In September we explored habitats in the Botanic Gardens and looked at the wonderful sculptures. We also wore blue to support our superb GAA teams. Up the Dubs!

 Recently in Room 11 we have been learning about Mt. Everest. We read a story in our Reading Zone called "On Top of the World", all about Mt. Everest and Edmund Hillary who reached the summit of Mt. Everest on May 29th, 1953.
We began to wonder what it would be like to climb Mt. Everest and wished we could ask Edmund Hillary all about his adventures!

Luckily for us, even though Ms. McGrath couldn't provide an interview with Edmund Hillary, she could provide an interview with her friend Richard who had climbed to Everest Base Camp.

We compiled a long list of questions for Richard about his time climbing Mt. Everest; we wanted to know about the weather, what sort of equipment he needed, what food he ate and what training he had to do. 

On Monday 21st September, Richard came to our class and we conducted our interview. He told us all about how he trained by climbing smaller mountains in Britain and Ireland, how his cup of tea froze over night on the side of Mt. Everest and how if you didn't get out of the way of a mountain yak, he would knock you off the mountain!! Richard showed us pictures of his climb to base came and brought in a Nepalese flag to show us.

Check out some of these pictures below!
​If you know an interesting fact about Mount Everest, please share what you know below too

Dear Parents,

The INTO has launched a pre-budget campaign calling for greater investment in primary education. The ‘Stand up for primary education’ campaign is demanding improvements in class size, funding and supports for school leaders in next month’s budget.

State funding for primary schools has never been generous and as you know we rely on your generosity to make up the shortfall. Irish class sizes are also the second biggest in Europe with about 125,000 pupils in classes of thirty or more.

State funding for school running costs at primary is 92c per pupil per day while second level schools get almost double (€1.77) for each student. This funding covers school running costs such as electricity bills, heating costs and water charges. Primary school classrooms must be opened, heated, cleaned and maintained for a month longer, but are expected to do this with just over half the funding.


A lifting of the ban on promotion would also help schools to deal with increased demands like special education, computing and literacy and numeracy.

Your support for this campaign is needed and would be greatly appreciated. It’s also easy to do. 

•  Please send the postcards to local TDs to let them know that for you primary education is a priority.   You can send the postcard directly to your local representatives or simply fill it in and send it back into the class teacher. We will then forward the postcards to our local public representatives.

•  Please go to www.standupprimary.ie and send the pre-prepared email to all local TDs.  This website will allow you to choose your constituency and corresponding public representatives so it is very easy to navigate.

• Between now and the budget in a month’s time, if you meet any TDs please let them know that for you primary education is a priority.   In the case of our own school class size, funding and lack of an adequate school hall are the areas of focus.       

• Free Text STANDUP to 50050

 Thank you for your support in standing up for Primary Education

And let's not forget Ms. Ryan! ;-)

In our first experiment, we took a look at what happens when you mix soil and water together. We half filled a jar with soil and we added enough water to nearly fill the jar. We then gave it a good stir. We had a talk about what we thought it would look like an hour later. Some of us thought we would see grass, carrots or even white flowers! Some of us thought the soil might sink to the bottom. An hour later, the water was floating on the top and the soil had indeed sunk to the bottom. We recorded and drew our findings and we took some photos of our investigation. We also took a photo of what the soil sample looked like the next day.

Senior infants and 5th class visited the Sculptures in Context Exhibition in the Botanic Gardens this morning. What a lovely sunny day to visit, and see many colourful flowers still in bloom. There were lots of interesting sculptures to see as well on our visit.
We hope to buddy up again in the future to work on different projects between our two classes. We made lots of new friends today.

The pupils from 4th and 5th classes were delighted to have an author visit them in school this morning. Martin Brennan, who has a pseudonym of Edward Crane, was in St. Brigid's to talk about his trilogy of books about the Havishams. During his visit,he talked about the length of time it takes to write books, how to create characters, and be creative in our story-writing. We were delighted to have some of the first chapter read to us, and to hear the plots of the books.
Thanks to Martin for his time and enthusiasm in helping us to see how great writing stories of all kinds can be.