Welcome to Ms. Longe’s class!
Welcome to Ms Longe’s class! We have 24 wonderful students in total in our classroom this year comprising of both First and Second class children. We are so looking forward to a wonderful academic year ahead and cannot wait for all the exciting learning journeys we shall be taking. We shall keep you all updated on what we get up to this year on this page.
June
After a restful week off at the start of June, we got very active during our Active Week which kicked off on the 10 th of June. On Monday, we had Zumba in the yard dancing and moving to music. We finished off the day with a delicious ice-cream.
On Tuesday we took part in the school’s Sports Day. We moved from station to station taking part in novelty races, Uni Hoc, Basketball, rounders and much more. Wednesday, we arrived to school earlier than normal and hopped on the bus to Kilkenny. We went to The Watershed where we swam and enjoyed water slides, team games and lots of various types of bouncy castles.
On Thursday we swapped teachers and enjoyed a P.E. lesson with Ms Cawley. On Friday we had Boxercise in the hall.
We also completed our entries for the Tullow Show as we drew pictures for the theme Me and My Best Friend. We also completed our handwriting entries.
It was time to open our time capsule and review our worksheets that we completed at the beginning of the year. We were able to see just how much we have grown and changed over the past ten months. Tests were completed and we held our end of year and First communion party too. We said goodbye to our friends for the summer and look very much forward to seeing everyone again in September.
May
May or Bealtine was a particularly busy month for the class as the children in 2nd class were getting ready to celebrate their communion. In art, we made crosses and chalices for the display in the church and we celebrated the sacrament on the 25 th May in Clonegal Church.
We had a wonderful day.
In history we learnt about the celebration of Bealtine. We also marked being part of the European union. May 9 th was Europe Day and we got to learn about and dress up in the colours of a selected EU country. We enjoyed a lovely walk to the castle and back again to school.
On the 22 nd our parents and grandparents came into class and we held a ukulele concert for them, playing tunes on our ukulele that we learnt throughout the year with Paul from Music Generation. It was so much fun.
In science we examined bridges, their designs and their different functions. We created and tests different designs in class too using coins, papers, cubes and coins.
April
April has kept us busy as we planted our seeds from our Let’s Grow kit, an initiative to show children how to grow their own food. We have planted cress seeds, French beans, salad leaves, peas and sunflowers thus far. We are taking great care of them and hope to make something nice to eat from them when they have grown fully.
This will ink in perfectly with our literacy writing genre at the moment, procedural writing.
In science we learnt about Magnets, attraction, repulsion and had fun playing with them making the magnets attract and repel from one another. We explored our class to see what items were and were not magnetic using our magnets.
We learnt about solar eclipses as we here in Carlow experienced one on the 8th April. We created our interpretation of a solar eclipse using chalk pastels in Art.
We commenced learning to play tag rugby with a coach from Tullow Rugby Club, John.
As gaeilge, we went ag siopadóireacht and to an gruagaire. We role played taking turns to be the grauagire and the siopadoir which was such fun.
March
We celebrated World Book Day early in March, which we marked by coming to school dressed up as our favourite character from our favourite book. We also brought the book into class to share with our friends and read our favourite passage from this book.
As the new season of Spring was abound, as part of our Science lessons we sowed some sunflower seeds and watched them grow each day as they sat on our classroom window ledges. We learnt to name all the parts of a sunflower and devised an experiment to investigate what factors are needed for sunflowers to grow. We monitored their growth carefully and recorded this. We also concluded that the plants without sunlight or food were unable to grow. And that in order for sunflowers to grow correctly, they need three things-food, sun light and water.
Second class celebrated their First Confession on Tuesday 12 th March at 7 pm in the Church and they had a wonderful evening. We marked their special occasion with a party the next day.
Bhí Lá glas againn ar an Aoine, an cúigiú lá déag de mhí an Mhárta. Bhí gach duine ghléasta suas i néadaí glas, na múinteoirí chomh maith!. Bhí céílí again sa halla agus chanamar amhrán Pompeii as gaeilge don scoil. Dhéanamar cartaí do Lá Fhéíle Pádraig and bhí an spraoi againn ag déanamh iad.
We had much work to do completing assessments on all our learning for this term and we celebrated on Friday 22 nd by having another class party and leaving school at 12 pm for our well-deserved Easter break from school.
February
February was welcomed with open arms, much like the welcome we gave our
Grandparents who came to visit the class on Grandparents day. On this special day our Grandparents came to the school and we celebrated mass together in the Church. We then invited them to our classroom where we showed them what we have been learning about in school. Before they left, we gave them a card made with love and recited a special poem that we wrote for them.
In Science we had much fun actively experimenting and learning about electricity, using balloons to see the effects of static electricity. From flying hair
to pieces of paper to straws zooming down lines of string, we saw just how static electricity works. As it is the season of Spring we examined how plants
drink water, using a celery stick and some food dye. We also planted some
sunflowers seeds and look forward to seeing how they grow over the coming
weeks.
In Maths we have learned about measurement and using metre sticks, lengths
of string, scales, cubes and bags of sugar. We got to measure the length and
weight of many different items in the class. In Literacy we have had much fun
writing narrative stories coming up with super creative storylines as we
collaborated with our friends. Rinnemar an rud céanna as Gaeilge freisin i
scríbhnoireacht Gaeilge, ag scríobh an scéal An Cochaillín Dearg.
Second class pupils have been preparing for their First Penance which they
shall celebrate on the evening of Tuesday 12 th March. We have been learning
lines and rehearsing for our Drama to demonstrate the story of Zacchaeus.
January
And so, our wonderful class book which we sent off for publishing at the end of 2023 finally arrived. Our very own copies arrived our first week back to school. The excitement in our class was palpable as we could not wait to show our parents at home our superb book. For our class Talk About we got to read our own story to the class on our Author’s Chair.
In P.E. we have had great fun learning new GAA skills with our GAA coach, Kevin. His session each Tuesday have been so much fun.
In SESE we have been learning about the Pacific Islands and focusing on Easter Island which we wrote our class report on.
We have learnt all about electricity and the ways in which it is generated. We have also learnt some safety guidance we should follow to keep safe from the danger it poses. We have also had such fun doing experiments creating static electricity and examining the effects of such.
In Music we have learnt folk songs from the Pacific Islands and for next month we are learning Praise to St Brigid on our tin whistles.
We have learnt how to take care of our bodies and our organs e.g. our heart and how a healthy diet contributes to this.
Next week we look forward to ushering in Springtime and marking the feast of St Brigid. We also look forward to having our Grandparents visit our
school and share some of our learning with them.
December
December saw the fruition of all our hard work in Music and Drama as we performed our wonderful musical, entitled The Bee Musical, for our parents, grandparents, siblings and extended family. We took to the stage on the evening of the 5 th December and again on Thursday 7 th with much nervous excitement. However, there was no need for any feelings of nervousness as we pulled off exhilarating performances on both occasions. And we made
such special memories with our friends which we shall carry with us forever.
We enjoyed a hot chocolate day on December 15 th , when we wore our Christmas jumpers to school. The Christmas jumper day was held in order to raise funds for our school. And the hot chocolate was a special treat organised by Ms Longe to acknowledge all our hard work this half term.
We also held a Christmas card competition too which Molly won in our class.
Congratulations Molly!
We sent off our book, If I had three wishes…, to the publishers to be printed. We look forward to receiving our very own copies next month.
In P.E. we have been learning about dance and collaboratively we created a dance with our peers in groups. We performed this dance to the tune of our Christmas song, Feliz Navidad.
In science we travelled to space to learn about the eight planets in our solar system. Then went further afield to the moon. We learnt about those who designed rockets and famous astronauts who have explored the moon like Neil Armstrong. We designed our very own rockets using papers and straws and held a competition to see whose rocket could travel the furthest.
We also compared three different rockets which used different mixtures to launch them in the school yard. Our favourite rocket was the Coke Cola and Mentos powered rocket which had the greatest thrust. The second best was the Bread Soda and Vinegar powered one. And finally, the Alka seltzer and Water rocket performed least favourably.
Our December was not without a visit from the local Gardaí who spent time with us explaining the vital work they do to keep our community safe. They explained how we can also do small things to keep ourselves safe every day. We climbed into the Gardaí vans and some of our class even got handcuffed and arrested! It was a marvellous day.
We are looking forward to Santa’s visit next week and spending some time at home with our family after our busy half term in school.
November
During November we had such a special and novel time preparing for our musical production, The Bee Musical, which we shall perform next month. We have chosen bees asthe topic for our musical as it coincides with COP 28 and when our world leaders are discussing how we can be more responsible environmentally. Taking care of bees is one small thing we can all do right away in our own community.
We have been learning about taking care of our teeth in Science and we conducted an experiment on how to dissolve an egg! This was fascinating.
In Literacy we have been busy authors for our collaborative class book, entitled If I had three wishes…. . We have worked as writers, editors and illustrators during our writing sessions. And our final stories and illustrations shall be sent to the printers for publishing next month.
In Music we have been learning Oíche Chiúin on the tin whistle and the lyrics to the song too.
In History we have looked at the life of Florence Nightingale and how her heroic contributions to nursing have helped prevent many patients from getting sick.
October
October has almost come to an end and looking back on this month we have been so busy and accomplished a lot! We explored report and explanation writing in Literacy. We shared our learning in class by writing an explanation on a topic of our choice and later shared it at Talk About time.
We enjoyed lots of Maths activities during Maths Week, playing games and solving problems with our peers.
We took part in the Credit Union Art competition too and are very hopeful that we shall have a winner from our classroom.
In Science, we created a volcano in the classroom whose eruption was
very impressive. We also took time and wrote spells to make our teacher disappear. We used our imaginations and instructional language to do so. They didn’t work!
For Oíche Shamhna, we dressed up as all sorted of ghouls and goblins. We enjoyed a fabulous spooky trip to Huntington Castle where we had a guided tour. We had a class party and enjoyed time with our friends.
We are ready for our little rest before the fun starts once again in November where we have a very exciting writing project to look forward to.
September
We could not believe that the summer had flown past so quickly and we were once again back with all our friends in Second class in St Brigid’s! In our classroom this year, we have some new but familiar faces from First class, so we have even more people in our class to learn and play with.
September has been a month of beginnings. We have begun swimming once again in Graiguecullen and we have commenced learning the ukulele again.
In class we are joined by Mrs Austin and Ms Corcoran for Early Intervention which has also started.
Individually, each of us are creating a Time Capsule which we shall gather and seal. It shall be opened in June 2024. We are so excited for the adventures ahead and look forward to what October holds for us.
