November and December 2016

History this month was the Famine.During this topic we learned about what kind of country Ireland was at the time. We read the novel “Under the Hawthorn tree’ by Marita Conlon McKenna and learned about the soup Kitchens, life in the workhouse and what a journey on a Famine Ship would have been like. We spent a day “starving” and experiencing  the food found on a workhouse menu. I had a lot of grumpy children that day!

Our trip to Dunbrody Famine ship concluded our work on the Famine. We all agreed that we were much happier living in Modern Ireland!

In Science we learned all about the skeleton. Both Human and animals. We learned how many bones are in a Human body and the different names for different bones. We listened to our song ” Mr. Skeleton”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gerXkG_8ME to help us remember the names. We then learned about the different skeletons animals can have and that some animals have a backbone and that others don’t. We finished up our work on skeletons by attending a ‘skullduggery” workshop in the Natural History Museum. We were all zoologists for the day and got to see and handle lots of different animals skulls.

We were finally able to unwrap our mummified chicken “Chicopatra Chickenkamun” It was really interesting to see how the salt had preserved the chicken and shrunk it. It was an enjoyable (if gruesome!) experiment.

There was plenty of noise and fun when we got to try our hand at samba drumming!

December was a busy and exciting month. We spent a lot of time learning our song and practising our scene for the Nativity concert.  A huge thanks to Róisín in 6th class for helping us prepare our song. I think we can all agree that 3rd class did a spectacular job in Christchurch Cathedral and I was incredibly proud of each and every one of them. In December we also learned to sew and made our own holiday jumpers and decorations. It was a lot of fun if somewhat tricky. I was really impressed with how the children persevered even though they initially found it tricky. Well done!

All in all it was a busy first term. We’ve had a lot of fun and learned lots and I’m looking forward to an adventure filled 2017 with 3rd class.

Stephanie