This term, we had expert gardener Paddy Madden in with us to help us develop our green-thumb skills! We had a master-class with Paddy early on & he explained to us how to plant pea seeds using eco-friendly pots (old toilet roll tubes!). We learned about the different parts of a seed as it is planted from when it starts to sprout & grow. We planted our seeds & kept them warm & watered in the classroom for a few weeks.

Then we got to plant them into the school garden! We were amazed to see the roots & shoots of the seeds as we re-planted them in the garden. Although the weather has not been good to us, we recently weeded our garden plot & saw that our pea plants had started to climb the wig-wam frame. We look forward to harvesting our peas later in the year!

We had a brilliant Active Schools’ Week in room 2! We spent a fortnight promoting exercise & physical activity to improve our overall helath & well-being. We had great fun throughout & did lots of fun activities – from running daily laps, to movement breaks & Just Dances in the classroom, to orienteering activities, dancing & even our sports day. We also loved the daily teacher challenges, especially the push ups & wheelbarrow races!

Junior & senior infants have had a jam-packed term 3 this year! The girls have had such amazing fun learning & progressing & it is so so wonderful to see what they have achieved this year. Junior infants are reading & writing words & sentences! Senior infants are confidently counting to high numbers & writing complex sentences independently! We have had such an amazing term, from Active schools’ weeks, school tours, group work with other classes, ice-cream vans, tennis & STEM lessons and much much more!

We have learned about a number of different themes this term – the vets, the restaurant & the airport. We have had such fun learning about these topics through SESE, art & other subject areas. We talked about the role of the vets & the work they may have to do, named some of our favourite restaurants & foods & places we would like to go to on a plane! We did lots of work on debating as part of our oral language & the girls have developed their own string opinions already on different topics! We also recently did a STEM challenge – we designed & build paper planes in pairs, then we got to test their ability to fly!

There was lots of collaboration between our class & older classes throughout the term – we came together for paired/shared reading, PE & art activities. We all had such fun working with other classes within the school & building teamwork skills. We also had an Active Schools’ Week celebration & we loved taking part in the teachers’ daily challenges!

On June 13th, junior & senior infants ventured to Lullymore for our school tour! Despite the rain the girls had an absolutely amazing day, from the bus journey to the indoor play area, then to the grounds of Lullymore & finally the train ride!

The girls were absolutely thrilled & it was a super way to celebrate their hard work put in this year.

6th class had a great day out in Prosperous for the annual Cumann na mBunscol basketball blitz this year. 12 of the girls made the trip to take part & we had a brilliant day. The girls competed against a number of primary schools across Kildare & we played in 3 games on the day, just falling short of reaching the semi-final. A tremendous effort by the girls!

It has been a pleasure working with such a great gang of girls this year for basketball – their dedication, teamwork & positive attitudes throughout were amazing. It was a great day out for all as part of their final year at Bunscoil Bhríde. We wish them all the best & hope they carry their basketball journey on to secondary school too!

February has absolutely flown by this year! We started off the month by celebrating St. Brigid’s Day. We were so lucky to have Ms. Marrinane’s 5th & 6th class girls come & help us to make our own St. Brigid’s crosses from rushes to celebrate the day. The girl’s had great fun with this! Our theme this month is all about Spring & new life, we have looked at the seasonal changes that come with Spring for plants, animals & daily life. We have produced wonderful artwork also, such as textured Spring flowers & baby lambs. We also explored the life-cycle of oak trees & how they start off as a seed in an acorn & can grow to be big strong oak trees after many years!

Senior infants have moved on to length & number 9 in maths. We have also explored procedure writing this month & have progressed from learning all about ‘bossy’ verbs to planning and writing our own procedure to make popcorn! Junior infants have finished with 2D shapes and have now started learning about number 4. Our Gaeilge theme is éadaí & the girls have learned so much new foclóir & are using it readily each day!

We also had a very special guest visit us this month for Spring – our gardener Paddy Madden was in to show us how to plant some mangetouts for our school garden! The girls had great fun with Paddy singing rhymes and songs as we planted & learned all about germination of seeds. We even made our own compostable pots to plant our seeds in!

Our annual Grandparent’s Day took place at the end of January & it was such a wonderful day for all! The girls were so excited preparing for our special visitors. We learned and performed 2 songs for our wonderful grandparent’s & one was even as Gaeilge! We also did one of our nursery rhymes as a class. Then, we showed the grandparent’s our super reading practice using our readers. It was such a wonderful experience for all involved & I would like to thank all of the grandparent’s for making such a special effort to visit our classroom!

Junior & Senior infants have been flying it since returning to school after the holidays! We spoke a lot about new year’s resolutions at the start of the year and things we would all like to improve on this year. Senior infants have been making excellent progress on our double sounds in phonics & junior infants are flying through the single sounds & it’s so exciting learning how to read!

Junior infants have also started officially doing our handwriting & it’s super to see their progress in writing words! In maths, both classes had great fun learning about 2D shapes and going on a shape hunt around the classroom – we learned that 2D shapes are everywhere in the environment. Senior infants are also making steady progress through our numbers, learning all about the story of 8 & ways to make 8. Junior infants have been having great fun combining numbers from 1-3 so far.

Our theme this month was all about Space & it was so interesting! We learned about all the planets in Space & how astronauts can travel through Space in rocket ships. We did so much work on Space through Aistear, reading stories, art & in SESE. We even had real space-suits to wear in the role-play station for Aistear!

Our new Bluebell’s playground was officially opened this month by special guest Margo Conlon, which was such a special occasion for our school community. We had great fun exploring the new playground & it is such a wonderful resource for the whole school to have & use as a special treat!

Congratulations to 5th & 6th class girls who have made it to the Cumann na mBunscol basketball league semi-finals! The girls have showed such amazing dedication & teamwork over the last number of weeks & have earned their place in the semi-finals! We were successful in 2 of our 3 games to date, being victorious in both our games against Prosperous N.S with a score of 28-12 & again against Scoil Uí Riada, Kilcock with a score of 16-6.

A massive thank you to each of the 58 girls on the team who show up every week to our training sessions & are so so dedicated, with many using their lunch breaks to also get together & practice basketball. All of your hard work is paying off! Also, a big thank you to all of the parents/guardians who are facilitating our after-school basketball trainings with later collections, as well as Ms. Banks who has helped out at a number of training sessions.

We will be back again in the new year to practice each Wednesday & prepare for our up-coming semi-final games against Castledermot. Well done girls!

Junior & Senior infants have really been getting into the Christmas spirit recently! We have been so busy over the past number of weeks preparing our festive songs & rhymes, which we performed as a part of Parent’s Day. The girls worked really hard, practising our songs & rhymes & even used actions & instruments along with them.

The girls really enjoyed our performances for all parent’s when they came in & all of their hard work really paid off! See below some videos of our Christmas performances!