Halloween Newsletter 2024
Mercy Primary School
Hallowe’en Newsletter 2024
Welcome to our Hallowe’en Newsletter 2024. Our first 2 months have been very busy with lots of fantastic activities. Our School Lotto is very successful – huge thanks to all who have supported it. We bought a brand new interactive panel for one of our classrooms with the money raised last year. This year we hope to update our iPads. Your support is vital! You can still sign up at http://www.ourfundraiser.ie/org/mercypsbirr to be in with a chance of winning one of the fantastic Halloween prizes – see our social media for details.
A huge thanks to our super staff who work so hard to create excellent learning experiences for the girls. Have a read of all the fabulous things going on in our classrooms!
Barbara Hanamy, Principal.
Junior Infants
Junior Infants have settled well into their first year in Mercy Primary School. They have been busy getting to know their new school community, new friends and new teachers. We enjoyed a teddy bear’s picnic in the Hall with Senior Infants. We have been learning new songs and rhymes, practised our cutting skills and learned how to hold our pencils correctly! We have been learning about our senses, about Autumn and hibernating hedgehogs and had a wonderful nature walk in Birr Castle where we saw and felt many signs of Autumn. The girls are keeping fit in school as they participate in the Fundamentally Moving Classroom Programme where they are learning skills to become physically literate children. In Maths, we have been learning matching, sorting and patterns. We have been practising our counting and used I-pads to reinforce the skills learned. We had fun participating in Maths Week, with lots of maths activities. Excited Junior Infants are busy making Halloween crafts and singing Halloween songs. Story time and dress up are a lovely way to unwind after a busy first half term in Junior Infants. Happy Hallowe’en!!
Senior Infants
Senior Infants WITCH you a Happy Halloween!!! These girls came back to school with a BANG! They are a super enthusiastic bunch and have enjoyed learning through thematic play this term. We explored a variety of themes such as Myself, School, Autumn and Halloween to name a few. We received an invitation from Buttons and enjoyed the Teddy Bears Picnic he prepared for us and our favourite teddies! We took a field trip to Birr Castle and the Camcor Park to look for signs of Autumn. We carried out a maths trail in the park for Maths Week and used our maths eyes to spot maths all around us! We enjoyed plenty of maths games in the halla and in our classroom! Drama lessons were great fun and the girls enjoyed role-plays based on the stories ‘Ouch’ and ‘Room on the Broom’. Making Winnie the Witch wands in art was a firm favourite! We have been making a huge effort to use our cúpla focal throughout the day too! Oíche Shamhna Shona daoibh!
First and Second Class
First and Second Class have been very busy since returning to school in September! We learned all about Autumn and the girls have collected lots of signs of Autumn for our Nature Table. We also painted beautiful Autumn birch trees and made fluffy squirrels in Art. We were so excited to see the movie ‘Puffin Rock and the New Friends’ in Birr Theatre for the Offline Film Festival. We had a lovely afternoon, it was just like going to the cinema! We also celebrated Maths Week, and thanks to Fifth and Sixth Class we got to take part in loads of fun Maths activities in the Halla. It was a great day. In the past few weeks we have been learning all about Halloween, and we are also learning about festivals celebrated in other countries, like Diwali in India and the Day of the Dead in Mexico. We made spooky spiders in Art, and we learned lots of Oíche Shamhna words in Gaeilge. Second Class have also started their preparations for their First Holy Communion next year. It has been a jam-packed couple of weeks, and we are ready for a well-deserved break!
Third class
We had a great first term back reuniting with our friends, learning lots of new things and enjoying fun activities. Everyone has been working at their school work this term. The girls enjoyed literacy lift off, hands on maths lessons, games as Gaeilge and engaging in reading, writing and poetry lessons. We created some lovely pieces in art over the last few weeks and have enjoyed practising our skills during our Futsal lessons. The girls thoroughly enjoyed their Music Generation classes each week and took part in Singfest in Birr Theatre and Arts centre on Wednesday 16th October. I hope everyone has a very happy Halloween.
Fourth class
Term 1 over and out? WOW! it has been a blast up in 4th class. We have been such ‘Busy Bees’ with all our new learning and activities since returning back to school. We didn’t waste any time in getting back into the swing of things. In SESE, we spent time learning about the body and about some of our important organs, such as the heart and the lungs. We learned about the importance of healthy foods and looking after ourselves every day. In Geography, we learned about the counties in Ireland and the provinces. We spent time in History learning about our locality here in Birr. We really enjoyed playing Futsal with Gary on Fridays and Music Generation on Mondays with Gregory. It was really cool to join other schools in the Birr theatre and Arts centre for Singfest. We took part in a really fun STEM workshop in the library where we got to build rockets and launch them. We had a great laugh when the rockets flew up into the air. Ms. Miedzinska joined us for 3 weeks and we LOVED having her in our classroom. We learned lots through fun engaging lessons. We planted together, went on a History trail, and we even painted a mural in the shed of our school which is on view for everyone to see. Please check it out! Big shout out to her for all her great work. Maths day was super fun in the halla during maths week. We loved learning through play and visiting all the maths stations with help from 5th & 6th class pupils. Spooky season is upon us now with Halloween looming around the corner. We are looking forward to dressing up, playing some fun games and having a spook-tastic end of term before parting for Midterm. Enjoy a well-deserved break everyone. Lots of love, Ms. Murphy & the Busy Bees
Fifth Class
We have been very busy in Term 1. We welcomed 4 fabulous new girls into our 5th class and already they have made lots of friends in Mercy Primary. We also welcomed Ms Nolan who is with us for 5 weeks. We have worked very hard in all subjects this term. We learned lots of new facts in Maths – we visited other classes and collected lots of data and then plotted our results on graphs. The highlight of our maths work this term had to have been Maths Day in the PE hall where, along with 6th class, we helped explain lots of maths facts and play maths games with the younger classes. We also did an outdoor maths trail in groups which was great fun. Ms Nolan did really cool PE with us and our favourite was relay techniques – how to pass on and catch the baton when taking part in a relay. We learned some lovely tin whistle tunes and are getting very good at it now! We continued our Music Generation lessons with Gregory every Monday and learned how to play Futsal with our coach Gary. We learned how to paint in two very different styles – that of artists Kandinsky and Cézanne. We had great fun in the library during Science Week where we made rockets with Seanie and got to explode them!! That was a pretty noisy lesson. In Geography, we learned all about Italy and in History we got to research lots more incredible and influential women from the past. Finally, we made a start on our very important Stay Safe Programme. What a busy 2 months! We are ready for our midterm.
Sixth Class
Sixth Class have had a really busy, exciting and interesting half term. We are now in 6th Class – the leaders and role models for Mercy P. This is a responsibility we are enjoying and have already started the ball rolling with being ‘Junior Buddies’. We love spending time with the infant classes, playing games and being part of their yard time fun!
We have explored lots of topics since returning to school. In SESE we learned about Ireland – the land of Saints and Scholars, the Celts and Early Christian Ireland. We learned about the Book of Kells and designed our own Celtic letters. We also studied the counties, cities and towns of Ireland and played lots of games to help remember these. We are reading stories and poems every week and our vocabulary is improving every day, in both English and Irish. The girls created brilliant projects about themselves using the Book Creator App and enjoyed sharing them with their friends. Maths Week was celebrated this month and the girls played lots of Maths games and solved puzzles and riddles. They even attended a hands-on, interactive Mirco:Bit coding workshop with STEM Educational officer Dean Hodge in Birr Library where they enjoyed a game of Snakes and Ladders using their own digital dice!
Eileen Casey, a local poet visited, and the girls did a very interesting workshop together and composed fantastic poems based on the 1924 All-Ireland Junior Hurling Championship final, when Offaly beat Cork!
The girls visited the theatre during the Offline Film Festival and watched their movies ‘Lockdown’ and ‘Senior Yard Spies’ which they created last year when they were in 5th Class. It was amazing to see the girls on the big screen. It was such a great experience and a very proud moment for us all.
The girls are enjoying their PE lessons this year. We are learning lots of new games and skills. They also had Futsal sessions with Gary which were good fun. Well done to the girls who took part in the Cross Country event in Tullamore this month. Music classes with Gregory are ongoing this year which the girls are enjoying. Also the girls have been practising the tin whistle, learning new tunes and harmonies and some of us made our first debut singing at the ambo, for our beginning of the school year mass. Well done girls!
Halloween is always a fun time in school. Our room is decorated with lovely art work. The girls read and created some scary potions and the girls loved getting dressed up and seeing everyone’s costumes.
Check out the school website for more activities and photos.
Wishing you all a happy and safe Halloween.
Ms Teehan’s Class
What a super busy term we’ve had settling back in to school this term. We’ve been up to loads of lovely things and here are just a few. We read a book called The Colour Monster in September which helped to teach us about different emotions and what we can do when we feel those emotions. We’ve been improving balance and co-ordination during our daily exercises. We made pancakes and followed a budget and shopping list to get the ingredients. We learned about the Aurora Borealis Aka the Northern Lights which we were lucky enough to witness recently. We created some spectacular art to depict the Northern Lights in the sky. We also celebrated SNA appreciation day for our two amazing SNAs – Mrs Feehan and Mrs Hoare – who do so much for us and the whole school. We’ve had lots of learning and fun this term – Have a happy and safe Halloween.
Green Schools
Welcome back to our Green School Committee members. We hold weekly meetings and the girls are great at coming up with ideas to help improve our school and the environment. We are working on our new theme again this year – Global Citizenship: Energy.
Our sixth green flag is flying high and we are excited to start working towards our next flag – Global Citizenship Energy. We’ll be forming our new committee after midterm.
Important Events:
Team Hope Christmas Shoebox Appeal – Thank you to all families taking part. Remember to fill your box with items from the 4 W’s (write, wash, wear and wow!) Please bring your box, along with €5 to the school by Nov. 8th.
Important Dates for your Diary:
November 19th /20th – Parent/Teacher Meetings for 1st to 6th Classes
December 18th – Christmas Carol Service
We close for the mid-term break on Friday 25th October
and re-open on Monday 4th November.