Welcome to 2nd Class and Ms O' Hare's Webpage!
Pancake Tuesday
We went to the staff room this morning to make pancakes as a little mid-morning snack but the boys were hugely disappointed when they realised they had been tricked into making 'healthy' pancakes. However, to the boys surprise and after a lot of convincing and nutella spread they finally admitted that banana 'healthy' pancakes are actually DELICIOUS! Some of the boys even asked to bring the recipe home to make them again that evening!!!
Class trip to the Olympia
After reading 'Billionaire Boy' together in the run up to Christmas there was great excitement when it was announced that the stage version of the book was coming to Ireland to the Olympia Theatre. We knew it was a show that we couldn't miss. We set off on our adventure and took the 79a Dublin Bus into town which turned out to be a great adventure in itself as two of the boys had never been on a Dublin Bus before! We arrived at the theatre and tucked into our popcorn and chocolate while we sat back and enjoyed the show. After a quick walk through town we hopped back onto a bus and made it back to school just in time to enjoy a delivery of sausage rolls from Doran's food shop as a special treat for being such fantastic and polite boys during our trip to town. They made Ms. O' Hare, Ms. Murray and Ethel extremely proud and the boys are already looking forward to our next adventure!
Reading
The boys have been working extremely hard at their reading this term. We now have all of the boys reading their own stories to the class during 'author's chair' and at lunchtime they read storybooks from our school library to the rest of the class. We have also been reading novels together every day. The boys all have a copy of 'Fantastic Mr Fox' which we read together and they have quickly realised that they can all read books independently with a lot of the boys even reading David Walliams books at home every night by themselves before bed! They also love the special 15 minutes after lunch every day when they can sit back, relax and listen to the exciting adventures of Grandpa and Jack in 'Grandpa's Great Escape'. The boys have quickly become invested in the book and it is fantastic to see their love of books and reading growing every day!
Natural paintbrushes
For art this week the challenge for the boys was to create a painting using paintbrushes made from nature. We began by discussing what we might find outside that would be useful to make a paintbrush. Once the boys had decided what they would hope to find outside we went out into the garden to collect leaves, twigs and plenty of other interesting choices to create our paintbrushes. We went back to the classroom and the boys were given time to create their masterpieces. It definitely turned out to be far more challenging and than the boys had originally expected!!
Youth Club
Every Thursday we are lucky enough to be invited over to our local youth club for the boys to socialise together and use all of the fantastic facilities. Everybody has the opportunity to play board games, snooker, minecraft and nintendo games along with learning how to use laptops and experiment with the piano and the drums! It is definitely a huge hit and something that the boys look forward to every week.
Happy Halloween!
We had a brilliant day before we all split up for the midterm holidays. Everyone was so scary in their costumes and we decided to make our own treats for our Halloween party. We designed our own rice krispie buns recipe before heading up to the staffroom together to melt all of the chocolate and make the buns. The buns were delicious but I think licking the bowl and the wooden spoon was definitely the boys favourite part!!
Absorbent or Waterproof?
On October 8th, we wanted to explore whether certain materials are absorbent or waterproof so we decided to carry out an experiment. To begin the boys predicted whether a material such as plastic, sponge, metal or fabric would be waterproof or absorbent and then tested a sample of each material in water to observe whether it would 'soak up' the water or if the water would 'roll off'. Once we had our results the boys then made charts to represent our data so that we could teach the younger classes about materials that are absorbent and non-absorbent. The boys had great fun carrying out the experiment and are now ready to make umbrellas out of a waterproof material of their choice!
Rugby World Cup
On the week of October 3rd we were learning about the Rugby World Cup. We focused on Japan in geography and explored the culture of Japan, in P.E we played rugby and for music we listened to the Japanese national anthem and learned 'Ireland's Call'. As a midweek treat we watched Ireland play Scotland and cheered (very loudly) while we saw Ireland come away with a great win!
Yoga and Meditation to Promote the Importance of Mental Health
Here, in 2nd Class we take our mental health very seriously and do everything we can to look after our mental health! To help us to relax and take time out from our hard work we love doing yoga and meditation. For meditation we follow 'story meditation' in which common yoga poses are incorporated into stories such as 'The Wizard of Oz' and we even had a "Fortnite" themed meditation!
Making Maths a Little Bit More Fun!
Maths isn't always just working from a workbook. On the 1st of October the boys invented their own dice games in which they would take turns to roll the dice to create their own equations. The boys would then use their addition and subtraction skills to find the correct answer to their new creations!
A Special Dance Class
On Friday the 27th of September, we were lucky enough to be chosen to trial a dance class on behalf of the school. The dance class was held in the PE hall and we learned great dance moves to 'Old Town Road.' To finish, we had a dance off and a dance battle, the boys showed off their sick dance skills!!!
