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.