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As part of our Christmas preparations we made a Christmas Candle stick which we hoped we would use during Christmas in our homes. Tradition in Ireland is that the youngest child in the household lights a candle on Christmas eve which is placed in a window to light the way for Mary and Joseph.
Some of us lit our candles during Christmas to remember those in our families who could not be with us this Christmas. |
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With the harvesting of our pumpkins it was time to prepare our Gairdín Scoile for winter. We have learned in Science that living plants need sunlight in order to grow well. We decided as part of our preparations of our garden for winter we would test this theory. We began by weeding all the beds.
In Science, scientists often speak of control groups and variable groups. We learned that in a control group scientists will keep all aspects of the experiment the same. In a variable group scientists will vary or change one thing so that it can then be compared against the control group and any differences that happen can be explained by the one factor that was different in the variable group. We picked two of the planters, which we firstly covered in newspaper and then a double layer of blackout cloth which will limit the sunlight that these beds get. We left two of the planters uncovered, giving the sunlight full access to these beds. All four planters, which are all equal in size, are located in the same garden so the amount of rainfall that will hit each bed will be the same and the temperature of the beds will be the same. We will not uncover the covered beds until late Spring so then we will be able to compare them to the uncovered beds and see if there has been any difference in weed growth. Having set up our investigation we then tried to tame our polley tunnel tomato plants! |
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Vincent Van GoghWe have been learning about the Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh. Vincent painted lots of landscapes, portraits and still lives. He often used his paintings to express his emotions. We saw that when he lived among poorer people he was upset at seeing how difficult their lives were and many of his paintings from this time are in dark colours like 'The Potatoe Eaters'. He spent some time living in France and here he loved the colours of the landscape in the sun. He loved the bright sunlight as he believed that yellow was a sign of life and hope. 'Starry Night' is an interesting painting as it is a mixture of some lovely bright colours but also darker colours. We talked about the importance of 'line' in this painting and how it the sky the curved lines and brush strokes give a sense of movement. Looking at this and other paintings where line is important we could see that lines can give a sense of slow or fast movement and a sense of organization or disorganization. We also learned how to zone a painting or photograph by talking about its: background, middle ground and fore ground to help us locate things we wanted to talk about. We used chalk and paint to create our own abstract paintings using line to create a sense of movement. It was amazing to see how different each one was! |
Paintings by Van Gogh |
Éist le Abbey agus Kasey, ag bualadh le chéile don chéad uair.
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We have been learning about Recount Writing in English. Recount Writing is used for retelling an audience of readers about something that has happened. The plan for a Recount piece of writing is:
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