Huge congratulations to Malcom, Jack and Ronan who received their first Holy Communion last Saturday in St. Fachtna’s Church, Rosscarbery. Well done boys, we are all very proud of you!

The links below might be of interest to parents as we prepare to return to school:

The following link is to a video message for parents ahead of the start of the new school year:

https://nascireland.org/covid-19-world-service?fbclid=IwAR23AAxhOijmYBYAHzkqUOvYYL6OeITRO06FgDwXpcxtnyalY_cxlH0phgU

The link below is to resources created by the Department of Education for parents and students alike:

https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/a04fc-advice-for-students-and-their-families/

The Department together with NEPS has developed short video clips to communicate with students and parents about the return to school with key universal messages.

Primary Students (3^rd to 6^th): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVlb0jAm55Y

Primary Students (JI to 2^nd): https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=92MLB_0nq8Q&feature=emb_logo

Parent Advice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=03RXGM1hMMI&feature=emb_logo

The calendar for the coming school year has been updated and can be found by clicking on the tab above.

The booklists for next year can be found by clicking here or you will also find them on the tab above.

We took delivery of gorgeous new furniture last week. Our pupils will be coming back to school to brand new single desks and chairs.

Our willow den is coming on beautifully! These pictures were taken only last week (in better weather than we are having so far today!)

From this last December…

To this…

Something strange is going on… Any guesses?! All will be revealed very soon. Watch this space!

At this time of year, we would be focusing on the topics of water and farm safety in our SPHE, Geography, Science and PE programmes in all classes. I’m sharing these links with you and I hope you get a chance to go through this vital content with your child.

The water safety activities can be found at https://www.teachpaws.ie/

http://www.agrikids.ie/home.php   is the agri kids website. It has an app available for android and apple devices and is also running webinars for children on the topic of farm safety which you can access through facebook – I can’t seem to send a link.

Eoin in Senior Infants has been very busy doing some science activities and investigations at home. Maith thú!

Zillah asked me to share this information with you to let you all know how you can stay engaged with this excellent service.

Online Library Services for Schools

Joaquin has been working on counting skills at home. This is great work, well done!

Green Schools Ireland have put together some great resources for pupils during the school closure. Have a look below for some ideas on staying busy!

https://greenschoolsireland.org/green-schools-stay-home-travel-week-5-walk-to-school-week/

https://greenschoolsireland.org/projects/

We were delighted to get these images of some research Aobh has been doing to keep busy during the closure – well done! She more than earned the treat of her chocolate mug cake, the recipe for which she has kindly shared. I look forward to trying this, it looks great.

Go raibh maith agat, Aobh!

Download the recipe for Aobh’s cake by clicking chocolate mug cake

One of our wonderful 1st class pupils wrote this excellent short story recently. Maith thú, Liam!

The Abandoned Shack

Once upon a time, there was a kid called Tim. He was ten years old and he had a big brother called Peter. One day Peter and Tim went for a walk in the woods. They got lost but when they looked up over  the brown, cold hills they saw a little shack. It was all broken and covered with moss after thirty eight minutes they got to the shack, they looked at it again. Then it started to rain. The only house in the woods was the shack. They ran into the shack.

It was all dark and there were no lights. Luckily Peter brought his phone and turned his light source on.  Suddenly a piano magically made music. There was a door but there was no way in. Peter turned around and he looked everywhere to open the door. After a while he tripped,suddenly a painting appeared. Tim and Peter ignored it but the painting watched them with his eyes. It wasn’t any old painting, it was a spirit of the person who owned the shack. A magic voice came and said you cannot open the door  unless you find the magic key and until you find the key you won’t be able to enter the next room. After that Tim and Peter searched everywhere for the key. After an hour they got very tired. They tried to have a sleep but they just couldn’t after another hour they found the key behind a statue in the hallway.

The key disappeared then reappeared at the door and opened it. The key disappeared again and Tim and Peter ran through the unlocked door.They saw a stick floating in the air,

Tim said to Peter “ Do you think this is the treasure or what?” Tim touched the stick and it magically brought them home.

The End

To view our new Admission policy, please click on the link below

Admission policy April 2020

Any comments, queries or questions should be directed to the Principal who can be contacted by emailing rnsns19@gmail.com

Teachers from www.ficheall.ie have been in touch to share these great ideas:

1. The Ficheall Challenge – challenge the students in your school to teach someone new in their household. It could be a brother or sister, mother or father. To help with this, one of the talented and tech savvy teachers in the Ficheall network has created videos demonstrating the mini-games approach to teaching chess which the Ficheall website details and which are explained at the chess summer courses. These are available on the Ficheall_ie Twitter account here (you don’t need a Twitter account to view) and also on the Ficheall.ie YouTube channel here.
2. Moves for Life is running an art competition – design your own chess set from junk materials in the house. All you have to do is make the set, and send a photo of it into mfl@movesforlife.ie. See www.movesforlife.ie for more details. All sets will be displayed on their facebook page so just photograph the set if you don’t want your child’s photo online.
3. Chessossity (chess lessons, puzzles) is free for the next two months and they’re running a puzzle-solving championship until May 31st. It starts next Monday 30th March. For more information see this link  http://movesforlife.ie/uncategorized/online-chess-for-kids-spring-2020-program/  and then go to www.chessossity.com to register.
4. Chessbud Ireland YouTube Channel – International Master Mark Quinn is planning to upload a new video each week for Irish primary school students who already know the basics of chess and are keen to learn new tactics and strategies. He has created three playlists for students to choose from: Beginner’s Mind (for students who understand the pieces and checkmate), Challengers and Masters. . Where possible Mark will feature the tactics of Irish chess players. He is planning to upload weekly lessons for free during school closures.
5. ChessKid.com are offering free gold membership for the next two months. Lessons, puzzles and online games. Use this link to get free gold membership –  https://www.chesskid.com/promo/brainblox.

Suggested activities for children of all ages from Junior Infants – 6th class:

– Joe Wicks has a huge range of child-friendly workouts on his YouTube channel. He has new ones every morning this week at 9am which last for 30 minutes. You can find these and shorter workouts here   https://www.youtube.com/user/thebodycoach1

– There are loads of interesting lego challenges and ideas here  https://www.freehomeschooldeals.com/category/lego/

– RTE will broadcast 1 hour school lessons from 11am – 12pm each day on RTE2 from next Monday

-The author David Walliams (who is really popular with children!) is doing audio readings from his series The World’s Worst Children every day at 11am. You can find more details at https://www.worldofdavidwalliams.com/

– You will find more free audible stories for children at https://stories.audible.com/start-listen

– A teacher in Co. Clare has created this fantastic resource https://padlet.com/parteensolosinging/zfdq5n59llog which has plenty of ideas for children of all ages from Junior Infants – 6th class

– 25 non-screen activity suggestions https://medium.com/pobble/simple-and-fun-non-screen-activities-that-children-can-do-at-home-115543cb3b9c

– There are some lovely Irish stories being read aloud here, you will recognise some of them no doubt! https://soundcloud.com/search?q=walker+eireann&fbclid=IwAR0hsRoTHasAwd62Won1nT5Nlcb7JoBLZyTbOEHGk_qi5k9xVwgC7rK0dPk 

Hope these are of some help!

If you need any more ideas or support or if any pupil would like to send us a video or photo of their work or just want to say hi, please be aware that we are monitoring the school email constantly during this closure. The address is rnsns19@gmail.com.

Stay safe everyone, we miss you all and can’t wait to go back to school as soon as it is safe!

Eimear, Mary, Anne, Claire, Carmel and Geraldine

We hope you are all keeping safe and well in these uncertain times. We will be keeping in touch with you via email and have plenty of suggestions if you need any inspiration for keeping your children busy, just let us know and we will forward those ideas to you.

Wishing you all good health and feel free to stay in touch with us,

Eimear and staff

Swimming lessons will commence for 1st – 6th classes on Friday March 20th next. All relevant information is contained in the letter below.

Swimming Feb 2020

The pupils of the Senior Room had a visit from author Olive Mooney yesterday. It was very informative and enjoyable!

We will close at 1:55pm this Wednesday February 19th to facilitate parent-teacher meetings. If you are unsure of the time of your appointment please get in touch.

School will be closed on Thursday 20th and Friday 21st of this week for our mid-term break. We hope you all enjoy the well earned break!

We count ourselves very fortunate to have the wonderful Reenascreena Communty Playgroup based onsite. They are having their open day at the end of the month for any prospective new pupils and their parents. All are welcome!

Luke proudly showed off a medal he earned recently while playing football and hurling. Maith thú, Luke! We are all very proud of you!

We will hold our annual meetings on Wednesday February 19th next. Classes will finish for everyone at 13:55 on that day.

We look forward to meeting with you to discuss your child’s progress.

The Department of Education has sanctioned 2 half day closures for all primary schools in order to engage with webinars to support the implementation of the Primary Language Curriculum in the the senior classes. We are to close for a half day in term 2 and again in term 3.

We will take our first half day on Friday March 13th next, finishing at 12pm on that day and will advise of the second closure after the Easter break.

At our meeting last night, the Board of Management ratified our Stay Safe and RSE policy and reviewed our Child Safeguarding Statement and Swimming policy. These documents can be found by clicking on https://reenascreena.scoilnet.ie/blog/essential-information/ or you will also find them under the ‘Policies’ tab at the top of this page.

We were visited recently by a cousin of one of our pupils who was on a family holiday from Italy. We really enjoyed meeting him!

We look forward to welcoming our incoming Junior Infants for their enrolment day on Friday week, January 31st from 12:30 – 13:30. They will meet their new teacher and some of their future classmates while having a good look around their new classroom! Once they are settled, the Mums and Dads will enjoy a cuppa and chat with Eimear in the staffroom where they can ask any questions they have about school life.

We are really looking forward to seeing everyone!

Please click on the link below to access the letter that will be sent home with children on Tuesday regarding upcoming Parent-Teacher meetings.

PTMs Jan 14th