St. Thomas' S.N.S. | Teacher Journal

This week we were let down by the technology. Our Internet connection just didnt want to work for us! Luckily Maree was able to make a surprise visit and we managed to have a great time anyway.

The children had so much fun sorting through the material last week we let them at it again. This time they were looking for the colours they would find in the sea. Once we had enough scraps we spread them out to make our own sea.

We sang a few sea shanties! Then we rescued our friends who were stranded across the sea.

We decided we needed some sea creatures to put into our sea. Everyone closed their eyes and imagined which sea animals they would like to see.

Then they drew, coloured and cut them out before adding them to the sea.

Maree brought out the magic shells towards the end of the lesson. Each child chose 3 magic shells and made a wish. We then put them on strings to make some kingdom necklaces to match our hats. Our kingdom of Tallaght costumes are getting better and better!

Last week we began the process of creating our individual flags. Each child made their template with paper and then began to transform their ideas into fabric creations.

The children thought carefully about their colour schemes and spent a lot of time sorting through and discussing the various pieces of fabric.

The fabrics were then sorted and pushed into the boards to creat really tactile fabric flags.

 

Once we had the flags completed we discussed who would see our flags. The children talked of all our visitors and their birds. We could see seagulls out our window and chatted with Maree about how they had visited us form the seaside.

Maree had sent us shells from the seaside and we looked at them with magnifying glasses, felt the textures and listened to their songs!

Then the children picked out the patterns and drew them.

During the week in class we had looked at the flags of the world. We discussed them again on Friday with Maree. The children were able to pick out all the different shapes and colours in the flags.

Then each child was given a page on which to make their very own flag. Each child had a very different idea of what they wants on their flag. From images of family and friends to monsters and castles, they covered it all!

When we had our individual flags made we Chose the fabric we would like them to be made with.

We had discussed and draw the different houses and buildings we will have in our kingdom. Now it was time for the children to make them. We invited some design experts from first class to come along and help us . We paired up and began to build.

When our houses were completed we put them all together to make our own clay city.

 

 

This week we looked at lots of different pictures of the sky. The children noticed that the sky can be lots of different colours.
We decided to pick out all the colours we could see and mix them up to create a colour for our own sky. They chose blue, yellow, red, purple and pink.
Everyone had great fun mixing the different colours.

When our colours were mixed we set about painting a sky for our birds to live in.

Once the sky was painted it was time to add in some clouds. We noticed how clouds were different shapes, one child had seen a dog shaped cloud! Our clouds were every shape imaginable .

Once our sky and clouds were up we could add in our birds.

 

 

We decided that Maree would nominate two children to be our passport control officers. The officers job would be to take fingerprints at the start of every trip to the Kingdom of Tallaght.
All the fingerprints can go into the childrens passports and eventually each child will have a page of fingerprints.

For our next activity we looked at some pictures of people wearing hats. We had made our own st Patrick’s day hats so the shield rein were very excited about creating their own individual kingdom of tallaght hats.

 

 

 

 

Maree came to school today, the children were delighted to see her in person.

She asked them all about the work we had done last year and everyone remembered it in every detail! Then we looked back at our blog and the children agreed it would be great fun to do a new project this year.

We talked obout Marees visit to Lesotho , looked at photos and watched a video of school children there. The children loved the idea of living in a kingdom So we decided this year we would create our own kingdom !

 

We drew pictures of some of the different places in our Kingdom.

our queen. 

A very happy house.

 

 

 

This week we looked at the kingdom of tallaght again and voted for our Queens name. The class agreed on Queen Nicloe.

We filled out our details in our passports.

 

We needed to include our fingerprints.

We did hand prints too, just to be sure,

We put in our hand prints and our fingerprints. Then we looked at the prints carefully. We realised there were lines and loops on our hands.

The children then examined their own hands and drew their own “hand maps”

 

Last week we had created our country landscape with its lines of trees, ditches and bushes and the beautiful ploughed fields.

This week the children were set the task of adding  anything else they thought belonged in their landscape.

We had been doing a lot of work on the farm and Spring time in class so the children were full of fantastic ideas. They drew farmers, ducks, chicks, cows, tractors to name but a few!

 

After they had drawn their pictures the cut them out and stuck them onto their landscape. The end result was a dramatic countryside collage.

Perfect for an exhibition!!

 

This week we were lucky to have Maree come and visit us in our classroom! There was great excitement as the children get on very well with her and love her chats!! They discussed their teachers, their class and also Maree! After this the children set to work creating portraits . Maree and the teachers were so happy to see such beautiful pictures of themselves!

 

 

 

 

 

Looks just like Miss Murphy!!

When the children were finished their fantastic protraits Maree talked to them about their mark making lesson from last week. They told her how much they enjoyed it and showed her their work again.

 

We showed Maree the tools we had used in the mark making activities with the sand and clay. Then Maree demonstrated how we could use these tools to paint. The children loved the idea and got straight to work.

Getting messy is all part of the fun!!