October was a busy month in 3rd and 4th class. We began the month immersing ourselves in a STEM project based on rivers. We studied the journey of a river, to discover it has three parts. It has an upper, middle and lower course. We learned all about the source, tributaries, and mouth of a river. We learned about the River Shannon in Ireland and the amazing Amazon River in South America. We even created our very own model of a river. We used sand, stones, tin foil, food colouring and water to create it. We placed sand and stones at the edges of a tray, and ran the tin foil in a meandering way through it. We diluted water with blue food colouring in a jug and poured into onto the tinfoil. However, we discovered this wasn’t an accurate model of a river as it wasn’t flowing. We came up with a plan to punch some holes with a pencil at the ‘mouth of the river’ and it did the trick. Our model river began to flow out into the sea, imitating a real river.

We then turned our focus to building a bridge to cross the river! We put our engineering hats on and worked in groups to design a bridge that would work. The aim was to ensure our bridge designs would hold a toy car for 30 seconds. We used a variety of materials to create our bridges, One team used building blocks, another used Lego, we had another group using cardboard and recycled materials, one using lollipop sticks and sellotape and we had an edible bridge made from ‘Pringles’. We used team effort, discussion, reason and problem solving to design and create our bridges. It was an exciting experience for us and allowed us to work as an engineer for a short while!

The history of Halloween came in a timely way for us and we discovered that Halloween dates right back to the time of The Celts. We focused on our scary Halloween stories first, where the children drafted, edited and redrafted their stories. We drew illustrations to go with them and we digitally added them to our typed version. The children really enjoyed using their imaginations and the writing process.

We rounded of the month with some very enjoyable Halloween pumpkin paintings and a haunted village craft scene!

Wishing everyone a safe and happy Halloween from all of us in 3rd and 4th class!

We had great fun making Halloween Slime in First & Second Class today!

First we measured out 100ml of PVA glue and poured it into a bowl.

Then we mixed in a few drops of food colouring and some glitter.

Next we added some bicarbonate of soda

We mixed it well and added in some contact lenses solution to bring all the slime together

We worked the slime using our hands, pushing and pulling it together until it formed Slime that we could play with.

We had great fun seeing how far we could stretch our slime out!

Congratulations to our Gortskehy girls who overcame an excellent team from St. Joseph’s NS, Ballinrobe, in a thrilling encounter this morning at Kilmaine GAA grounds. Having all the hallmarks of a competitive county quarter final, Gortskehy got off to a good start with points from Alaois, Faye and Holly. Ballinrobe bounced back with two goals while Gortskehy narrowed the gap to the bare minimum as half-time approached. A fine point from Ballinrobe left them two points ahead at the interval on a scoreline of Gortskehy (0-5); Ballinrobe (2-1).

Gortskehy had the better start in the second half with Alaois splitting the posts for a fine point and Ciara blasting to the net at the end of a great passing move. Ballinrobe responded with two points to leave the teams level midway through the half. Alaois found the net and Faye tapped over from a free while Ballinrobe again scored a goal and, with a minute to go, lofted over a point to leave the teams level on the brink of full-time.

In what was to be her final kick-out of the game, Grace sent a long ball down the center where, despite two markers and a scramble for possession, Faye came away with the ball finding Alaois with a well-placed pass. Alaois held her composure to send over the winning point before the welcome shrill of the final whistle was greeted by loud cheers from jubilant Gortskehy supporters made up of pupils and parents alike. It was a fantastic match and an excellent display of football by both teams.

Grace had a fine game in goal with excellent kick outs, Aoife and Sorsha were tireless on the back line with Sorsha blocking at least one certain goal as full time approached. Alaois and Faye were once again exceptional at mid-field with Holly M and Holly H performing very well against a strong Ballinrobe defence. Ciara made a match-winning contribution when she joined the fray in the second half with the final scoreline Gortskehy (2-8); Ballinrobe (3-4).

Both the county semi-final and final will be played in The Dome at the Connacht GAA Centre of Excellence on Thursday, November 17th. It’s the first time the school has reached this stage of the competition and we’re very proud of all the girls.

Team and panel: Grace, Sorsha, Aoife, Alaois (1-3), Faye (0-2), Holly M, Holly H (0-2), Ciara (1-1), Caitlin, Daphny, Niamh, Ailbhe, Zara.
Because of age restrictions in the Mini-7 competition, Alisha, Aoibhínn and Niamh couldn’t take to the field but are an integral part of our training and match preparation.