St. Peter's Primary Bray Blog

First class have been learning about summer, the beach and boats in Bray harbour. Our focus was how boats float in the water. We discussed the importance of boats as the transport of goods/people, but in order to do so the boat must float. Firstly we brainstormed the properties of making a boat. We discussed materials that would be good or bad to float and why. We linked the Titanic which sank and concluded our boats would require good construction without any holes to avoid sinking. In order to predict we needed to understand floating and sinking so we investigated with an orange. Once placed... 

Senior Infants have been taking part in an after-school club based on STEM. Carl Dempsey from Salesforce has been helping out with the club and we’ve really enjoyed welcoming him to our classroom. All of the sessions were based on nursery rhymes or fairytales. We measured this tower and it was the tallest! Session 1 was based on Humpty Dumpty and materials. Humpty Dumpty likes to sit on high structures so we got into groups and built walls as high as we could. The walls had to stand by themselves by the end of the five minutes. We learned a lot about what makes structures sturdy –... 

This week, in Junior Infants, we met a whale named Sally, who lives in the sea beside a lovely village called Sandy Shores. We asked Sally lots of questions about Sandy Shores and made predictions about what she might like to play, eat and do for fun! She was very upset the second time she came to visit us, however, because Sandy Shores had developed a terrible litter problem. Her home was getting polluted with lots of rubbish and this made her feel very sad. Luckily, Junior Infants are experts at dealing with rubbish and looking after the environment. The Lord Mayor of Sandy Shores heard that... 

STEM for Fun with the junior classes started a couple of weeks ago. Here Junior Infants, Senior Infants and 1st Class are brought to the hall each week to work with teachers and parents to engage in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths games and challenges. Check out some of our pictures below (where the adults seem to be having just as much fun as the children!)  

Hi everyone! 5th Class here, and we’re going to tell you all about how we celebrated Engineers Week 2017. Firstly, we explored the work of engineers. We had a special project to complete on the interactive board in school! We also looked at this wordle challenge completed by some of our brothers and sisters a couple of years ago. We’ve started #engweek17! We built a word wall, looked at the work of engineers and we prepared for our afternoon challenge! #5thClass pic.twitter.com/8kgipCJ35I — St. Peter’s Primary (@StPetersBray) March 6, 2017 For Engineers Week this year we: Completed... 

The Green Schools Committee have been hard at work in picking litter each week.  We have noticed a distinctive decrease in the amount of litter which has been collected.  We have been allowing enthusiastic non-members to join our litter picks in preparation for the National Spring Clean which will be happening in Early April. Litter beware!!! Our worst blackspot 🙁 Taking our litter picking to the next level 🙂 We are very excited to be welcoming a visitor to the school later this month.  We will be learning all about composting and how we can use this as a way of decreasing the amount... 

Senior Infants have had a busy month. We continued our work on Money – working first on the bank and then onto the post office. We’ve been writing constantly thanks to our post office and we expect that December is going to be very busy too! This is our attendance tree. We’re working to get apples to earn rewards. It’s really important that we are in school every day! Sadhbh was in with us for a week on work experience. She was a fantastic addition to our classroom! Literacy stations Here are some of our videos of our literacy stations. We have different stations every day... 

In week 8, we finished off our work on our Homes unit and in week 9, we moved onto our unit about Money. This has been a very exciting fortnight as we got great news about an investment in our school by Salesforce. You can read all about it here. We’ve had lots of fun in the Aistear stations this fortnight with puppets, socio-dramatic, small world, sand, PlayDoh and our very popular construction station. First, we plan, then we play, then we review. We problem-solve a lot before we play about how we’ll ask to use something that someone else has. Here are some things that we say: Can... 

In Senior Infants, we had a really exciting week. On Tuesday, we visited SuperValu to see the bakery. You can see all of our photos from our lovely trip here. This week, we continued our work on homes and construction. Our Aistear socio-dramatic corner became an estate agency. We learned about renting and landlords. We learned words like apartment, bungalow and detached. Look at all the beautiful homes we had for sale! In our PlayDoh stations, there was lots of creative work this week. Our teacher noticed that we liked working in groups a lot. Can you spot the snails, the pepperoni pizza,... 

In Junior Infants, we have been getting used to the idea of doing an hour of play each morning for Aistear. Our first theme was ‘Space’ as last week was space week. In this collage, Garylee and Fia did wonderful teamwork in which Garylee made a spaceship and Fia made an alien. Oisin and Reece were also enjoying their playtime in the malleable area and both boys created wonderful aliens. In the role play area, some of the boys and girls look very scary indeed! Below, in the construction area, Leon and Kaiden were working together to construct spaceships and rockets. They did a super...