Over the past number of months the children in the Senior Room have been putting in a lot of time and hard work into preparing for the VEX Robotics Regional Event (Offaly). The children put in great work and came up with great ideas, strategies and worked so well together.

The children performed very well on the day of the competition - placing in 8th place overall which is a great achievement. The children represented the school and themselves really well showing great teamwork and playership towards the other teams. And most of all they enjoyed the day. 

We would like to say a big Thank You to Offaly County Council for facilitating the VEX Robotics competition in Offaly and for supplying the resources to the school. Also we would like to thank Ray Bell and Dean Hodge, who are the STEM officers in Offaly County Council, who lead the initiative and give a lot of their time, their knowledge and assistance to the schools. It is very much appreciated. 

And finally, with the ever changing world around us, with technology becoming more and more prevalent in our daily lives, the VEX robotics competition gives the children the knowledge and understanding of how things around us work. Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths all make up the area of STEM, which is currently being phased in as a curricular area within Primary Schools across the country. So, the VEX Robotics gives the children in the Senior Room that opportunity to engage with STEM in both an educational, enjoyable and competitive way. 

The Senior Room had a very enjoyable day in Colaiste Naomh Cormac attending their Sciencefest day! The children got to see lots science experiments being carried out and also got to try out some experiments themselves! 
A big thank you to CNC for inviting us and well done on a spectacular day! 

To warp up their time in 4th Class, the children put all their knowledge from the past year into use on the yard during a Maths Trail. 

This week 4th class have been exploring 3D Shape. We played around with cubes and given a certain number of cubes to try make a bigger cube with all the smaller ones provided. 

We've been busy since Christmas getting ready for the Robotics Competition at the beginning of February. We are deep in practising our driving skills, teamwork challenges and our coding of the robot. 

 OK, so we are not at the building robot stage but we are on our well on our way in this years robotics competition "Rapid Relay". After our amazing achievement of making it to Cork and doing really well down there, the children are even more excited and determined, to get to Cork again this year! Well, they have their minds set on getting to America!!! As you can see some of them already have their front page of the paper poses at the ready!!

We have looked at the game for this year and come up with a few strategies already. We haven't started building a robot yet but we have set out what we want out robot to do. We have just started building the arena and practising our coding skills this week. We hope to have the arena very soon and start building our robot.

This week we have been focusing on multiplication in maths. The children used cubes to look at various multiplication sums, visualising multiplication in action and engaging a amazing maths talk! 

Back in October 2023, our senior class won the Cumman na mBunscol football final in Tullamore and today the children were presented with their medals. 
We would like to thank Kathleen Murphy for presenting the children with their medals. Thank you to Ms. Gath and Ms. Flynn for training the children both during PE time and during lunch time.
A big thank you to Daithí Feighery for giving up his free time to come in to also train for both the football in October and hurling in March/April. 
Finally, thank you to Kilcormac GAA and Luke Watkins for doing hurling with all classes over the past few months. 

The children on the team have put in so much work and dedication and performed admirably and represented the school well during all matches. 
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Just remember where it all started when you're playing for Offaly in a few years time!