June
If we thought the month of May was a busy month...... we had no idea what June would bring!!! What an action packed few weeks. We've had so many exciting learning experiences to top off what's been an amazing year here in Primary 2. Are you ready????........................
Here we are busy having our feet painted as part of our end of year Summer mass display. We are also busy painting pasta shapes to create a butterfly craft which was also on display for our mass.

During our minibeasts theme we never got a chance to do our building block activity so we made sure we fitted it in during our summer theme this month. It was a lovely group activity which allowed us to work together, helping one another!

We enjoyed a game of balloon tennis in the hall for PE

We carried out a nice simple experiment for science - coloured daisies. We observed how the different food colouring magically coloured the white petals of our daisies

And let the gallivanting begin.........
First stop the Greenway!!!
We used our money from our savings to hire bikes and take in the fantastic scenery from Durrow to Dungarvan. We stopped along the way to have a picnic and of course play in the playground! Then while recharging the batteries at Abbeyside playground we said we'd have an ice-pop after all our exercise. Great day enjoyed by all.

Where to next????
Well we had plenty of savings so why not treat ourselves to lunch at McDonalds and before we do let's feed those hungry ducks......

It wouldn't be the month of June in St. John's without our signature school BBQ. Great food with great company....... who could ask for more!

A highlight every year is our annual visit to the local Fire Station with our one and only fireman....... the excitement is amazing

With the fine weather here we said we better make the most of it so we invited our teddies and dolls for a picnic at school!

With the beach on our doorstep we said why not.........

We enjoyed the most amazing tour up at Leahy's Farm. Definitely a day to remember!

The sun was out for our fun sports day and we had so much fun

And we had some savings left believe it or not so we treated ourselves in town to some goodies and even had some money left over to visit the cinema to see 'Rock Dog'.

So we're broke now!!!!!!
And we're wrecked from all the going!
What a month......... You can't beat this for action, fun, learning and pure enjoyment!!
We would like to wish everybody a fabulous summer. Enjoy the holidays and we'll see you all again in September!

May

May was a very busy month here in Primary 2. We managed to cover 3 different themes: Life Cycles, The Circus and Minibeasts. We even had time to fit in some extra activities also.
Let's kick start with our theme 'Life Cycles'.......
We focused on the life cycle of the frog and learned a lovely theme song called 'Life cycle of a frog'.
We enjoyed making our very own frogspawn.

Of course the best bit was getting all messy and even having a little taste.......

Check out our master pieces - our playdough frogs which kept us company for a few days while we worked hard!!

Of course we sang '5 Green Speckled Frogs' and acted it out with our very own frog headbands

We pretended to be frogs and try catch some flies for our lunch with this fun game using frog straws and plastic bugs.......

There's no doubt we enjoyed making our frog craft - what fun we had with the noisy blowers!!!!!

We hopped from lily pad to lily pad in PE, trying carefully not to fall in!

We tried hard to suck up the tissue paper frogs and carry them carefully to safety on their lily pad.......... sadly some didn't make it!!!!!

We learned all about pond life through our sensory pond we made in the classroom - we worked in pairs - it was so much fun!

Any water left in the pond girls??????

Time to relax and listen to a lovely story about a frog and his special friends at the pond...

Our next theme was 'The Circus' - we were very disappointed there was no circus in Dungarvan during this time because we would have loved to go but we made our own fun in school instead!
We made a lovely simple popcorn craft, take a look.....

We enjoyed our circus themed playdough mats

Lots of fun and laughter with this 'home-made' colour ball pit......... all the more fun when Ms. Ryan popped her head through the coloured holes and they got a chance to throw a ball and try hit me!!!

Drama at its best..... our very own circus!

We didn't take the chance with high stilts but we gave this a good ole shot....... we were very good

Our fruit clown faces were so yummy

Our third and final theme this month was 'Minibeasts'. We enjoyed learning all about these creepy crawlies during our theme song 'Minibeasts Song'

We continued to learn about these creepy crawlies through group activities such as the ones below.....

Of course what better way to bring our learning to life than through a minibeast hunt...... What fun!!!!

Now for a closer look.......

Imagine in between all that learning we still had room for more.............
We planted what we like to call 'Our Golden Flowers'. We water them regularly and love to see them grow.

We had a small class one morning so we decided to have a little treat........ who doesn't enjoy a McDonalds once in a while!!!!

We are still practicing our cycling and I am so proud of this boy for mastering the skill independently

Africa Day was so much fun

We took a walk to our local library to collect our storybooks

We celebrated our final birthday for this school year

We entered the Dungarvan Tourist Colouring Competition - we worked very hard and took great pride in our efforts

We said we better make the most of the sunny weather and we hit the local playground....... and of course we had some ice-cream!!!!

And finally......... the ultimate highlight of the month of May................Our First Holy Communion. A special day for all involved!

April arrived.....

April was a short but very exciting month. In preparation for our holidays our theme was none other than Easter!! To kick start the theme each pupil had an Easter basket hanging in the classroom filled with chocolate goodies........ When behaviour was good, hard work was going on and all was going well in the camp the pupils were allowed to take a treat from their basket! Nothing like a bit of chocolate to help inspire us!!!!!

We decided we would use some of our school savings to buy Easter eggs and take a trip to the cinema. We went to our local Supervalu where they had great deals on the Easter eggs - we were able to buy two eggs for our family members and one for ourselves. We choose our favourite eggs, we all had our own savings in our very own money bag which allowed us to pay for the eggs ourselves. Take a look at us in action......

We really enjoyed our trip to the cinema to see 'Sing'. It was so much fun.

We decided we would try our hand at a little baking....... Check these out.......they were yummy!!!

It wouldn't be Easter without an egg hunt. We had great fun finding our chocolate eggs hidden around the playground!

And of course we had to have a party afterwards.........

And now the holidays are upon us - Happy Easter to everyone, we hope you all have a lovely break.
See you all soon.

March madness!!!!
March was yet another busy month here in Primary 2. We celebrated another birthday - and we did what we do best - partied! Cake, balloons, decorations, trip to town....... and this birthday boy was very very lucky as he got a spin in the fire truck to top it all off. Smiles all round.

Our themes this month were St. Patrick's Day and Spring. Our theme song for St. Patrick's Day was called Rainbow Colours. We decided to try an experiment to make our own rainbow using skittle sweets. The results were amazing.......Take a look......

We enjoyed using our musical green shakers to play along to our St. Patrick's themed song G-R-E-E-N.

We made puffy paint shamrock crafts in art........ and wow did they smell good too!!!

The race was on to find the matching St. Patrick's themed card! First back to their seat with two same cards was the winner!!!!

We had so much fun Irish Dancing with Ms. Walsh and her sister - they truly were amazing and we loved every minute of it.

Back in class we did some of our own dancing - dance dance leprechaun dance

Putting our creative skills to the test with our fun St. Patrick's Day themed playdough mats - check these out........

We played a fun game called 'Where's my shamrock?' - The Leprechaun had to hide and his friends hid his special shamrock by sitting on it. The leprechaun had to guess who was sitting on the shamrock!!!

What better way to celebrate our St. Patrick's Day theme than to dress as leprechauns and go on a hunt for gold.........
Really???? Is there gold at the end of that rainbow???? Let's find out........

Our second theme this month was Spring.
We got creative with our playdough and had fun with our spring themed mats.

As Spring is all about new life we decided we would plant our very own broad beans and watch them grow......... This is still a work in progress...... we water them everyday and monitor their growth!

We took a trip out to the polytunnel to see all the fabulous flowers, herbs and vegetables that are growing out there........
Spring is definitely in the air!!!!

We love building blocks here in Primary 2 so its no surprise we enjoyed our next activity........... matching spring picture blocks.

In PE we enjoyed some Spring themed games - now we had no wellies so we had to watch out for the puddles - no wellies no puddles! So we had to jump over them and if by chance you fell in, Ms. Ryan was on hand with the water sprayer and lets just say 'people got wet'!!

This game was hard work....... the wind blows the clouds around the sky so we decided to have a 'blow your cloud' race. The straw was the wind and the cotton ball was the cloud. First to reach the mat was the winner. Our friends cheered us on from the sideline!

March was so much fun. New themes, lots of new learning opportunities, fun games and much more.
Who knows what April will bring...........
See you soon!

February Fun.........
For those of you who are wondering .............................. YES WE FILLED OUR MARBLE JAR!!!!!!!! WAHOOOOOOOO!!!! We were very excited and proud obviously. Our surprise for filling the jar was to take a trip across to the local shop and pick our very own treat. Happy days!!

To help kick start the month we had two very important birthdays........ only days apart and both girls turning 6 years old. We celebrated in style with chocolate cake, balloons, banners and trips to town for our pressies!

One of our themes this month was of course Valentine's. We learned a lovely Valentine's song with actions, made our mammies some special Valentine's cards and played some fun Valentine games. Here we are playing a fun matching Valentine card game - the rush is on to find our matching card and be the first back to the couch!!!!!

We played a lovely game called 'Pass the loveheart'. We listened to Valentine themed music and passed the cushion around in a circle, when the music stopped and you were holding the loveheart you were out. Last valentine standing was the winner!!!

Check out my Valentine Sweethearts..........

As Valentine's fell early in the week we had time to squeeze in a little extra theme - Shapes. We learned all about 2d shapes with Debbie Doo and friends in the Shape Song. We made 2d shape monsters.........

We were busy constructing 2d shapes using matchsticks and blue tac.

We enjoyed a game called 'Shape Swat'. With all the shapes on the floor and a swatter in our hand, we had to listen carefully to the shape called out and the first person to swat the correct shape was the winner!!!

We had fun dancing to our shape dance song, check us out.......

With February being Dental Health month our next theme was obviously just that!! We had so much fun learning all about our teeth. We are very good here in Primary 2, we brush our teeth everyday after our dinner. We now know how important it is to do it after our experiment.....
We put duck eggs (teeth) into coke overnight and saw how dirty our teeth got. We saw how important brushing is in order to keep our teeth clean and healthy.

To go with our theme song 'Brush your teeth' we made our teeth clean and bright and pearly white with this fun art and craft activity - we painted the tooth white then sprinkled glitter on top!!!

We learned about the foods that are good for your teeth and bad for your teeth.

We learned how our teeth love calcium to help keep them strong and healthy. We learned this through a fun activity where we used grapes as our teeth and poured yoghurt over them, the red plate was our mouth. What a tasty snack too!!

Brushing alone doesn't always clean our teeth fully! We learned that flossing is very important too.

We played a fun game called 'Race to loose a tooth' - we played with a partner. We had mini marshmallows as teeth and a pink mouth. You had to throw the dice and count how many teeth you were to take away!!! Obviously enough we ate the marshmallows in the end (not so good for our teeth we know!!!)

In PE we pretended the bowls were our teeth and we chose a food/drink that was bad for our teeth and threw the ball to see how many teeth we could knock out (down).

Finally we ended our dental health month with learning all about the dentist. To say we had fun role playing the dentist would be an understatement!!! Very entertaining. If only I videoed it..........

We look forward to what the month of March brings..........bring on the fun!!!!!! See you soon.

January Joy
How excited were we to get back to school to meet all our friends and share our Christmas news with everyone!!! Well thankfully Santa paid us all a visit and no bags of coal were received...........Phew!!!!!!

Our first theme of the month was Toys. This seemed very appropriate after our Christmas holidays. We did a very exciting show and tell - each pupil brought in a chosen toy that they got at Christmas. We had great fun learning about the toy and of course getting to play with all the different ones. We had a minion who made us all laugh and a magnetic fish game which was a great hit - just to mention a couple......

We learned a very cute poem called 'Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear'. We all had our very own teddy to help us act out the poem.

And as if we didn't have enough toys after Christmas we set up our own toy shop and money was no object - we shopped 'til we dropped!!!!

We took our much loved cars and taped markers onto them - double the fun!!!

A blast from the past - well from our grandparents even maybe our great grandparents time.......... Marbles!!!! Who'd believe so much fun could be had with these little guys.

Not only did we learn a poem about Teddy Bears but a dance too......... The Gummy Bear dance - check out our moves..........

Having spent all our money at the toy shop we had to make our very own toys using none other than a couple of cardboard boxes and tape - oh and let's not forget those little guys - the marbles!!!! Take a look out our creation.......

And the race is on..........

Our second theme of the month was Friendship. This was a fabulous theme. We learned a lovely song called 'Will you be a friend of mine?' and we danced with a friend each time we sang it. Very cute!!! We had lots of drama and role play helping us to learn about being a good friend. Sharing with our friends and helping each other is so important..............

Taking turns with our friends - 'I'll blow the bubbles, you pop them'.................................

Our themed story 'The Rainbow Fish' was a fabulous story all about a beautiful fish who wouldn't share her sparkly scales with her friends. A truly enjoyable story which led to lots of different activities - one being our Rainbow Fish themed playdough mats.

Having learned some friendship rules, we are all trying very hard to be the best friend we can. We have a marble jar in the class and every time we are 'caught' being a good friend we get to put a marble in the jar ('caught' being a bad friend and a marble comes out of the jar!!!!!!) so needless to say its a work in progress - but when the marble jar is full we are going to have a surprise treat.

Check back next month to see if we filled that jar!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Delightful December

There's no place I'd rather be in December than St. John's!!!! What a fun filled month we've had - no words can describe how magical its been. Hopefully the photos will give you an insight........

We kicked off the month with our annual visit to Faithleg Hotel, Co. Waterford. Santy arrived by helicopter whilst a brass band played Christmas songs in the fake snow!! We were greeted by all our favourite animated character friends as we entered the hotel. They joined us all on the dance floor as we danced and partied to all our favourite Christmas songs. And finally we got to meet the main man himself - Santy. Now how amazing does all that sound........

We had a very special visitor to our class for the month of December - he came in the post all the way from the North Pole from none other than the big man himself........ Yes you guessed it.......... Santy!! He arrived with a special letter, treats for all of us and a lovely storybook. He had no name so we decided to call him Eddie........ Eddie Elf. He had a busy month in Primary 2 let me tell you - keeping an eye on us all and reporting back to Santy every night. Eddie used to hide somewhere different in the class each day, we loved trying to find him. We'll miss Eddie in the New Year but we hope he'll come back to visit again next year.

Our next outing took us in to town to take part in a Duck Hunt. We had to follow clues to help find the Christmas Duck hiding in shop windows. Each duck had a number and we had to write it down when we found it. We had so much fun as we got to see all the Christmas decorations in town also - double the fun.

We said we'd try a little cooking, something kind of healthy - we made the cutest, simplest Santa strawberry hats - they were yummy too!

So we had been busy saving our money in our school savings scheme since September and now it was time to count it all up and plan a shopping spree. Wahoo!!!!!!! What better time to shop than Christmas. We treated ourselves to something nice and bought a special present for a family member too. With our change we decided to have one little go on the amusements in the shopping centre - such fun!!

Done and dusted..........

Now for some more fun.......

The week leading up to the holidays was jam packed with fun, excitement, surpirises and plenty of laughter.
Each morning I had to check my laptop as I kept getting special messages for the students in my class......... From who????? Yes from Santy!!!! If only I could have recored their reactions - so cute!!

The Deise Jazz Band held a concert for the whole school - we danced and sang our hearts out!!
Probably one of the cutest moments ever - a special guest apperance with a member of the band who is also one of our bus escorts. Just look.......

Where else would you spend a Monday morning but only at the cinema......... Yes thats where we headed to next!! The whole school went to see Elf. Everyone really enjoyed it.

In amongst all this excitement we celebrtaed two birthdays this month, both boys turned 8 years old.

Christmas lunch here at St. John's is a fantastic gathering of the whole school together for a delicious dinner with all the trimmings! Our chef is truly gifted and we are blessed to have her cooking for us everyday.

We have a school Christmas concert and each class contributes - either with a group performnce or individual acts. Again another truly enjoyable day here in St. John's. We did the super simple song 'We wish you a Merry Christmas'. I was just blown away with my students performace. They sang their hearts out and did all the actions we learned - I was so proud of each one of them. When all performances were finished we had one final song and the whole school joined togther and sang and danced.

You would think we wouldn't have any time left to fit in anymore fun but you're wrong......... On the day of our holidays we partied hard and enjoyed a visit from the big man himself - Santy!!

Finally would you look at the twins - wearing matching dresses - too cute!!!

To say we were tired by the end of all this excitement and activity would be an understatement!!! Having fun is hard work!!!!!
We enjoyed each and every moment this month had to offer here in Primary 2. We will take a well deserved break to recharge the batteires. We'll be back in the New Year ready to rock and and we look forward to what January has in store for us.

Merry Christmas everyone and Happy New Year x x 

November in Primary 2

With such lovely weather this month we decied to go on a nature walk. We took in the sights of our beautiful seaside town and enjoyed taking a closer look at what nature had to offer......

We learned all about occupations/community helpers this month. We had so much fun dressing up and role playing the different jobs. These are just a few photos of us in action!

We love to shop........

Another theme this month was winter. We learned a lovely song called '5 Little Snowmen standing in a row'. We dressed up with hats and red scarves and used a prop as the sun to melt the snowmen away!!

We enjoyed learning our poem 'A chubby little snowman'. Lots of fun actions to help us remember the words!!

We played a fun game in PE - we had to race to find our winter themed matching card. First one back to their seat was the winner.......

As its winter we are hoping to get some snow!!! But while we wait we decided we'd make our own snow storm in a jar. It was very cool. Take a look.......

Once again this is only a peek into the fun and learning that we had this month here in Primary 2. We are super excited for December!!!! So much to look forward to here in St. John's. Be sure to check back at the end of the month to see what we got up to.

October is over already!
We've had such a busy month - it just flew by. We were busy learning all about autumn and Halloween. Halloween was probably the highlight of the month. We had lots of fun celebrating this special holiday.

We started by learning a new song called 'Halloween Night'. We really enjoyed dressing up as the scary characters.

Obviously we carried out the tradition of carving pumpkins and turning them into Jack-O-Lanterns.

For art we made Mummies so we decided we would turn ourselves into mummies for fun - scary or what??!!!!

In between all the Halloween celebrations we managed to practice our drumming skills.

We've also been busy practicing our new drama 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears' - it's a work in progress at the moment.....

Another tradition which we loved was making chocolate covered apples and we also enjoyed playing the well known bobbing apples game.

It wouldn't be Halloween if we didn't dress up in our favourite costume.......

Don't they look delicious.........

This is only a snippet of the fun and learning that took place in Primary 2 this month. Who knows what November will bring?!!!!!!!!!!!!
Check back to find out!!

Sailing back to September
Yes we're back!!! We had a fantastic summer and we are ready for the new school year ahead.

We enjoyed learning a new theme song called 'Family Tree song'. Take a look at us signing the words to the song....

We got straight back into our work at our work stations. Don't we look super busy...........

We have a special friend in our class who loves to see us doing good work. She gives us a reward if we work hard at our work stations. Meet Daisy......... We love Daisy!!!!!

We love to act out our nursery rhymes. Here we are doing '5 Little Ducks'......

Every Friday morning we work with the blocks to learn to build and follow patterns!

If you eye spy the mats on the floor in the above picture, they are for our sensory tac pac activity that we look forward to every Friday after our building block activity!! It is very relaxing!

Playtime is so much fun. We love to have free play with the toys in our class. We have fun with our friends.

For our theme this month we learned a poem called 'I look in the mirror'. We made our very own special mirrors and performed our poem whilst standing on a pretend stage in the classroom. We had so much fun. These are our lovely mirrors.....

Busy bees here in Primary 2 as always. We can't believe September is over already. Bring on October!!!!! See you all soon.