Citywest & Saggart

Community National School

First Class Room 8: Our Trip to Dublin Zoo

First class went to Dublin Zoo on the school tour on Thursday 25th May 2017. We had a fantastic time and saw everything from snakes to sea lions, and giraffes to gorillas. The weather was fantastic as you can see from the photos below. Thank you very much to the parent/guardian volunteers who helped us out for the day – Laura, Karen, Simona, Nicola, Claire, Nicola and John on camera!! Please see the photographs here.   A very special thank you to Ms. Bates who organised the entire trip. I know everyone will agree when I say she did one TERRIFIC job! Thank you Ms. Bates....

First Class Room 8: What do seeds need to grow?

Scientists ask themselves important questions all the time. It’s what helps them to discover things. So, when Ms Bates asked us the question ‘What do seeds need to grow?’ we were so excited to investigate to find out. We wanted to see if seeds only need water, or sunlight, or whether the actually need both in order to grow. In our class predictions, many children predicted that seeds need both sunlight and water to grow. Some of us weren’t so sure. Ava remembered a time when it was dark  and wet when her plant was a seed and yet it still grew! We needed to find out once and for all. We began by taking turns to put soil in our pots. We were surprised that the soil was cold and damp. Once the soil was in our pots we then added cress seeds. Ms Bates informed us that the more seeds we had the better.  To try and see which factors were needed for the seeds to grow, some pots only got light and no water, others got water and no light, another pot got no water or light and finally, some pots received, water and light. The results were astounding! All of the plants which received water and light grew into beautiful green cress plants. No seeds grew in the other pots! What a result, plants need water and light, and of course, soil, to grow! Ava realised that although it may have been dark outside all the plants need is a little bit of light and not sunbeams. Luckily enough, since we are living in Ireland!...

First Class Room 8: 3D Shape Orienteering

We has such a fun day doing 3D Shape Orienteering in Room 8! We have been learning about 3D shapes all week, and so, we were given this exciting challenge to see just how much we have learned. As it turns out, we know quite a lot! We now know that: 1. a face is the flat surface of a shape. 2. an edge is the line where two faces meet 3. a vertices is when three or more faces meet, quite like a corner. In groups of three we set off around the class looking for coloured cones. Under each cone was a 3D shape riddle  which we had to solve before the time ran out. Why don’t you have try at one of our riddles? I have 6 faces, four of them are rectangular, two of them are square. What shape am I?  The answer is….. CUBOID! Congratulations to Ava, Evan and Arshmann who won. They had all of the correct answers in the fastest time. Click here to view some...

First Class Room 8: Science Week

What a week we’ve had! Room 8 had so much fun being scientists for Science Week. On Tuesday Dr. Dave from Maynooth university visited the very lucky children in our school. We were each given lab coats and goggles to protect our clothes and eyes. Dr. Dave told us the importance of healthy eating (makes us strong) we then experimented on lots of different foods such as bread, mushrooms, and cornflakes to see which one had energy  (starch). We were amazed that the high energy food turned black after we dropped a special solution on them (iodine). We then tested drinks for protein and no surprise that milk came out on top.   On Wednesday and Thursday Ms Bates introduced us to magnets! We learned so much by freely exploring magnets. We watched a video and found out that if two of the same sides of the magnet are put together they will repel each other. Did you know? the earth is one giant magnet as there is nickel and iron in the middle of the earth! How cool is that! BIG THANK YOU TO DR. DAVID FITZPATRICK AND HIS ASSISTANTS….. WE LOVE SCIENCE! For more photos click...

First Class Room 8: Architects

Today in art Room 8 sketched the school building. As India is our theme for the month we looked at school buildings in India. Emma thinks that many of the schools in India look very big. Ms Bates, gave us the task of sketching the school building. We each got clipboard and sheet of paper, we went outside and observed the school then sketched for 5 minutes. Even though our school building is very large with many windows, we did a fantastic job! Click here for...

First Class: Lights, Camera, FREEZE!

We had so much fun today in class doing drama. Ms. Bates read us a story during the week where the main character of the story Leela and Tig’ was feeling jealous. We discussed a time when we felt jealous and decided that it was important that even when your feeling jealous you must still try to be a good friend. We worked in groups to create freeze frames. Our freeze frames had to depict a scenario when we might feel jealous. It was so much fun!! (pictures to...