ST. FEICHÍN'S N.S., CROSS, CO. MAYO

Cake Sale, a Visitor and Aistear

12/7/2018

The Cake Sale Is On Sunday

This week we were busy getting ready for our cake sale which is taking place in the school after mass on Sunday, December the 9th. Have a look at the beautiful festive floral arrangements made by Ms. Gillon. One of our children has made some fantastic festive logs. We have lots more treats for you to buy on Sunday morning.

A Very Special Visitor

This month's theme in the Junior Room is "The Post Office". On Friday afternoon we were absolutely delighted to have a visit from Beth's granny Bernie who worked as a postwoman. Bernie answered loads of our questions and she told us a few stories about her time working as a postwoman. A postal worker has to get up really early to sort the post before they get on the road delivering our letters and parcels. Bernie said that coming up to Christmas is a really busy time and some years she might have had to deliver up to 600 letters a day!!!! Bernie had to learn off everybody's name on her route because delivering letters in country areas can be tricky as there are no numbers on the doors. Bernie loved driving the postal van but one day a cross dog punctured one of the tyres with his teeth!!! Another day a dog bit Bernie on her ankle through a gate!!! Cian asked Bernie if it is important to write neatly on envelopes. Bernie said it is very important to write neatly and slowly because if an envelope is too messy to read, it has to go to a special place in Limerick where experts try to figure out what is written on it. A letter could be weeks late if this happens. Check out our photos of the afternoon. Michael came up from his classroom to see his granny. Thanks Bernie for a lovely afternoon.

Aistear - The Post Office

We were busy filling out forms in our Post Office this morning. We applied for passports, dog licences and T.V. licences. We sorted the post and stamped it. The postman put the post into his postbag and delivered it around the area.

In the small world area, our little people visited our miniature post office.

We had great fun sorting, matching, counting and playing memory games with the items in our post bags.

We recycled paper, old christmas cards and bits of coloured paper shapes to design and create our own stamps. We drew and coloured them also.

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Busy Times In Cross N.S.

12/4/2018

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Science Week Prizewinners

Jack, Evan, Daragh and Luke were the pupils who came second in the Science Week competition in the McWilliam Park Hotel in Claremorris. There was a bit of a mix up that day because the team who came third got our prizes because we had to go home for the Parent Teachers meetings. Thankfully in the end, we got the hoodies and bottles. The hoodies were purple and yellow with a logo that said “Science Week 2018” and the bottles were also yellow and purple.

Junior Room Art

Pioneer Essay Competition

This week 4th, 5th and 6th classes wrote their Pioneer Essay entries. We do this every year. Some people don’t like writing stories as much as others because it can hurt your hand but everyone still participates in this competition. There are always particular headings e.g. “I like Art Classes in School”, “If I had Wings for a Month”, “ My Favourite Sportsperson”, “If I was a Sports’ Reporter” and “Shepherds on the First Christmas Night”. Some people prefer having a selection of titles to pick from while others like having their own to do. The limit of words you could use was 400 so it took a lot of thinking. We have been working on these stories for about two weeks . If you could not think of 400 words to put in your story you could just do as much as you possibly could. Everyone is happy with the way their story turned out. Hopefully we can do as well as we did last year and maybe somebody can win a prize for Cross N.S. again.

Sports

A lot of children in Cross do sports outside of school, the most popular being soccer or Gaelic football. We also participate in lots of other sports including martial arts, athletics, dancing and golf. The majority of people who play soccer play for Moyne Villa or Mervue. The most popular sport is Gaelic and most students play for The Neale or Ballinrobe.
Conn does karate and his black belt is not too far away. He does lots of different exercises in karate and he learns different patterns of moves for self-defence. To get each belt you have to learn a different pattern of moves. You also have to own a license to get each belt
Faith does Tae-kwon-do. It is a Korean martial art. The art of Tae-kwon-do consists of kicking, punching, self-defence and reasoning to a point. To start the class they do stretches and warming up. After warming up the pupils under yellow belt take a water break. Then they do kicking and punching. Each class does different types of kicking and punching. At the end of the session, they play a game of dodge ball. Faith is very close to getting her yellow tag. She would highly recommend it.
Tom plays soccer for Mervue and Galway town. He is playing Roscommon this weekend and if he wins the game he will be in the Connacht final. More than likely he will be playing Mayo in the final because they will probably finish second in the group. This year Tom got to the Connacht quarter final for Mervue. Unluckily they lost but it was a good game. Hopefully Tom will win his next two games to get to Connacht final and if he wins the final he will be in the All Ireland quarter final. It is a big commitment for Tom’s dad because he has to bring him up three or four days a week for training and matches.

The Owl Who Was Afraid Of The Dark

This week Ms. Muldoon’s room were very busy. Second class finished their novel called “The Owl who was Afraid of the Dark”. They drew a picture of the owl and wrote a poem about owls. They are all excellent. The owl in the story is called Plop who is a beautiful, new born, baby owl. She is perfect in every way except for one thing - she is afraid of the dark. My most favourite line in the book is “The dark is kind in all sorts of ways”. Mrs. Owl really likes the dark… she says things like; dark is wonderful, dark is fascinating, dark is fun, dark is exciting and dark is necessary, This book is a really good and interesting novel.

Senior Room News

We have been working hard in school recently. We made some “All about Me” portraits. We put in everything that we liked, like animals and sports. When we were finished we coloured them in. After that, we got cardboard and stuck them onto the cardboard.

When we did the Celts we did some Celtic art. First we got a page and filled it with circles and other shapes . We cut the shapes out, put glue on them and stuck them on black paper. First we glued the thinner bits on and then the wider ones after. Next we stuck the circles on row by row. When we were finished they looked really nice, everyone’s was very colourful and different.

We are doing projects on our local community. It’s very interesting to find out a lot about our local buildings. Ava did O’Malley’s pub. It has been sold to a lot of different people in our community. It opened in 1943. Danny did the battle of Moytura. It took place in 1699.

This week we were learning about Weather and Climate. We learned the saying “Red sky at night, shepherd's delight. Red sky in the morning, shepherds warning”. “Make hay while the sun shines” is another well known phrase.
We explored the Duchas website and discovered some past pupils’ work. Children who lived in Cross wrote them years ago. When a dog’s tail is shaped like a rainbow, it is a sign of bad weather. When a cat sits beside the fire, it’s a sign of bad weather. When a dog eats grass, it’s a sign of rain.
On Friday we looked at satellite pictures of Ireland. We were learning about climate change and we learned about the Gulf Stream.

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Futsal, Scór and X-Factor

11/24/2018

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Futsal

On Tuesday the 20th of November, 4th class went to the Lakeside hall in Ballinrobe for the 4th class league of Futsal. There were six teams competing including Robeen, Roundfort, St Joseph’s Ballinrobe, The Neale, Tourmakeady and ourselves, Cross. Very soon after arriving, the boys' team played The Neale. The Neale boys won. The girls' team played the Neale first, they lost 2-1. There were many more games played, ending with two successful wins for the girls. We had our lunch before we left the hall. We all had a great day and hopefully next year 4th class will come back with several wonderful wins.

Scór Na nÓg

On Thursday night the 22nd of November, Aisling, Eleanor, Darragh,Hannah and Lauren represented The Neale GAA club in a GAA music competition called Scór. We practised a lot in the two weeks before the competition. We learned two tunes, a jig and a polka. On the night we got to the hall in Hollymount ,we found out that there was only one other team in the instrumental music section. This was another team representing The Neale! We met this team on the practice night in Cong. There were also two acts/plays and six singers competing on the night. The singers were amazing and the acts were so funny. After both of those categories were finished, the music started. We were the first group to go on the stage and everyone said that we played really well! The other Neale group played amazing as well! We waited for the presentation and the other team won! We were quite proud of them because lots of them were our friends. Because The Neale had the most participants in the competition, the club got to take the cup home. They picked the names out of a hat to see who would take the cup first. Eleanor got picked so she brought the cup to school. We showed the cup to the whole school. On Monday, Cong get to have the cup. We had an amazing time at Scór and hope to go next year.

X-Factor

On the 22nd of November, J.J. Burke Car Sales came to Cross N.S. They recorded us wishing Brendan Murray the best of luck for X Factor semi-final. They gave us a big banner and posters of Brendan which we waved proudly. Alannah recorded a speech for Brendan on behalf of us all. We wish Brendan the best of luck in semi-finals and hope he will get through to the finals. Brendan is our number 1! Here is a still from the video on J.J. Burke’s Facebook Page.

Houses and Homes

The Junior Room are still exploring the theme of "Houses and Homes". We used paper, colours, glue and scissors to create these lovely houses.

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Science Week and Aistear

11/16/2018

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Science Week

This week was Science Week. Check out our slideshow from the week.
We did a lot of fun activities this week including building bridges, having live chats with actual scientists, building and launching our own rockets, testing different foods e.g. apples, pasta, bread, biscuits and flour for the presence of starch, making boats out of plasticine, discovering how plants drink, discussing different types of building materials and taking part in a Science Week Table Quiz.
Please visit our STEM page for more in-depth information.

Building Bridges in Claremorris

On Wednesday the 14th we went to the McWilliam Park Hotel in Claremorris. We had to build a bridge using 25 straws and 3 feet of masking tape.
On Monday, we had a trial run in school to see who would get through. We had a class competition first. The students who got through had to put weights on their bridge. We had to put a bag on the bridge. Then we put spoons of rice in the bag.
Team 1 was Fiachra, Danny Callan, Patrick and Darragh Murphy. Team 2 was Jack, Evan, Daragh O’Dea and Luke. The bus left at 12 O clock. It took half hour to get there. When we got there, there were sweets on the table for us and 4 rulers. We had 40 minutes to build our bridges.
Team 2 had it built in 20 minutes. Team 1 took longer because they were younger. Team 1’s bridge held 131 grams and Team 2’s bridge held 411 grams. Team 2 came second. Team 2 lost by only 1 gram!!!!!!

Aistear

The Junior Room are delighted to be taking part in Aistear. We are exploring lots through play and discovery and we are currently having a great time looking at Houses and Homes. We have four groups and four different play areas in our classroom. Each group is made up of boys and girls from the three classes of Junior Infants, Senior Infants and First Class. We had great fun cooking, making tea, cleaning, dressing up, answering the phone and writing down phone messages in the home area. We loved playing with miniature families and doll’s house furniture in the small world area. We really showed our creativity as we made cushions for the couch, flowers for the garden, cars for the garage, windows and doors for the house, rubber ducks for the bath, and healthy food for our lunchboxes out of playdough in our creative area. We built some fabulous houses and even made a lovely hotel for our teddies in the construction area.