At 10 o’clock on Friday 9th. November, the boys and girls “met” Helen for the first time. She spoke to us from her studio in Goatstown. What a quaint name! Of course we had to ask how the town got its name, and sure enough…………. beautiful alpaca goats being in residence had a lot to do with it!

Helen talked to every child, finding out their names, and what their favourite animal was.

Ryan – A gorilla.                                 Cliodhna – A monkey.

Ciaran and Carl – A cheetah.           

Aoife – A horse.   Helen said that she rode a horse when she was young.                

Darragh – A monkey.                                   Eimear and Stephen – A lion.

Conal – A tiger.                                              Olivia – A koala bear.

Caitlinn – A pony.                                         Tia – A robin redbreast.

Ronan – A tiger, a lion and a fox.              Oisin – A hummingbird

Kella – A dolphin.                                         Laoise – A dog.

Charlie – Bull sharks, great white whale sharks and tiger sharks. Helen told us that she swam with baby sharks in Australia!

We found out some more interesting facts about Helen too:

• Fact #1: She loves collecting things, like bugs. She showed us some of her collection. She had a huge dung beetle which makes its nest from dry elephant poo! The children loved that! Helen told us that the beetle is in such a good condition because it is in a liquid called formaldehyde. She loves the smell of it and she enjoys going on visits to the Natural History Museum in Dublin. It is full of dead animals, many of which are preserved in formaldehyde.
• Our “key word” this week is: formaldehyde. Each week we are going to try to introduce a new word for the children to remember.

 

                                  

• Fact #2: She has 2 children. Her son Reuben, was 6 last week and she made him a jelly cake with jelly worms coming out of it. Yummy!

Helen uses a very kinaesthetic approach, so she started off by showing us a life size outline of her body on 2 different coloured papers. Helen drew our attention to the following: Did you know that your arm is the same length as 4 of your hands and that your height is the same as 7 of your heads. This is the same for EVERYONE, no matter how big or small you are.

                                     

Then the children started using body parts (hands) to measure the length, height and width of their tables.

  

                    

                                             

Next, the children measured the width and length of the classroom using their whole bodies. We found out that 32 children could sit back to back around the 4 sides of our classroom. The room is a rectangular shape, with 2 doors and 17 windows.

                   

                                          

The next activity involved tracing round the children’s hands on vinyl material and then cutting them out. The hand shapes were stuck on top of the tables. Some were more successful than others, as each child is at his/her own level of competence, but everyone enjoyed the activity.   

                                          

 

10:45am – BREAK-TIME: Helen asked the children to watch out for birds in the playground. She asked them to observe how they moved in the air and on the ground.

11:05am – When the children returned from break they told Helen that they had seen blackbirds and seagulls.

We had watched a murmuration of starlings, (what a lovely word) and we noticed how they made swooping and swirling movements in formation.

Helen asked the children to describe the movements that they had noticed at breaktime.

Charlie said that he had watched a seagull flapping and gliding. He gave a great demonstration!

Kella said some birds did a loop de loop.

Conal noticed a blackbird swooping round and round looking for worms.

Tia said that she saw a bird pecking at the grass and a bird was being blown around by the wind.

There were super observations and demonstrations given by Darragh and other children.

Helen copied some of the movements and complimented everyone on their great observation skills!

Eimear told us that her Grandad keeps pigeons.

Helen then asked the boys and girls to make marks in their notebooks to show the different bird movements which they had noticed.

                         

All too soon it was 12:15. Time for LUNCH and time to say GOODBYE to Helen until next week! We had a great first session and were looking forward to session number 2.