St. Peter's Primary Bray Blog

We were learning all about pets in 1st class so we decided to make homes for some of the pets we had discussed in class.

Each group made a pet rock and we made a whole class brainstorm on what our pet rocks would need in their homes to survive. Take a look at our brainstorm:

After we discussed our pets needs, we started to plan for our homes, making sure we included the essentials! Have a look at some of our plans.

We finally got started on our designing and creating part of science week. Take a look at how our finishing products turned out… would you be happy for your pet to live here?

We have been very busy this month in Senior Infants!

We learned all about the hospital this month. We became patients, doctors, surgeons, nurses, paramedics and receptionists. We built hospitals using our blocks and practised making some tools that surgeons, doctors and nurses use.

We read ‘The Witch with an Itch’ by Helen Baugh and made our own magic potions. Here are some photos of us making our playdough potions!

Here are our spooky Halloween Costumes!

Thank you so much Mr.Kinsella and Liz for helping us to make this yummy chocolate apples!

We have had a very busy month in Ms. Kane’s class. We’ve enjoyed celebrating Maths Week, taking part in STEM activities, baking and celebrating Hallowe’en!

Maths Week was a super opportunity for us to play some of our favourite problem solving games like draughts, Jenga and Frustration! We also took part in Place Value races in the hall and loved watching Maths TV.

We loved taking part in a simple STEM challenge to see which team could build the longest paper chain. It sounds easy but we’d recommend lots of teamwork to make it work! We only used 1 sheet of a paper, a pair of scissors and a stapler to complete the challenge. We had a time limit of 12 minutes and we all successfully made a paper chain, with the longest chain measuring 180cm!

Our favourite weekly activity is baking and we got to create some of our favourite recipes this month! We made s’mores (back by popular demand!) and chocolate apples to celebrate Hallowe’en! We were happy our friends in 6th class could enjoy some s’mores with us!

Finally, we had a fantastic time celebrating Hallowe’en together! Everybody made such a fantastic effort with their costumes! We’re looking forward to seeing what next month brings!

We started off the month with some Autumn Art. We used autumnal paints for our colourful dot painting. They turned out so well and really brightened up the classroom!

We had great fun designing and carving a pumpkin this month for Halloween and learning about the stages in which a pumpkin grows.

We had a brilliant last day before the mid-term, dressing up and painting pumpkins!

3rd class have had another super month this October in school, read on to see the different activities they’ve been up to!

Rang a trí kicked off October by learning how to multiply, they’re pros at it now and even built an array city showing the different arrays to make numbers. For maths week, we then looked at division and recognised the link between multiplication and addition and division and subtraction. To help us divide, we used skittles in groups and of course ate them after

We also learnt all about plants this month. We learned how plants need air, water, heat, soil and light to grow. Then we planted our own lettuce seeds in science. We wanted to test out if plants could grow without one of the above elements so we we also planted control pots – one without water, one without soil and one without light, to see if any seeds would grow – they didn’t.

We have also been very busy this month completing lots of fantastic Halloween art.

Firstly, we created egg carton animals. 3rd class used egg cartons for the faces and created a picture by painting their bodies on the cardboard, they turned out so well!

We created some spooky Halloween art including skeletons and pumpkins!

Our final bit of art was creating Halloween costumes for Ms. Roche – including a Dracula, a bat, a clown and many ore, they were brilliant!

Finally, we had a brilliant last day before the holidays dressing up and playing games and painting pumpkins!

We wrapped up the month by finding out we won the most points for speaking Gaeilge so we got to Spin the wheel and won extra Golden time – a fantastic way to end the month!

6th class have been working really hard on their submission to the ReelLIFE Science Video competition. We made a short video all about nettles (and about a few other themes such as women in STEM and the power of science to ease our fears!)

We had great fun researching, creating and filming our film – the hardest part was keeping it as short as possible! We hope you enjoy it!

STEM Flying ‘Ghosts’

We learned all about electricity this week – especially static electricity. We created our own static electricity by rubbing balloons on our hair and jumpers making them stick to the walls and windows. We made some of our ‘ghosts’ fly using the static from our balloons!

Pumpkin Painting

We had great fun painting pumpkins as a group – deciding on characters together, painting and drawing their faces! We will raffle off Olaf, the Ninja Turtle and Scarecrow tomorrow and kids can take them home for their Mid-Term!

Pumpkin Patterns

Here we used our maths patterns with our art to create cool pumpkin patterns! We had great fun mixing colours and using markers to create our Halloween patterns!

Have a lovely Mid-Term Break – from all in 2nd Class!

Today in first class we celebrated Maths Week by going on a math hunt around the school!

We found different 2D shapes, lengths, numbers and worked out our speed while running and doing jumping jacks.

we had to unlock all of these challenges together as we moved around different areas of the school , it was so much fun!

We got a great start to Maths Week in first class by finding 2D shapes in the classroom. Each group got a different shape that they had to search for in the room! Take a look at what we found:

We then made some 2D monsters with the new shapes we had learnt about. Take a look at our creations:

We have been learning about space in Ms. Kane’s class in celebration of Space Week. We learned about the International Space Station, completed some space art and watched some very interesting videos from the well known Canadian astronaut, Chris Hadfield. We were thrilled when we tweeted about what we learned about him and he saw it!

We decided to carry out a design and make activity based on ‘robotic arms’. We discussed the use of ‘robot arms’ in space and learned that astronauts have to use them when collecting samples and while carrying out investigations outside the International Space Station.

Before we began, we discussed what materials we’d be using and the big engineering questions associated with this activity: how would we make the arm move? and how could we make sure the arm could lift items? Before using the materials, we sketched a plan of our design and discussed some approaches in our pods. Then we got to work!

We used cardboard and brass fasteners to create our robot arms. Making sure that our arms could move freely was really important and we soon found out we needed to check if the fasteners were too tight or too loose and adjusted them as needed. We needed to measure each piece of cardboard and decide where to punch holes so that our robot arms would work properly. This required lots of teamwork and discussion.

Testing our arms was lots of fun! Some pods were successful on their first attempt of trying to pick up an object but other pods decided to make some ‘modifcations’ to their designs. For instance, a cardboard spoon and fork were added to the end of one arm to help making lifting objects easier and others used a felt eraser. Lighter objects were easier to lift and we discussed what materials might be useful for robotic arms that need to be used in space. Lots of great engineering and maths skills being put to use!