​This week is Seachtain na Gaeilge, and there are lots of fun activities happening in Esker to promote the Irish language. We would love for all our families to get involved as well!

This year, we are running a poster competition, with a fantastic prize—a €50 voucher for Cosmos in Liffey Valley for one lucky family! Closing date is Friday March 14th!

We are also offering free resources for families to take home (first come, first served). There was huge interest in these resources and we ran out, which is a great sign of the interest in Gaeilge!!
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Finally, we will have our Lá Glas this Friday, March 14th, where children are encouraged to wear something green to school.

We did mini projects before our winter break about traditions. We could do a project about family traditions, winter traditions or cultural traditions. We also brought in food from our traditions and everyone got to try them. Linda brought in the traditional Irish crisp sandwich that all the children loved!!

For science we were learning all about our taste buds and where they were located on our tongue. Did you know different parts of our tongue taste different things?? 

We had so much fun playing Tiddly Winks in school. We were learning all about games in the past in Ireland and what life was like for children in Ireland. 

As part of our restorative practice, we are spending a couple of mornings a week having a check in and sharing how we are feeling at that moment. Which possum are you??

In 2nd Class Red, we have been learning all about space. We have been learning about the planets, the sun and the solar system. For art, we thought it would be fun to make rockets to send to space! We used junk materials and got very creative with our designs. Check out our amazing rockets in the pictures below. 

Maths week was very exciting in 2nd Class Red! We were given a Maths Pack full of interesting maths games and resources. The best part was that our parents visited our classroom to play some of these games with us. We had so much fun playing together!  

Check out our performance at the school assembly last week! We spent lots of time practising our lines, learning our poem and building our confidence speaking in front of an audience. Our assembly was about our amazing school Esker Educate Together! 

Here are some pictures of our displays this year.

We try to get outdoors as often as we can! Here are some photographs where we explored history and engineering by studying King John's bridge and comparing with newer footbridges. We created letters using our bodies - can you work out D-A-N-C-E? We made butter using old fashioned method of shaking it in a jar and we got to use our sense of taste! Thank you to the PTA for our tasty ice-creams from the ice-cream van!

An Ethical Approach to the Environment is a key principle of the Learn Together curriculum and this year we took part in Picker Pals, which we really enjoyed! Here are some of the pictures from when we received the kit and some photos our families sent in to Tania.

We had a great tour to Kildare Farm!

We really enjoyed continuing with Aistear stations this year. They were a little different to when we were in Junior and Senior infants and were focused on drama, engineering, science and technology and linked to the main monthly topic we studied. Here are some of our favourite pictures. Some of our themes included Jack and the Beanstalk, The Enormous Turnip, Spain, Transport and birthday parties!

Check out some of our hands on maths activities. We had great fun using our fingers with our partner to count doubles, when we do a high five it makes 10 and then we count on the extra fingers. We figured out the best way to show someone which colour blocks the class picked... by showing it on a graph! We explored capacity and pattern.

Thank you to two of the parents for coming and reading books to us in your native languages.

We had such a fun day celebrating the different cultures that are important to us. We recorded some interesting facts and shared these with our families on Seesaw.

We had great fun learning this song as part of our Dabbledoo music lessons.

We learnt about some interesting traditions and celebrations including Halloween and the Hindu festival of Diwali. We have three children from India in our class and were very lucky to have one mother come and speak to us about Diwali. We made beautiful paper lanterns to celebrate Diwali, the festival of light!

Every group gets to do construction activities one day a week as part of our stations! We use magnet tiles, wedgits, building blocks and a fun problem solving game using a castle! We have different challenges each week and we are really enjoying learning the skills that architects, engineers and designers use! 

Drama and role play are great ways for us to work on our oral language skills and the skills of story telling and sequencing that are needed for English and History. Each table group gets the opportunity to do role play once a week as part of our stations. Some of our themes so far have included birthday party, The Enormous Turnip story and The Three Little Pigs story.