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St Mary's Primary School Banbridge

December Newsletter

2nd Dec 2015
December Newsletter

St Mary’s Open Night

St Mary’s Open Night, for prospective parents of Playgroup, Nursery and Primary 1 children, will take place on Thursday 10th December 2015 from 6.30pm to 8.00pm. Our Autism Specific Class and Junior Learning Support Class will also be open on the evening. Application forms are available to download from the school and Education Authority, Southern Region websites or may be collected from the school office.

Fit To Help

Thank you to everyone for the amazing support towards our sponsored, “Fit to Help” fundraiser. £3,115.93 was raised for school funds over the past number of weeks.

Congratulations to Caitlin Grimes in Mrs Austin’s P3 class and Darragh McGrath in Mrs Morrow’s P7 class on winning the main prizes in the Fit to Help draw.

Thank you to Mr McGrane for organising the event. Well done to all the children!

School PTA

The next meeting of our PTA will take place on Tuesday 12th January from 7.30pm in the school. All are welcome to attend.

Our PTA will be holding a children’s Craft Workshop on Sunday 6th December, 3pm to 5pm. This is a craft workshop for children and is free of charge. Refreshments will be available on the day and a raffle will take place on the day for prizes including an Amazon Fire, a trip to Santa's Gate Lodge. Tickets will be on sale in school, £1 per strip.

Donations of kitchen roll/towel roll tubes, egg boxes (all sizes), Pine/Fir cones and empty plastic bottles (e.g. water, soft drinks) are requested for use by the children at the Craft workshop on Sunday 6th December. £606 was raised for the school PTA from the Kildare Village trip. Thank you for the fantastic support.

Christmas Dates

The P1 and P3 Christmas Assembly will take place on Thursday 17th December at 10.00am and at 1.00pm. Children may go home after the 1.00pm show.

The P2 Nativity Performance will take place on Thursday 17th December at 10.00am and separately at 7.00pm.

Performances will take place in St Patrick’s assembly hall. Please use the main entrance to St Patrick’s College. There will be a small charge on the door. Our thanks to St Patrick’s for helping to facilitate our Christmas performances.

Text Santa appeal

On Tuesday 15th December we are inviting pupils to take part in Text Santa Christmas Jumper Day.

Children get to wear their silliest, sparkliest or cosiest Christmas sweaters and make a donation of £1 to help Macmillan Cancer Support, Make-A-Wish® UK and Save the Children give hope to families in difficulty at Christmas.

Please do not buy a jumper to take part – just decorate an old or plain jumper with tinsel, baubles or homemade snowflakes to create unique crafty crackers. To find out more, just visit the website at itv.com/textsanta

Tune into UTV on the evening of the 18th December for the Text Santa Christmas Jumper Day show, to see how your child’s support will give hope to even more families in difficulty.

Children in Need Appeal

Our P7 children raised an amazing amount of money for Children in Need.  The grand total on the day amounted to £1,701.02.  The children carried out a number of fundraising activities to get this amazing total.

All the staff at St Mary’s would like to thank all the parents for the fantastic contribution; we would not have reached this amount without your support. 

Workshops

Thank you to all our parents who were able to attend our recent workshops. The last ParentingNi ‘Dealing with Children’s Challenging Behaviour’ workshop will take place on Thursday 10th December from 3.00pm to 5.00pm.

The next Literacy Workshop will take place on Thursday 21st January from 7.30pm. The next Maths Workshop will take place on Wednesday 27th January from 7.00pm in the school.

School Clubs

St Mary’s Astronomy Club will finish on Monday 14th December with a special visit from Professor Mark Bailey, Armagh Observatory.

 Friday Football Club, Netball Club and Table Tennis Club are now finished for the term. Fun Fit, EVO Football Club and Michael Feeney’s Gaelic Club are finished until the New Year.

Irish Dancing will finish on Tuesday 15th December. Speech and Drama will finish on Thursday 17th December

Traffic Patrol 

Please do not park in Clan na Banna car park. This is for staff parking only. Please avoid parking on the main road near our entrance and where our Traffic Patrol man operates. This is dangerous as it blocks his vision for crossing children.

Please be aware that Police and Traffic Wardens will be patrolling the Scarva Road area, in the mornings, to combat cars parking illegally or dangerously.

School Inspection

Please note the school Follow-up Inspection Report is available to download at www.eti.gov.uk.

School Certificates

Congratulations to Darragh McDowell, Caiden Trainor, Adam Maginn, Rory Comer, Ethan Winters, Jack Conlon, Darren Cousins, Thomas Cunningham, John-Michael Feeney, Molly McAteer, Niamh Norris, Ewan Hadden, Eireann Wolfe, Dylan Thompson, Lily Conlon, Orlaith Norrby, Ethan Moles, Hailie Ferguson, Jonathan McGrath, Cormac Topping, Olivia White, Ciara McGrath, Mychaela McEvoy, Rosie Copeland, Darragh Moles, Casey Smyth, Olivia McAleavey, Connor McCreedy, Cara Burns, Denisa Lacatus, Gemma Cunningham, Aoife Monaghan, Marika Jablonska on being awarded a class certificate for good work during November. Well done to all the boys and girls who have been working extremely hard this term.