Kris Krindle

Over the last few weeks we have been doing Kris Krindle in our class. We learned that Kris Krindle means Christ Child. We have been working hard to be more like Christ Children to each other during the month of December. We realised that if we only went out of our way to be nice to the person we had for Kris Krindle they would soon figure it out! Instead we have been trying really hard to compliment everyone in our class, to ask people to play with us in the playground and to help others in the classroom. 

Today we gave each other our gifts. We were all delighted with our presents! Many of us put real thought into our gifts and considered the likes and interests of  the person we were giving to. Some of us were quite surprised at who our Kris Krindle was!! 

Sewing stars continued!

Ms Travers was so impressed with how brilliant we were at sewing our snowmen that she decided we could be challenged to make Christmas trees. These Christmas trees were a little more difficult! 

First we had to sew buttons onto our trees. We learned how to backstitch to make sure that our buttons were nice and secure. Next we had to sew the ribbon onto the back of our decoration (what a pity it would be if we couldn't hang our beautiful creations on our tree this Christmas!!) Then we had to sew the two pieces of our tree together. We had to make sure we left enough space to add the stuffing though before we put in the last few stitches. 

Now we have Christmas trees and snowmen to hang on the tree in our classroom!

Nativity practice

Practices for our Nativity play as Gaeilge are going really well. Today the girls in Ms Travers group practised on the staging in Croi na Scoile. We got lots of compliments from people walking past! 

We are really looking forward to performing for our families on Monday the 21st of December. The girls in Ms Travers' group will be performing at 11.00 and the girls in Mrs Kerrigan's group will take to the stage at 11.30.  

Sewing Stars in 4th Class!

Today we sewed some lovely snowman decorations! It was really difficult at first but once we got the hang of it we were flying!! 

The Sam Maguire came to visit today!!

The girls in 4th class really enjoyed the Sam Maguire's visit today! 

Fractions with cuisenaire rods

Today in Maths we experimented with making fractions with cuisenaire rods. We were learning to show that each quarter in a fraction has to be equal. At first we found it really hard but once we realised that we only had to make each of the four quarters the same we had lots of fun making quarters in different ways!

Soon some of us discovered that, as long as we kept the same rods in each quarter, we could change the pattern around within each of the quarters and they would still be equal.

Then we recorded what we had learned in our copies.

Warning! You are entering a Norman Castle building site!!

Three of our groups started working on their Norman castles today! The other three groups are looking forward to starting their castles tomorrow. We are very lucky that we have a lovely transition year student from the secondary school working with our class this week. She was a big help to all of us today! 

We are really looking forward to her teaching us Geography on Thursday. We have enjoyed teaching her some Irish (she is from Seville in Spain) and we are hoping she is going to teach us some Spanish on Friday!! 

Nativity chalk pictures (with a little inspiration from Vincent Van Gogh!)

Christmas is starting early in 4th Class! This week for our art lesson we created beautiful chalk pictures of the Nativity, taking inspiration from Van Gogh's 'Starry Night'. We found the stars quite hard to replicate, and it took a lot of practice on scrap paper to get them just right, but we were proud of the pictures we produced.