Junior School News May 2025

Congratulations to the winning artwork selected to go forward to the Hermione Exhibition 2025. This is a prestigious event, and we enjoyed celebrating and seeing the girls’ artwork.

Artwork selected

Jessie, J6W
Title: Street of Wonders
Medium: Oil pastel and pencil

Molly, J5W
Title: Life on a Lilypad
Medium: Acrylic paint

Aryna, J5W
Title: Hermione
Medium: Paint

Eliza, J4R
Title: The Cat with the Purple Bow
Medium: Acrylic paint

Shivi, J4W
Title: The Wonderful Spring Robot
Medium: Pencil and marker

• Kg Lower: Carol 
• Kg Upper: Yesol
• J1: Chloe 
• J2R: River 
• J2W: Ivy 
• J3R: Eunsol
• J3W: Isabel 
• J3R: Abigail
• J4W: Holly 
• J4R: Cindy 
• J5R/J5W: Juliet, Lola 
• J6R: Jessie, Amelia 

Library Trip

On Thursday 1st May, the KG Lower girls took a trip on the school bus to Dundrum Library. They were so excited to be sitting with their friends on the bus. We met with the librarian, Joanne, who showed us around the library and brought us upstairs to the kids’ section. She told us some facts about the library and the type of books that are in the library. We got to ask her some questions like what her favourite book was and how long we could keep a book for. She even read us a funny story about a cat, a hat and a rat. Then we got to explore the kids’ section and read some books. We loved our trip to the library!

Easter Assembly

The girls were very excited to present their last assembly of KG Lower to the school. We chose to tell everyone about our "Easter News". We spent a whole week coming up with some things we all did over the Easter break. Some of us went on holidays, some of us did Easter camps while a few of the girls did egg hunts. The next step in our writing process was to draw our news. We took our time and created beautiful masterpieces. Next, we told Ms Kenny our news which we wanted to share and she wrote it in highlighter pen for us to trace. We have been working so hard on our writing, so once we traced the news, we wrote it all by ourselves underneath. Take a look at some of our fantastic handwriting. The final step was to practise saying our news loudly and clearly so everyone could hear us on assembly morning. The assembly went so well, everyone was very impressed with our work. We are so proud of all we have achieved this year with our writing and reading and we can't wait to see what KG Upper has in store for us.

Basketball Lesson

On Wednesday 7th May, the girls in KG Lower were treated to a special basketball lesson with Coach Ciaran. Emily E. in our class won this experience for us in the JACA auction earlier in the year. Ciaran showed us how to dribble and hold the ball and did lots of fun games like stuck in the mud. Next, we worked in pairs to practice passing the ball to each other and build on bouncing skills. We had so much fun! Ciaran broke us into teams of 3 and we got to play a match. We shot into the basket and some of us got slam dunks! We really enjoyed this lesson and can't wait to practise at home. 

On our recent J1 class trip, we had the exciting opportunity to visit the Fighting Words Workshop, a creative writing centre in Dublin that helps children express their ideas through storytelling.

We started the day by brainstorming as a group. The friendly volunteers helped us come up with characters, settings and exciting plot twists. Everyone was encouraged to share ideas, no matter how wild or funny. Together, we built the beginning of a story, filled with imagination and humour. Then came the best part—we each got to finish the story ourselves.

With pencils at the ready, we were given time and space to write our own endings, each of us taking the story in a new direction.  It was amazing to see how the same beginning could lead to so many unique conclusions. We even had our class name printed on the cover of our own storybook which we got to take home—a really proud moment for many of us.

Absolutely, yes, and this year we had the joy of early summer sunshine which added to our enjoyment of coming together and running track in both individual and team events and enthusiastically taking on the fun challenges in our novelty zones. These areas were all ably supervised by our class teachers, Sports Captains and TY students, along with Peter and Mairéad, all who kept activities moving safely and smoothly.

The ‘taking-part element’ with a smile and a giggle for the girls, is always high on our priorities, and receiving a medal simply added to this excitement, so many thanks to you all once again. It was wonderful to see so many Mums and Dads, Grannies and Grandads and supporters, cheering on each athlete with gusto. And roles were reversed when they took to the track themselves most definitely inspired by our younger runners before them! Congratulations all round on a super days’ fun activities, and finishing off with surprise ice creams is a well deserved treat indeed! Our ‘athletic field events’ were held during class time. It was brilliant to see the way the girls gave these quite technical events a go with many achieving their personal bests in throwing and jumping challenges. Very well done to you all!

Preschool Sports Day

On Monday 26th May, Preschool Lower and Preschool Upper had their Sports Day. Luckily the rain held off and we had fantastic fun with the teddy bear race, obstacle course and many other activities. At the end of Sports Day, the girls received participation medals and everybody went back to school with big smiles on their faces. A big thank you to Mairéad for organising this event for the girls. Fun was had by all!

Ms Wales, Ms Brandon, Ms Breen, Ms Murphy, Ms Potts and Ms Byrne

On Friday, 16th May, J2R and J2W visited Newbridge Farm and house. We toured the Georgian house first and then we visited the farm where we saw donkeys, goats, pigs, sheeps and lots more. We enjoyed our final trip of J2 in the sunshine!

J2W have had a very busy May and we have learned lots of interesting things as well as going on a great school tour. 

This month, we started reading Fantastic Mr Fox by Roald Dahl. We have learned lots about the characters and the language used in the book. We have also done some artwork based on the story, such as, designing our own front covers and drawing what we think the characters look like. We did an assembly on Fantastic Mr Fox this month and everyone really enjoyed it. 

There have also been lots of other fun events we have enjoyed this year including Sports Day, the Talent Show, and the Teacher Swap. We have also been working on projects about the planets with J2R. We have had a great time working with the other class and we cannot wait to present what we have learned.

On Thursday, 9th May, the Junior School orchestra from J2-J6 with their teacher, Ms. O’Rourke performed at the Grange Golf Club. The orchestra had the opportunity to play for Gladys Ruddock’s wonderful “Ladybirds” and they performed beautifully. It was a great afternoon and all the ladies there really appreciated the musical performances. Well done, everyone!

J4W have had yet another busy, fun-filled month in May. In SPHE, we discussed how each individual has their own unique strengths and after reflecting on the things which make us who we are, we created our own ‘Trees of Strengths’. 

In maths, we looked at our final topic of symmetry and we looked for where we could spot symmetry all around us. We even created some symmetrical shapes using our bodies!

We have been discussing ‘Éadaí’ as Gaeilge and we had lots of fun using Bratz dolls to talk about clothing and fashion through the Irish language. 

The class earnt a well-deserved picnic. We had lots of fun enjoying our treats on a sunny day in the park followed by some time in the playground.

On May 1st, the J5W class took a trip to visit the Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin. We had a phenomenal time learning all about the various types of plants and trees growing in the garden. We saw the Californian Redwood trees, tropical rainforest, desert cacti, banana trees and much more. After the tour, the class got to plant their own peas using handmade paper plant pots. We spent the afternoon creating watercolour paintings of the flowers in the gardens.

Planting Seeds

After Easter, the class started planting cress seeds in preparation for our trip to the Botanic Gardens. We used soil, water and light to grow our cress seeds. Here are the steps we followed: 

1. Fill your yoghurt pot 3/4 full with soil.
2. Make a small hole with your finger about 1cm deep.
3. Place 5-10 seeds in the hole.
4. Cover the seeds with more soil. 
5. Water the soil.
6. Place the pot in sunlight. Water daily.

Last week, we went to visit the Hermione Art Exhibit. We observed all the various techniques the artwork was created with: acrylic, oil, pastels, pencils, clay. We even saw Molly and Arina's paintings. They were amazing!

As another year comes to an end, the Creative Technologies Programme in Alexandra College Junior School continues to go from strength to strength. Across the year, from KG Lowers up to J6, the students had the opportunity to try a range of different technologies - from programming screenless robotics; to creating wonderful animated books; to coding in Minecraft and re-creating musical compositions in Scratch; to constructing LEGO robotics and much more! We look forward to developing this programme over the next academic year.

A huge well done to our four J5 Dreamspace Ambassadors for 2025: Aimee, Orla, Maeve and Molly. They’ve done an incredible job representing our school throughout our journey with the Microsoft Dreamspace programme. Across the year, the girls engaged with a wide range of online learning experiences with the Microsoft team, where they learned about Minecraft, staying safe online, Micro:bits and they even held a “Tea & Tech” morning with residents from Mageough House, to help older users of technologies understand how to stay safe online. The whole experience has been a fantastic opportunity for the students to build confidence and develop key digital skills for the future. We’re really proud of everything they’ve achieved—well done to all involved!