It has been all about China in Room 12 for the last few weeks! As well as reading all about Chinese traditions and the Chinese New Year in our Wild Explorers, we were learning about China in geography and we even listened to Chinese music. The children then produced fabulous projects which we put on display for all of the Grandparents to enjoy on Grandparent's Day.

On Thursday the 26th of January, Room 12 were lucky to be visited by our local community garda, Brian. Brian works out of Coolock Garda station. He was visiting us to encourage us to behave in a safe manner at all times and to tell us the role of the Gardai in our community. 
We showed us all of his equipment like his badge, his handcuffs, his asp and pepper spray. Frankie got to try on his protective vest and Brian passed around his Garda cap to all of the children. There were quite a few children who were very shy to try it on!!
Kian and Iseult both got to try on the handcuffs. He handcuffed Kian behind his back and showed us how hand it was for Kian to move once Brian was holding on to the cuffs. We watched a slideshow that showed us the different roles of the community garda and also all of the different modes of transport that they can use. It was a really interesting morning.

.We had our Witches Walk this morning. Thankfully the weather stayed dry. We did a great job and there was very little moaning!  The cars all beeped when they saw us passing by in our fabulous costumes. It really cheers people up when they see us coming...though their dogs give us funny looks!

Room 12 have been very lucky this year to be chosen to participate in the picker pals project. Our fabulous pack was delivered to the school during the week and we were so excited to see what was inside. We found children's and adult's gloves, hi-viz jackets with the Picker Pals logo and two litter pickers.
We sent out permission slips and drew up a list, Lots of boys and girls have had a chance for a turn already and it won't be long until the whole class has had a turn. We will go back to the beginning of our list then again.
As well as our lovely pack, there is a picker pals song, video calls with the creators and episodes of picker pals TV sent to our teacher. Everyone is really enjoying it. 
Any parents who would like to post the pictures of their children litter picking onto their Instagram page should use the hashtag #pickerpals for the chance to win picker pals prizes,

To the that the class were in high spirits heading off to Newgrange Farm on Tuesday morning would be something of an understatement!  We got settled on the bus and after endless rounds of Baby Shark being sung, we arrived at the farm. We started off playing in tunnels and in the sand area with all of the diggers. We fed goats, lambs and the chickens. We saw lots of different types of hens and turkeys. We fed the geese and went on the tractor trailer ride. Thankfully we survived the haybale maze without tears or injuries - which is miraculous! We got to hold 2 day old chicks and some kittens. The picnic area was lovely for a middle of the day rest and most importantly, there was no rain until we got back on the bus for home. At this point, around 10 of the children promptly fell asleep! 
​We look forward to more tours next year!

All the classes went litter picking in and around the school grounds this week. We each took a separate area and it was surprising the amount that we managed to collect in a short space of time! It is important to keep the place litter free now that we have earned our sixth green flag.

For the last few weeks, the children have been learning all about Spain in school. We learned the names of important cities, learned about different festivals and even tasted some Spanish food. We completed our beautiful projects and we hope you enjoy seeing them.

Iseult and her mum made a lovely madeira cake for us all to try and we tasted Spanish tortilla, oranges from Valencia, olives and Spanish tomatoes.

We are really lucky to be able to do GAA twice a week both with Tony and Chris. Teacher took pictures today as Chris brought along loads of pretend snowballs made from cotton wool and we were able to have a snowball fight. It was really great fun!

We have been learning about light in science this week. We have a few new words, transparent, translucent and opaque.  We worked together in our pods with torches, trying to see if we could see the light through different materials. We had crepe paper, pieces of wood, newspaper, clear plastic and fabric.

On the 22nd of October, we had our dress up day in school and our Witches Walk.  We were so well behaved on our walk and loads of people stopped to say hello or beeped their horns when we went past. It really cheered people up to see us out and about. Our teacher was very proud of us!