It’s been a busy few months for the Green Team here in St. Paul’s as we prepared our application for our work on the theme of Biodiversity. Bernadine Carry, Environmental Officer for Meath County Council, visited the school on Thursday 21st March for our Green Flag assessment. She met with the hard-working committee members who talked her through the work that we have done on Biodiversity. They were able to explain what biodiversity is, why it is so important, potential threats to biodiversity and ways in which we can help. We spoke about our habitat mapping exercises in St. Paul’s and how we have tried to increase biodiversity in small but significant ways. The committee were able to name the trees and plants that we have in our grounds along with the many birds that come to visit! We also had an enlightening discussion about palm oil and the destruction of rainforests for the purpose of palm oil plantations along with the devastating effects overuse of plastic is having on our oceans. 

Climate change featured highly in our discussion as we spoke about our plans to highlight Earth Hour 2019 by having our own Earth Hour in St. Paul’s. The Green Team represented their school beautifully and were extremely passionate about the work they have done and the information they have acquired. They spoke so eloquently and should all be very proud of themselves!

We have it on good authority that Bernadine has sent in a glowing report to An Taisce and, coupled with the actual application that we have prepared, we are hoping to hear some good news about our submission in the not too distant future!!

The boys and girls in Room 2 are in full bloom this Spring!! 🙂

They had a busy start to the month of March as they were making sure the animals were all well and healthy. They learned about animals and their babies and the different types of homes they live in. Lambing season also started where they made their own fluffy spring lambs!

They are all doing so well with their reading and writing this term! They love writing their own news and enjoy building word walls during writing stations. Going to the library is always welcomed as the boys and girls love finding new books to read and explore.

The recent sunny weather was the perfect time for lots of teddy bears to come to school!! The boys and girls had a wonderful day and really enjoyed having a picnic outside with their teddy bears! They loved singing the Teddy Bears’ Picnic song all day long!!

We celebrated Pancake Tuesday by hosting a pancake party in our classroom! We flipped AND dropped lots of pancakes but we had lots of fun while doing so! We decorated pancake pictures with our favourite toppings and we all enjoyed eating our pancakes with some sugar and lemon! Mmmmmmm 

Our Lenten promise is Room 2 is to focus on SHARING with our friends! We are all doing a wonderful job so far and it is lovely to see the boys and girls being so kind to their friends! 🙂 

St. Patrick’s Day brought with it lots of glas, bán agus oráiste!! The boys and girls arrived to school in beautiful green hats, dresses and accessories!! We read “Pete’s Rainbow” where we learned about the colours of the rainbow and what magical surprises can be found at the end of it!!! We had our own St. Patrick’s parade in our classroom where we marched to lots of Irish music!

Stay tuned for more to come in Room 2!! 🙂 

We had another great Health Promoting School Week in St. Paul’s this year! We started each day off with a Drop in Dance Class before school which certainly got the heart rates going and put lots of smiles on children’s faces. There were lots of activities over the week for classes, including yoga, meditation, healthy cooking, sharing our happy thoughts and our hugely successful Brushathon. All of the children and their families were asked to brush their teeth on Tuesday the 12th of February at 8pm, so as to try and get as many people as possible brushing their teeth at the same time. Have a look at some of the selfie pictures that were sent in! 

On Valentine’s Day a child in each class was randomly picked to “spread the love” by giving as many compliments as possible to different people over the day. It costs nothing to give a compliment and it always guaranteed to make someone happy! The HPS committee were also busy delivering daffodils to members of staff as a random act of kindness.    

Have a look at the pictures below to see how great a week it was!  

To mark World Book Day, the children in Room 19 wrote about their favourite book of all time. Mazyanne wrote a great response which also seemed fitting for International Women’s Day this week.

My favourite book is “Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls; 100 tales of extraordinary women”. This is my favourite book because it shows you that women and girls can do anything men can do and sometimes even better. It tells you lots of interesting stories about rebel women. The women in this book went outside of their comfort zones and protested for what they wanted and believed in. They did stuff you would never believe. I hope that one day I can make a difference and step outside of my comfort zone just like these women did, and this is why “Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls; 100 tales of extraordinary women,” is my favourite book.

Written by Max Brady, 5th Class, Room 19

Recently our class filled our star chart and the majority of the class voted for baking as a reward. Since Ms Conroy wanted to stay on theme with Chinese New Year, we made pig-muffins, because its year of the pig. Ms Conroy let us pick two jobs out of a jar, and whatever it said, that’s what we had to do to help. My two jobs were bringing the plates upstairs and helping to mix the icing. I didn’t get to mix the icing until later because we had to wait for the buns to cool down or else the icing would melt. Ms Conroy gave us Chinese New Year word searches to do while we were waiting for our turn to help make them. It was annoying having to wait until they cooled down as it took a while. They were sitting at the back of the classroom and they looked delicious, even without any of the toppings! At the end of the day, a few people [including me] were called down to make the icing while everyone else was working on their art. Teacher then called people down in fours to decorate their buns. I saved my bun until I got home and I think it was worth the wait as the pig-muffins were delicious. I would recommend them to anyone and would love to make these buns again.

“As good as chocolate cake” – Me  

St. Paul’s Bug Hotels open for business!!

The St. Paul’s Green Team have been working extremely hard for the renewal of our green flag on the theme of biodiversity. We have been very lucky to have welcomed the Ratoath Men’s Shed on board and they have constructed two fantastic bug hotels which have been placed beside the school garden. We are now going to spend the next few weeks filling the nooks and crannies with the following  lots of natural materials to create some lovely hidey holes for creatures galore to come and visit! We are looking for the following:

• red bricks (preferably with holes)
• old earthenware flower pots
• wood chips
• bark
• hollow bamboo canes
• moss
• sand
• logs
• sticks/twigs and kindling
• pine cones

We are extremely grateful to the members of Ratoath Men’s Shed for coming on board to help us out and are very fortunate to have such a talented group at work in our community. A huge thank you from all of the pupils and staff of St. Paul’s!

Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone from all the boys and girls in Room 2! Spread the love and kindness this week! 🙂 xoxo

The boys and girls in Room 2 are enjoying the start of a new season – we have been doing lots of fun activities this February so far! 

We love Show and Tell on Fridays! We always enjoy bringing in something special from home to share with the class. We have seen lots of teddies, photographs, stretchy toys, GAA gear, dolls and even secret jewels and giant calculators….the list goes on!! We made funky fruit baskets during art time and we loved listening to the story of The Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. We wrote our own diary about the fruits the caterpillar ate! 🙂 

On the 1st of February, we celebrated St. Brigid’s Day. We loved learning about St. Brigid and how she helped the poor, the sore and the sick. Our teacher showed us how a St. Brigid’s cross is made and how we place it over our door to keep us safe. The story about St. Brigid’s colourful cloak was really special! We made some lovely art to honour St. Brigid! 🙂 

Cake Sale Day – It was a very happy Friday last week when the boys and girls went to the hall to buy some of the wonderfully delicious treats, cakes and bars that the sixth class children made. We all had happy cake filled faces that day!! 🙂 

The boys and girls in Room 2 put their baking skills to the test last week! We set up our ingredients in the kitchen and followed our step by step recipe to make some delicious Rocky Road biscuit cakes! We broke up the chocolate, separated the marshmallows, crushed the biscuits, melted the chocolate and prepared the bun cases. We all enjoyed stirring the mixture and we resisted the urge to lick the chocolatey spoon!! We were happy boys and girls going home that day!! 🙂 

Alongside making Rocky Road cakes, we made our own homemade butter!! We were learning about how we can get milk from cows and we made a list of the different dairy products that are made using milk. We poured some fresh cream into an empty jam jar, closed the lid and we shook shook shook!!! We kept watching the cream as we were shaking and after a little while, we noticed that it began to turn more yellow, it started to thicken up and eventually a lump of butter was formed! The liquid part left over was the buttermilk! We spread the delicious creamy butter on some rice cakes and enjoyed the fruits of our hard work!

The three sixth classes went to Leinster House and the National History Museum on Wednesday the 24th of January. We left the school early in the morning at around 9:30, it was a long bus ride to Dublin city centre and we arrived at around 10:30. We walked into Leinster House and left our bags in lockers and we went into a large gallery. Beneath us was the Dail where the Ministers were discussing Brexit and how it would affect Ireland. We watched for a while and then we were split into groups to go around the building

We were brought into a hallway and we were told the story of the Duke of Leinster who lived in the house first. We then went into was another room, the Seanad where we listened to more discussion. We moved on and we saw an original copy of the proclamation and we were told about the men who had signed it. After that we headed out to a large room where Thomas Byrne came in to answer some questions that some of us had. He was kind and answered all the questions we had. After that we went to the steps of the National History Museum and we ate our lunch.

After we finished our lunch we split into groups and we headed into the National Museum of Ireland. We received a booklet each to fill in as we went along. The booklet told us to find certain items in the Museum. Most of them were in the same room. Some of the items we had to find and write about were a Bronze Horn, the Ardagh Chalice, an arm-shaped shrine and the Tara Brooch. The booklet asked us questions about each item and we had to examine the items. Most of the items were in the Treasury exhibition. Each one looked old and they looked like they had a lot of history. We all really enjoyed both the Leinster House and the National History Museum. It was a great day out.
By Erin Leeson

On Friday 21^st December, the children of St. Paul’s took part in a Santa Run on the school grounds. All children wore their school tracksuits and something festive. The children turned up very excited wearing Christmas Jumpers, Christmas Hairbands, Santa Hats and all looked very festive.

The Active Committee co-ordinated a fantastic Santa Run. They called two year groups to the yard and then paired a Senior Class child with a Junior Class child prior to taking on the run and each pair were to complete two laps of the yard together chatting, singing Christmas Carols and Songs.

The class pairing were as follows: Sixth Class with Second Class, Fifth Class with First Class and Room 26, Fourth Class with Senior Infants and Room 25 and Third Class with Junior Infants. Have a look at some of our pictures from the day thanks to Ms O’Toole.

Have a look below of some of the photographs from Santa’s visit to school on Thursday.

As always, our wonderful Parents’ Association organised another fantastic Christmas Fair in the school on the 2nd of December. There were lots of things to do there including our selfie mirror, face painting and a visit to Santa’s Grotto. There were a range of stalls with various items to buy which included the White Elephant stall, cake stall, book stall, flower stall, sweet stall, jewelry and accessories stall and a toy stall. We ended the day with our bumper raffle with over 50 prizes! The following week the students were given the opportunity to buy tickets for the children’s raffle. There was great excitement in the lead up to the raffle and at the fair! It helped get everyone into the Christmas spirit!
Many thanks to everyone who helped make our Fair so successful. Have a look here for a full list of sponsors to the school who donated very generously to our Christmas Raffle.

Following the fantastic win  by the boys’ Gaelic Football Team in Páirc Tailteann a few weeks ago, we were delighted to hear that one of our players was chosen by the reporters of the Meath Chronicle for a special award. This award is called ‘The Spirit of the Final’ Award and Seán Twyford-our captain, was chosen. As part of this award Seán and some of teammates, James Kelly, Gerard Leavy and Oscar Glynn were invited to attend an awards ceremony at the Dunganny G.A.A. Centre today, Wednesday 12th December. The ‘Spirit of the Final’ Award was presented to each player by Meath Captain Mickey Burke. In total, 14 players were awarded this award following the finals.

September

Junior Infants had a wonderful first few weeks in school. We made lots of new friends and really enjoyed our play time topic “At School”. We worked with Lego, built schools, cut out shapes and got to play lots of different people in our school! We became little scientists when we were learning all about how our eyes work. Grandparents Day was a very special day in Junior Infants and we all loved showing our grandparents around our classroom. Well done Junior Infants!

October

We had a busy month in Room 2 as it was harvest season.  We collected leaves, brought in conkers and made some very prickly hedgehogs during art. We were introduced to the colourful characters of Numicon and we enjoyed exploring how the shapes work together to make different number stories. Yoga is something we all enjoy in Room 2. It’s a lovely way to relax after a busy week in school. We set up our own Fancy Dress Shop during play time and loved making castles and cauldrons and learning about Hallowe’en around the world. We also performed at our very first assembly – it was a spooktacular day!

November

We were very busy this month as we took on the role of doctors and nurses. We built hospitals, made healthy food, wrote cards and helped lots of patients get better. We really enjoyed a visit from a real doctor who told us all about the fantastic work she does at her surgery.  Book Week was lots of fun, especially when the very talented author, Benji Bennett came to talk and read to us. We have been doing an amazing job at learning all of our new sounds each week – we love blending them together to make new words. We also like the challenge of finding “tricky words” in our library books!

December

‘Tis the Season to be Jolly….. Our classroom has been transformed into the magical North Pole! We have set up Santa’s workshop where we are busy writing lists (and checking twice!!), making toys, wrapping gifts and delivering presents. We even built Santa’s sleigh using big lego and made Christmas puddings and glittery candles! Advent is a special time of year and we’re doing lots of things to get ready to celebrate the birth of Jesus. We are busy practicing for our Christmas Nativity Play and we can’t wait to perform it next week! Oh and not forgetting the special visitor that arrived in Room 2… Jingles our school elf!!

Keep an eye on our Junior Infant blog – we’ll be back with more updates soon!

From all the boys and girls in Room 2 🙂 

When Ms. Burke’s class were asked what their favourite activity in Second Class has been so far, many responses were Art. And what amazing artists they are! Have a look at what room 8 have been doing in this subject since the start of September.

We had a very busy day in St. Paul’s last Friday as we had lots of Grandparents visit us for Grandparents’ Day. The day started off with a mass for Grandparents in the Church where Third Class sang beautifully in the choir. Grandparents were then invited back to the school for tea and coffee and were treated to some lovely performances from Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Class. Our visitors were then free to wander the school and pop into their Grandchild’s class for a chat. The children really enjoyed their visits and had lots of fun with their Grandparents including playing games, colouring, reading books, interviewing their Grandparents, singing songs and we even had one Grandfather who sang a song to the class! The whole school community really enjoyed the day and everyone left school last Friday with big smiles on their faces! Thank you to everyone involved for making it such a wonderful day.

We had one boy in Senior Infants who made a massive effort for Funky Fruit Friday this week and we just had to share a photo! Well done John for all your hard work and we hope you enjoyed your delicious fruit parrot!