We were very delighted to welcome Mel Mercier, musician extraordinaire, university professor and director of the UCC Gamelan Orchestra to the school on Monday 18th.
He had us spellbound with his skill on the bones and bodhrán, his vocal Indian drumming language and his prowess on the African Talking Drum. He was delighted with the response from the children and Mr. Kavanagh was delighted to get the chance to play music with such a legend! Many thanks to Carmel for organising the visit! One of the last art lessons of Mr. Kavanagh's career was a very successful session, making coil pots from clay. Everyone concentrated on the task in hand and we ended up with a beautiful range of pots, some of them with covers. They will be very nice desk pencil holders or doodah containers.
They can be painted in a few weeks when they're completely dried. The class was abuzz with activity today with the construction of crannógs. The children had collected materials during the week and we had a scout around the school grounds to find other handy bits and pieces. Below see some of the work in progress.
We hung up bird seed feeders to keep the Knockanore birds going during the winter months.
But we also made bird fat cakes... lard, seeds, porridge oats, breadcrumbs, peanuts, raisins... all the pupils got their hands dirty making delicious fat cakes. The feeders are hung outside our classroom window so we're hoping to see lots of activity over the next few months. We explored the painting The Starry Night today and listened to Don McLean singing.
Here are two of the pupils' interpretations of that famous painting. Now that we have had time to settle in we can now launch our class blog. We will put up some interesting stuff here from time to time, so tune in regularly to see what we've done!
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