Junior School News 29 January 2021

Birthday Girls this Week!

Sophie Pye 9yrs

Nicola Wildish 10yrs

Fódla Morgan Breslin 4yrs

Dolly Truman 5yrs

Zayneb Kashif 12yrs

Covid Self-Portrait by Alannah Corr (J3W)

Poetry Competition – What Matters To Me

The girls have the opportunity to enter both a poetry competition and a poetry challenge. The same poem can be entered to both events. The theme of the poem is 'What Matters to Me'. The girls are required to write a poem using less than 200 words. Each girl needs to enter the school based competition by Friday, 5th February at 3pm. Entries can be uploaded to Seesaw (KGLr to J4) or Google Classroom (J5/J6).

You may also like your daughter to enter the same poem to the RTÉ News2day poetry challenge. Email it to news2day@rte.ie as soon as possible.

Virtual Tour of the Zurich Portrait Competition Exhibition in the National Gallery

On Tuesday, 26^th January, we had a virtual tour of the Zurich Portrait Exhibition in the National Gallery. There were many entries to the competition but the exhibition had 26 adult and 20 children’s works on display. The tour was presented by Kate Drinane and Catherine O’Donnell. We saw the picture ‘Is this normal?’ by the winner of the children’s competition, Eva McParland aged 14. It showed her younger sister wearing a face mask. We also saw the entry from the adult competition which was called ‘Portrait of a Boy, Morning’ by Aidan Crotty. We viewed a few alternative portraits showing feet such as ‘Comfortable Shoes’ by Amanda Doran. We learned that portraits can be created from different perspectives such as a bird’s eye view. We saw art created using emojis, embroidery, scrap metal, newspaper, leaves, flowers and fabric. This technique is called mixed media. We liked an interesting photograph called ‘Twenty Seconds’ by Eloise Cassidy. It showed candles on a cake in the background while the girl washed her hands for 20 seconds and sang ‘Happy Birthday’ twice. We enjoyed our virtual tour and our favourite piece was of a girl eating an ice-cream which was called ‘Myself Eating Ice-cream’. We were encouraged to take part in the next Zurich Portrait Competition. Thank you to Ms. Smith for arranging this opportunity to view this interesting exhibition.

By Zoe McNally (J2R Art Captain) and Ms Gorry (J2R Class Teacher)

RTÉ's Science Guy Phil Visits J3!

This week the J3 girls went Science mad! We were so excited to have Scientist Phil from RTÉ's Science Hub in for a chat. We asked him lots of questions such as: 'Why is it dark in space? What made you love Science so much when you were younger? Why is the sky blue? How does wind start? (Phil said by eating beans!!) and How do tsunamis happen?' He also explained how noise in space is so different to what we're used to seeing in the movies by teaching us how signals are sent from our ears to our brains.

Phil answered all our burning Science questions by using props from his home and going through everything in great detail. He was really interesting and we learned so much from him.

Phil also had some very thoughtful quotes. He told us that all good things in life start with a question and that everyone is born a scientist. He also told us you don't need to be a scientist to use Science. It's everywhere around us. Figuring out new ways to do things is the most important thing, such as sport and food. To make things cheaper, faster, safer, always look at things and have a bash. Trying things is what it's all about.

Thank you, Phil, from all of us in Alex - this was a great way for us all to start the weekend!!

J3R and J3W

News from Preschool Lower

The Preschool lowers Winter theme has kept them busy throughout the month of January. We have sung songs and recited poems about snowmen and penguins, gone on winter scavenger hunts and painted winter trees. We also celebrated three birthdays in our class and had lots of fun playing our instruments and singing along with Ms. Higgins and her ukulele. We have kept fit and danced with Mairead, made play dough and showed our favourite toys to each other during show and tell. Well done girls on a busy few weeks.

Ms. Brandon & Ms. Malseed.

News from Preschool Upper - Learning about the Arctic and Antarctica

One of the themes in Preschool Upper this week was exploring and finding facts about the arctic and the Antarctic. The girls watched National Geographic Kids’ videos about polar bears and penguins. The girls were fascinated to discover that polar bears are actually black, not white. They learned that the polar bear’s fur is actually translucent and only appears white because it reflects visible light. They also discovered that polar bears are the largest land carnivore. They also found out that polar bears live in the Arctic, not in Antarctica.

Penguins on the other hand live in the Antarctic and the children were made aware of the fact that one of the biggest threats to the penguins is the melting ice and the effects of climate change. The highlight for the girls was drawing pictures of both the polar bear and the penguin and they did a great job as you can see from the photo below. Well done, girls!

Ms. Murphy and Ms. Moran