St. Peter's Primary Bray Blog

We were all very sad to hear about the passing of Seamus Heaney, one of Ireland’s most favourite and loved poets.

We wanted to remember his great work, and so 5th and 6th Class have recorded some of his poems.

Click on the piece below to hear Leon and Sam from 5th Class as they read ‘Digging’, one of Heaney’s most well-loved poems. We will hear from 6th Class tomorrow and look forward to hearing what they have read.

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We’re very lucky in St. Peter’s because we have pupils from many different countries all over the world, who speak many different languages.

As a result, it’s only fitting that our blog can be read in the many different languages spoken by children in our school.

We have added a ‘Translate Our Blog’ option to the right-hand-side of our blog, and we encourage you to see what our blog looks like in another language!

We hope this means our blog can be appreciated and shared with families of our school who are scattered all over the globe!

Our new 2nd Class

I just want to say a huge thank you to the students, staff and parents for what will go down as a great day in the history of our school.

Our new 2nd Class girls celebrating on the first day!

2nd Class were welcomed to the school in style, with everyone out cheering them on as they walked through the doors of St. Peter’s for the first time. The decorative theme for the 2nd Class corridor is Despicable Me and so we had a few surprises for the boys and girls – including a fabulous minion shaped cake baked and iced by Ms. Sexton! It was wonderful to see so many parents, from all classes, pop in for cake and a coffee and it made the day all the more welcoming for the new parents to our school. We look forward to getting to know you all and if you ever need anything, the door is always open for a chat.

Celebrating, St. Peter’s style!

The atmosphere was electric today and it was the perfect start to what promises to be a great year.

All the best for 2013/2014!

Emer Whyte.

Ms. Sexton’s cake and coffee ready for the parents!

Our magnificent Minion cake!

Everyone wanted a bite!

Enjoying the fun on our first day!

Ms. Whyte made a welcome pack for every child in the school!

Hi everyone! Ms. Whyte here. Can’t wait to see all of the lovely smiling faces tomorrow, as we start a new school year with our very first girls.

To mark this momentous occasion, we would like to invite all parents in for a coffee at 2.15pm on Wednesday 28th August in the library. Here’s to a great year ahead!

See you all tomorrow!

The bags are packed, the pencils are sharpened, the lunchboxes have been dug out from the back of the press – and that’s just the teachers!

It can only mean one thing – it’s nearly time to head back to school!

This promises to be one of the most exciting years in the history of St. Peter’s. We can’t wait to welcome all of our new students – boys and girls – and to welcome back old faces. We’re looking forward to hearing all your news from the Summer! September promises to be a busy month – apart from celebrating our new adventure, we’re planning a big event to showcase our wonderful school and we’re preparing to enroll our first junior classes, as well as welcoming girls at all class levels, for September 2014. Did we mention it’s going to be an exciting year??

Take a look around and preview a few snippets for what we have planned for the year. For parents and families, we recommend that you keep an eye on the blog during the year as we will be updating it very regularly. We, in St. Peter’s, have always used the monthly reports and events during the year to keep the parents involved in and informed about your child’s learning. The blog is another really useful tool to achieve this.

Looking forward to seeing you all on Wednesday morning at 8.50!

What are you looking forward to in the coming year?

P.S. Speaking of movies, Film Club – check out the lovely comments from a school in Greystones on the post about Mr Curran’s film!

We have so many amazing things to look forward to in the year to come. From Roald Dahl Day to Maths Week, the Primary Science Fair to Science Week – the year is packed full of amazing and interesting events and celebrations for you to explore, learn and discover! We’re also going to have the Winter Olympics and the World Cup to look forward to! Why not check just some of the many events we’ll be celebrating and learning about in St. Peter’s this year. Ms. Brennan made the list below for the Seomra Ranga website and the original post can be found here!

September
1. Grandparent’s Day (US), Sunday 8th September – http://grandparentsday.org/
2. Roald Dahl Day, Friday 13th September – http://www.roalddahlday.info/
3. International Day of Peace, Saturday 21st September – http://www.internationaldayofpeace.org/
4. European Day of Languages, Thursday 26th September – http://edl.ecml.at

October
5. Children’s Book Festival (Ireland), month of October – http://www.childrensbooksireland.ie/childrens-book-festival/
6. World Animal Day, Friday 4th October – http://www.worldanimalday.org.uk/
7. Referendum (32nd and 33rd Amendment), Friday 4th October – http://www.refcom.ie/en/
8. World Teachers’ Day, Saturday 5th October – http://www.worldteachersday.org/map/
9. World Space Week, 4th – 10th October – http://www.worldspaceweek.org/wsw/index.php
10.  Maths Week, 12th – 20th October – http://www.mathsweek.ie/
11.  World Food Day, Thursday 16th October – http://www.worldfooddayusa.org/

November
12.  International Tongue Twister Day, Thursday 7th November.
13.  Science Week, 10th – 17th November – http://www.scienceweek.ie/

December
14.  Birthday of Walt Disney, 5th December.
(more…)

Hi everyone! Time is really flying by and before we know it we’ll be back together again and welcoming the new boys and girls of 2nd Class to St. Peter’s. I can’t wait!

We’ve had an exciting time over the break and we’ve been planning new projects for the blog for the year ahead. We’ve also had the opportunity to get to know other schools that are blogging! Some eagle-eyed people might have noticed that I added a ‘blogs we love’ list on the right hand side of the homepage and we encourage you to explore some of the outstanding work on other school blogs. We hope to add to this list in September when we’ll be asking you to suggest other blogs to add to this roll. We hope to connect with even more schools and we’ve already gotten off to a great start thanks to St. Brigid’s in Greystones who featured our blog on their blog! Read what they wrote about here.

In the meanwhile, we’ve also added our blog to the Seas Suas site. This is a list of some of the many schools and classes who are blogging in Ireland and we’re now on it! Check out some of the sites and let us know what you think. Which one do you like?

Hi everyone, we hope you’re enjoying the summer break! It’s so hard to believe that we have reached the halfway mark in our holidays, time is flying.

Since today is a rainy day it’s a perfect one to stay in and watch some interesting videos online.  One of our favourite websites in school is TED.com. It’s a really great site where you can watch very interesting talks. The basis for each talk is that it has to be ‘an idea worth spreading’ and TED stands for Technology, Education and Design.

One of Ms. Brennan’s favourite talks is from child prodigy Adora Svitak. Adora says the world needs “childish” thinking: bold ideas, wild creativity and especially optimism. Kids’ big dreams deserve high expectations, she says, starting with grownups’ willingness to learn from children as much as to teach.

What do you think? We think she’s onto something! One of the reasons we love to blog here is that we (as teachers) feel we can learn from all of you. Adora makes some great points about the views and power of children as you are all the voice of the future. Watch her video, maybe she’ll convince you to run for Student Council next year! Talk to you soon!

Heading into the Summer holidays, we’re all looking for something new to read and we’d love to see all our boys (and girls!) get stuck into a good book over the Summer! There are some fantastic bookshops in Bray, like Dubray or Bookstation, and online shops like amazon.co.uk and bookdepository.co.uk also have some great deals on books. Also, the local library has many of the books listed below on their shelves and the library staff would be happy to help you to choose something that would suit you!

Kim Harte from http://www.kimharte.org/ recommended some fantastic books, if anyone is looking for some tips! Kim loves children’s literature and often appears on Ireland AM to make suggestions for books for children and young adults. Also, from checking out her list below, we can confirm that she has EXCELLENT taste in books! (more…)

On behalf of everyone in St. Peter’s, we would like to say a huge thank you for all the kindness and support you have shown the school over the past year. It was a great year with many highlights and I’m already looking forward to the coming year. In August, we will make history in St. Peter’s when we enrol the first group of girls in over 170 years. This, amongst other exciting plans, will make it a year to remember.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of the staff for their commitment and dedication to the school this year, and a special word of thanks and good wishes to Mr. Curran and Lily who will retire this summer. Wishing you the best of happiness for the future.

Finally, where would we be without our fabulous boys? They have worked really hard and we are so proud of them.

I hope you all have a safe and happy summer and see you at the end of August!

All the best,

Emer Whyte (Principal)

End of year cake for the boys, as made by Susan in Hollyoaks!

… not forgetting some cakes for the staff! Thanks Ms. Hyland!