We had a fantastic Roald Dahl themed Book Week this year where the children were exposed to many Roald Dahl books and they learnt lots of interesting facts about the famous author. There were plenty of activities over the week including book browsing at the Book Fair; shared reading where children in the older classes read to the younger classes; DEAL time (Drop Everything And Listen) where the children had a visitor to their room to read some Roald Dahl stories. We ended the week with a dress up day and the children dressed up as a character from their favourite book – we had lots of Matildas, Oompa Loompas, Willy Wonkas and even some Golden Tickets!! Willy Wonka himself hid some golden tickets around the school and the lucky finders were rewarded with a chocolate bar!

We were delighted with the amount of books sold at the Book Fair as the school will get 60% of the money raised back in books for our libraries. A huge thank your to our Parents’ Association for manning the Book Fair and to every parent for your support in purchasing books and of course for helping to kit out your children in fantastic costumes on Friday.

On Wednesday the 10^th of April, we had Shane Arnold, a guest speaker from Bord na Móna, who came to speak with the Green School Committee, as well as our three 3^rd classes. Shane gave such an interesting presentation to the children about why we recycle and how we should recycle. He explained about the different bins that are used and how to use them effectively. He described the process of recycling and what happens to our waste between the bins being collected from outside of our house to the factory, where the materials are recycled. The children were so interested in it and they had plenty of questions for Shane, all of which he expertly answered! In St. Paul’s, we make such a conscious effort to recycle our waste correctly and we really believe in the value of recycling. We hope the children brought some tips home!

Féach ar na grianghraif thíos anseo ó Seachtain na Gailge. Bhí craic agus sproai ag gach duine i rith na seachtaine. 

Our day started off early because we had to meet at the school for 8:15am and our bus was supposed to come at 8:30am. The build up was great because we were all so excited for the tournament. We were waiting for about 20 minutes at the gates of the school, but it turned out that the bus driver went to St. Paul’s N.S. in Navan so we had to go in the teachers’ cars instead! It took us about 35 minutes to get to Gormanston College. We were rushed to get changed and warm up because we were playing in the first match against Longford. It took us a moment to get into the match as best as we could but we played our best in the second half and our work payed off because the final score was 10-0 to us. At this point we were two players down as Katie O’Brien had an injury from the previous weekend and Ellie O’Leary had been sick at the tournament. We had a while to wait for our next match which was against West Meath and the score was 9-1. We played really well and we worked as a team. We had about 2 hours to wait until our next match. This match was against Wexford and we had a big improvement as the score was 13-0. This result meant that we were into the final! The final was against St. Olaf’s from Dublin. The build up to the match was great. We were all making sure we had our starting team ready. Our starting line up was Emma Mulvaney in goals, Eliza Prior at the back, Lauren Richardson
on the left wing, Maya Moran on the right wing and Sofia Sarapaite was up front. All of the girls had a part to do in the match and we worked together as best as we could. We were under a bit of pressure but we continued to score four goals but unfortunately St. Olaf’s scored 2. The second half started and we played really well. We knew that this would determine if we could go to the University of Limerick for the All Ireland Finals or not. From the top, we scored a goal straight away to make it 5-2. St. Olaf’s had scored another two after that but we all played really well for the rest of the match and scored two more goals to make the final score 7-4. We were so happy when the whistle blew because we knew we made it to the All Ireland Finals! We had a great day and are looking forward and training hard for Limerick.

Written by Emma Mulvaney and Lauren Richardson

On the 29th of February, our school celebrated Odd Socks Day to help raise money for Down Syndrome Ireland. On that day, all of the students and teachers wore odd socks and were encouraged to bring in 2 euro each as a donation. On Odd Socks Day, our school managed to successfully raise a total of €937.76! Thanks to all of the students and teachers in our school, we were able to help support Down Syndrome Ireland and raise a lot of money.
Written by Emma Flood, 5^th Class

On Odds Socks Day everyone brought in two euro to raise money for Down Syndrome Ireland. Everyone wore Odd Socks to school. Down Syndrome Ireland offers support and services to people with Down Syndrome and their families throughout Ireland. In St. Paul’s we raised €934.76.
Written by Adam Sherlock, 5^th Class   

The end of 2023 was a very busy year for the St. Paul’s Garden and our Garden Committee!

Following on from the success of our Hazel tree planting to mark Tree Day, we planted our very own orchard right here in the grounds of St. Paul’s! We planted 5 fruits trees – 3 apple trees, 1 pear tree and 1 plum tree. These fruit trees were kindly donated to us by DC’s for Bees Orchards in the Community Project. We are very much looking forward to making many visits to the orchard and watching the trees grow and bear fruit for many years to come.

Many thanks to our Garden Committee for promoting our new orchard across the school and encouraging our classes to go out to visit it!