First and Second Class News
We have had so much fun in the snow. We went on a winter wonderland walk and looked for our signs of Winter. We were able to find all the signs of Winter on our list. We put out food for the birds and enjoyed watching the birds eating. We also wrote our names in the frost with our feet.
We have been very busy.We made Christmas trees, Santas, Christmas stockings for our fireplace and we also sent home Christmas cards.We had super fun in Science learning about frost, fog, ice, freezing and melting.
In English and Gaeilge we have been very busy learning all our Christmas words.
We have had great fun talking about Baby Jesus and the very important day that is ever so close now. Also our indoor soccer league is up and runnning. Keep an eye out to see how it is going.
We would like to wish everyone a very Happy Christmas and a peaceful New Year.
We are having great fun in our classroom. We have been busy in Maths and are learning all about tens and units. We are getting very good at them now. We are learning all our Halloween words in both English and Gaeilge.
In Art we are turning our room into a very scary classroom. We have made bats, pumpkins, witches and ghosts, and we made up very scary stories.
In History we learned all about the origins of Halloween and read all about Jack - O' - Lantern.
We are really enjoying the Food Dudes programmes. We are eating lots and lots of fruit and veg and being rewarded with cool prizes.
Welcome back everyone. I hope you all had a great summer break! I am sure you are all ready for a year of good fun and hard work!
A big welcome to our new first class, I am sure it will not be long until you all settle into your new classroom. We will shortly be setting up a Gaelic league for first and second class so you will all have to start practising your drills at home! We will also be getting out and about looking for our signs of Autumn!
We have lots of fun things planned for this coming term - so watch this space!
We have all been so busy this last term we don’t know where to start with our news! But we feel the celebration of First Holy Communion was so wonderful we should start there.
Congratulations to the First Holy Communion class who had their special day in May. You all looked like little angels and we hope you enjoyed your day and all the preparation! You all did your jobs perfectly and we could see on your little faces how happy you all were to be receiving the Body of Christ for the very first time! A special thank you to all those who helped make this day so special for second class – Fr. Brilley for the lovely mass, Mairead and the choir for the lovely music and singing, Lucy Brady for the beautiful flowers on everyone’s seats and last but not least the mammies, daddies and all those who helped out with the celebrations after – thank you all so much. Oh, and well done to the Communion Class again, who took part in the Corpus Christi procession the week after their Holy Communion. The boys did a fantastic job waving their flags and the girls looked lovely throwing lots of beautiful rose petals as they walked.
We had great fun with weight and capacity in maths, playing with water and getting to use weighing scales and the many exciting experiments we did during science were quiet amazing! It was like being at a Keith Barry magic show!
We all managed to finish our readers and got lots of extra reading done, enjoying the many books in our little class library! We even got to act out some stories from our readers and library books so became really good actors and actresses.
By the end of term, our class was full of colour from the beautiful artwork and flowers we created during art class. In fact, when the lovely sunshine came through our windows, our artwork really brought the room to life!
Our Sports Day turned out to be a hectic day, full of energy and enthusiasm! Well done to everyone involved!
BOOKLISTS 2010-2011
FIRST CLASS:
ENGLISH:
Spellbound 1
Onwords and Upwords 1
Write Here Book C
Here Comes Buster
Buster’s First Book of Facts
The Bouncing Castle
Penny’s First Book of Facts
IRISH:
Bun go Barr 1
MATHS:
Mathemagic 1
Maths Shadow Book 1
HISTORY:
History Quest 1
GEOGRAPHY:
Geography Quest 1
SCIENCE:
Science Quest 1
RELIGION:
Alive O3’ Workbook
COPIES: 88 paged lined copies x 10
88 paged squared copies x 2
SECOND CLASS:
ENGLISH: Spellbound 2
Write Here Book D
Treasury B
Hitch up your roots and walk
Jill’s New Rollerblades
Buster’s Second Book of Facts
Penny’s Second Book of Facts
IRISH: Bun go Barr 2
Ceartlitriu 2 (rang a do)
MATHS: Mathemagic 2
Maths Shadow Book 2
HISTORY: History Quest 2
GEOGRAPHY: Geography Quest 2
SCIENCE: Science Quest 2
RELIGION: My First Holy Communion and Penance.
COPIES: 88 paged lined copies x 10
88 paged squared copies x 2
Mr. Keena’s class have been busy bees since their return in January.
We have been having great fun with fractions – Mr. Keena tried to trick us a few times by offering us half of his chocolate bar but his piece was always bigger so we were able to tell him that if it was divided in half, the two pieces would be EXACTLY the same size! We know our fractions Mr Keena so you can't trick us!
We entered the recent Write a Poem Competition. We all had great fun composing our own lovely poems. We also are busy reading our library books and giving the class a synopsis of on our book.
We worked hard on the pitch and in the gym to prepare for our challenge match against Baylin N.S and thankfully, this hard work paid off. Both the girl’s team and the boy’s team had great wins.
In Irish, we have been learning about all the different TV programmes as gaeilge, e.g. Clár spóirt, cartún etc and also all the different kinds of shops, e.g. siopa iasc and siopa bróg.
For science, we decided to make our own boats out of plasticine. We then checked in the basins of water to see if they’d float or sink!
For history, we concentrated on school long ago. We sent home questionnaires and interviews to our grannies and granddads about school long ago. This was very interesting and a little scarey – we do not think that we would have liked to walk to school in our bare feet, or used the toilets they had back then – shrubs and bushes!!
Art, as always, was very exciting. We made fabulous colourful rainbows, St Patrick’s Day men, love hearts for Valentine’s day and Mother’s day cards.
Second class are busy preparing for confession and communion and remembering that lent is a very special time of year, where we can get even closer to Jesus.
Happy Easter to everyone.
Everyone in 1st and 2nd class are very busy preparing their classroom for Christmas! Again this year we made our fireplace in the classroom and decorated it with Santas , snowmen, Christmas stockings and wreaths. We are doing Kris Kindle in the classroom. Each child is buying a present for €2 or €3. Presents are left beside the fireplace until Tuesday, the day we get our holidays!
In Irish we have been busy learning all our Christmas words. Each child made an A4 display of all our Christmas words.
In Religion we have been learning about the Birth of Jesus. We now know that Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year, not for presents but for celebrating Jesus’ birthday. We will all wish Jesus a happy birthday on Christmas morning and we will remember that:
Christmas isn’t Christmas
Til it happens in your heart
Somewhere deep inside you
Is where Christmas Starts
So give your heart to Jesus
I’ll tell you when you do
It will be Christmas,
really Christmas for you.
I would like to say a big well done to all the children in the school for putting on such a fantastic Christmas concert.
I would also like to say a huge thank you to all the parents who helped out in any way with the Christmas concert. It was greatly appreciated.
Hope everyone enjoys their summer holidays! See you all in September!
Congratulations to the First Holy Communion class who had their special day in June. You all looked like little angels and we hope you enjoyed your day and all the preparation! Always remember to try your best to be caring, kind, loving and respectful.
First of all, well done to all who made their First Confession last month and did all their jobs very well! It was a lovely, simple, peaceful service which helped the children to become even closer to Jesus as they prepare for their First Holy Communion.
First Holy Communion will take place on the 7th June and we wish you all well on this very special day. We hope it will be a memory you will always cherish.
We have all been very busy in class since the start of this new term. In Irish, we have been learning how to talk about football matches ‘ás Gaeilge’. For example, we know ‘cluiche’ is game, ‘cartá buí’ is yellow card and ‘cartá dearg’ is red card (we hope not to see too many of those)! We know that ‘foireann’ is team, ‘cúl’ is goal and ‘pointe’ is point (we hope to see lots of those in our upcoming tournaments) and that ‘cic saor’ is free kick.
In English we have been writing our own stories using random words! This has proved very interesting and in most cases, extremely funny!
May is always a busy month as far as art is concerned. Not only are we busy doing our Communion art but we are also busy doing art in honour of Our Lady. This is one of the two months we remember Mary, the mother of Jesus. We prepared a nice May Altar in honour of her and talked about her in our Religion classes.
Everyone in first and second class were delighted to hear the news that Lara Ellen, Miss Keena’s new baby, arrived into the world safe and sound on 23 April 2009. She is a beautiful little baby and we all hope she will come and visit us very soon.
We have been very busy bees this term in school.
We have just started our ‘Stay Safe’ programme. This involves lots of thinking and discussion and, of course, group work which is good fun. More importantly, we need to learn about such things as the dangers of talking to strangers etc.
Speaking of safety, we did a fabulous project on ‘Safety on the Farm’. We talked about all the different ways of staying safe on the farm and then we drew pictures of how to stay safe and put them up on our notice board. A lot of accidents can happen on the farm so it was a very worthwhile project!uj
We have all been talking about Lent and Ash Wednesday. We remember that Jesus spent 40 days and nights in the desert, talking and listening to God. Lent is a time when we can get to know Jesus better. It is a time when we can take a break from our busy life to be closer to God. Here is a little poem we are learning:
Turn away, turn away from too-busy-ness.
Be quiet, be still and pray.
Turn towards God-in-the wilderness.
Turn, turn, day by day.
We have all made our Lenten Promises. Some of us are giving up sweets or cutting down on playing our playstations and nintendos! Some of us are helping out more at home, or saying an extra prayer at night. All these little things will help us to feel closer to God.
We are busy practising for the INTO handwriting competition! All our entries have to be in by Friday,
27 February! We hope we have some winners.
Happy 70th birthday to one of our most loyal supporters, Bam Bam! Bam Bam is granddad to quiet a few children here in Ardnagrath and is well known and loved by all!! He is a great man for getting involved in all we do here at school; especially supporting our football teams. During a match, if you are not sure of the score, Bam Bam is the man to ask! He also helped us out with the history of the area which you will find under the history section of this website. So once again, Happy Birthday to you Bam Bam and many, many, happy returns!
First and second class are busy preparing for Christmas.
We have some lovely pieces of artwork displayed in our room. We have reindeers and angels hanging from the ceiling and a lovely display of an open fire with our Christmas stockings hanging all around it. It looks cosy and so very Christmassy! We even made some very cool looking snowmen out of potatoes!
We are doing Kris Kindle again this year and have sent home Christmas cards which we made in school.
We are also busy learning! In Irish, we now know all our Christmas words and we are enjoying learning all about Advent and the story of Christmas in Religion.
We hope everyone has a lovely Christmas and don’t forget to say happy birthday to Jesus on Christmas day.
Our room is looking very scary indeed. We have made a large ghost and it is hanging up along with spiders, bats and mini ghosts!. We are all looking forward to our fancy dress party on Friday, 24th October.
We are busy learning our Halloween words as Gaeilge and in music, have composed our very own song, which is also about Halloween.
Our soccer league is into its final round. Scores are very close at the moment!
We have made a display for all those who have died belonging to us. May they all rest in peace. It is entitled our garden of remembrance and it looks beautiful.
We have been very busy after our long summer holidays:-
•We have made a beautiful autumn display showing how the leaves on the trees change colour in the autumn.
•We sketched self-portraits to display along side our class prayer.
•We talked about time and the times we love best! We then created our special time clock and they are also on display in our room.
•We have been busy training for the Cross Country Championships in Mullingar.
•We are in the middle of our Gaelic league at the moment. The teams up for the challenge are Westmeath, Dublin, Kerry and Cork!
•We talked a lot about Athlone and have entered the ‘Discover Athlone’ Art competition.
BOOKLISTS
FIRST CLASS
ENGLISH: Spellbound 1
Onwords and Upwords 1
Write Here Book C
Here Comes Buster
Buster’s First Book of Facts
The Bouncing Castle
Penny’s First Book of Facts
IRISH: Fuaimeanna agus Focail (rang a haon)
MATHS: Mathemagic 1
Maths Shadow Book 1
Figure it Out 1
HISTORY: History Quest 1
GEOGRAPHY: Geography Quest 1
SCIENCE: Science Quest 1
RELIGION: ‘Alive O3’ Textbook (Rent from school)
‘Alive O3’ Workbook
COPIES: 88 paged lined copies x 10
88 paged squared copies x 2
SECOND CLASS:
ENGLISH: Spellbound 2
Write Here Book D
Treasury B
My Spelling Workbook (Book B)
The Lost Dog
Jill’s New Rollerblades
Buster’s Second Book of Facts
Penny’s Second Book of Facts
IRISH: Fuaimeanna agus Focail (rang a do)
Ceartlitriu 2 (rang a do)
MATHS: Mathemagic 2
Maths Shadow Book 2
Figure it Out 2
HISTORY: History Quest 2
GEOGRAPHY: Geography Quest 2
SCIENCE: Science Quest 2
RELIGION: ‘Alive O3’ Textbook (Rent from school)
‘Alive O3’ Workbook
COPIES: 88 paged lined copies x 10
88 paged squared copies x 2
Note: Large copies for Religion, History/Geography/Science can be purchased from school. Some of the above books can be purchased second hand from past pupils.
Ardnagrath N.S. Homework Journal to be purchased from school in September.
FIRST HOLY COMMUNION
Congratulations to Tara, Ciaran, Katie (F), Caroline, Sean and Krzys (Ardnagrath National School) and Katie (B), David and Adam (Drumraney National School) on receiving their First Holy Communion on 25 May 2008.
Not only did you all look great but you all performed your tasks perfectly:
Tara sang.
Ciaran, David, Katie (B) and Krzys did the prayers of the faithful.
Sean and Caroline did the prayers before Communion.
Katie (F) and Adam did the prayers after Communion.
A big thanks to Fr. Brilley and all who participated and helped make it a very special day and a day to remember for the class!
Thanks to the choir who sang beautifully throughout and thanks to all who helped out with the choir in everyway possible!
Also, thanks to everyone who helped out with the beautiful artwork and to all those who helped out with the refreshments afterwards. All in all, it was a fabulous day that would not have been possible without everyone’s help.
We are talking about the importance of car safety and how to stay safe in the car. Thanks to Garda Kathleen Tumelty for providing us with a video on how to stay safe in the car. Remember, always belt up!
Junior and senior infants, first and second class are currently training from Monday to Thursday at lunchtime, practising basic G.A.A. skills.