This month the children in Mr Smyth’s 4th Class are learning about the Greek myth “Theseus & the Minotaur“. Having read the story and watched a video of it, they designed their own book cover. They then explored the geography of story from the capital Athens to the islands of Crete and Naxos using their class atlases. Today the children began the process of creating some clay art inspired by the story.

They made some beautiful clay pots using the pinch pot method. Next, they decorated the pots with fun geometric patterns commonly found on pottery from Ancient Greece. When dry, the children painted the pots in the orange/black style found in Ancient Greek pottery with images from the story of “Theseus and the Minotaur”, much like the Ancient Greeks documented their myths and tales of daily life in Greece in their pottery.

Today, the children in Mr Smyth’s 4th Class had a wonderful day with paint, and print. They painted their own photo frame and Christmas decoration as a gift for family and printed their own wrapping paper to parcel up their gifts.

Recently, the children in 4th class got to have some fun exploring magnets. They were investigating which objects were attracted to magnets, looking at different forms of magnets (ring, horseshoe, bar, etc.) and investigating the effect of magnets on iron filings.

They also created their own compass, seeking out magnetic north in their classroom.

The pupils in 4th Class had a wonderful time making imaginative constructions in Art this week.

Check them out below.

The pupils in Mr Smyth’s 4th Class had great fun this week working as journalists and presenters, writing and recording their first ever episode of Gabriel’s Television News (GTV NEWS) using green screen technology. The episode contained stories from around the school, a “Question of the Week” and weather reports from around the world in Polish, Pashto, Danish, Spanish, Russian, Romanian, Moldovan, Urdu and Greek. The children had great fun making this episode and there was great excitement in the other classes as they watched the first episode. We hope this is the first of many shows! Well done!

Taha in 4th Class and Fatma in 5th Class proudly represented St Gabriel’s NS during an historic radio link up with NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli aboard the International Space Station.

The amateur radio contact was part of the school STEM work with TUD Dublin, took place on Friday 6th October and was live-streamed using Technological University Dublin’s YouTube channel. The pupils had fascinating questions that their classmates had devised to put to the astronaut about life in space. Meanwhile on campus prior to watching the live stream pupils from the school received prizes for Space related art work and poetry completed during Space Week.

St Gabriel’s NS are very proud of our pupils work during Space Week and their participation in the contact. Huge thanks to Ana and the staff in TUD for the opportunity.

During Space Week, 4th Class took part in an exciting workshop “Mars Rover Challenge” in TUD, Grangegorman. In the workshop, the children worked in groups with Sphero robot cars, a play-based learning programme where pupils kids design and build their own mazes, creating opportunities for students to learn the basics of coding, problem solving and computational thinking skills.