St. Peter's Primary Bray Blog

It’s that time of year again folks! It’s hard to believe, but we are already ordering our Christmas annuals. Please tell someone on the Student Council if you would like to order one, they cost €3 and they’re packed with brilliant puzzles, stories, quizzes and more!

On the 8^th of November, a GAA tournament for fifth and sixth classes took place in Bray Emmets GAA Club. There were six local schools involved. Our first match was against St. Fergal’s B team and we floored them with a whopping three goals and one point! Our second match was against Bray School Project and we scraped through with a one goal lead. After another win against St. Fergal’s A team, we left the stadium delighted and victorious. It was a great tournament and we would like to thank Paddy for all his hard work. Thanks also to Ms. Whyte and Ms. Sexton for letting the boys go.

By Archie Farrell

Here  are some pictures of our cross country events from last week!

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In St Peter’s, we try to use real life examples for work on reading comprehension skills. This includes newspaper articles, websites, recipes and instruction manuals.

Last week, in 5th class, Ms Sexton gave each group of four in the class a kit with flower bulbs, soil and flowerpots. We had to follow the instructions carefully – different bulbs needed to stick out of the soil at different heights. We also had to place them in a cold, dark place for the first few weeks. After a lot of brainstorming, Ryan suggested Les’s room. We have to remember to water them every week.

Here’s an Animoto with some of the pictures of us working on our kits:

We’ve also signed up for Incredible Edibles, which will take place in the Spring. Have you planted any flowers for the Spring yet?

Congratulations to the boys and girls who were presented with their Seatbelt Sheriff certificates recently. They worked very hard to earn the certs, wearing their badges to remind family and friends how important it is to wear your seatbelt. Well done all!

If you can’t see the video, please click here!

2nd Class finished up Food Dudes last Friday. We loved taking part and being healthy! Why not check out our last podcast on it?

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First week back after midterm and after what we packed into this week, it feels like we’ve been back for weeks!

Here are the week’s headlines:

• A popular addition to this week’s blog was a look back over the first half term in numbers. Read all about it here!
• Our student council have lots of big plans on this week’s podcast!
• 2nd class podcasted about what they’ve learned in Geography recently here
• The Mini-Scientist work is starting to take shape – read our tips for researching your topic here
• Speaking of the Mini-Scientist project, 4th class blogged about their preparation so far here
• Ms Kane is helping to teach 5th class at the moment. Read all about what they learned about South America this week here
• ‘Wednesday for Parents’ dealt with the issue of web safety this week
• Take a look at 2nd class’s dancing skills in their Animoto video here
• The ‘Wednesday for Parents‘ post over the midterm was about Halloween online!
• Ms Hyland’s class were cooking – check out photos here
• International Tongue Twister Day was on Thursday. We used Twitter to share our lesson, we got great suggestions for tongue twisters from Alex and Caoilynn’s mam and we swapped tongue twisters with St Patrick’s NS in Glencullen! We also made a podcast of tongue twisters here!

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This week, Ms Kane has been visiting 5th class. The theme we’re following  in 5th class in November is ‘South America’.

Oisín interviewed the rest of the class about what they’ve learned so far this week.

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• We talked about the statues on Easter Island and watched this video about how the statues might have been moved on the island.
• We used what we know about forces to draw our own conclusions about the Easter Island statues.
• We learned about cities in South America and we summarised the information.
• We learned about the Incas and the Aztecs and all about the tribes.
• We listened to Irish music and South American music and we compared the two. Here’s Davy’s work on responding to the music:

• We learned all about Pope Francis, who comes from South America, and why he chose his name.
• We also created artwork using paint, using South America as an inspiration.
• In Drama we created freeze frames about trekking in the Amazon jungle.
• For International Tongue Twister day, we made up our own tongue twisters with a South American theme, you can listen to them on the podcast.
• We interacted with other schools and with parents on Twitter and shared our tongue twisters:

Ms Kane will be with us for another 4 weeks, so we will be sharing more of what we’ve learned about South America next week! Where would you like to visit in South America?

We had a brilliant day today trying out different funny thing for Tongue Twister Day! Have a listen to hear our Tongue Twisters!

– Ryan, Caoilynn, Kayden, Kelsey, Dean T

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This week, our ‘Wednesday for Parents’ post deals with an issue that worries many parents out there – Internet safety. Sometimes talking about technology with children can be like trying to speak a language that the adult is only learning and that the kids are already fluent in! It can be difficult to talk about keeping themselves safe online, when they seem to be the experts.

The resources we’ve picked out this week will help you to open the discussion about what your child knows about keeping him/herself safe online!

First, a website! Webwise is a fantastic resource. There’s an excellent parents section – with plenty of advice on how to keep your family safe online. This parental guide is particularly useful if you have any specific questions about web safety. Also good for answering any questions you might have about social networking, such as Snapchat and Ask.fm. Also useful for handy tips, such as how to toddlerproof your tablet and how to prevent in-app purchases .

Also worth a mention is Scoilnet.ie. They have a list of resources related to web safety – some for children, some for parents, some for teachers.

Finally, we really recommend NetSmartzKids. It has a variety of videos, with great graphics, that are up-to-date and relate to real problems and issues that kids face online. We’ve picked out a few videos to show you how they can be used, but you can check them all out here.

This one can be used with younger children to discuss telling someone if they see something online that upsets them or makes them uncomfortable:

This one can be used to discuss what your child or teenager puts on their social networking profile and how it could impact them in the future:

We’ll focus on these videos in more depth over the next few weeks in posts aimed at students as well as parents, but we really think that they’re worth taking a look at. We’d love to hear any other suggestions you have regarding online safety. Let us know in the comments!