St Mary's Convent Primary School

Today we were celebrating World Book Day in Room 26. This is  the 17th year of this event and 100 countries all over the world celebrate books, reading, authors and illustrators. We decided to make ourselves comfortable and we curled up with our books. Can you recognise us when we have our noses stuck in a book?!

Room 26 went on a nature walk to celebrate National Tree Week and investigate signs of spring. We noticed plenty of biodiversity around Trim and we were kept busy recording everything that we saw. Spring is definitely in the air… and in our step!!

There was a beautiful smell of baking around St Mary’s today.

Room 8 opened up the “Pancake Cafe” and we made some beautiful pancakes. We even wrote a menu for our cafe and the little chefs got busy with the ingredients!

Chocolate and banana pancakes were very popular today followed by sugar and lemon. Even the plain pancakes were delicious! What a fun day we had!

We opened up a Gardening Centre at school. Look at the beautiful daffodils that have grown.

We learned all about the parts of a plant and taking care of plants.
We will bring them home soon!

The children in First Class are lucky enough to have the use of 7 tablets in their classrooms.  The tablets were bought from funds raised from the last cake sale, so thanks to all the mums and dads and boys and girls who made cakes or who bought or sold cakes!

The children have spent the last couple of weeks using educational apps for English, Irish and Maths.  They have really enjoyed using the tablets – just have a look at the hard work in the photos below.

Thanks to Trim Tidy Towns, we now have a Bug Hotel in our outdoor classroom. At present, we have no “guests” but hopefully in the near future we’ll be booked out! We need to bring materials such as bricks, sticks, straw, moss and logs to furnish our Bug Hotel to entice guests!

After Christmas, we began rummaging through our recycling bins at home to collect as much waste as possible. We brought it all into school and got creative with our findings. We worked in groups to design and make some robots and these are our finished products. We think they look like a little robot family.

The First Class children in room 13 made beautiful St Brigid’s Day crosses, to celebrate Spring which starts tomorrow, 1st February.  St Brigid brings the Spring and here is a lovely prayer you might like to say with your family at home:

St Brigid of Ireland help us we pray,

To be kind and loving in our work and our play.

You always lent a helping hand to all who came your way,

Help us now to understand how we should live each day.

Amen

Room 12 learned loads of interesting facts about how the Chinese celebrate the Chinese New Year.  2014 is the Year of the Horse.  Chinese people celebrate the Chinese New Year by sweeping out their houses as they believe that this gets rid of bad luck.  They often repaint their front doors in red.  Red is a very lucky and popular colour in China.  Children often receive red envelopes with money in them for the Chinese New Year.

We would like to wish Mia, William and all the other Chinese children and their families a very Happy Chinese New Year.

Mrs Flattery came to visit all the First Class children for Grandparents’ Day.  She told us all about growing up in Longwood.  She lived in a house that had a thatched roof.  She had no electricity.  Most of the time she walked to school, but sometimes her Dad brought her to school on the horse and trap!  Sometimes they picked up other children along the way.  We wonder if they had ROWs in school – Ride on Wednesdays???? 

Mrs Flattery brought us in some old photos to look at, a huge big dish and “paddles” for the butter churning, some old candle holders and an oil lamp, and some old irons.  She explained how her family would have used all these things in times past.

Finally she brought in some turf to show us.  When she was going to school, all the children would have to bring in one piece of turf every day to keep the classroom warm!   We are so glad that we have radiators in our school to keep us warm during the cold winter.

We really enjoyed listening to Mrs Flattery’s stories and looking at all the lovely old things she brought in.