St. Peter's Primary Bray Blog

If you missed our last two posts don’t worry, here is your chance to catch up with Novembers “St Peter’s All Star Attenders Awards.” At the end of every month children with full attendance for the month receive a certificate and have their name put on the Wall of Fame. The class with the greatest attendance each month also receive a class prize and all students with full attendance get named “All Star Attenders”.
So far our winners have been;
September: Ms. Fry’s 2nd Class (Trip to a show in the Mermaid Arts Theatre)
October: Ms. Shimmin’s 3rd Class (Home cinema experience)
This winning class for best attendance in November was Ms. Keating’s 4th Class. Ms. Keating’s class chose the home cinema experience after hearing how much 3rd class enjoyed it last month. They watched The Santa Claus 2 and loved it, complete with cinema shop, popcorn and goodies.
Check back each month to see who has won the class prize for best attendance and check if your name has made the All Star Attenders List.
Well done to 4th Class and to the following “All Star Attenders” from each class for November;
Junior Infants
Grace Carton
Jasmin Coogan Moorehouse
Ben Douglas
Lauren Hipwell
Noah Johnston
Max Murray
Zuzanna Siakala
Jake Thomas

Senior Infants
Carl Barry
Kristana Anna Daniel
Chloe Farrell
Tobias Farrell
Cian McDermott
Liam McGrath
Lauren O’Brien
Sophie O’Connor
Elif Standage
1st Class
Ellie Byrne
Damiano Carabaich
Haylie Treacy
Liam Mullen
Kyra O’Shaughnessy
Ned Wall

2nd Class
Karl Ashe
Jamie Cowap
Brian Grefaldeo
Dylan Hackman
Craig Hipwell
Dylan Lawless
Adem Standage

3rd Class
Tristan Byrne
Tadhg Cahill
Emanuel Carabaich
Nathan Douglas
Madeleine Farrell
4th Class
Caoilynn Ashe
Brooke Carey
Bridget Cox
Abbi Douglas
Dean Douglas
Caithlin Farrell
Jamie Hipwell
Dylan Moloney
Amber O’Sullivan O’Carroll
Dean Thomas

5th Class
Christopher Mullen
Patrick Braganciuc
Stephen Brien

6th Class
Robyn Brauner
Alex Coffey
Luke Connolly
Astrid Douglas
Jordan Farrell
Jack Jin
Mason Kelly
Alannah O’Brien

MR. FOLEY’S CLASS
Adam Hackman
Arturas Ratkevicius

Great practice today down in the hall! It’s really starting to feel like Christmas! Play season is upon us and we have a busy week ahead.

On Wednesday our Junior and Senior Infant classes will be sharing songs and plenty of cheer in the hall at 12:45pm. On Thursday, our 1st and 2nd Class will join forces at 1.30pm to present the hilarious and entertaining ‘Straw and Order’, a nativity story like one you’ve never seen before!

Both performances will get us all in the mood for the senior classes (2nd- 6th) who will perform the annual Roald Dahl musical on Monday. This year we are presenting ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarves’, a story bound to entertain and delight! As always, we’ll have lots of jokes and laughs for all, and you might even hear a few local names and businesses getting a shout-out!

All are welcome to attend, and we look forward to seeing you over the festive week ahead!

Ms. Whyte

The Parent Association held it’s AGM on Monday the 30th November in the school. Principal Emer Whyte, Chairperson of the Board of Management, Ray Hughes, and HSCL Teacher Paddy Kinsella attended to speak to the Parent Association  about upcoming events and the Board of Management.

Ray spoke to the Parent Association about the job done by the BOM. As the BOM changes this year two new Parent Reps for the board were nominated unopposed. John Coyle and Fiona Clucas will now move into the role of Parent Reps on the Board. Sharon Byrne was selected to be the staff rep replacing Dave Foley.

Noleen Barsoum steps in the position of Chairperson of the PA Committee this year, Melanie McDonald takes on the role of Secretary and Yvonne Standage/Cathy Sweeney McMaster taking on the joint role of Treasurer.

The Parent Association is always looking for new volunteers. If you are interested in joining the Parent Association or helping out please see Paddy Kinsella or any of the members of the Parent Association Committee.

Thanks,

Parent Association Committee

Christmas has landed in St. Peter’s. We are all feeling festive in St. Peter’s today and can’t wait for all our Christmas plays!

Last Wednesday we were delighted to have a group of parents come in to learn the basics of flower arranging and designing Christmas wreaths. Places were limited to first come first served and we were delighted it filled up in no time. Everyone had a great time designing their own wreaths and flower displays as well as getting to know other parents. It was hard to pick a winner on the day, as all the creations were wonderfully designed but I think everyone agreed that Paddy Kinsella’s was by far the best!!!!

Thanks to the following parents for getting involved; Melanie McDonald, Fiona Clucas, Christina Brauner, Lizzy Kelly, Vicky Thomas, Leisha Thomas, Louise Doyle, Claire Martin, Noleen Barsoum, Bernie Carton, Ann O’Brien.
Please keep an eye out for upcoming parent classes in the school or if you have any skills or suggestions for classes you’d like to share please see Paddy Kinsella in the school.

A very special thanks to Joan and Mary from the Bray Adult Learning Centre who ran the course and provided the materials. Bray Adult Learning Centre run a variety of free classes for adults who wish to get back into education. Check them out on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Bray-Adult-Learning-Centre/194257483922666

On Monday 30th of November SPECS, a brand new service to Bray, held their official launch. To celebrate, SPECS held an art competition in the town for schools and clubs. Homework club in St. Peter’s took part in the competition and we were delighted to hear that our very own Leon Reynolds from 3rd class was one of the winners. Leon was invited to the launch to receive his prize which was awarded to him by Minister Simon Harris. He also got to meet the Ombudsman for Children, Dr Niall Muldoon and his picture was put on display on the day. Leon drew a picture of something he loves to do with his family, camp in the backyard. Well done to Leon for his fantastic work.

 
Specs (Supporting Parents and Early Childcare Services) is a prevention and early intervention initiative that works with parents, early years services, schools and other agencies to improve outcomes for children from pregnancy through to school age.
If you are interested, or would like to find out more, call the SPECS team on 01-211 6481 or just drop into the office for a chat – you will be most welcome.

Over the past the couple of weeks in Senior Infants we have been learning about hospitals and doctors as part of our Aistear activities. It linked in really nicely with our theme of food and healthy habits! We discussed lots of new vocabulary like ‘accident’, ’emergency’, ‘surgeon’, ‘thermometer’ and ‘stethoscope’. We discussed going to the doctor if we don’t feel well and going to the hospital if we need an operation or have broken our arm or leg. During our role play we played the parts of secretary, doctor, nurse, hospital chef, pharmacist and patient. We are getting really good at staying in character. We also discussed how people get medicine from the pharmacy using a ‘prescription’ that the doctor writes.

Our doctor working hard to check a patient’s blood pressure.

A patient takes an eye test and is helped by the doctor and the nurse.

A busy day at the pharmacy – what a queue!

Our secretary tells a patient where to sit in the waiting room.

We worked really well together in our Aistear groups to use our new vocabulary. We constructed a doctor’s surgery and a hospital using blocks and cubes and even made an umbrella from straws – it’s important to try and avoid getting colds and coughs during the winter!

We also discussed lots of different body parts and filled out some patient feedback forms and some prescriptions. Our writing is really improving!

We used our traffic lights to self – assess our writing: green means we tried our best and worked very neatly, orange means we tried really hard but think we could do a little better next time and red means that we really want to make a better effort next time. Self – assessment helps us to take time to think about our work – what we like and what we want to improve on.

We are also busy getting ready for our Christmas performance and can’t wait to practice more next week!

We had an exciting start to the week! Ms. Allen joined us on her teaching practice journey. We love having her work with us.

It's a brilliant morning in #6thClass. We have a teacher working with us on Team 6th Class for the next 4 weeks! Welcome Ms. Allen!

— St. Peter's Primary (@StPetersBray) November 23, 2015

We’re working on our typing skills for our life skills series.

A keyboard practice sheet in #6thClass. pic.twitter.com/3rRwcoymhn

— St. Peter's Primary (@StPetersBray) November 23, 2015

Jordan is working on improving his typing. He is using the BBC dance mat typing website! Well done J. #6thClass pic.twitter.com/8zL9zxlpCs

— St. Peter's Primary (@StPetersBray) November 23, 2015

We love our new maths game too.

We are playing a Maths game called Monkey Tennis with Ms. Allen in #6thClass!

— St. Peter's Primary (@StPetersBray) November 23, 2015

We’re as creative as ever!

Look at the lovely art #6thClass made with Ms. Allen! We love working with her. pic.twitter.com/sJX11lxx0C

— St. Peter's Primary (@StPetersBray) November 27, 2015

We love making our winter scenes. #creativeschool #6thClass pic.twitter.com/vKmp9k293k

— St. Peter's Primary (@StPetersBray) November 27, 2015

We’re experts on China. Jack J is very impressed.

Can you guess what else we have been learning about with Ms. Allen? China! #6thClass pic.twitter.com/x53KGheqg7

— St. Peter's Primary (@StPetersBray) November 27, 2015

We are preparing for Advent and we have mass on Sunday.

We've a Confirmation mass on Sunday. We're looking forward to lighting the advent wreath. We made one too! #6thClass pic.twitter.com/AX5zCOrOry

— St. Peter's Primary (@StPetersBray) November 27, 2015

We had Food Friday to reward us for our Friday attendance in November!

We're looking forward to Mr. Kinsella's first ever Food Friday! It's for people with perfect Friday attendance! #schoolspirit

— St. Peter's Primary (@StPetersBray) November 27, 2015

We’re learning all about how damaging smoking is.

This month in SPHE we are learning all about how damaging smoking is. #6thClass pic.twitter.com/CMqC0rxpe8

— St. Peter's Primary (@StPetersBray) November 27, 2015

Our Student of the Week! Ms. Brennan and Ms. Allen agreed on one clear winner.

Our student of the week was set a challenge this week and she achieved it every day. Well done! #6thClass pic.twitter.com/9KSGxDGaRT

— St. Peter's Primary (@StPetersBray) November 27, 2015

We’ve been working so hard on our Class Dojo points. Mojo is always watching!

Mojo hanging out in #6thClass! Happy Friday everyone! @ClassDojo pic.twitter.com/y1KMhrJAqs

— St. Peter’s Primary (@StPetersBray) November 27, 2015

For the past couple of weeks we have been learning about ‘Food’ in Senior Infants. We have discussed our favourite kinds of food (pizza, chicken, bread and potatoes!) and where certain foods come from. For example we know that Sushi is a Japanese dish, France is famous for bread and Italy is famous for pasta. We also discussed how important it is to eat healthy food. Healthy food gives us energy and helps us to concentrate in school. We love to eat healthy foods like apples, bananas, fish and wraps. We learned about the ‘food pyramid’ and worked in groups to create our own food pyramid display for our classroom.

On Thursday morning we had a surprise Porridge Morning! It was great fun! We had talked about how important it is to have a healthy breakfast each day before school so we were very excited to try some porridge and fruit. Everyone in the class tried a little bit and some boys and girls even wanted another bowl! We were really pleased that everyone enjoyed their breakfast. We would like to say a big thank you to Mr. Kinsella, Ms. Farren and the very kind parents who came in to the school hall to make our breakfast for us. Check out some photos here:

Junior infants have settled really well into school and are working hard! We love our sounds. So far we have done the sounds- s,a,t,i,p,n,c,k,e and we are now working on h! We sing fun songs with our sounds and do fun actions with them too!

Look at this boy’s great work!

This great boy has been working really hard on his sounds- look how well he has done!

We have been having lots of fun and learning lots in Aistear too!

Hard at work and having fun!

We love showing off what we have done!

Look what we made!

We are great at jigsaws!

One of the things that we’ve been working really hard on is our fine motor skills. Here’s some photos of our cutting!

Our cutting and pencil skills have really improved so we are now working on our handwriting, the letter “c.” Hopefully we’ll have some work to show you soon! If any of our mums, dads, grannies, granddads or other family members are having a look at this blog post, please leave us a comment! That way we can have a look at your comment in class!