In prepartion for our first Active Schools Week, which will run from June 13th to June 17th, a martial arts expert from Martial Arts Tallaght will be running a demonstration for the children in our school hall on Wednesday June 1st. Classes from Junior Infants to First Class will enjoy a twenty minute class with instructor Martin. The children are looking forward to learning some new active skills.

Dear Parents/Guardians,
 
Last year's Sports Day proved a great success. The children had a super time and that was due to wonderful parent and teacher involvement. Sports Day is on Friday 17th June 2016 and is again at St Mary’s GAA field in Saggart!
 
Here is how you can help!
 
1. We are looking for volunteers to help with sports activities
2. We need donations of equipment and plastic storage
 
1. Volunteers
Friday 17th June 08:45 to 12:30. Different sports activities will be set up by the teachers with clear instructions. You will run that one activity for the morning. Each class will visit your activity with their teacher.
 
Unfortunately, due to health and safety regulations, we cannot allow babies / toddlers to accompany volunteering parents for this part of the day.  You will join in / watch the whole school activities later in the day. Let us know you can volunteer by filling in the form below before Thursday 9th June 2016!

With so much learning going on around the school we thought we would take some time to focus on Mathematics.

Below is a review of Mathematics learning throughout the school and throughout the year.

Enjoy!!!

Junior Infants Seeing  Patterns

Senior Infants Threading Patterns

First Class Fun with Shapes

Second Class get Bee Botting around 

Third Class Weigh It All Up

The clothes collection finished this week.
​A huge thank you to all who supported it! It was a great success.

€465 was raised towards the purchase of play resources.

Keep an eye out for the next collection in September!

Parenting a child with extra needs can be rewarding, exhausting, challenging, frustrating, and heart warming. Did you know that there is support available? Click here for more information.

Congratulations to the boys and girls from second and third class who received the sacrament of First Holy Communion at St. Mary's Church, Saggart on Sunday 22nd May 2016. The children prepared for the sacraments of First Penance and First Holy Communion during their After School Faith Formation class. ​

Today, the children of 2nd and 3rd class had a very special visitor come and talk to them about story-telling and story writing... and all from the comfort of their own classrooms! 

Martin Brennan, who goes by the pseudonym 'Edward Crane', is the author of the children's book trilogy The Havishams. When Martin was a young boy in school, he was influenced by authors such as Charles Dickens, Roald Dahl and J. R. Tolkien, and began putting his own imagination onto paper when he started reading these and other authors' stories!

Martin explained to us that the more you read, the more you will be able to visualise exciting characters, plots and settings for your own stories! Not only did Martin give us some helpful hints and tips on how to write a good story (for example, he suggested that you should always write about something that is interesting to YOU) but, he also taught us about the process that goes into publishing a book! 

Thank you Martin (or should we say, Edward Crane!) for answering all of the questions we had about story writing!
 
(The Havishams books are available to buy in our school at €10 per book)

Last week our children in Junior Infants took a walk down to Saggart village to visit the Catholic Church there. This visit was a part of our ongoing project of visits to places of worship at all levels of the school.
Earlier this year, the children of First Class visited a synagogue and the children from Second Class visited a mosque.
These visits give the children an opportunity to see for themselves some of the aspects of each religion that we learn about in class.

Breda, a parish worker at St. Mary's was very helpful and accommodating. She showed the children the different parts of the church. The children also had a chance to explore the church with their teacher, and there was even time for a picnic before heading back to school.
Thanks as well to the parent volunteers who helped out on the day.

We are currently developing a Home Learning Policy for our school. Parents and pupils in 3rd class were recently surveyed to find out how they feel about homework. We had a 96% response rate in both surveys! Take a look at the findings here below.
​
A 5 week "Home Learning Enrichment Programme" begins this week in 2nd and 3rd class! It's packed with fun learning activities that the parents can participate in with their child.  We hope the children (and their parents) gain from this programme and that it generates a love for learning outside of the school environment. Happy learning! 

Three cheers for Dusty Bin, the copper collection fundraiser!

A cheer for Lisa for organising Dusty Bin to come and help us raise
almost €60 for playground resources!

A cheer for all those who gathered up their coppers and their spare change and contributed to the fundraiser!

And a cheer for 2nd class for showing off their maths skills by counting all those coins!