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Welcome to the Senior Room Page!
November 2023
Science Week
As part of science week we took part in Donegal Country Council webinar series.
On Monday we listened to the fantastic webinar “we need poo” it discussed the reasons why we need to study poo and what it can tell us about what we eat and what creatures ate long ago.
On Wednesday we took part in a zoom call with the National Reptile Museum.
we were shown snakes, insects, turtles and a leaf tailed gecko.
it was fascinating to learn about the adaptions which many of the animals have made to the environment.
Explorers Programme
On Friday 10th November we had a great visit from David from the Explorers Programme.
He is a marine biologist living in Gweedore and studying there.
He had so many interesting facts about the sea and all the amazing creatures which live there.
The sea is 71% of our world is made from water and not land. Thee are animals and fish in our oceans which have not even been discovered yet.
Next Friday David is returning to do some Art with us and we are already looking forward to it.
Shoe Box Appeal
This November we were able to donate shoeboxes filled with items for a children to the Shoe box appeal. As an annual appeal we tried our best to fill as many shoes boxes as possible to help those less fortunate than ourselves and those who might not get a Christmas present this year. We thank all our families and friends for aiding us in this.
October 2023
Halloween Dress Up
On Friday before we finished for the mid term break we decided to have our very own halloween dress up day. Each of the children and staff came in their best costume. It was interesting to see so many characters. Some pupils took inspiration from our sports heroes , others looked to their music interests while others looked for inspiration from their favourite tv shows.
Maths Trail
To finish off for the half term we completed a Maths trail together as a whole class.
We had great fun completing the whole trail and finding the clue to find our treasure.
Many of the children completed the task but found it very challenging to complete the hidden clue .
It was great fun and everyone had a great laugh when they eventually found the treasure.
Chocolate Cake
We completed our cooking series for Galilee by creating our very own chocolate cake with icing!
It was delicious.
The children thoroughly enjoyed cooking and baking over the past number of weeks and we home to keep continue ins in at times throughout the year.
Agriaware Webinar Series – Farming through the seasons
Coming up to Mid-term break we are taking part in the Agriaware series about farming through the seasons.
Each day this week we will have a zoom call with a different type of farmers asking different questions and learning what they are doing on the farm in the Autumn season.
Day 1 – Webinar with Beef Farmer Amie Coonan
Day 2 – Webinar with Dairy Farmer John Molyneaux
Day 3 – Webinar with Beef Farmer Aoibhín Coady
Day 4 – Webinar with pig farmer Hannah Ryan
Halloween Stations
Coming up to halloween we are completing different stations of halloween activities.
We are writing scary stories , learning about the history of halloween, creating scary printed pictures and carving our own pumpkins.
Cooking Friday’s
Following on from Climate Action Week and using up products we have at home to create delicious meals.
We decided we would create a dinner using up products we had at home.
So…. we created Chicken Stir-fry. Using up chicken, rice, peppers and sweet chilli and garlic sauce we created a super dish which we all tried and enjoyed.
We have a number of budding chefs.
Maths Week
It Maths Week here in Drumfad N.S. We are busy revising all of our maths skills.
Monday – Blooket – Together in pairs we practised our multiplication tables as well as our division. It was such a challenge to answer all the questions correctly. It was great fun and we all had a great time.
We also discussed and created our own spiders webs. Spiders webs are full of different shapes, lines and angles. We had not realised how many angles and shapes there is. They are amazing creatures with a fantastic skill. We tried creating our own but we don’t think they look quite as good. They make it look so easy but its actually really messy.
Tuesday
We got creative with our Maths today. We used smarties for our Maths.
In pairs we got a packet of smarties. We found the average number of sweets.
We created a bar chart of the numbers of each colour of sweets.
We also found what fraction of sweetie colours we had and simplified them if we could.
It was so much fun!
Thursday
On Thursday we completed some open ended Maths activities as a whole school. We tried to give reasons for our answers when finding the odd one out in a pattern and how many legs could be on animals inside a farm.
It was very exciting.
The whole school worked together and in the end came up with some fantastic 2d shape pictures.
Friday
We had a table quiz together with 1st and 2nd Class.
It was so much fun to work together with the juniors and answer some questions they were really challenging. We each came up with a team name too which was confusing in the beginning.
Climate Action Week
As part of our Green school programme and travel flag we took part in a webinar for World Food Day. This talked all about how food goes off and what we can do to help waste food.
To stop food waste we came up with a great idea!We got cooking.
To use up eggs, milk and bread before it goes off we made French Toast.
It was delicious. A small group this week made the French toast and next week we will make a dinner with the following week creating a dessert.
Blooket
As we are learning so many new and exciting things each week, we are also trying new ways to assess our learning. This term we have been using quiz games such as blooket. We have great fun answering questions and earning rewards.
National Walk to School Week
As part of walk to school week we completed a school walk together. As the weather on the week was not the best many of our student tried their best to walk or park and stride to school but were sadly rained off. So together we walked around our local area and showed the children the correct way to walk on the roads. We also looked out for all the signs of Autumn which the Junior Room has been learning about this term.
Space
– Our new theme for this month is Space. Along with the National Space week and Maths week running this month we are linking all our subjects together for a month dedicated to space.
In geography we are exploring our Solar System. We are able to name each of the planets in order from the sun with our new rhyme.
My
Very
Excellent
Mummy
Side
Jumps
Up
Now
In investigating the space race we completed a timeline of space events.
We learned many interesting facts such as that fruit flies were first put in space before dogs or monkeys.
We have also been busy completing STEM challenges this month. We created a safe perch for our friend Henry to watch us from space in.
Wainfest
On Thursday 12th October we will be going to the Milford Library to meet Author Eirka Mc Gann.
We are very excited to meet her and where she found the ideas for her books.
Local Projects
Over the month of September we created our own local projects.
We each took different parts of our local area which are important to use and create a fact file for each. We discovered the caravan parks, beaches, community centres, churches, restaurants, barbers and natural features of our environment which we enjoy.
We then presented each of our projects to the class learning new facts about our local area.
September 2023
We are back in Drumfad Senior room and we have had a very busy month of September.
We have 19 pupils now in our senior room and its buzzing with excitement for the new year.
We have gained 2 pupils to our classroom and we are delighted to welcome them to our school.
Green Schools Committee for the new year 23/24
Our Committee for this year has changed to the senior room.
Our new committee members for this year are
We are continuing to work towards our travel flag and are patiently waiting on Walk to school week starting on 2nd October.
Active School Committee for new year 23/24
Our new committee for this year includes
We are set out our playground leaders for the first term with many in the senior room enjoying the role they had last year and hope to continue it this year.
We are hoping to buy some new equipment in the coming weeks so watch out.
Cross Country Athletics – Milford
On 19th September we travelled to the Milford training ground as a whole class group to take part in the Cross Country Donegal district races.
We were entered in the Under 10 girls and boys , and under 13 girls and boys races.
Many pupils from other schools were taking part from around our area of all different sizes.
We were training during school practising laps around our school.
The track was huge. We all tried so hard and finished our races.
We cheered each other to the very end. It felt amazing to reach the finishing line.
AG and VMcG were medal winners in their races. With AG getting 3rd and VMcG getting 5th.
We all got to wear our sports shirts which were really comfy.
Bible Time Prize Giving
On the 20th September members from Bible Time in County Cavan came to our school. They were coming to give us prizes for all the work we completed last year in doing the bible time course from them each week.
We sang songs together while one of the members played the guitar and they taught us a lovely story of David. It was amazing to hear of his life and all that he was able to do.
At the end we were given our certificates with how we did over the course of the year. We all did so well and were very proud of our work. We were able to choose our own prizes of bibles, colour, torches, pens, books and frames of all shapes and sizes.
Donegal Schools Service
On 26th September 2023 we were able to join may school from across Donegal in the Donegal schools service in Ramelton at 11.30am. Many Protestant schools from across the county travelled and in total there was 29 schools in attendance.
Each school had to prepare a prayer on a given topic. For our school we wrote a prayer each and our teacher Ms Gallagher put as many together as she could and came up with a class prayer which AF read aloud for us. It was lovely to hear from other schools.
Many minsters and clergy was there including the Church of Ireland Bishop of Derry and Raphoe and our own Reverend Susan. They talked of connections and how we get disconnected and reconnected.
They also gave us a lovely goodie bag which we hope to use for a party before the mid-term break.
European Sports Day
On Friday 29th September it was the European Sports day.
As the weather was not what we had expected we kept our activities inside and getting outside at the end of the day for a game of tag rugby.
First we completed out throwing and catching name game.
Followed by a go noodle of stretches for awaken us for the day.
After break we completed our set dances for our songs from the Donegal Schools Service and a just dance video.
After lunch it had finally tried up and we completed a game of tag rugby which the children have really enjoyed learning about through the Rugby World Cup.
Basketball with Bernie
This term we have started our basketball training with Muinteoir Bernie from Mulroy Hoops.
We comes in each Wednesday to complete basketball skills with us. We have really enjoyed dribbling and practising our shooting. A number of weeks has been very wet so we have stayed inside and have worked on our passing. It has been so good to work in small groups and get better every week.
Music with Muinteoir Moira
Muinteoir Moria has come back to Drumfad this term.
We are learning the recorder in the senior room.
A number of children are starting from scratch while other are working hard and brushing up on their skills from previous years.
June 2023 A visit from John
It was great to have John visit to teach us about animation today. There is a lot more to it than we realised! Thank you John for a really interesting animation workshop, we’re looking forward to next’s week!
Here are some of our two frame animations ☺️
We have been busy working on a collaborative project as part of the Pushkin programme this week. can you guess what our theme is?!
We tried painting in the style of Michelangelo today. After 15 minutes of working in this position, we all agreed that Michelangelo must have had very strong arms after spending four years painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel!!
Swimming lessons are complete. Each of the children had a fantastic time at Magherabeg Leisure Centre over the last 8 weeks. We have seen amazing progress and the children have really enjoyed their time.
St Patricks Day
We celebrated St Patricks day this year with our very own parade. 1st Class to 6th Class came together in groups created these amazing floats.
World Book Day
World book day celebrations took a creative turn on Wednesday 1st March. Each of the children dressed up as their favourite book character.
Trip to Milford Garda Station
The whole school travelled to the Garda station in Milford on Thursday 2nd March. We all had great fun learning about the interview rooms, cells as well as getting our fingerprints taken.
It was an amazing trip.
It’s snowing!! Have a read of some of our snow themed poetry ☺️
We’re delighted to be back in school again after some snow days☺️ As a special treat after being out in the cold at break time, we had some hot chocolate to warm our hands and our tummies – yum yum! 😋
We had a very interesting visit from Aengus Kennedy today as part of our work for the Green Flag (we’re currently working towards our fourth😊).
Our Shared Reading has come to an end, but boy did we enjoy it! We loved working with the boys and girls from the Junior Room.🙂
We are excited to be preparing for our Christmas play; learning lines, making props and rehearsing songs 😊
Our STEM projects this afternoon were tricky to say the least!
We had great fun showcasing our projects to the Junior Room.
Well done to everyone who entered the Credit Union art competition this year, and congratulations to those who won prizes. We are very proud of our talented artists!
We had a great time at the A.T.U. ‘s Science Week event with Professor Plunger this week. Thanks to the A.T.U. for having us, and for the extra-special treat bags you gave us!
It’s harvest time again! We had a great crop of potatoes this year, enough to make chips for everyone in school😁
We had an amazing day with the guys from Eco Adventures today! Pier jumping followed by kayaking… that’s our idea of a fun day of learning!
Thanks to Fanad Gaels for organising such an excellent Gaelic Blitz yesterday, we really enjoyed it!
If anyone happened to be passing Drumfad today, you no doubt got the delicious smells of baking!
We had chocolate cakes, biscuit cakes, cupcakes, sponge cakes, rainbow cakes… and more for the Drumfad Bake Off!
Green Flag News!
Congratulations to the Green-Schools Team who achieved the 3rd Green Flag on Water Conservation after a lot of hard work! Have a look over at our Green Schools page for more information on what work they carried out to achieve the award. Here we are celebrating all together! Well done everyone!
We’ve been working on the Blue Star project for the past few weeks. We each chose a country belonging to the European Union, researched it and gave a presentation on our findings.
Our audience was very impressed by our presentation skills 😊
It’s Easter Egg Hunt Time!! It’s that time of year when our playground gets a little crazy😁
We had a great time today with Donna from Jumping Clay making Easter decorations, thanks to Donna for visiting Drumfad!
Water Workshop with Aengus Kennedy
We had a fantastic day with Aengus Kennedy. First of all we had a learning workshop in school in the morning. We learned some fun facts about Otters and some important information about Water Conservation that we will be implementing in our school. We then went to Drummonaghan Woods in Ramelton and had a nature walk through the woods. We then explored around the water fall and we made Nature Crowns. We were very ready for our lunch back on the bus when we were finished!!
It’s Daffodil Day!🤗 We had a lovely time reading poems about Spring and daffodils, here are some of our favourites.
We’ve given our windows a touch of Spring 😊
And our playground was full of colour today – we turned the place YELLOW!
Happy World Book Day! We had lots of fantastic costumes today and great fun reading our favourite books along with the boys and girls in the Junior Room.😊
Like the rest of the world, we are thinking on those who are having to flee from their homes in order to keep safe.
Our thoughts and prayers are very much with the people of Ukraine.💗
Thanks to the coaches from Citadel for the fantastic gymnastics lessons today! We’re looking forward to next week already 😊
It’s Pancake Tuesday!! It’s been a busy day of making pancakes here in school. They were delicious!
Thanks to everyone who donated to our fundraising event for Childline last week, our breakfast morning was a great success!
Can you guess what we’re working on now?!
Here’s a clue!
We’re building pyramids! We’ve been learning about the Ancient Egyptians this week – who knew History could be so interesting!
We were delighted to be selected as one of the schools to receive a beautiful selection of 25 Irish books from Children’s Books Ireland this week. We have been enjoying reading and discussing them (as Ghaeilge of course!) in class😊.
We had two visitors in our classroom today! Phonsie brought his mannequin in to teach us first aid skills😊
We learnt lots about how we should respond in an emergency situation.
We’ve just started reading our latest class novel, Goodnight Mr. Tom, and we are absolutely loving it! Our Artwork this week was based on the London bombings that took place during World War Two. Here is a sneak peak at our work 😊
We’ve been enjoying poetry lessons with Denise for the past few weeks. Have a read of some of our poems😊
Guess where we were today! Citadel Gymnastics Centre!! It was so much fun, have a look at our Active School page for more cool action pics of us😁
We had so much fun in Greenfort this week with Michael Bell😊. As you can see, we love being outdoors and learning about our environment and our locality!
It’s WAINFEST time!!! We’ve been enjoying taking part in lots of interesting webinars this week, from authors to illustrators, we’re loving them! Here we are working along with graphic designer and illustrator Aga Grandowicz 🙄
We also really enjoyed a talk given by author Darragh McCullough on his book ‘The Great Irish Farm Book.’ He even introduced us to some of his (smaller) farm animals!
Can you spot Henrietta?!
We’ve been really busy working on our projects this week, as you can see, they’re taking shape!
Our room is looking really colourful at the minute, with lots of beautiful artwork on display. Have a look at some of our finished pieces 😊
Have you read the book ‘Break the Mould,’ by author Sinead Burke? It is such a great book,with an inspirational author. We’re really enjoying reading it and learning about the life and experiences of Sinead. If you would like to get an insight into Sinead’s life, have a look at her Ted talk! Just Google ‘Why design should everyone,’ it is well worth a watch!
We had a go at writing and presenting our own Ted Talks, they were excellent😊
Some of our poetry, based on the theme of ‘Summer.’ As you can see, we have lots of talented poets in our school😊
Looks like being back in school isn’t so bad!😃
It’s great to get back and see our friends again! We’re loving this hot weather, and making the most of it by bringing some of our lessons outdoors.🙂
Term 3. 2020/2021
April 2021
We have been back and busier than ever.
Before Easter we celebrated yellow day, raising much needed funds for the Irish Cancer Society.
Using our oil pastels and chalk we also became creative and created our own daffodil day pictures.
As part of our Agri-Aware programme we have been lucky to be able to take part in many zoom lessons.
In this one we were shown a roof garden with thousands of plants.
This programme has also aided us to explore the food pyramid.
March 2021
On March 15th, we were delighted to return to school!
While we have been at home completing our work we missed many of our friends.
We got busy straight away into creating our St Patrick’s day crafts.
Happy St Patrick’s day everyone!
January and February 2021
Over the course of distance learning we have tried many new things while we are at home.
This term we are learning using google classroom and Zoom. Zoom lessons are new to our class and we have really enjoyed them.
All the children have been working extremely hard and their engagement has been fantastic during this term.
During the month of February everyone has enjoyed learning all subjects especially Art and Science.
Over Midterm break, everyone enjoyed a well deserved rest while also competing in a pancake decorating contest and testing their own science experiments.
We look forward to seeing everyone back in the Senior room very soon!
September to December 2020
This new school year has brought new exciting moments for us in the senior room as well as some challenges. We have adapted, grown and learning more than ever!
We each designed our own masks this year. With current circumstances we stopped to think of everyone under the masks and how we are all different but keeping each other safe by wearing masks.
This year Agri-Aware have produced a new programme for primary school children called Dig In. This programme covers all the aspects of farming form The Irish Farmer, healthy eating, food products and farm safety. This term we explored many areas of this programme and completed our own projects based on farming. It was great and we all learned a lot especially about the seasons.
For Science Week we created our very own lava lamps and they enjoyed making short animations using Scratch.
In the run up to Christmas we were incredibly busy.
As we could not have a pupil audience this year we rehearsed and recorded our “Covid Christmas” play which was great fun to do. We completed many other activities 3D snowflakes, Christmas cards, Christmas ornaments from clay.
School year 2019/2020
January
Happy New Year everyone! January is getting off to a flying start for us; we’ve started our swimming lessons and we’ve also begun working with our neighbouring school, Tamney NS again. We’re now focusing on Dance, and we’re quickly becoming ‘ceilí dancing’ experts thanks to Teresa from Rinka!
We are also really enjoying having Denise Blake back with us for poetry workshops, we love getting creative with her and have already written some beautiful poems! We’ll share some of these with you soon😊
December
Happy Christmas Everybody!!🤗
Hi again everyone! Sorry we haven’t updated our page in the last few weeks, we’ve just been so busy getting things organised for Christmas and of course rehearsing for our Christmas musical!
With so much happening around Christmas time we always like to make some time to think on others who may not be as fortunate as us. This is why we decided to do a Reverse Advent Calendar, to gather food supplies for those in need over Christmas. We donated all of the food we gathered to the Letterkenny Food Bank. Thanks to all the mums and dads who helped us collect so many food items, the Lk Food Bank were very grateful!
We had lots of fun with Aengus Kennedy today making Christmas wreaths bird feeders! Aengus also taught us lots about the wildlife of Donegal, and brought in some stuffed animals to show us 🙂 It was super interesting!!
We had a great time crafting today with Donna from jumping clay! Our elves looked fantastic, and were really fun to make😊 Thank you Donna!
November
Coding in Letterkenny Institute of Technology
We got to third level students for the day on Friday, as we spent the day in LYIT!
We had a great time learning how to code today along with Tamney! We began our day by using tablets to create computer games, and then moved on to creating codes for drones! It took us a while to get our drones off the ground, but when we did get flying we were able to programme them to do flips and fly in all directions! As you can imagine, the teachers needed to keep their heads low with so many drones being controlled by us amateur pilots flying around!😃
Donegal Sports Hall Athletics Competition!
Well, what a day we had on Tuesday this week in the Aura, Letterkenny! We entered the Sports Hall Athletics competition for the first time and boy did we run fast, jump far and high and throw that weighted ball as far as we possibly could! This will definitely be on our list of events to take part in again next year, what a great day out it was! You can see from the photos, we gave it 100%, our teacher told us we did our school proud😊
Well done to Éabha, who came home with lots of medals from the Citadel Gymnastics competition this week! You did so well Eabha!
We’ve been really busy since returning to school after our mid-term break. We’ve started doing mindfulness classes with the boys and girls in Tamney, and we’re also getting ourselves prepared for Donegal Sports Hall Athletics competition which is coming up in a few weeks! We’ve been working on our long jump skills, our high jumping, our speed bouncing and of course our running! We are really looking forward to the competition.😊
November is a very busy month for us, as we are also planning a trip to LYIT soon for a day of coding in their computer lab! We are very excited about being ‘students’ for the day!!
We’ve also begun working on our Christmas musical, which has gotten off to a great start!
October
It’s Dress Up Day in Drumfad today!! As you can see, we have some very spooky characters here today 😊
We also have Steffi from the Heritage in Schools Association. She has brought lots of traditional materials and crafting machines with her. We had great fun trying to guess what the machines did!
Can you guess what they’re used for?!
Tallulah thinks the hemp (also known as ‘Angel’s Hair’) would make a good wig!
Did you guess what the machine is used for?! It’s a traditional rope making machine!!
Christian made some lovely, colourful rope 😊
We had to open the doors to make an extra long skipping rope… It was 8 metres!!
The boys had to turn and turn and turn the rope…
The girls had to sit on the box to make sure it didn’t tip over!
Thanks to all who came to our Harvest Assembly yesterday! We really enjoyed performing for our audience😊
We are almost all set for our Harvest Assembly today, and really looking forward to performing our dramas, songs and dances for our family members this afternoon! As you can see, our school is looking very seasonal at the minute 😊
We had a lovely story read to us by Dylan today, we learnt lots about sheep and farming! Dylan wrote the story himself,using the computer to add photos taken on his own farm😊 We are so impressed Dylan!! Thanks for sharing your story with us!
As you can see, his photos and illustrations are fantastic!
Wainfest 2019 – Visit to Letterkenny Library
Yesterday we attended Fab Lab in Letterkenny Library, where we got to make really cool bookmarks using some very hi-tech equipment. 😊 Here we are, working away!
We were also lucky enough to get a tour around the library, and we got to see the 3D printer and the interactive table in action! Letterkenny Library is definitely worth a visit! Thanks for having us!!😊
We had a really fun and interesting assembly with Rev. Susan yesterday based on the theme of Harvest. She had a very important message for us in her story; how important it is to share what we have. We are all good sharers here in Drumfad!😊
Ulster Scots Living History Lessons with Charlie
We had great fun with Charlie today as we brought history to life in our playground! We were on the battlefield today, with swords and shields… Thankfully, we all survived the battle!
We are currently collecting stickers from Aldi, to be in with a chance of winning their competition we need to collect 300! As you can see, we’re well on our way😊 If you shop in Aldi, please keep the stickers for us!
The lady from the Credit Union has also begun visiting us on a Monday morning again, so if you’d like to save some money with the Credit Union, please bring it in each Monday.😊
We had our first dance lesson with Aislingi Academy today which was great fun! We are working towards our 3rd Active School Flag this year, so We have lots of exercise scheduled for this year 😊
September
Welcome back to school everyone! We’ve been working hard since coming back to school, but, as you probably know, in Drumfad we like to balance our hard work with lots of fun!!
We’ve started our GAA lessons with Manus again, which we really, really enjoy! Here are a few shots of us in action😊
We also had our first Living History lesson today with Charlie Gallagher which was very interesting. We really had to concentrate hard as there were lots of facts to remember, but we managed really well. 😊 He tells us that we will be learning lots of fun skills from the past such as using a compass to find your way and using swords!!
We took advantage of the lovely, sunny weather this , morning and went out to the garden to plant some bulbs. We look forward to seeing a garden full of daffodils in the spring!
As you can see, we’re good gardeners😊
We also finished off our Viking projects today and presented them to our class. Here We are giving our presentations. We got very positive feedback from our audience.😊
School year 2018/2019
Happy holidays everyone! We said our last goodbyes to 6th Class today, and ‘see you soon to everyone else 🙂 Here awesome of the photos taken of 6th class on their last day as Drumfad pupils!
Come back and visit anytime 6th Class!
May – Summer is here!!
We had a really great day in the Ulster American Folk Park on Friday! It was lovely to be able to celebrate the success of our Peace IV project with Tamney, and of course see and hear sights and stories from the famine times in Ireland; which was our chosen theme for project work this year.
We thoroughly enjoyed working with Tamney this year and can’t wait to find out what is in store for next year!
Our last music lesson with Moira went really well today, we are almost ready for our musical performance on 20th June now!
Congratulations to Lisa and her Gaelic team on their big win in the division 1 county final in St. Michael’s, Dunfanaghy on Monday! We are super proud of you Lisa 😁
Well done to Ellis who won two gold medals in the Citadel Home Gymnastics competitions at the weekend!
We started GAA lessons with Charlie today!
We are delighted to have been presented with our second green flag! Some members of our Green Team had the honour of travelling to Letterkenny to attend the awards ceremony. They were also treated to a lovely lunch in The Centre Hotel. 🤗 well done to everyone, especially the Green Team on receiving your green flag!
Our Summer term is always a fun one, this year we have basketball lessons, gymnastics, GAA training as well as music with Maire to look forward to. 😊 We’re also busy preparing for our Peace IV celebration with Tamney NS. We will have our projects on the Great Famine on display as well as lots of super artwork. Come along on the 17th May for a look!
April
It’s Easter Time!!!!!
Our playground got a very special visit today from the Easter Bunny! There were eggs hidden almost EVERYWHERE! It took us a long time to find them all, but we got there in the end 😉
As part of our Easter celebrations, we’ve been designing, making (and in some cases remaking 🙄) Easter bonnets. Today was ‘D Day,’ and time for the fashion show! We modelled our bonnets in front of all the other classes and of course our judges, Ellie and Dan, who came to visit all the way from Colorado! Boy, had they a tough job judging these bonnets, there were so many really creative entries!
Such fabulous models!
Is that the real Easter Bunny?!
And the bonnets just got higher and higher!
We also had Billy Joe, the giant owl on our runway 😊
There were also some hidden surprises to really ‘wow’ the audience 🎩😀
We had so much fun during our gymnastics lessons this month! This week, we were doing ‘team gymnastics,’ which involved a lot ofmcooperation. The toughest part was making human pyramids! The secret to a successful human pyramid is… team work 😁 Everyone must work together for it to work well! As you can see, we’re good team workers 😊
March
Working as Engineers with Bricks 4 Kids!
We had great fun with the boys and girls from Tamney NS today during our Bricks 4 Kids engineering workshop. We made rrally cool nelicopters using lego, as you can see below, they were quite complicated to make!
We’re really happy to see our gymnastics teachers back again this year. As you can see, our foyer was taken over this afternoon by 39 gymnasts and a LOT of equipment! From balance beams to trampolines, we got to try them out!!
Thanks to Citadel Gymnastics for such fun lessons 😊
It’s Seachtain na Gaeilge 🙂
Look at all the fun activities we have planned for the week! We are really looking forward to going to Caiseal tomorrow for the annual trash na gceist. The Juniors are also very excited about going to the Seó Puipéad in Milford Library tomorrow too.😊
Ulster Scots Highland Dancing Workshop
We had a very active day today, with Kenzey from the Ulster Scots team taking us for a highland dance class. There were lots of high cuts, springs and jumps this afternoon!
Did you know that highland warriors danced around their swords as a warm up before going into battle?! If they touched the swords with their feet during the dance, it was a bad sign for the upcoming battle. If they managed to dance around the swords and not touch the blades, it was taken as a good sign for the battle.
We had our last swimming lesson today. Well done to everyone on doing so well in their swimming tests. We came home with lots of certificates today 😊
Potato Recipes 🙂
As part of our project on the Famine, we’ve been researching lots and lots of different recipes that use potatoes. We’ve come up with some very interesting ones. Today we made potato pancakes and champ ☺
Today, we’re making roast potatoes!
It’s Pancake Tuesday!!
There were sooooo many pancakes made in Drumfad today, not only were we maling lots and lots for ourselves, we also had so many visitors calling in for some too! Thanks everyone for bringing in such a delicious selection of toppings. 😁
We worked off all of those delicious pancakes with some highland dancing with Linda.
We had a lovely poetry reading session with Denise Blake today, we all got the opportunity to read our favourite poems to the group. Thank you Denise for your wonderful poetry workshops, we really enjoyed them!
Well done to all our lovely poets!
February
Happy Grandparents Day everyone!! We had such a lovely afternoon with all the visitors had for Grandparents Day this year. We heard some great stories about days gone by and some shocking ones about school in our grandparents time. Did you know, that in years gone by children would have walked miles and miles each day to get to school? Aren’t we lucky to have our comfy school bus!
Thanks to Olive for bringing in so many interesting artefacts from the past. It was very interesting to read about who lived in our area in the last century.
Eric brought in an old radio and other interesting artefacts to show us.
He also kept us entertained with some very funny stories from the past about growing up in Fanad!
Thanks to all our visitors for
Coming into Drumfad for Grandparents Day.. . We are looking forward to next year already!
Bringing History to Life with Patsy and Margaret Cavanagh!
We had a really great time watching 6th Class as they re-enacted life during famine times!
These poor girls (stage names are Billy and John, the terrible twins 😊) are being transported all the way to Tasmania because the landlord caught them poaching.
Old Patrick was caught stealing grain. He’d had enough and lashed out at the guard who was arresting him. Can you gess what happened him? He was shot 😔
These were the men in charge of checking who was alive and who was dead on the coffin ship. They used a cloth, which was placed over the mouth of the sleeping person to see whether or not they were breathing! Poor Miss Martin wasn’t breathing.. so over the side of the ship she went! Life during famine times weren’t easy!
Day Two with Tamney
We had our second Art workshop with Tamney and Bernie Wilson from Art Farm yesterday. We were working on our clay plaques, they’re coming on really Well! We painted them, taking care to use authentic colours such as mossy greens, greys and flax and corn shades of yellows and oranges as opposed to our usual choice of brighter colours. These colours are in keeping with our theme – The Famine.
After our Art workshop, we were learning about what it was like to live during famine times. It was without a doubt a very bleak time.☹
Here are some of our frieze frames… can you guess the scene?!
Boarding the coffin ship
At the soup kitchen
Waving goodbye to her family
Working in the soup kitchen
Weaving with Colm.
We’ve been working with Colm Grant today on really cool willow weaving projects as well as hearing lots about the great impact that willow has on our natural environment. Did you know that willow is one of the first plants to flower and provide pollen for the bees each year?! We’ll definitely be planting more in our playground!
Here we are, weaving away 😊 We have fish, tents, Mickey Mouse and lots of other weaving projects going on in these pics!
Colm also brought in the bones from a HUGE orca he and his family found while walking along the beach at Mailn Head. It was the full length of our foyer!
He wasn’t sure how the orca had died or got stranded on the rocks. Perhaps he was sick, or perhaps the bad storm pushed him onto the rocks.
Thank you Colm for a great morning!
Peace IV – Shared Learning with Tamney NS
We had a really great time with our friends in Tamney NS this week. Our Art workshop with Bernie Wilson was so much fun, and we produced some lovely plaques based on our theme for learning – ‘The Famine.’ We also got a chance to play some board games and have some ‘get to know each other’ time.
We’re looking forward to our next visit already!
Anyone 4 Science
Happy Monday everyone! We’re starting our week with a visit from Angela, who is part of the Anyone 4 Science team. We’re learning about the history of the battery; how it was invented, who invented it and how they came about inventing it… and the fun part – making batteries!! As you can see, safety for us is a priority, safety goggles are a must when doing experiments as dangerous as this!
We also made a human battery 😁
January
Happy New Year everyone! 2019 has gotten off to a great start for us here in school; we’re really enjoying getting creative with Denise during our poetry writing lessons. We’ve written some fabulous work already… We’ll share some of it very soon! We’ve also started our swimming lessons in Magherabeg which is so much fun 😁
As you know, we are very keen explorers and investigators here in Drumfad, which makes taking part in the Discover Primary Science and Maths Award programme an easy task for us. Here is a quick peek at some of the STEM projects we’ve been working on recently. Just in case you plan on trying any of these at home, be warned… they can get MESSY!!!
Making Oobleck😊
December
Just before our holidays we really enjoyed a Jumping Clay workshop with Donna in the Senior Room. We created a ‘Santa Stuck in the Chimney’ masterpiece out of clay. Let’s hope Santa doesn’t get stuck in our chimneys!!
Isn’t it hard to believe that it is December already?! We’ve been so busy here in school the time has flown. We’ve been rehearsing for our Christmas musical, which is shaping up really well for us now. We are counting down to our big performance now, please come along if you’re free on 13th December. We guarantee a good show 😊 we’ve been working on our choreography and singing for the past few weeks and they are G-R-E-A-T, even if we do say so ourselves!
Here is a sneak peak at some of our moves.. come along to the play to see lots, lots more!
Look at our wonderful decorations! We’ve had so much fun over the past six weeks with Helen, Marjorie and Olive during our knitting lessons. Thank you so much ladies, for coming to visit us. You’re welcome back any time!
We are very excited about our performance tomorrow, we had our first rehearsal in the hall yesterday! Being on stage was really good fun😁
November
Our visit to Arena 7 with Tamney NS today was so much fun! We were bowling, playing lazer quest and playing in the soft play area too, while all the time, getting to know our new friends 😊. As you can see from the pictures, it was an action packed day! Sorry for the blurriness of the lazer quest photos; things were moving so fast in there the camera couldn’t keep up with us!
Energy Workshop with Aengus Kennedy
We had a great time with Aengus today, he organised a fantastic energy workshop for us! We learned lots about global warming and different types of energy and we also learned about lots of ways we can look after our planet.
Our cake sale was a huge success today! Thank you so much to all who supported, we are delighted to have raised so much. All of this will go towards Brigid McGinley’s rehabilitation fund.
We were really lucky to have John Fealty in to talk to us about farm safety, with a little bit of Fanad history thrown in!
All ready for our cake sale!
6th Class presented John Fealty with the funds raised at our cake sale on Friday. Than you to everyone who supported us, our cake sale was a great success!
On Friday 9th November, we will be hosting a Cake Sale. We are busy getting prepared and getting our recipes perfected at the minute. We also had a talk on the strict hygiene standards professional bakers must meet from Esther Mc Connell, of Esther’s Home Bakes. We now know exactly what we have to do to ensure that our baking is of the highest quality. Thank you Esther.😊
October
Happy Halloween everyone! We had great fun dressing up and playing Halloween games in school.
Our Cheerios Breakfast morning was on the 26th October this year. It
We are currently preparing for our Harvest Assembly. Our musical, Eddie and the Penguins will teach our audience all about global warming and what we can do to stop it in a really fun way!
Our rehearsals are going really well. We actually had a choreographer in today to help us with some of our dances! Thanks Miss Emmett for sharing all your great ideas with us!😊
Here we are working on our choreography.
Maths Week Fun!
Our Maths quiz today was lots of fun. Let us introduce you to our teams 😁
Fish ‘n’ Chips
The Crazy Waynes!
The King Bananas
Candy and Ice-Cream
The Big Bananas
The Senior Room also went to the LYIT along with Tamney to see the Maths Magician James Soper. This was a really interesting event, with schools travelling from all over the county to attend.
On Friday, the whole school took part in our Maths Week Trail! We had great fun measuring, searching, estimating and problem solving in the playground.😊
We had our last first aid lesson with Phonsie Mc Ateer today. We learnt how to clean cuts, how to apply bandages and how to put someone into the recovery position. Thank you Phonsie for coming to Drumfad and teach us all these skills 😊
Wainfest
We had a great time with the author Steve Cole in Milford Library today. He told us some hilarious stories and read some extracts from his book to us… Ten Nasty Little Toads is definitely on our ‘to read list!
Cartoon Art with Jarla!
We had a really interesting cartoon drawing session with Jarla on Friday. Here are a few samples of our work 😁
We have some fabulous entries going off to the Credit Union Art competition this year. Well done to everyone who took part!
Our first aid lessons with Phonsie started today. We learnt about what to do in an emergency situation, how to check for hidden dangers and how to assess a person who has had an accident and give the emergency services all of the information they will need to help the person. Thank you Phonsie for teaching us all of these important skills!
Well done to Christian and his team who won the Parish League at the weekend!
September
Hi everyone, and welcome back! We’ve all had a really busy summer break, which was great, but it’s nice to be back to school again. 😊
We’ve been settling back into class, and will be starting the ‘H’ word again on Monday… (homework!)
We’ve also started reading lovely new novels; 3rd class are reading The Butterfly Lion, and 4th and 6th are reading The Breadwinner. We’ll be starting music with Moira again very soon, so watch this space for some pics! 😎
Making Chips!
We made lots of delicious chips today using the potatoes from our garden. We brought in lots of spices and sauces to go along with them..yum!!
The Donegal County Champions visited us this morning with their trophy! Well done girls, and thanks so much for calling in to visit us!
Here we are with the girls and their trophy 😁
We had a really good time at the cross country athletics trials today, and made some fantastic times 😊 While we didn’t come home with any medals, we still enjoyed the taking part! And our teachers all agreed that if there were medals for happiest faces while running, Drumfad children would have gotten 1st place! Here we are after our races-
School year 2017/2018
June
The Drumfad Bake Off is underway everyone! We have Crunchie and Oreo Cheesecake, Chocolate Cake, brownies, a Victoria Sponge cake, biscuit cake, top hats and some delicious chocolate chip cookies!
Our judge, Olive Borland will have some very hard decisions to make 😁
May
Congratulations to Kate, who got a gold medal in the Community Games at the weekend. We are very proud of you Kate!
Mindfulness in the sun 😁 We really love this weather!
Today is the perfect day to try out our solar oven!
We’ve had a really great Active School Week here in Drumfad. To finish it off, we had jiving lessons with Hayley today. Thanks Hayley!
It’s National Learn Outside Day! We made the most of the beautiful weather today and took our art class outside. Drawing in the sunshine, what could be nicer?!
We had so much fun at Work It Out on Wednesday. Thanks to Patricia and all of the Marine Harvest staff for organising such a great event!
This month, we’ve been working on our Peace IV project with Ballyheerin, and are thinking ahead to our celebration day which is fast approaching. At the minute we’re working on a drama, some songs and we’re hoping to give you a synopsis of what we did for our group project. It will be a fun packed afternoon!
We’ve also been having a great time with our gymnastics teachers Fiona and Stephen. They’ve got us doing all kinds of crazy moves!
It’s great to see Teresa from Rinka back in Drumfad again, we really love her dance lessons!
Today, we did lots of different types of dance; hip hop, ballet, and some freestyle!
Here we are putting our own sequences together 😁
March
The Easter holidays are almost here, where did that time go?! We’ve been so busy here, we’ve hardly noticed the holidays flying up on us! We’ve finished our swimming lessons for this year, and we’ve got really cool certificates to prove how well we all did in our swimming tests. Now it’s time for gymnastics to start! We had Fiona and Stephen visit today from Letterkenny Community Centre for our first gymnastics lesson… It was so much fun!
Watch this space for pictures of our Easter fun day!
Happy World Book Day everyone! We’ve had an activity packed day here in Drumfad, with some wonderful costumes as you can see! Here we are enjoying paired reading.
Some of our Senior Room authors read their personalised stories for everyone. We had a lovely storytelling session, with lots of characters from the Junior Room mentioned in our stories!
Kate got lots of laughs during her hilarious story!
Great story Iona!
Well done Mark!
Our World Book Day quiz was a great success, with all teams scoring very highly.
Thanks to our quizmasters for putting the question list together!
Fun in the playground!!
Some of our Science Week events have had to be postponed due to all of the snow we’ve been having, however, we had a fantastic workshop with Angela from Anyone 4 Science earlier this week… we were experimenting with acids and bases. Thankfully, we didn’t have any explosions! (Well… no major ones anyway 😉)
As you can see, we had Ballyheerin over for the day too. We had great fun with our friends!
February
Snow in Spring! Would you believe it?! We took some time out today to go outside and play in the snow 😊 some tiny snowmen were built and lots of snowballs thrown! After only a few minutes of being outside in the cold however, we couldn’t wait to get back in again… our poor fingers were frozen!!
Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! We’ve had a busy day here baking lots of lovely Valentine’s treats… yum!
Happy mid term break everyone!
This month has gotten off to a great start with a visit from the boys and girls of Ballyheerin NS today. We had great fun in the playground with them, and they really enjoyed watching us present our History projects.
Some of our History projects.
Lisa and Emily Rose entertaining their audience with a spooky ghost story! Their project was based on the old Portsalon Hotel.
We also started the Human Being Myself programme with Bernie Wilson (and Ballyheerin!) today. It is such a great programme, we really enjoyed ‘losing perfection.’ We don’t need to be perfect, in fact we don’t want to be perfect! We’d just prefer to be ourselves thank you very much 😁
We had a really busy playground today with all of our friends from Ballyheerin here!
The girls are having great fun trying out our new willow tunnel. Thanks to the green school committee from Loreto, Milford who spent all afternoon planting it for us!
January
Happy new year everyone! We have been very busy since coming back to school, with fun activities such as swimming lessons in Magherabeg, ‘Making Irish Fun’ with Rosemary Herraghty and we’ve also been working along with Denise Blake, from Poetry Ireland. Here are some of our poems:
Window
There was once a very small window, hidden away at the top of a castle.
One day a child looked out the window
And saw a toy that he really wanted.
A farmer looked out the window and
Saw a nice T7 new Holland tractor.
A teacher looked out the window and saw
Children playing.
A Parent looked out and
Saw their child grown up.
God looked out the window
and saw a storm coming
And then I looked out the window
And saw a football
By Mark Mc Adoo 3rd class
Colours
Happiness is the colour orange
Like oranges
Happiness is the sound of laughter
If happiness was an animal it would be a sea cucumber
I am happy when I eat ice cream
Anger is the colour red
Like lady birds
Anger is the sound of screaming
If anger was an animal it would be an angry tiger
When I am angry I scream
Hope is the colour yellow
Like the sun
Hope is the sound of nothing
If hope was an animal it would be a yellow canary
I hope I get ice cream
by Tallulah, 3rd Class 🙂
Window
There once was a very small window
hidden at the top of a castle.
And saw a small child looked out of the window
And saw a book of wonders
A farmer looked out of the window
And saw a tractor
A teacher looked out of the window
And saw a bunch of good pupils
A parent looked out of the window
And saw their child
God looked out of the window
And saw the world
And then I looked out the window
And saw a library full of books
By Iona Wilson, 3rd Class
We’re also getting ready at the minute for Ballyheerin’s first visit as part of our School Link Programme on Friday. We will also be taking part in Bernie Wilson’s ‘Human Being Myself’ programme on Friday along with our visitors from Ballyheerin. We began this programme last year, and we’re very excited to be continuing with it!
Autumn/Winter 2017
Happy Christmas! 😁🌲
We’ve been busy making all of these cool decorations today using ‘jumping clay’ which comes all the way from Korea!
Thank you Donna, for a fun filled afternoon of crafts!
The excitement is building here in Drumfad as Christmas approaches. We have our letters to Santa written and delivered, and now that our Christmas Musical (Straw and Order) is over, we are really looking forward to our visit to see Paddington 2 in the Cinema!
We’ll fill you in on that soon, but first… our musical!! Straw and Order – what a performance! We gave an award winning performance, keeping the audience entertained from the opening scene, right up until our very last song! All of our hard work, rehearsing lines, dance moves and songs paid off in the end. We can’t wait to see the DVD .Thank you Phyllis for recording it for us!
Here are some snaps of us during the show!
Today was the day…. for the delivery of our ‘Secret Santa’ cards!!
So many beautifully made cards, well done everyone!
We made these lovely candle holders last week, won’t they make beautiful Christmas presents?!
We’ve had a busy few months since our last update. In September and October, we were working on our SESE (History Geography and Science) projects, which involved lots of research and investigations into the reefs of the world. We then made slideshows, and each person presented their show to the class, and then to the Junior Room. We also made up a quiz for them to check what they learned (and to make sure they were listening!!) Have a look at some of the sample slide shows here…. see what you can learn!
Coral Reef | The Amazing Underwater City
In October, our theme was ‘Reducing, Reusing and Recycling’, and boy did we recycle!! Have a look at some of the fabulous creations for our very own Drumfad Trash ‘n Fashion show! Here are some pictures of us in action on the catwalk. The parents loved our show, and of course our commentary!
We also put on a wonderful musical performance for the parents just before mid-term. Our theme was ‘music from around the world’. Thanks Moira McGinley for all of your help with learning our pieces! Our parents and teachers were entertained with singing, recorder, piano and accordion musicians, and not to forget the wonderful Macarena dancers from the Junior Room!
Here is a snapshot of some of the highlights of the school year for us so far……….enjoy!
We really enjoyed our delicious cupcakes baked by Esther. THANK YOU ESTHER!!
Suile na nÓg art exhibition was really interesting. We’d highly recommend a visit!
As you can see, Ju-jitsu is not for the faint-hearted! The self-defence skills we’re learning are really good fun 🙂
Shoebox Appeal
On 10th November we had our Shoe Box appeal collection. Samuel Anderson, our school caretaker (who also works with the Shoe Box Appeal charity group) came and took them to where they will be checked, taped and sent away in a big lorry to all the boys and girls in different countries. We look forward to hearing where our shoe boxes go this year!
We really enjoyed making then shoeboxes and we hope the boys and girls like them.
