The dark days of December are here,its so cold and the bird table has a constant queue of finches and tits. Every morning I bring out stale bread which the children grate it into a fine crumb for our bossy robin and willy wagtail.Great fun was had by all as we made a bird cake by melting fat and adding seeds and nuts.The storms that are raging at the moment have confined us indoors and all are working well and discovering new activities. Last week,Inez,a Spanish Transition Year student from Sligo Grammar School spent the week with us.I was delighted with the extra hands as we made Xmas decorations and decorated the tree(a branch from an apple tree)The school was bustling as we put up lights and streamers and made santas, angels, wreaths and stars. Much fun was had with glitter and glue!It is such a lovely time and excitement of santa is mounting!However, the story of the Nativity has each little one spellbound and they never tire of hearing it.We are busy practising the Xmas play and this year instead of 3 kings we have 2 kings and a queen!

Last Monday was such a dark day and brought with it all the symptoms of Winter.However,the children are as usual full of the joys of life , that one cannot feel ,even for a minute, dismal or sad..They all have their little routines and arrive full of smiles eager to “work” and the room is a hive of activity.Polishing is still the favourite activity for Conor, Sean, Odhran, Lugh, Zav and Keelan and they now take such pride in shinning their work to real perfection.As only 3 can polish at a time the others are grating soap or washing dusters until their turn.And as the polishing table is right beside the window they also have prime view of the birds on the feeders so their chatter is regularly interrupted by someone saying “quiet, there s a goldfinch or bluetit, great tit , chaffinch” etc. They then proceed to count the different species and are so good at this that Birdwatch Ireland could benefit from their help! Insets or cutting and glueing are a very popular start to the morning for Aimee ,Asher ,Mella, Leah, Vivienne and Phoebe.The children settle in very quickly and after a while approach me to introduce some new work, usually something which they are eager to find out about. This may be something which they may have seen me introduce at circle time or which they ve seen another child do.Last week dressing frames were on the go:zips,fasteners and buttons for the boys and bows for a couple of the girls. A few children are reading word boxes well and were introduced to the verb and noun boxes while another group are enjoying doing their”sounds”.The pink tower and broad stairs also come out on a daily basis whilst cylinders are being experimented with matching the knobless and knobbed.Again some of the older ones are loving number work and started on golden beads. Asher loves the binomal cube and I ve promised to introduce the trinomal to morrow!After introducing planet earth at circle time on monday we then looked at the continents on colour globe followed by the jigsaw map of the world on consecutive days. I then decided that we would look at S.America first.The children really enjoyed looking at the folders with pictures of the people an animals of S.America. I read a story about a family who lived in the rainforest.Some of the children traced the map and brought it home to find pictures of children. We will follow on with a little project on the rainforest and each child will find out about an animal as we climb the layers of the rainforest. This was alot of fun when we did this a couple of years ago and we will build our own rainforest and display it in the school. Never a dull moment and so much to do with such wonderful little workers!

We filled the bird feeders with sunflower seeds and peanuts last week and at last the little garden birds are returning. On Friday I did a circle time on the birds, talking about each one and its characteristics and habits. This never fails to intrigue the children .Each child then picked a bird which they would find information on over the weekend.They went home clutching the precious note for eager mums and dads and on Monday 3 of the children arrived full of pride with beautiful projects on the thrush, goldfinch and robin.Today, it rained and the wind blew fiercely but the garden was full of birds.The goldfinch family are queuing for the seeds, at one point we counted 10 of them and blue tits and great tits are enjoying the nuts.The robin(a bossy cock robin) lands on the bird table every now and then and is making sure no other robin comes into his garden.The children were so excited at the activity on the bird feeders and table and all can already recognise these species. Its also a wonderful way to do the silance game as each child tries to be as still as possible when they spot a bird..With the garden alive with many species of birds, a wet , miserable day in school becomes very exciting

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A beautiful sunny day and the great outdoors beckons.Wellies on and out we go to see if Autumn has really gone and Winter has arrived.We fill the bird feeders and take a walk to examine the trees.Amazingly, there are still some raspberries which we pick and the children know that these go into the freezer for Elizabeth.When she comes home from Australia at Christmas,she can will enjoy them as part of her usual breakfast so they are very precious. The pear tree still has a couple of pears and tomorrow we will juice them along with other pears we have in storage. The children can then taste our own pear juice.We admire the bark on the birch tree. It is such a perfect day and one to be cherished so we go for a walk down the field. We take the binoculars and I tell the children that we are going bird watching.It is a wonderful opportunity to give them a lesson on how to use the binoculars.Much fun is had at first looking at the cows through the binoculars, then at the lodge , houses in Rosses Point and finally we focused on some brent geese feeding on the shore. We are so lucky as we once again enjoy our wonderful natural environment.

We are back to school after a nice ,restful mid term.The children have settled   and eager to work.Winter has arrived and to day I read a story about a squirrel which lead on to a discussion on hibernation..Lugh enjoyed the matching cards on the Amphibians …maybe we’ll do a project .

One glorious day last May, john came over with hazel and willow rods and showed the children how to make a climbing frame for the beans.It was a wonderful lesson and very quickly, the children were able to join in and help by paring the leaves of the rods.A day to remember and wonderful practical activity..