickest to get through.

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6th class were learning about Ancient Rome and at the end of the unit, they were tasked with trying to create a functioning aqueduct that could carry water into three different vessels without leaking. They first had to draw out their design and then come back to the original plan and tweak it if they found it didn't work.

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6th class spent a lot of time on fractions this year and learning about simple ratio. They were able to see the relationship between fractions and dividing something into a ratio. They played some board games to reinforce their learning.

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6th class learned about the parts of The Heart and how blood is pumped through the heart and then around the body. They also learned how to draw a simplified diagram of the heart.

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4th-6th class took part in our Science Fair in December. The children worked in small groups with the focus on following the scientific method. Thanks to our judges Ms Burns and Ms Gibson. We announced the winners at a zoom assembly.

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Ms. Grier-Gavin's sixth class were learning about ways to separate various materials. They carried out this interesting chromatography investigation. The pupils were able to separate mixtures of colours that are present in markers by using a moving solvent or liquid on filter paper. They observed capillary action and discovered that the solubility of a pigment in water affects the distance the pigment travels along the filter paper. Then, they used their chromatography filter paper to make spooky Hallowe'en moon pictures!

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This week in 5th class, we did the marshmallow challenge! We had 20 minutes to build the tallest tower we could with 20 pieces of spaghetti and one metre of sellotape- it was much harder than it looked!

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START Primary Schools 'Meet the Scientist'

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START Primary Schools 'Meet the Scientist'

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Ms. Grier-Gavin's 6th class took part in the START Primary Schools 'Meet the Scientist' webinar series. Over the course of this programme, sixth class pupils were able to find out what it is like to work in the fields of health psychology, neuroscience, data science, medicine and engineering. They were able to pose any questions they had to several science professionals, such as a health psychologist, neuroscientist, data scientist, doctor and engineer! Sixth class pupils learned lots about the important role science plays in shaping our future.

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During autumn 1st class learned about the different parts of plants and explored what plants need to grow. They discussed why some plants do not grow very well during the winter but start to grow again in the spring - they need a suitable temperature. The children planted daffodil bulbs in the school garden. They firstly prepared the soil by adding compost and then used gardening tools to plant daffodil bulbs.  The children look forward to seeing the daffodils grow in the spring.

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1st class Engineering - designing and constructing Leprechaun Traps

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1st class Engineering - designing and constructing Leprechaun Traps

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1st class had great fun designing and constructing their own leprechaun traps after listening to the story 'How to Catch a Leprechaun'. The children discussed how they would build the traps, selected suitable materials and constructed their leprechaun traps. Each group presented their design to the class, explaining why they had chosen the different materials and demonstrating how the traps worked.

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4th class learned about resistance and forces. We explored air resistance by creating a parachute and dropping it from different heights. We discussed water resistance and how it it is used in hydro-electricity.

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Ms Hurley's Senior Infants designing a boat that will stay afloat

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Ms Hurley's Senior Infants doing experiments to see if a range of objects sink or float.

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We loved exploring 2D shapes in 4th class! We used match sticks, lollipop sticks and our whiteboard to complete some shape challenges.

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We had a great time in 4th class exploring what we could do in a minute. We had challenges such as what group could make the tallest house of cards or the longest line of unifix cubes. It showed us just how quick a minute can pass!

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We were set a challenge in 4th class to create the longest paper chain we could from a single sheet of paper. We came up with some great strategies such as cutting really thin strips of paper. I think they make wonderful Christmas decorations!

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4th class has a ball exploring magnets and investigating what materials were magnetic and what materials weren’t. We loved using the iron filings to discover what a magnetic field looked like. We even made our own board games using the properties of magnets!

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As part of science week, 4th class took part in a challenge to build the tallest tower. Every group was given a selection of materials to use and worked as a team to make a plan before building their towers. As you can see from our results, there are some great future engineers in rang 4!

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2nd class enjoyed making their own rockets. It was important that the rocket would be streamline and be able to move fast through the air. Each group had a competition to see who’s rocket went the furthest!

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2nd class made their own structures out of jelly sweets and cocktail sticks. They had to carefully plan their structure to make sure it was supported and would not fall. Each group tried to make the tallest structure

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2nd class loved measuring one another with different items such as copy books, teddy bears, lollipop sticks !

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2nd class had a great time planning, designing and making their own bridges. These bridges were made out of spaghetti and marshmallows!

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Living things - Plants and Animals - 'Birdwatch', Senior Infants Ms. Martin

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Living things - Plants and Animals - 'Birdwatch', Senior Infants Ms. Martin

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We had a special visit from Pat Hunt of 'Heritage Ireland', who knows lots about birds and plants. He helped us to recognise many birds that fly around our school and to recognise the different songs they each make. Pat played specific birds songs that attracted lots of local species to us. All of the boys and girls got to take a closer look at birds such as robins, Blue-tits, Great-tits and chaffinches and to hear them all singing! He also taught us facts about some of the plants growing in the school.

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Living Things - Under the Sea - Senior Infants Ms. Martin

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Living Things - Under the Sea - Senior Infants Ms. Martin

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Senior Infants learned about lots of different animals that live under the sea. Aswell as learning about starfish, octopus, blue whales and sharks, Senior Infants also learned some very interesting things - for example: a crabs skeleton is on the outside and a starfish can grow an arm back if something happens it! Senior Infants really enjoyed pretending to be different sea creatures and playing with the water and sand!

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Living things - The Zoo - Senior Infants Ms. Martin

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Living things - The Zoo - Senior Infants Ms. Martin

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Senior Infants spent time exploring and learning about different animals that live in the zoo. We discussed the people that work at the zoo and help take care of the animals including the zookeeper, the vet, and the different buildings and enlcosures at the zoo. The children took it in turns to play at the Zoo corner and to dress up as zookeepers and animals! They also built their own zoos to house lots of different animals!

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Maths in Our School– Maths Trail – Senior Infants Ms. Martin

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Maths in Our School– Maths Trail – Senior Infants Ms. Martin

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Senior Infants had great fun completing a Maths Trail created for them by their buddies in 4th class! They had to find objects that were various colours and different shapes around the school such as rectangles, triangles and circles. They also had to count different objects around the school yard!

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Senior Infants have been learning about interpreting Data and making Bar Charts. We decided to carry out some surveys in the classroom using bar charts such as, ' Do you prefer cats or dogs?' and ' What is your favourite food?' We had lots of fun seeing what were the most popular things by looking at the Bar charts we made!

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Engineering and Construction - Design a House for a Síoga - Senior Infants Ms. Martin

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Engineering and Construction - Design a House for a Síoga - Senior Infants Ms. Martin

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The children in Ms. Martin's class had to design a Fairy House for their síoga (fairy) to celebrate Seachtain na Gaeilge! Children drew their designs first, including features in their Fairy Houses that they thought their síoga would really like! The children then had to build their fairy homes using just matchsticks and marshmallows! It was a little tricky trying to join the pieces together and getting the houses to stand up but it was really great fun too!

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Engineering and Construction - Design a Broom to ride on! - Senior Infants Ms. Martin

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Engineering and Construction - Design a Broom to ride on! - Senior Infants Ms. Martin

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Ms. Martin's Senior Infants used blocks, Lego or other building tools to create a fun broom for a witch and her friends from the story book 'Room on the Broom' to ride on! The broom had to have a place for the witch and her friends to sit on! The children drew the design for their brooms before they began making them!

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Living Things -  Autumn Walk and 'Autumn Palettes' - Senior Infants Ms. Martin

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Living Things -  Autumn Walk and 'Autumn Palettes' - Senior Infants Ms. Martin

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Senior Infants have been learning about Autumn and the changes that happen in Autumn. We learned how some leaves change colour and fall to the ground, apples and berries can be picked in autumn and many animals prepare for winter during this time. We went on an autumn walk in the school garden and gathered as many colours as we could find to create our own 'Autumn Palettes' from leaves and other signs of Autumn in our school garden.

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Materials and Change – Making Monster's Slime! - Senior Infants Ms. Martin

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Materials and Change – Making Monster's Slime! - Senior Infants Ms. Martin

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We were reading 'The Gruffalo' book, so we decided to make our own monster's slime that might come out of the Gruffalo's mouth! We needed lots of shaving foam, PVA glue, food colouring, glitter and a few drops of Optrex to make our slime! We all got turns at stirring the mixture. When Ms. Martin added the Optrex the mixture started to bind and turn into slime! When the Optrex was added to the shaving foam and glue the slime felt really bouncy, like stretchy elastic. We noticed that the slime kept changing shape depending on how we squeezed it. The slime also changed it's shape to fit into any container we put it in!

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Engineering and Construction - Designing and Making - Senior Infants Ms. Martin

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Engineering and Construction - Designing and Making - Senior Infants Ms. Martin

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Senior Infants take part in a range of and making activities based on a range of themes. They plan their constructions together in their groups and work together to build their designs. They have built towers, buildings, homes, roads and villages and much more!

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Recycled Christmas Tree Decorations - Whole School Activity

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Recycled Christmas Tree Decorations - Whole School Activity

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All of the children from the school were invited to make a Christmas Tree Decoration using only recycled materials! There were lots of entries displaying a wide range of design skills, construction techniques and imagination! We decorated our school Christmas tree with all of the decorations!

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Through investigation we learned that gravity is everywhere. It is a force that make sure see stay grounded. When we made out helicopters we observed how the size of the blades effects its flight. We also investigated the difference between dropping it clockwise and anti-clockwise.

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In 1st Class, we had so much fun measuring each-other and objects in our classroom using our finger spans, strides and lollipop sticks!

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We had so much fun working with magnets in First class! For most of us it was our first time playing with magnets. We talked about what materials we thought were magnet and non-magnetic. We also learnt that earth has its own magnetic field. Magnets have a north and South Pole. Like poles repel and opposite poles attract!

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First class were learning about the signs of spring. We were lucky to have a bright spring day so we went on a nature trail and see what signs of spring we could spot in our locality! Rang a hAon had very good eyesight and could even spot some lambs out in the fields past the school yard.

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Design and Make Activities
Making a Space Suit for an Astronaut.
First class designed a spacesuit suitable for an astronaut. We talked about the important features of a spacesuit. Pupils knew they had to design a suit that kept the heat in and provided an air supply to the astronaut. We worked with a variety of material to create inventive suits !👩‍🚀

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Engineering Week Workshop: Visit from Aecon 

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Engineering Week Workshop: Visit from Aecon 

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3rd class were lucky enough to have a visit from 2 extremely capable and informative female engineers from Aecon, an Engineering company. They spoke to us about their favourite parts of their jobs and took time to answer all of our pressing questions about engineering and how that affects the world we live in.

We studied some pictures and then they challenged us to build the tallest pasta structure!

We had to use only pasta and playdough, we decided to accept the challenge.
We worked dilligently in our groups in order to try to complete a solid structure that would stand alone.

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First class investigated the effects melting has on a variety of material. The three materials we tested were butter, chocolate, and an apple slice. We predicted what materials would melt in the hot water and what items would remain solid. To make sure it was a fair experiment we timed how long the material sat in the water and made sure each container contained the same amount of water. The butter and chocolate melted, they converted from a solid into a liquid. This inspired to cook rice krispies buns as we got to see the benefits of materials being able to convert from a solid to a liquid.

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3rd Class recorded videos for their Junior Infant buddies of some fun science experiments. These included tornado in a bottle, fireworks in a glass, walking water, jumping frogs - static electricity and the floating egg experiment. The students explained the steps to their buddies and carried it out for them. It was fun to teach our younger friends!

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3rd Class took part in some brilliant activities for Maths Week. We looked at measurements, creating a Hallowe'en Maths trail for our Junior Infant buddies, exploring lines, angles and 2D shapes with chalk in the school yard and solved problems each day. It was a very enjoyable week and we learned loads!

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3rd Class loved this year's Science Week activities and especially the egg drop experiment. The students used recycled materials and planned how to keep their egg safe. It was so exciting to test them and see if they had broken or not!

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3rd Class greatly enjoyed designing and building catapults to launch their candy into the bucket. The students used lollipop sticks and elastic bands to create their catapults. Catapults were tried and adjustments made before trying them out in front of the class.

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As part of Showcase Thursday during Science Week, Ms Galavan's 6th class shared some fun and 'magic' Science experiments with their buddies in Ms Gilligan's 1st class. Some experiments included 'The Dancing Marker Man', 'Wriggly Worms', 'Rainbow Skittles' and 'Marshmallow Cannon'

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Materials and Change - Skittles Experiment (3rd class)

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Materials and Change - Skittles Experiment (3rd class)

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We tried the skittles experiment where we spooned warm water over an arranged pattern of skittles. Each group had a different coloured arrangement. It was interesting to watch the colours spread to the centre of the white plate. We noticed that the sugar coating on each skittle eventually dissolved in the warm water leaving our skittles white! Some pupils remarked that it looked like a rainbow colour wheel!

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Activity 3rd class - Build the Tallest Tower

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Activity 3rd class - Build the Tallest Tower

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In 3rd class as part of Engineering Week we embarked on a challenge to create the tallest tower possible using sticks and pegs.

We discussed what structure our towers should take and what way the base should be. It was discovered that a strong, sturdy foundation was best.
Here is our result!

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The Tallest Tower from the Bright Spark table

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Caring for the Environment - Climate and Nature Summit

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Caring for the Environment - Climate and Nature Summit

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From November 1st -5th, COP26 took place in Glasgow. 6th class took part in some activities in the Climate and Nature Summit that ran alongside COP26, including learning the effects of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (trapping heat) and actions that can be taken to take more carbon dioxide out of the air e.g. planting trees, using renewable energy sources.

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For Tricky Thursday, our classes were given the task of trying to break some codes. They could come up with their own codes or else follow ones such as Braille, Morse, Binary etc.

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4th-6th classes took part in the Minecraft programme 'Ireland's Future is Mine' in collaboration with Dreamspace and RTÉ. They learned how to create different worlds, including their dream home, their own desert island and a Mars Rover!

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For Halloween and Maths Week, 6th class had to design a bone bridge that could hold at least 75 unifix cubes. They drew out their plan and then went about building, using lollipop sticks, cotton buds, pegs and pipe cleaners!

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Each class took part in some problem-solving activities each day of Maths Week. Some problems involved breaking codes, emojis etc.

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3rd-6th class took part in an Ireland Rocks times tables competition for Maths Week. Here are the top three most valuable players in each class.

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6th class learned about static electricity and how atoms work. They took part in experiments to separate pepper from salt, bend water, make cheerios swing and wriggly worms move off paper.

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For Maths week, the classes designed a face for a pumpkin to include some 2-D shapes. The winners then had their designs drawn onto their very own pumpkin!

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Ms Hurley's Senior Infants enjoying work on their Maths Trail

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Rang a Sé took part in a Coding Ireland 'Code Along Live' workshop in September where they learned how to code in Scratch to make their character walk, run, jump and fly!