St. Peter's Primary Bray Blog

Hi everyone! Welcome back to school! We’re so happy to be back, and we’re getting to know our new room and exciting new school building. What a super time to be a student in St. Peter’s!

Here is the first of many updates from 5th Class over what will be a very busy year.

We’ve been busy tweeting already!

Good evening everyone! #5thClass have had two brilliant days getting settled into their new room. We're delighted to be back to school.

— St. Peter's Primary (@StPetersBray) August 30, 2016

We’re in Ms. Brennan’s class again, just like many of us were in 2nd Class. Now our class is bigger and better than ever before! Here is the picture of us back from the Bray People back in 2013 when we were the first ever class to take in girls. We’re history makers!

We are in Ms B's class again and have grown up so much since we were last together in 2nd Class! #5thClass pic.twitter.com/dVDG7FtY4s

— St. Peter's Primary (@StPetersBray) August 30, 2016

We've set up our @ClassDojo accounts, had golden circle time moments, learned a poem, drew maps and practiced new class chants! #5thClass

— St. Peter's Primary (@StPetersBray) August 30, 2016

Our classroom door is also shaping up, can you tell the theme? We've lots more to add to it yet! #5thClass pic.twitter.com/eCi6pLVeK1

— St. Peter's Primary (@StPetersBray) August 30, 2016

We’re back at work in class, learning lots and getting our thinking hats on.

Today's #5thClass question of the day to get us thinking, talking and chatting! pic.twitter.com/x5P98QblNM

— St. Peter's Primary (@StPetersBray) August 31, 2016

We’ve started a brand new unit of work on the counties and provinces of Ireland.

If you see #5thClass out and about, challenge them to recite our counties of Ireland poem! pic.twitter.com/akyesbgVt9

— St. Peter's Primary (@StPetersBray) August 31, 2016

And we’ve been sharing summer stories. We brought in things that told a story about our summer break!

We had a bit of show and tell before lunch! #5thClass pic.twitter.com/VSkfpo0SaT

— St. Peter's Primary (@StPetersBray) August 31, 2016

We’ve made our classroom rules and we have them to look at on our class Prezi account.

Our #5thClass rules @prezi presentation! pic.twitter.com/77ta4ZnZli

— St. Peter's Primary (@StPetersBray) August 31, 2016

We’ve been creative too, drawing amazing chalk art in the yard and interacting with them!

Chalk drawings for Art in #5thClass today! Some walked on the moon, others did HW and more did gymnastics! #edchatie pic.twitter.com/fiOe0R6609

— St. Peter's Primary (@StPetersBray) August 31, 2016

After that, we took a balloon ride, played some pac man and then sat down to do some writing! #5thClass pic.twitter.com/9uQPWcJ9HF

— St. Peter's Primary (@StPetersBray) August 31, 2016

Emoji art, scooters and 'flying in the air like we just don't care!' #chalkart #5thClass pic.twitter.com/6vJUmPBtbY

— St. Peter's Primary (@StPetersBray) August 31, 2016

We’ve had perfect attendance since we came back too. We’re starting as we mean to go on! Here is our class picture!

Team #5thClass 2016-2017! #backtoschool pic.twitter.com/eDSUSOlFkS

— St. Peter's Primary (@StPetersBray) August 31, 2016

Check it out! Our #backtoschool pictures. 1/3 #5thClass pic.twitter.com/i1b3h0yEqg

— St. Peter's Primary (@StPetersBray) August 31, 2016

Check it out! Our #backtoschool pictures. 2/3 #5thClass pic.twitter.com/2rQuzkHKS6

— St. Peter's Primary (@StPetersBray) August 31, 2016

Check it out! Our #backtoschool pictures. 3/3 #5thClass pic.twitter.com/aPvhrRuScn

— St. Peter's Primary (@StPetersBray) August 31, 2016

That’s it for now, three days in and it’s like we were never away! Here’s to a brilliant year!

Today, we had our First Day in St. Peter’s and what a day it was!

We were so brave this morning and found our seats so quickly. We were happy to make new friends and learn each others names. We had a special treat and used paint to make our hand prints – you can see them on display in our classroom!

We started doing some work on Goldilocks and the Three Bears. We loved the story and are learning a new song about the large, medium and small  sized bears in the story. We have beautiful singing voices!

We hope you like our pictures in our beautiful frame. We are excited for the year ahead!

With love,

All in Junior Infants xxx

What a busy term we have had in Senior Infants! Between our school tour to Glenroe Farm and baking rice krispie buns with First Class, learning about animals during Aistear, taking part in Bike Day, Sports Day and a minibeast hunt, having a guest speaker visit our class, planting flowers and taking part in another design and make project with Fifth Class we have been working so hard and enjoying ourselves along the way!

Take a look at some of our photos and read below to see how we got on!

We really enjoyed learning about animals and as part of our Aistear role play station we learned what it would be like to work as a vet and to work in a zoo as a zoo keeper. We love our role play area as we get to act and use our imaginations! We dress up, use lots of different props and try to stay in character, all while using our new vocabulary that we have learned.

Vets looking busy!

This patient is being well cared for.

Construction Station.

Junk Art Station.

Mr. McAdam was kind enough to come back to visit us and brought a special guest – our chick! We were delighted to see how big the chick had grown and were happy to hear he is now living on a lovely farm with some new chick friends! 🙂 We were really happy Mr. McAdam came back to visit us.

Chick!

Mr. McAdam designed a cool home for the chick so that he could travel to meet us!

Our last Aistear role play theme of this year was the ‘Garden Centre’. The boys and girls were very good at remaining in character as managers, cashiers and customers. They used compost to plant seeds and used the till to practise using money which we learned all about during Maths.

Fun in the Garden Centre!

Sand Area.

Customer and Garden Centre employee.

Construction Station.

We also learned lots about minibeasts like bees, wasps, ants, butterflies and caterpillars. We went on a minibeast hunt to see if there are any minibeasts in our school yard and were surprised with what we found! We recorded our results and shared them with the whole class when we returned to the classroom. We saw slugs, flies, ants and butterflies!

Busy recording our findings!

Looking carefully for different types of minibeasts.

As part of our History lessons we were delighted to welcome a very special guest speaker to our classroom to tell us about what school was like in St. Peter’s 50 years ago. Mr. Cunningham taught in St. Peter’s when it moved to our current location from the church grounds in 1961. He kindly answered all of our questions and the boys and girls learned a lot about what school was like when he taught here. He explained that the rooms were not as colourful as they are now and that the boys in the school had to use ink wells to do their handwriting. He said that he loved teaching and we were delighted to show him a photo in the corridor that he is in! We are very lucky that Mr. Cunningham came to visit us and hope that he will come back when the new classrooms are complete. Huge thanks to him and Frances for coming to see us!

Mr. Cunningham leading pupils to the new school from St. Peter’s Church grounds in 1961.

The boys and girls worked so hard during the year so we decided that we would bake some rice krispie buns as a nice treat! They were delicious! Thanks to Ms. Ward, Ms. Travers, Ms. Flanagan and First Class for this great idea! We also decorated our classroom for the Euros and cheered Ireland on with our flags, watching their brilliant goals on RTÉ News2Day. Unfortunately they are no longer in the tournament but we wish all the other teams the best of luck!

Baking!

Go Ireland!

We also worked on another design and make project with Fifth Class and Ms. Sexton. This time we discussed the Post Office and how we post letters and packages. We worked in the Post Office during Aistear earlier this year and were able to remember that we need to put an address on the envelope that we are sending, as well as a stamp. Our challenge was to post one pringle crisp in the post and to make sure that it wouldn’t break along the way! Our other challenge was not to eat the pringle before posting it 🙂  The Fifth Class were so helpful and worked with us to think of the best designs and materials that we could use. We sketched our designs and Fifth Class helped us to label them. They also asked us excellent questions to make sure we had considered all the different aspects of our designs, like if it was strong enough/ would it fit in the post. We decided that it was important to make sure the pringle was cushioned and protected in the package and that the package wouldn’t crush the pringle. Then we got to work! We used materials like bubble wrap, cardboard boxes, cotton wool, plastic bottles and yoghurt cartons. We made sure to use plenty of sellotape to secure our packages. Our designs were so unique and Ms. Byrne has helped us post them to their destination. We hope to hear they survived the journey in the post intact! 🙂 Big thanks to the boys and girls in Fifth Class for all their help and patience, they are so kind and we loved working with them!

Great teamwork!

We followed our designs when making our package.

We had a fantastic year and learned so much and worked so hard! We are definitely ready and excited to start First Class in August! We hope everyone has a well-deserved rest this summer and enjoys their break! 🙂

Junior Infants had a fun day last week. We had so much fun! We had a soccer tournament with the senior infants that Paddy organised- it was so much fun! We were in four teams and we played really well!

The we had a yummy barbecue with hot dogs and ice pops to finish.

After our barbecue we made yummy cupcakes and decorated them. Then we did some art and made puppets and windmills!

Next it was time for Jungle Dave! Jungle Dave brought in so many reptiles and told us all about them!

We had a fantastic Fun Day! We have had a great junior infant year. We had lots of fun and we worked really hard. Now, on to senior infants and our new teacher Ms. Sexton- we can’t wait!! 🙂 🙂

The June 15th singing club party was a sad occasion as 3 boys attended the after school club for the last time. Carl Iacob, Tommy Lang and Jordan Farrell said goodbye to the rest of the group and wished them well as they will soon be departing for Secondary School. Tommy and Jordan in particular, have been members since they were in 2nd Class and both have rarely missed a singing club over the years. They both went to all Hallelujah Concerts and have been instrumental in what songs we have sung. Tommy said “My favourite memory is the last singing club party. Everybody was up dancing and everyone tried their best. I also liked the Hallelujah Concert we went to last year. It seemed the most fun.” Jordan added “I thought the 2014 Christmas party was the best. We sang Christmas songs and had good food. I also liked the special performances at the Hallelujah Concerts and enjoyed being in charge of the food for everyone”. All the staff wish the three boys all the best in their future performances and hope they keep up their interest in music and song.

Paddy and the lads!

Tommy Lang’s top 5 singing club songs.
1. Troublemaker – Olly Murs
2. Fast Car – Jonas Blue ft. Dakota
3. Cha Cha Slide – DJ Casper
4. Grenade – Bruno Mars
5. Happy – Pharrell Williams

Jordan Farrell’s top 5 singing club songs.
1. Lets get ready to rumble – PJ and Duncan
2. Hopeful – Bars and Melody
3. Heart skips a beat – Olly Murs
4. Candy – Robbie Williams
5. What does the fox say – Ylvis

Singing Club for life!

The boys and girls from Junior Infants, Senior Infants, First and Second Class completed their sports day today. Paddy worked very hard to put together lots of games from High Jump to relay races, to egg and spoon races and catch the teacher games!

Some happy faces from Junior and Senior Infants enjoying the fun!

The boys and girls were so lucky and each one got a hotdog as a treat on this special day. They needed some fuel for energy – they were all giving all the races and games their very best effort! Well done boys and girls.

Below see Seán from Second Class and Maja from Junior Infants completing some of today’s events.

After a fantastic day, the boys and girls must be exhausted after all their exercise in the sun.

Well done to everyone. What a wonderful day!

Everyone say CHEEEEEEEEEEESE!

Throughout the year, Dylan and Adem of Ms. Fry’s second class, completed Speech and Drama lessons every week with Ms. Farren. They worked so hard at their lessons and at home and were ready in March 2016 to make their journey to the Royal Irish Academy in Westland Row, to complete their Grade 1 Speech and Drama exam.

Dylan and Adem in the Royal Irish Academy.

The boys had practiced and prepared their poem, mime, storytelling skills, reading and theory to present to the examiner in the Academy. She was particularly impressed with their story ‘Bedtime’ by Hugh O’Brien and thought that the two boys had lovely facial expressions during their performances.

The boys enjoyed some hot chocolate and chocolate muffins in the cafe they spotted beside Pearse Street station – a treat so well deserved after their exam!

Dylan and Adem enjoying some yummy treats!

A few weeks later, post arrived in St. Peter’s – it was they boys results! Ms. Farren was so proud of both Adem and Dylan who both received an Honours result. Their hard work had paid off and the examiner wrote so many lovely comments about each of the boys and how well they had performed.

A huge congrats to Adem and Dylan on a job so well done.

The boys with their certificates.

Check it out! 6th Class are in today’s Irish Independent talking about their coding work. Click here to read the article.

First class visited Bray library today.  We got to read some very interesting and fun books.  There were so many cool books to choose from.

A huge well done to Alana Murphy Porter and Dylan Mason in 6th Class who recently won their categories in the Bray Alcohol Awareness Campaign poster competition!

Today, joined with their families, they were awarded two beautiful trophies and a really generous One-For-All voucher in a beautiful lunchtime ceremony at the Barracuda. Check out some pictures and tweets below!

In the Barracuda in Bray supporting Alana M & Dylan M, prize winners in the @BrayDrugsAware poster comp! #6thClass pic.twitter.com/wPlRgglGLV

— St. Peter’s Primary (@StPetersBray) May 26, 2016

So proud of our two #6thClass students. What an amazing achievement! Thanks @BrayDrugsAware! pic.twitter.com/Wgv1Xpkq3u

— St. Peter’s Primary (@StPetersBray) May 26, 2016

So proud. Well done all! #6thClass pic.twitter.com/iE26ymDT2M

— St. Peter’s Primary (@StPetersBray) May 26, 2016

Dylan’s poster will be on display at locations all over Bray during the 2017 St. Patrick’s Day festival. #6thClass pic.twitter.com/LPeNdjmwX2

— St. Peter’s Primary (@StPetersBray) May 26, 2016

Meanwhile, Alana’s will be displayed in the run up to Halloween 2016. #6thClass pic.twitter.com/PPgwTPx36k

— St. Peter’s Primary (@StPetersBray) May 26, 2016