We are all very proud of the girls in fifth class for all their work in preparing for our Christmas musical. For many girls, this was their first time to perform on a stage and we are very proud of them all. Thank you to all our family and friends for coming to see our show. We celebrated on Friday with a hot chocolate party. 

Thanks to Sarah, Callie and Aoibhe for writing the report below on our musical: 

On the 20th of December, St. Philomena's held their Christmas concert. Each class did a Christmas play but today we are going to tell you about the fifth class play called 'The Magical Christmas Jigsaw'. 

Our musical started in a Christmas market. Our first song was 'Roll up, Roll up'. There were five children: Niamh as Beth, Sarah as Joe, Jade as Eve, Allyssa as Meg and Emma as Tom. The children run into the Christmas market where they meet the toy seller (Izzy). She offers them an old jigsaw. Even though it takes her a lot of persuading, the children finally decide to take it. The jigsaw takes them back to the very first Christmas. 

Each image that was shown on the jigsaw was performed by fellow classmates. Putting the pieces together, the children found out the true meaning of Christmas by watching the romans, the nazarenes, the shepherds, angels, kings and of course Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus. 

We hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as we enjoyed writing it. 

We hope you all have a Merry Christmas. 

Written By: Sarah, Callie and Aoibhe

We enjoyed our SESE trail around Tullamore in October. We brought our trail booklets with us and stopped off at Tullamore DEW Centre, O'Connor Square, Kilbride Street, Tullamore Courthouse, Tullamore Train Station and the famine cemetery in the town park. We listened to the history of each stop on our speakers using the Tullamore Historical Tour App. We had great fun learning all about our town and filling in our trail booklets. We even got to enjoy lunch in the park.

We are learning about habitats in Science. The first habitat we explored was our school yard habitat. We found a family of snails, worms, lots of tiny insects, bees and birds. Our school yard has the perfect conditions for all these creatures to survive. 

We are really enjoying our oral language lessons this term. We are exploring the elements of storytelling through a lively and engaging mixture of creative writing,
listening and talking, art and drama activities using the hilarious LEGO Movie as inspiration. So far we have invented, illustrated and written a character profile for a new Master Builder recruit having analysed, evaluated and discussed The LEGO Movie trailer. Take a look at our characters we built using our LEGO. 

  We had a very busy, active workshop with Eddie (www.eddieoneill.ie) today. We made lots of rhythms on East African drums and a selection of percussion instruments- some quiet and relaxing rhythms and a lot of very loud, energetic ones ! Eddie has been coming to our school for many years and we always enjoy his workshops.
Thanks Eddie !
​Here are some photos: ( video to follow hopefully...)

A Mandala is a circular pattern that is used for prayer and meditation in Hinduism and Buddhism. It can represent the Circle of Life. Mandalas are sometimes made with flower petals or with sand. We used paint to create our interpretation of mandalas.
Here are the photos (click on the thumbnails) :

 We really enjoyed the 3 activities that we did with Tommy  and Judith yesterday. We worked co-operatively to complete the tasks that we were given. We had a great time !
(Teacher was a bit neglectful of her photography duties !! Sorry about that !!)

Today we enjoyed seeing a magic show performed by Evan.  Lots of girls got to assist him with some of the tricks. We also met his "wild animal" called Rocky.
Here are the photos: