Newsletter June 2023
SUMMER NEWSLETTER 2023
Welcome to the final newsletter of the year – and what a fabulous year it has been!
All classes have worked very hard and have had many wonderful experiences in school – you will read a snapshot below of these.
We are delighted to announce that we will be involved with Music Generation from September – Gregory Ward will come to the school each week and do music with each class. It will be new and exciting – the girls have had a couple of sessions with Gregory already and have really enjoyed them.
We have also been accepted into the “Say Yes to Languages” programme for Term 2 next year – this means that all girls from Third – Sixth classes will have 8 weeks of French lessons here in the school. This is fantastic for them and will give them a great introduction to the language before going to secondary school.
I want to thank our Board of Management and Parents’ Association for all their support and help this year – working together makes our school great.
Have a read below of just some of the wonderful activities this term. Don’t forget to keep an eye on our Facebook page and website (www.mercyprimaryschool.ie) to see lots of fabulous photos.
We will have an exciting announcement in September of a new venture for us for next year……… keep an eye out!
Junior Infants
Term 3 is coming to a conclusion and it has been very busy. We had great fun on our school tour to Tullamore. There was great excitement including the bus journey, Playtown, and the playground.
The children have become knowledgeable gardening enthusiasts and helped plant seeds. They learned about habitats and explored the Camcor Park, Birr Castle and the river nearby. The weather has been kind and we took advantage of it, we presented our dance outside, raised our green flag and celebrated May Day in the prayer garden. Our Outdoor Classroom Day was great fun, we had breakfast in school and participated in outdoor learning after.
Gregory from Music Generation captured the girls imagination with two lovely music lessons.
We learned about lifecycles and watched as caterpillars metamorphosed into beautiful butterflies, we set them free in our garden, a little reluctantly by some! I hope you and your family have a lovely, safe summer. Enjoy the well-earned rest Junior Infants.
Senior Infants
Senior Infants were busy bees this term! We had great fun out and about in the sun! In Aistear we learned about ‘The Garden Centre’. We grew sunflowers in plastic bags so we could watch root and sprout growth. We planted wild flowers, pea and sweet pea. We explored our environment during trips to the park, playground and the castle. We located a worm, a snail, primrose, cow parsley, dandelion, buttercup, clover, grass and daisy for our scavenger hunt. We even caught a butterfly and learned about its lifecycle! We made a giant ‘Hungry Caterpillar’ by working together and beautiful butterfly handbags!
We learned a song about the church bells and visited St. Brendan’s Church. We learned about the sacrament of Baptism and examined some photographs and drawings of the children’s own baptisms. We even had a look at teacher’s christening dress! Yes, she really was that small once!! We enjoyed the May Procession in the prayer garden. Dance with Lisa and Music Generation classes were a big hit with the girls. Our school tour to Playtown in Tullamore was a great success. To take full advantage of the heatwave, we held an ‘Outdoor Classroom Day’, which began with a breakfast morning! It was yummy!!!
Rang 1 & 2
We have had such a busy final term of the year. It started with our Second Class girls making their First Holy Communion. It was a beautiful celebration, and we are so proud of the girls for all their hard work.
We have been very busy this term learning to use our school iPads to research information for our habitat shoeboxes. We worked in groups to gather information, sketch diagrams, find facts and put together our reports. We even made “habitat shoeboxes” to show off everything we have learned.
This term has been so busy with Sports Day, trips to the playground and our Dance Show with Lisa, and athletic challenges. We have had an amazing year and are so looking forward to our summer holidays. We hope everyone has a relaxing, fun, safe break before we start it all again in September.
Rang 3
Third class have had a great last term! We have learned so much, had so much fun and we are feeling really ready for our Summer holidays.
Lisa came in and did dance with us again this year. We got to pick our own music and really rocked it the day of the school performance. I think it’s fair to say that we have some serious movers and shakers here in Mercy Primary School.
We also celebrated our 6th Green Flag (Global Citizenship – Litter and Waste) this term. This has been a fantastic school effort and we are so proud to fly the flag. We want to thank Ms. de Chaumont for leading us throughout the process. All the meetings and hard work finally paid off.
Fota Wildlife here we come!! We found out we are going on our school tour to this fabulous park in Cork at the end of June and boy are we excited. We actually did projects on all the different animals in Fota so we’ll be experts on the day!
We learned all about Vikings in History, climate change and weather in Geography, we designed butterflies and cows in art, took on the role of famous movie characters in drama and got to sample some exciting Music Generation classes with Gregory.
Rang 3 have been such a hardworking and fun class. They have listened, learned and had LOADS OF CRAIC. The year is almost done and Ms. Treacy is ready for her holidays too!! I hope everyone in our fabulous school community has a happy and healthy summer.
4th Class:
Fourth Class had a fantastic, fun-filled final term. We learned so much together and here is just a short synopsis of our activities.
Our English novels are completed and the girls are looking forward to watching the movie version of ‘The Sheep-Pig’ to compare and contrast the two. The girls enjoyed their visits to the library and have discovered lots of new authors. And there was great excitement recently when the girls received their pen licence. Our Daily 10 in Maths was a big hit and our Gaeilge is improving every day through stories, poems, conversation and free-writing.
Various projects were carried out in SESE on Ireland and The Celts. The girls also enjoyed an archaeological workshop and unearthed some interesting artefacts and gems!
A beautiful and solemn May Procession was held in the Garden of Tranquility where the children danced, prayed and presented pictures to Our Lady.
‘Hit the Road Jack’ was the theme of our Dance with Lisa and the children displayed fantastic moves and great talent each week. The girls also enjoyed Music Generation lessons with Gregory and learned lots of fun songs and games.
An action-packed Sports Day was held in the Boys’ School where the girls showed great determination and teamwork.
An amazing day was had in sunny Athlone recently for our school tour where we sailed down the river Shannon, explored Athlone Castle and went to an adventure playground.
Make sure to look at all our videos and posts on Seesaw and the school website. Thank you for a very enjoyable year. Have a wonderful summer!
5th Class:
As the the Highschool Musical song goes “What timeeee is it? Summer Time, it’s our vacation, what timeee is it? Summer Time…. Schools OUT, Scream and Shout! Wuooooo!
Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end- and so ends our time in 5th class. We have had a BALL! There is a never-ending list of all the fun, laughter, adventures and memories we have made together this year, not to mention all the hard work, dedication and learning done in our classroom. The following are some highlights for us this year.
- Future Labs Workshop with Caroline where we presented our work to parents and again at assembly for the whole school – we are very proud of ourselves!
- We are a very sporty class and we loved – swimming, tennis with Dermot, rugby with Dennis and dance with Lisa which we always love.
- Incredible Edibles- what an experience! The day we prepared and cooked our very own soup, salad and homemade chips from our potatoes was one we WILL always remember!
- Games Stations Creation- we created our very own games for other classes to trial – it was so much fun! We are SO ready for junior buddies next year!
The most important thing we learned this year is to have confidence in ourselves and to be grateful for having such a fun and happy school! Go Mercy P!
Have a super Summer everyone – lots of love 5th Class Queens and Miss Murphy xoxo,
6th Class is coming to an end and what a year it has been. This term, like all the others was packed full of joy, learning, adventures, laughing, excitement and ice-cream!!
We have had loads of fun in school this term. We put all our work from Maths to the test, to work with a budget and find the best value for ice-creams in Birr. Once we figured it out we went and bought the ice-creams to cool us down one Friday evening! In SESE we learned all about the history of the Native Americans and also explored lots of Tourist destinations in Ireland. In Gaeilge we became actors and directors, creating our very own weather forecast videos. We also used our technological skills to create our own podcasts all about our hobbies!
This term Lisa returned with her brilliant dance lessons. We had a ball learning new moves, creating our own routines and dancing in the sunshine. All our hard work and practice paid off when we performed for our school and families. We also went to a really interesting STEAM workshop in Birr Library. We experimented with designs for building paper planes, watched first-hand how 3D printers are used to make creations and explored all corners of the world with virtual reality headsets – these were sooooo cool!
In preparation of our Confirmation we went to the Marian Hall for our retreat in April. Fr. Anthony, Fr. Tom, Joan and Vonnie led us in a great day of fun and mindfulness. We even had pizza and chips for our dinner!! We made our Confirmation on the 20th of May. We sang and played tin whistle and what an amazing day it was. The Holy Spirit was alive and well in Mercy for our Confirmation and we hope to bring all the gifts and fruits with us in our lives as we get ready for our next chapter in secondary school!
We had a blast taking part in our annual Sports Day. All of the girls in 6th class led by example and made the most of the day. They were so helpful with the younger kids in the school and they played a big part in what made it such a fantastic day. This year we had a special competition where 6th class competed against the teachers. We had so much fun taking part in ball races and winning the penalty shoot-out against the teachers!! To top off a great day we even got ice-creams!!
Our final school tour in Mercy P was fantastic. We had the best day at the OEC. We went out to Cadamstown and went gorge walking. We climbed, splashed, slid and jumped our way through the river! Afterwards we returned to the OEC for an afternoon of field games, archery and finished off with some rock climbing!!
There are mixed emotions leaving school this year, we are happy and excited but also a little sad. We have had an amazing 8 years here. We have laughed, cried, sang, danced, lost footballs, made mistakes, learned, and most of all we have been happy!!
Thank you to all the staff at Mercy Primary, our parents, our classmates and our friends for all the gorgeous memories we have made over the years. We wish you all an amazing summer!!
Ms Teehan’s Class:
This term in Ms. Teehan’s class has been an extremely busy, active and fun one. We had dance with Lisa which we all loved, there was some great boogieing going on.
We welcomed some teeny tiny caterpillars to our classroom. We watched them daily as they grew bigger and bigger. We observed the caterpillars form their chrysalis, and we waited patiently for our butterflies to emerge.
Four fabulous butterflies emerged and we named them, Blaze, Ella, Sasha and Willow. When they were strong enough we released them in our beautiful garden.
We learned all about the life cycle of a butterfly also and made some colourful displays.
We celebrated Confidence Day by learning about what the word confidence meant and creating some art work with our confident ‘I am_____” phrases.
We have also been to Birr Castle, the playground, the park, the shop and……. Supermacs!!!
We have also been cycling, typing, painting, reading, writing, building, blowing bubbles and loads more.
We’ve learned lots and made some new friends. We hope everyone has a super summer. Can’t wait to see you all in September.
GREEN FLAG NEWSLETTER
We held a lovely ceremony recently in the school to raise our 6th green flag –
Global Citizenship – Litter and Waste. A big thanks to Mrs. Murray and Ms. De Chaumont for leading the Green Schools Programme and well done to our committee members, our caretaker, secretaries, SNAs, staff, pupils and families who are all part of our Green Schools Team.
We have come to the end of another fabulous year in Mercy Primary – a full and vibrant year in which we have learned lots and have grown greatly.
I want to wish our wonderful Sixth Class the very best of luck in their future – they have been a fantastic bunch of young ladies.
Thanks to our very hard-working staff for all that you do.
Enjoy the Summer
Barbara Hanamy
School closes for summer holidays on Wednesday 28th June at 12.15pm