Third and Fourth Class News (Part 1)

Updated: Jun 14, 2023

Hello from 3rd & 4th Class

All the pupils in 3rd & 4th class have settled in well to their new classroom after the summer holidays and have enjoyed getting to see all their friends again. It has been a busy month and all the boys and girls have been working hard but having lots of fun in their learning too. Washing our hands and sanitizing our tables and belongings have become part of our new daily routine and all the children are so good at keeping it up. Here is a flavour of what we have been up to over the past month in third and fourth class.

We have been focusing on looking after our well-being since we came back to school. We follow our school motto of Work Hard and Be Kind. Each pupil has a gratitude journal and have been keeping a record of things that they are thankful for. We also made rainbow moment clouds and have been taking movement break throughout the day. We made cardboard phones about how we spent the summer holidays and are following the Weaving Well-being SPHE programme. We have been doing lots of Art this month. We have been learning about the colour wheel. We learned how to make secondary and tertiary colours by mixing paints. We used the colour wheels to make some cool eye art. We made our own pop out face masks and starbursts.

In history, we are learning about Ancient Egypt. We read about how the pyramids were built and how Howard Carter discovered the tomb of King Tutankhamun. We took inspiration from his head-dress to draw portraits of pharaohs.

Fintan wrote a letter to President Michael D. Higgins last year and received a letter a signed copy of the Presidents poetry book, The Season of Fire. He brought it in to show us.

In geography, we are learning about the counties of Ireland and did a study on the county of Cork. In science, we did an experiment of taking our fingerprints. We are also working on the theme of light. We used mirrors to make our own secret codes like Leonardo Da Vinci and some optical illusions.

3rd and 4th are really enjoying playing chess too. Those that had never played before, have picked it up so quickly. A few pupils had learned the game from older siblings at home too and are improving their strategies and skills each time they play.

The library bus still comes to the school every fortnight and drops off a box of books that the librarian has selected. Each day after small break, we have DEAR time to have some silent reading time. In music, we are learning to play a percussion instrument called Boomwhackers. These are colourful plastic tubes tuned to the scale of C. Our favourite songs include Rio and Dance Monkey.

On Sunday, September 20th, 8 pupils from Third Class received their First Holy Communion in Dromore Church. It was a beautiful and special occasion for all involved.

On 29th September, Cycle Sense came to the school for National Bike Week. We had a great session, practicing bike safety skills with Ruth and Katie. We especially enjoyed going over the ramps and under the limbo poles. We entered an Bling Your Bike colouring competition and there are meant to be some “wheely” good prizes in store for the prize-winners.

These (below) are our sunflowers. We read the story "Camille and the Sunflowers" and created our own versions of Sunflowers inspired by the artist Vincent Van Gogh. In keeping with the flower theme we also did some gardening. We planted some crocuses and daffodils.