After two years of a hiatus, we were delighted to be able to bring back Kilcornan National School's annual Christmas show. Pupils from Junior Infants to Second Class put on a nativity based musical called 'Whoops A Daisy Angel', while pupils from Third to Sixth Class performed a selection of Christmas songs and songs from their upcoming Peace Proms performance. We are incredibly proud of all the pupils!
Thank you to the staff for their hard work in ensuring the pupils were extremely well prepared for the shows. Thank you to the Parents' Council for organising the raffle and providing refreshments for both shows. We are very grateful to the community centre for the use of the hall and to Mike O'Connell for all his work preparing the stage and providing lighting and sound. Thank you to everyone who supported the show, prepared the pupils and helped with staging and costumes.
Please find below a beautiful selection of photographs by Mary O'Shaughnessy. DVD's will be available in the new year from Fergal Nash.
Wishing you all a wonderful Christmas and a healthy and happy new year. We look forward to welcoming pupils back to Kilcornan on Thursday 5th January!
What a wonderful term we have had in the Senior Infants and 1st class classroom!
We were lucky enough to be able to put on our Christmas show ‘Whoops-A-Daisy Angel’. We had great fun learning our songs and helping to make up the dances to go with them. There was great excitement when we first got to practise on the stage! We also painted some props and learned our lines. When the day of the show finally arrived, our nerves and excitement were all mixed together, but we all had great fun performing for an audience. It was a fantastic experience and lots of our family members came to see us!
We were also so delighted to attend the panto ‘Peter Pan’ in UL. It was the first time for most of us to see a panto and we loved it – especially shouting at the actors ‘He’s behind you!’ and ‘Oh no you’re not!’
We celebrated Science Week by completing different science experiments: we made butter using double cream and then tasted it on toast; we compared the reactions of coke and mentos and bread soda and vinegar; we filled a balloon with the gas from the mixture of bread soda and vinegar; and we painted our names using an invisible mixture of bread soda and water, then when that had dried we painted over the whole page, using a mixture of turmeric and sanitiser, to reveal the hidden name.
In Literacy, we are learning to write more elaborate information, especially using words and phrases that we know and we know where to find them to help us spell. The 1st class worked in pairs to write acrostic poems – they were great fun to read aloud! It is great to be able to use our skills independently. We love reading time, both shared and DEAR time (Drop Everything And Read). We start every morning with oral language, where we enhance our skills of speaking and listening. It is great fun so we don’t realise we are learning!
Is maith linn Gaeilge! We love learning songs and rhymes in Irish. We play games to help us practise our vocabulary – Deir Ó Grádaigh and Bíongó are our current favourites!
In Maths, we learned to compare items – tall, taller, tallest, wide, wider, widest etc. We have investigated up to the number 8 in Seniors and spent lots of time with concrete materials. We also created patterns using different resources. In 1stclass, we spent time learning about money – it can be tricky to count! Luckily we had lots of coins and real-life scenarios to help.4
In SESE, we have been learning about winter and the weather. We use a lot of observation and comparing. It is important to take notice of the world around us. In History, we examined old and new toys. We watched some clips of the old Late, Late Toy Show with Gay Byrne presenting it. We took notice of the different types of toys and the different clothes that were in fashion. We also noticed some toys that are still the same or similar to our toys today.
In Visual Art, we developed more drawing and painting skills. We drew amazing ‘Barry, the Fish with Fingers’. We also created patterns and mixed our own colours; we made a three-toed sloth; we created a hedgehog using match sticks and autumn leaves. We also made Christmas tree decorations, woolly hats and elf door hangers.
We have been so busy! We are very excited for Christmas and spending time with our family and friends!
Welcome back to Senior Infants and First Class! It has been wonderful to be back and meet our friends again!
We are delighted to be able to use Aistear this year as a learning tool. Aistear allows the children to explore a topic across a variety of curricular areas that all link together. It provides hands-on learning activities and creates meaningful shared experiences for the children.
Our first topic was ‘Myself’. We worked together in groups at a different station each day; we created self-portraits in plasticine, examining our features in mirrors; we identified body parts in the SESE group; we role-played being a family, each person taking on different roles, and used our play kitchen and soft seating to create our home; we traced our hands and feet and used non-standard units of measurement to measure and compare the length and width of each; and we wrote all about ourselves on a flower, saying our likes and dislikes, who is in our family and our favourite hobbies.
Our second Aistear topic was ‘The Airport’. We were lucky enough to be able to use the library for our role-play, where we took on different roles – being the pilot, the passenger, the air steward etc; we made passports for ourselves in the literacy station; in the numeracy station we used weighing scales and balances to explore weight – a very important packing skill when travelling via air!; we had free creative reign at the junk art station and we made models of planes and the airport at the construction station. This topic was really useful for Senior Infants because their first reader was called ‘Ella goes to the Airport’, and they were very familiar with the new vocabulary when reading.
Our next Aistear topic was ‘Autumn’. We read a beautiful story called ‘Don’t Hog the Hedge’ about Hattie the Hedgehog and her unlikely friends – we used this as the basis for our role-play station and everyone took turns being Hattie; we had a reading station in Ms. Balfry’s room with books based on our theme, and we used the bean bags and cushions to get really comfy!; at the numeracy station we had Halloween themed number lines; we especially loved making our collaborative potions, which Mrs. Gleeson typed on the interactive whiteboard as we decided on our disgusting ingredients, then we hit print and each got to design our own printed copy of the potion; at the art station we created 3D hedgehogs using dried autumn leaves and matchsticks to create the spines.
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What a busy term we have had here in the Senior Infant and First Class classroom!
Our best day ever was our school tour day! We went to Arena 5, to Jump Lanes and the soft play area. It was brilliant fun! Lots of our class had never been on a school tour, because of Covid, so it was exciting getting on a big bus and travelling with all our friends. When we were finished playing, we ate delicious food in the party room. The weather was awful – it had been raining all morning – but we headed for Mungret playground with hope in our hearts! We were so delighted that it stopped raining and we were able to go into the playground and have fun! We ate our picnic treats and headed back to the school. What a wonderful day!
We have also enjoyed a most wonderful School Sports’ Day. Th class children did such a great job organising all the different stations for us! Some of our favourites were the sack race and the egg and spoon race.
We were delighted to have Declan Hannon to raise our 10th Green Flag! We celebrated with lots of singing and treats! Declan spent lots of time signing hurleys and sliotars for everyone in the school! We will always remember that day!
We did a lot of work this term too! In maths, in first class, we learnt to carry our ‘tens’ to their new house. It is a bit different from how our parents learnt it!. Seniors learnt all about capacity. We compared all our drinks containers and put them in order. It was a bit tricky, because some bottles were tall and some were wide.
We visited ‘An Trá’ in our Irish lessons and enjoyed playing le buicéad agus spád!
We learned about Irish wildflowers and conducted many hunts in search of different varieties.
We read many, many stories – some of our favourites were ‘The Beast with a Thousand Teeth’, ‘Rainbow Fish’, ‘Peas, Cheese and Chocolate Pudding’.
We designed and created our own rainbow fish and used tinfoil for the very special scales. We also created an outfit for George the giant from ‘The Smartest Giant in Town’. We used lots of different fabric and fibre to create different textures from his old gown and sandals to his ‘smart’ clothes and shoes.
On our last day we made a guard of honour for Mrs. Wixted as she drove to school. A drone captured the crowd, and our handmade signs, from the sky. It was a wonderful send-off. We will miss Mrs. Wixted next year but look forward to hearing about all her adventures!
We are ready for our summer holidays!
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