email: cforde@stmarysns.ie

Daily Games

(World)le

Wordle

Seachtan na Gaeilge continues and there will be Biongó inniu. There will be time put aside to complete your seanfhocal posters today also.

Well done with your Maths test yesterday also, it was great to see that 4 students had questions about the test before it even began.

PE today will be a basketball but we will warm up with a game called Birds in the Nest.

Seachtain na Gaeilge begins today. We will give a quick run through ‘Rattlin Bog’ again and there will be a seanfhocal poster competition. A seanfhocal is a proverb. A proverb is a simple and insightful, traditional saying that expresses a perceived truth based on common sense or experience.

• Sláinte!
• Is fearr an tsláinte ná na tánite – Your health is your wealth
• Níl aon tinteán mar do thinteán féin – There’s no Hearth like your own Hearth
• Is fearr Gaeilge briste, ná Béarla clíste – Broken Irish is better than Clever English
• Ní neart go cur le chéile – There is strength in unity
• Ní dhéanfadh an saol capall rása d’asal – You can’t make a racehorse out of a donkey
• Tús maith leath na hoibre – A good start is half the work
• Mol an óige agus tiocfaidh sí – Praise the young and they will prosper
• An rud is annamh is iontach – Rare things are beautiful
• Ní thuigeann an sách an seang – The well fed cannot understand the lean
• Go n-ithe an cat thú is go n-ithe an diabhal an cat – May the Cat Eat You, and May the Devil Eat the Cat
• Ní bhíonn saoi gan locht – There is no wise man without fault

I have a large money box, 10 cm wide, and 5 inches tall.  Roughly how many coins can I place until my money box is no longer empty?

A man stands on one side of a river, his dog on the other. The man calls his dog, who immediately crosses the river without getting wet and without using a bridge or a boat. How did the dog do it?

Seachtain na Gaeilge begins on Thursday. There will be a seanfhocal poster competition that day. A Seanfhocal is a proverb. Tús math meath na hoibre – a good start is half the work.

Auditons for next Mondays story telling and poem recital will happen today. The 4 winners will not have written homework this week (including posters).

A concrete block weighs 4 kg plus half a block. How much does a block and a half weigh?

In PE today we will be doing Orienteering on an app called adventure Walks. We will visit locations on the school field where a question will appear on your screen. 10 locations to visit.

A man has to get a fox, a chicken, and a sack of corn across a river.

He has a rowboat, and it can only carry him and one other thing.

If the fox and the chicken are left together, the fox will eat the chicken.

If the chicken and the corn are left together, the chicken will eat the corn.

How does the man do it?

Well done yesterday constructing the water pumps. It is mainly an assembly project and it doesn’t allow for much creativity on your behalf but it is still good to see how they are put together. We also learned about the Archimedes Screw, aqueducts and water towers we see around the country.

How many 9′s are there between 1 and 100?

A hungry feeling came o’er me stealing
And the mice were squealing in my prison cell
And the old triangle went jingle jangle
All along the banks of the Royal Canal

To begin the morning a screw was bawling
‘Get up you bowsie and clean up your cell’
And the old triangle went jingle jangle
All along the banks of the Royal Canal

The lags were sleeping, Humpy Gussy was creeping
As I lay there weeping for my girl Sal
And the old triangle went jingle jangle
All along the banks of the Royal Canal.

If there is a 20 minute slot free in the hall today we will play a game called 3 Ball.

Airbag Jeans for Motorbike Safety

Secrets to a good nights sleep

A frog is inside a well that is 30 metres deep. Each day, the frog jumps three metres up the wall and it slides down the wall two metres each day. How many days did it take the frog to jump out of the well?

Todays PE game at 10:30 is called RollerBall

`U2` has a concert that starts in 17 minutes and they must all cross a bridge to get there. All four men begin on the same side of the bridge. You must help them across to the other side. It is night. There is one flashlight. A maximum of two people can cross at one time. Any party who crosses, either 1 or 2 people, must have the flashlight with them. The flashlight must be walked back and forth, it cannot be thrown, etc. Each band member walks at a different speed. A pair must walk together at the rate of the slower man`s pace:

Bono – 1 minute to cross
Edge – 2 minutes to cross
Adam – 5 minutes to cross
Larry – 10 minutes to cross

For example: If Bono and Larry walk across first, 10 minutes have elapsed when they get to the other side of the bridge. If Larry then returns with the flashlight, a total of 20 minutes have passed and you have failed the mission. Your goal is to get all the men across in 17 mins or less.

Our PE game today is EndZone Escape.

Mad Puck Goat.
It is said to be a patriotic fighting song that uses a mad, ferocious goat as a symbol for the fighting and indomitable spirit of the Irish.

Each year in Killorglin, Co. Kerry August 10th, a Puck Fair is held. The Puck, a wild mountain goat, with decorated horns, is paraded through the streets with rapturous applause and cheering. On arrival at the town square he is crowned and then ceremoniously raised on a scaffold platform some twenty five feet high. The Puck resides here for the next three days and nights looking down on his subjects. The well-known song An Poc ar buile, ‘The Mad Puck Goat’, is associated with the festival which dates from the seventeenth century.

At that time, a herd of goats was grazing on a high peak, when the noisy throng of Cromwell’s army shattered their peace. Alarmed and frightened, the goats scattered and ran into the hills – all of them that is except for one brave male who ran down the mountain and into Killorglin. The local people on seeing the goat sensed something was wrong and took cover. The people of Killorglin survived and have commemorated the event by holding the fair ever since.

Seachtain na Gaeilge will run from the 9th – 16th of March.

There will be a storytelling competition and Talent show that week. Stories can be told in Irish or English or a mix of both. Auditions will take place that week as each class has only a few places.

Ms. Morris is running a GAA lunchtime league and I’m delighted to see that we are able to make 3 teams. Great to see this level of participation. Well done to everyone who attended girls and boys soccer trials in the last few days also. Make sure to give as many sports as possible a go.

In Matter of Fact yesterday we learned about the human body and in particular about stress and how food affects how our body functions. Animals and humans have a psychological response called Fight or Flight that helps protect us in times of danger but it is important that this response is not triggered all the time. While thinking about the future is good, we sometimes spend too much time doing this instead of focusing on the present, and we create what if scenarios that triggers fight or flight (stress).

News2Day from Tuesday 21st of February

Try to get the Glasnevin trip permission slip back in as soon as possible. We are going on the 7th of March. The tour is an exploration of Irish History between 1912 & 1923. All costs for the event are covered by the Department of Education.

We have made a good start to our Music Compositions and you will receive more time again today. Each group picked a theme for their piece of music, the themes selected are 1916, Saturn 5 Rocket LaunchThe Boy at the Back of the Class

The February podcast is a music composition. Recording will take place on Friday. We will use school instruments, voice, body percussion and some of you may also want to bring an instrument in from home. You must also write the piece of music on paper so all members of the group can follow it easily

I have been mulling over picking a winning design all weekend. We had some great names of apps from 1 A day, Circle of Friends and Mr Motivation, however my favorite name was DocAway. It was extremely difficult choose but the overall winner is Great Goal by Lucy, Lillian and Anna. As there was so many good features in other apps I think it might be a good idea to add elements of other app designs into this app. I especially liked the idea in the Circle of Friends app design (KatyMay & Méabh) that got classmates interacting with each other.

Well done everyone, fantastic work by everyone. I will sit down with Lucy, Lillian and Anna this week to discuss what they want to happen with the app from here.

New Irish Stories from Anna, Daniela, Cillian, Tara, Megan, Conor & Oisín have been added. If you have not yet completed your story please complete it at home and get it up to me as soon as possible. Let’s read some of the stories.

Our 1st PE session of the week is at 10:30 today, we will play a game called Hook it Up.

Blistering Israel Olatunde smashes 60m national indoor record

We played Cone Orienteering for the 1st time today, we will play it again later in the year when we have a full class. It was very interesting to see how each team organised themselves when made into a larger group.

App Design presentations take place today. I’m really looking forward to the presentations and seeing what you have come up with?

We largely take our bones for granted but, as Rob explains, they are miracles of engineering, and predate fibreglass by many millions of years in combining hardness and flexibility.Show less

It was great to get all members of the class logged in yesterday and I’m hoping to get the laptops for another hour again today. Everyone now has a Scratch login and we will start programming today. Just before finishing up with the laptops we will have another quiz on Kahoot – the quiz will be on World Flags.

PE at 12 today and our warm up games are called WARBALL and Bandits.

Bogota aims for cleaner environment by going carless for a day

In the build up to our Glasnevin visit on the 7th of March a new item (Glasnevin) has been added to the site menu. The page looks at a number of important events in Irish history.

A good portion of today and tomorrow will be spent on your app design project.

We will get the remaining members of the class up and running on the laptops tomorrow and we may even begin our 1st Scratch project – Dance Party.

We are down almost half our class today and again next Friday due to the open day at the Community College. We have chrome books in the class today and we will be setting you all up on them.

A small sample of our 2 point perspective buildings. We will complete them on Monday when the whole class returns.

• Design an app to be used by class members (this app may be added to our class app)
• No internet connection needed
• It must promote well being (being comfortable, healthy, or happy)
• Complete a wireframe showing layout, colour and how to navigate the app.

€290 million to be spent on walking and cycling projects

The Green Schools commitee have asked us to look at water over the coming weeks, its important, how it is being polluted all over the world and what we can do to help. We will also have a water theme in Art/Science this month as we will be constructing water pumps and a water powered car. Regarding the water powered car, 2 days will be needed to construct it I feel. With midterm on the 16/17th (Thursday/Friday) of February we will spend the 2 preceding days constructing them.

Fantastic work in art today, unfortunately we ran out of time to complete the street view. We will return and complete it this week.

KatyMay, Donagh, Megan and Cillian were selected to read our comhrá today. The standard off Irish reading as a class is improving and it was fantastic to see the effort all groups made to get the pronunciation correct.

A date for the diary – On Tuesday 7th of March we will be going on a tour to Glasnevin Cemetery. We will spend the whole day there and it is completely free of charge 🙂

The community games basketball is coming up in the next few weeks. Unfortunately not everyone can play and we have been asked to pick a girls and boys team (10 players in each). We will be looking back on the basketball tournament from before Christmas and selecting squads from that.

You had chapter 20 of the Boy at the Back of the Class last night. Let’s read your comments now.

Walk & Talk is back again and we hope to go for a walk this Friday. Those who featured in the Travel Diaries, make sure to get a parent to listen to your work. We will also be doing 2 Point Perspective drawing after lunch today.

The topic of our February podcast has been added to Upcoming Events. You will be in groups of 4 or 5 and you will be composing and performing a piece of music.

The 16th man…the story so far

Great work completed last week by everyone. All 8 auditions were of a very high standard. Sydney, Buenos Aires & San Francisco were the winning groups and we will listen to their podcast now.

Asteroid 2023 BU passes closer to Earth than some satellites

You were asked yesterday to design a water powered car. You would simply attach a bottle of water to a car and the car would travel at least 2 meters, the water could not be pressurized and no battery/motor could be attached to it. I was amazed with how quickly you came up with solutions. I may put a day aside soon to allow you to build this.

Today you have another brief but instead of designing, you will build. Your brief is

• To use 50 or less toothpicks and hot glue to create the tallest tower possible

https://youtube.com/shorts/a0HvLS5eSDM?feature=share

Food Dudes begins today.

Fruit and vegetables are an important part of a healthy, balanced diet, as they are good sources of fibre, as well as having lots of essential vitamins and minerals and other substances such as phytochemicals which are known to have a protective effect on the body. 

Eating lots of fruit and vegetables can help you to keep a healthy weight as they are naturally low in fat. Scientific evidence suggests that having 5-7 portions a day may reduce your risk of many diseases.

Variety is important! Different types and colours of fruits and vegetables contain different combinations of important nutrients, which our bodies need to stay healthy. So, to get the most benefit out of them, try to have a wide variety of fruits and vegetables from each of the colour groups – red, orange, yellow, green, purple, blue and white.

Fruit and vegetables can be prepared in many different ways. They can be eaten raw or cooked, fresh or frozen, and even tinned in their natural juices. They can also be added to smoothies, which can be delicious. Fruit and vegetables are better eaten whole because they are more filling and provide more fibre.

Video 1

Auditions later today for the Travel Diaries podcast. It was great to hear snippets of your script yesterday and I’m really looking forward to hearing them today. There is no defined marking scheme for your auditions. I am looking for your podcast to stand out from the crowd, does it have golden nuggets of wisdom and eye-opening insights about the location. How well do you deliver this information and do I and other members of the class stay engaged through out the audition. Just 3 groups will go forward to recording tomorrow. The podcast will be edited over the weekend and we will listen to it on Monday morning.

I Gaeilge inné, léigheamar comhrá idir a mháthair agus a triúr paistí. Chniotáil Mamó geansaí do na paistí ach níor thaitin siad leo. Bhí na geansaí rómhór agus róbheag. Cleacht sibh agus thaifead mé trí ghrúpa.

I’m undecided as to what our next construction project in class will be, there is a selection of projects to choose from. To help me decide, later today I’m going to time to design a solution to this brief. You must design a car that will travel at least 2 meters, the car must be powered by water and this water can not be pressurised. There is no motor or battery allowed in the design either. Let’s see what you come up with.

An Cailín Ciúin first feature as Gaeilge with Oscar nod

Deacon Gerry asked me to remind you to complete questions in Creed Session 2.

We are on Day 25 of 4 A Day. These quick and sometimes tricky questions are a great review of work completed already this year. It is great to see the effort you are making to not only work out questions but to learn when you get the wrong answers.

Emma from Ms Nugent’s class has been asked by the Green Schools committee to gather information on the robin. She is going from class to class giving opportunities to add to the poster. What will we add today?

The ‘white gold rush’: Inside a lithium mine, where stores of recyclable energy lie.

Lithium powers many of our devices as well as electric vehicles. Western states are believed to hold an immense amount of the metal and some say it could help the U.S. reach its climate goals.

Podcast auditions will take place on Wednesday and only 3 groups will go forward to recording on Thursday. You will get 1.5 hours tomorrow to work on your scripts in class tomorrow followed by another hour on Tuesday. You should have your scripts and rehearsal completed in that time.

In history we will begin a new topic this week called Plantations in Ireland which happened between 1550 & 1610. The result of these plantations can still be seen in Ireland today.

Sometime in the next few weeks we will start to learn computer programming. There are many programming languages but we will start with a language called Scratch.

Brazil begins first operations to protect Amazon rainforest

Our 10th artifact was brought in by Aidan today. It was a Wii U from about 2015, it was without doubt our most recent artifact. Aidan informed us that it was not a very successful product for Nintendo, the game controls were too big and technology was advancing rapidly when this released and Nintendo quickly moved onto the Switch as their main product. Chloe challenged Aidan to a race on the WiiU but the 20cc car she was handed left her the impossible task of defeating Aidan. Well done Aidan, every well presented. Who will present next?

We have Badminton with Ms.Morris at 9:30. It is a fantastic game the sport demands excellent fitness: players require agility, strength, speed, and precision. It is also a technical sport, requiring good motor coordination and the development of sophisticated racquet movements.

Yesterday you had to make a comhrá between a waiter and customer. You invited the customer into the restaurant, asked for their order. However when the soup was served there was a soup in it. Here are some of the conversations that you made.

last night Chapter 8 was assigned and we will look at your reading logs now.

Sports clubs to avail of EV charging point grants

We have a huge amount of items in to help build our marble runs today. Thanks to everyone who took the time to do this.

Your marble run will be judged on a number of elements, 1 point for every turn, 4 points for a successful run, 1 point for every second it runs for. There will also be a bonus point on offer for the team that uses the greatest number of different materials.

In Matter of Fact yesterday we learned about Child Labour. One paragraph was about Bangladesh where many children have to work. Almost half the population live in absolute poverty. Bangladesh is also home to the world’s largest river delta and prone to frequent, devastating flooding. Farmers here are expanding an ancient technique of building floating farms that simply rise and fall with the swelling waters. In times of rising sea levels, could this offer a solution to food security problems?

With just a day left to our Marble Run Construction, we will take a look at some Rube Goldberg machines. It is similar to a marble run however A Rube Goldberg machine is a chain reaction–type machine intentionally designed to perform a simple task in an indirect and (impractically) overly complicated way. Usually, these machines consist of a series of simple unrelated devices; the action of each triggers the initiation of the next, eventually resulting in achieving a stated goal.

A third of electricity generated from wind last year

It is the last few mornings to bring in materials for the marble run. We will be putting book aside on Wednesday and spending the day building them.

We will continue looking at river s and islands of Ireland this week. Dursey Island has Ireland’s only cable car service. It has been going on a wing and a prayer since 1969. But islanders were faced with being cut off after it was announced it was to close for repairs. At the last minute the Government said a replacement ferry service will now be put in place for Dursey Island in West Cork, a relief for people and animals alike.

There are nearly 152 million child labourers worldwide. Many agency’s provide aid in areas where displaced and local children are forced to work as many children face the burden of having to earn wages to support their families. Today we will be reading Chid Labour in Matter of Fact.

Many members of the class are making a great effort in Irish and I am seeing improvement every week. Today you were given just a few minutes to put together a short conversation between a shopkeeper and customer. Here are some samples.

You received a note about Food Dudes yesterday. It will begin on January 26th and it will last for 8 days. Food Dudes is Ireland’s national healthy eating programme for primary schools. It works by positively changing children’s attitudes towards eating fresh fruit and vegetables. This is achieved by combining three key elements – repeated tasting, rewards and role modelling.

The more we taste a food, the more we learn to like it. Evidence shows that multiple tastes of the same food – as many as 15 or more – can be required to establish a liking for that food. 

Food Dudes offers children a variety of different fruits and vegetables to try on rotation in an exciting, encouraging way. Children’s palettes are expanded as they sample an assortment of fresh produce and begin to add new foods to their diet.

We welcomed Guga to our class yesterday and I know everyone will make a big effort to make him feel welcome here.

Tbilisi is the capital of Georgia. Spoken Georgian is like no other language you are likely to hear. It includes rare sounds that many visitors may never have heard before. Some consonants, for example, are pronounced from the back of the throat with a sudden guttural puff of air. Georgian has its own 33-letter alphabet thought to be based on the sort of Aramaic spoken in the time of Jesus. To the untutored eye, the letters look very much alike. A squiggle too far and your “k” can easily turn into a “v” or a “p”. But even without understanding it, Georgian writing is beautiful, a myriad of theatrical swirls and flourishes.

Leonardo da Vinci was one of the most prolific inventors of all time! Some of Leonardo da Vinci’s inventions that are most well known are Leonardo da Vinci’s flying machine invention, Leonardo da Vinci’s robot knight invention, Leonardo da Vinci’s machine gun invention, Leonardo da Vinci’s parachute invention, Leonardo da Vinci’s armored tank invention, Leonardo da Vinci’s diving suit invention, and Leonardo da Vinci’s self-propelled cart invention. Most of these inventions by Leonardo da Vinci are precursors to inventions that we benefit from today. Da Vinci’s flying machine invention was a precursor to the modern plane for example. It is amazing to think that he came up with these 500 years ago. He lived between 15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519.

‘THE BOY AT THE BACK OF THE CLASS’ offers a child’s perspective on the refugee crisis, highlighting the importance of friendship and kindness in a world that doesn’t always make sense.

One point perspective is a drawing method that shows how things appear to get smaller as they get further away, converging towards a single ‘vanishing point’ on the horizon line.

A note went home yesterday evening regarding the school tour to Baltinglass Outdoor Education Centre, please show it to a parent.

Tying in nicely with our work on Island of Ireland this week, an Irish movie called Banshees of Inisherin have won a number of awards. The movie is set on the islands of Achill and the largest of the Aran Islands called Inishmore.

Maths Test this morning, I will go over questions you struggled with at home last night before the test begins. Yesterday we learned about Turlough Hill, What do you remember about it. We will do a Sketch Note on it later today.

Finally new stories from Daniela and Chaz have been added. Please get a parent to read your story and try to read and comment on a classmates story.

The girls and boys teams for the 2023 Blessington Cup have been selected. Team selection is different this year with each teams made up with different classes. Best efforts have been made to make teams as fair as possible. Players are coloured coded to identify their class. The draw for both competitions will take place today.

New vocabulary popped up again today about rivers. Can you remember the meaning of words such as confluence, meanders and erosion.

Great to have another artifact in today. Cillian brought in his great grandfathers medals and dog tagsfrom WWII.

Cillian’s great grandfather was part of the British army. He was based in Shanghai and fought the Japanese in the Pacific. One of the medals had Pacific inscribed on it to reflect the time served there.

Cillian also informed us that his great grandfather has been played a part in the planning of the D Day invasion.

The medals were always carried in an old cigarette box and he had his initials put on the box. There was a slight bend in the box as he carried them everywhere in his back pocket.

Excellent Cillian, brilliant presentation and what a treat for us all. That makes 9 artifacts brought in so far this year. Our target is 18. Who is next?

The story ‘The Wild Ducks Nest’ threw up some great vocabulary yesterday.

dilated eyes – Colm, with dilated eyes, eagerly watched the bird

indifferent – he ran pretending indifference

stealthily – he ran stealthily along the river bank

The story was also set in Rathlin Island which is part of our Geography maps this week.

Thanks Oisín for bringing in Marble Run materials today, just a week to go to bring in items (pipes, wood, tubes, anything that you think a marble will run on).

Great to see everyone hitting a few golf balls on Friday and willing to give it a go.

Today you will be put into groups of 3 and given your city/country for the January podcast. Each group of 3 will have a radio presenter, a travel journalist and a local from the location. The travel journalist has been invited onto the radio show to talk about a holiday destination.

They must include travel costs, airports, hotels, restaurants (best dish)$$$, landmarks and their history, other history, famous people, museums (why visit this museum). They will also have a recording of a local from their trip there.

What is winning?

Winning is being better today than you were yesterday everyday.

This month’s podcast is called Travel Diaries. You and team of reporters will be asked to review a holiday destination, talk about the landmarks, food, activities and meet a local from the area to tell you more. Here is a short sample of last years Travel Diaries. The details of the podcast will follow on Monday.

As we missed the Christmas quiz we will be having a New Years Quiz today.

For the month of January we are looking at Placenames. We saw that many placenames have no real meaning in English, in many cases the Irish Placename has just been Anglicised. Can you remember the meaning behind the placename Tallaght?

The place-name Tallaght is said to derive from támh-leacht, meaning “plague pit” in Irish, and consisting of “támh”, meaning plague, and “leacht”, meaning grave or memorial stone. The earliest mention of a Tallaght is Parthalón, said to be the leader of an early invasion of Ireland. He and many of his followers were said to have died of the plague. The burials that have been found in the Tallaght area.

We have a busy January ahead, In Art we will be doing optical art along with 1 and 2 point perspective art. In Science we will be completing a marble run at the end of January (we must gather materials for it).

Unfortunately time came against me and there was only enough time to edit the winning Christmas Story. Ms. Nugent informed me that Jack’s story (The Missing Christmas) won. Hard luck to Cillian and Chloe. Anyone who has stories please hand up and I will publish them on the site.