Junior School News February 2026
Preschool Lower and Preschool Upper
Preschool Lower and Upper had a wonderful time celebrating Valentine's Day together before the mid-term break. The classroom was transformed into three fun Valentine's stations for the girls to enjoy. At one table, they got creative making adorable "love bugs." Another station was all about decorating cookies with icing and sprinkles, while the third offered fun tattoos and colourful hair braids. It was a joyful morning filled with creativity, laughter and lots of Valentine’s fun!
KG Upper
Over the past month, KG Upper has been very busy! In Maths, the girls worked on number bonds to 9, 10 and 11, sequencing days of the week, understanding time (morning, afternoon, night, before/after), and explored positional language through lots of hands-on activities. In English, we focused on phonics, tricky words, handwriting and oral language and spent some lovely time engaging with the story Whatever Next, creating story maps, actions and writing our own versions. In Gaeilge, we practised everyday Irish while chatting about clothing, colours through songs, games and comhrá. In SESE, we explored space and the moon and carried out a waterproof materials experiment linked to Whatever Next. In SPHE, we talked about feelings, friendships and how our actions affect others. Our highlight was performing in assembly in front of the whole school!
J2W News
J2W enjoyed welcoming the start of spring with a little weaving for well-being and 3-D flower art.
J3R Update
J3R has begun 2026 with lots of learning. In English, we have been learning about nouns, verbs and adjectives and even created our own ‘noun towns’. We have also started reading a class novel called ‘Kensuke’s Kingdom’ and it is fun to discuss and write about the adventures that the story entails. We have also created some lovely artwork, for example some renditions of St. Brigid’s cloak and some Chinese lucky cats to celebrate the Lunar New Year!
J6 FIRST LEGO League Competition
On Friday February 23rd, both J6 classes took part in Alexandra College Junior School’s first ever LEGO robotics competition, the FIRST LEGO League (FLL). This competition is an international STEM competition where students work in teams to design, build and program a LEGO robot to complete missions on a game table, while also creating an innovative project to solve a real-world problem. It aims at developing key skills such as teamwork, problem-solving, creativity and communication through hands-on learning and friendly competition. The theme this year was “archaeology” and students had to investigate the role archaeologists play in our society and learn to problem solve through an archaeological lens.
The day was a great success: all classes from KG Lower up to J5 came to see the girls’ work and support them. Past Maths teacher in the Senior School and long time supporter of the Junior School Ms. Elizabeth Oldham along with our very own Mr. Daniel Kruger were very generous with their time and entered into the role of judges for the girls’ Innovation Projects. Teachers Ms. Anna Bergin and Mr. Eddie Fitzgerald also presided over the Robot Games table. After a challenging but enjoyable day, two teams made it through to the next round which will be held in DCU on Thursday 26th February. A huge congratulations to Team AMOE (Annika, Maeve, Orla and Eve) and Team Scuba Doo (Ameila, Hannah, Aimee, Ali and Georgia) - they will be travelling to DCU to participate in the next round of the competition. We wish them the best of luck and look forward to hearing how they get on!
J4 Science through Picturebooks
Just before the midterm, both J4 classes revealed the exciting science projects that they had been working on. Using three different picturebooks, “The Very Hungry Caterpillar", “The Clumsy Click Beetle” and “Can't You Sleep, Little Bear?”. Both J4 classes were challenged with solving problems for the main character in each of the books. Problems ranged across 4 main areas: simple machines, lights, insulators and bridges. The girls researched the science topic and then came up with a solution to the main character's problem, for example building a bridge to help “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” travel from one leaf to another. The girls held a mini showcase and they thoroughly enjoyed sharing their work with the younger students.
Saint Brigid's Day
Saint Brigid's Day Art
To honour Saint Brigid and the start of spring here in Ireland, the girls in J5 created stunning art pieces of Saint Brigid and her cloak. We love seeing their artwork brighten up the Jellicoe building! The girls learned all about the story of Saint Brigid.
Saint Brigid's Day Crosses
The girls also tackled the challenge of creating Saint Brigid's Crosses with rushes. Ms Roache and Ms Dower were very impressed with the girls’ skills!
Spanish Food Tasting
The Spanish Club girls took part in a food tasting this month. The girls sampled various tapas style food from Spain including jamon iberico, chorizo, manchego, jamon serrano and tostadas. Que Aprovecho!
Green Day
To show our school's devotion to being a Green School and helping the planet, the J5R girls created projects about climate change and completed case studies on its impact around the world. We only have one planet and we need to take care of it!
Credit Union Table Quiz
On Friday the 8th of February, 3 teams of J6 girls went out to St Colmcilles SNS in Knocklyon to compete in the Credit Union table quiz. The girls who went were: Maeve, Cara, Lizzie, Molly, Alex, Amelia, Reiltín, Saskia, Emily, Hannah, Jessa and Holly. There were 12 rounds, each consisting of 6 questions. The rounds varied in difficulty and knowledge, but in the end we all had a very enjoyable time. One of our teams finished 5th overall. Sadly, we didn't advance to the next round, but we thank Mr O’Connor very much for giving us this opportunity. We had a brilliant time taking part!
Lunar New Year
We are delighted to be celebrating the Lunar New Year in the Junior School. We are looking forward to the special day to mark this event which will take place on the 1st March.
Music Assembly
On Wednesday, 4th February a number of girls played the piano, guitar and ukulele at a music assembly. It was a wonderful start to the day. Thank you to Ms Qiao and Mr Gutierrez for preparing the girls for their performance and to Ms Fitzgerald who assisted the students on the day. Congratulations!
Green-Schools Committee
It's an exciting time for the Green-Schools Committee as we are preparing to get another Green Flag for the school. We had lots of fun on Green Day when we led assembly, sang our Green- Schools code, hosted a quiz and announced a poster competition. Soon the Green-Schools Committee will be meeting with a member of Green-Schools Ireland who will visit the school and chat with the girls about what we've been up to. Our Green-Schools’ motto is 'Kind to Each other, Kind to the Earth!'
Competition Winners
- Ava (KG Upper)
- Tessa (J2R)
- Eonsalt (J4R)
- Shivi (J5W)
Croke Park Active Days Everyday Challenge 2026
On Monday, January 19th, the girls in the Junior School were given a challenge. They were asked to take a short movement break every day right up to the midterm break on February 13th. This was an initiative of Active Schools and was led by our fantastic J6 Sports Captains who modelled and demonstrated the breaks to all of the Junior School girls.
These weren't any ordinary movement breaks, however. This challenge was supported by the GAA and all of the movement breaks were filmed in different areas of Croke Park Stadium including the Cusack Statue, Handball Alley, Muhammad Ali Tunnel, Press Box, Players Lounge, Hill 16 and of course, on the side of the famous field itself.
In addition to the dynamic exercises, the girls learned a new fact about Croke Park every day. Did you know that the groundskeepers walk 13 kilometres every time they cut the grass? Or that Croke Park has two resident hawks named Alfie and Kayla, who keep the seagulls out of the stadium?
Fuair na cailíní treoracha i mBéarla agus i nGaeilge agus iad ag déanamh na gcleachtaí gach lá. Bhí a lán ‘action shots’ ó gcluichí le déanaí i bPáirc an Chrócaigh freisin agus bhain na cáilíiní níos óige taitneamh astu.
When the classes completed the movement breaks, they either signed or placed a sticker on a wall chart in order to track their progress.
Thank you to all of the teachers for participating and to Ms. Lamplugh, Ms. Gorry and Ms. Tracey for supporting this initiative. A special thank you to our J6 Sports Captains (Alex, Erin, Amy, Lola, Amaya, Amelia, Martha and Jessica) for their enthusiasm and help, especially when the tasks were performed during active assemblies on Mondays and Thursdays. We hope that the girls enjoyed the breaks, learned a little bit about our national stadium and that they may feel inspired to keep up the movement breaks, even if Croke Park isn’t the setting.
Beir Bua agus Míle Buíochas
Sports Update
Our Sports Captains are back and ready for a busy term of sporting activities ahead. We are all enjoying learning about different sports, especially those in the Winter Olympics, at the moment!
We have a number of AIJS events scheduled for the next few months, from athletics, basketball, golf, J4 mini-hockey, soccer and tennis and weather permitting they all go to plan.
Plus our mini-hockey league sectional matches are nearing a conclusion and things are looking pretty close. Both our A and B teams were out playing their first home league fixture, opposite Our Lady’s Grove recently and were delighted to record their first wins of the new term! Well done to you all, with great team passing skills evident in supporting and moving into space on the pitch, resulting in super goals! Both our teams have a match in hand and we are hoping they will be played during the first week back after midterm break.
We also had the annual AIJS Mini-rugby day, kindly hosted by Mount Anville School. We had two teams playing, one from J6 and the other from J5 and despite the rainy weather our girls had a great time! Exciting non-stop action from the start, all matches were played in a round robin format with 2 teams qualifying from both draws. Our J5 team just got pipped by 1 point from making their semifinals. They were very unlucky indeed as they really got to grips with the tricky conditions, definitely not easy to control ball passing at all. The J6 team had better luck on the day and got through on leading points scorer from their section. This moved them onto semifinals and then following a win against Saint Gerards, into the finals where they played the host school, Mount Anville, in a thoroughly exciting, skilful and speedy contested final only to lose out by one try. Congratulations to them and to all our teams who enjoyed themselves and who played in a very sporting manner. Well done! Thank you to both coach Anna and TY student Alex for helping out and supporting our teams. It was a really great fun tag-rugby day out!
And speaking of tag-rugby, we have our Leinster Schools’ Development Rugby Coach, Ariel, back with us for some extra skills time in his masterclasses, with our Thursday afternoon groups involved. We’re getting 6 Nations ready!
And finally, after many cancellations, we have rescheduled our J6 Headfort invitational afternoon to Wednesday, March 4th which seems a long way off at this point in time but we are looking forward to welcoming them and playing some exciting mini-hockey.
