We celebrated World Book Day on Thursday, March 3rd.
A lot of fun activities took place in the classroom to mark the special occasion. Some classes designed their own book covers and bookmarks while others completed book reviews.
A ‘Mystery Book’ competition was held in both buildings. Children had to guess the title and the author of the book from the excerpt read aloud by our wonderful volunteers, Jamie and Nathan!
A parade of our wonderful World Book Day costumes took place in both buildings.
We held our very first St. Laurence’s N.S. Spelling Bee competition on World Book Day. We held 2 finals – one in the junior building and one in the senior building. Both finals were very exciting and very tense for those involved and for the audience too!
Well done to Matthew, Alessio, Brody, Sara and Annabelle from 1st and 2nd class. They did an amazing job of spelling some very tricky words. Congratulations to Sara who achieved 2nd place and congratulations to Anabelle who was crowned the overall winner of the Spelling Bee Final in the Junior building.
Well done to Craig, Emma, Zack, Tomas, Dylan, Jonathan, Ava, Stephen and Patricija from 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th class. They did a wonderful job in spelling some very difficult words. Congratulations to Craig who achieved 2nd place and congratulations to Patricija who was crowned the overall winner of the Spelling Bee Final in the Senior building.
Keep learning your spellings everyone – the Spelling Bee will return next year!!!

Safer Internet Day (SID) is an EU wide initiative to promote a safer internet for all users, especially young people. Safer Internet Day 2022 took place on Tuesday, February 8th. On this day we discussed ways your child can be safe online. We ask that you reinforce this message with your child at home regularly too. 

Webwise.ie is the Irish Internet Safety Awareness Centre which is co-funded by the Department of Education and Skills and is co-financed by the European Union’s Connecting Europe Facility. Here you will find information, advice and free educational resources addressing a range of internet safety issues and concerns including the latest online safety advice in relation to different apps and softwares. https://www.webwise.ie/parents/

Webwise in partnership with the National Parents Council Primary hosted the #TalkListenLearn Safer Internet Day 2022 event on supporting children and parents/guardians online. The #TalkListenLearn campaign encourages parents to have open and regular conversations with their child about the internet. 

In school we held a Safer Internet Day Competition where all classes were asked to create a Safer Internet Day poster or art competition. The entries were brilliant, and the winners were very well deserved. 

Thursday the 4th of November was 'International day against violence and bullying in the school, including cyber-bullying'. To mark the day, all classes engaged in lessons about kindness, bullying and cyber-bullying.
Some classes took part in an anti-bullying poster competition. The winning entries have been displayed all around both school buildings. A huge well done to all who entered. The standard was exceptionally high and it was a very difficult competition to judge. 
1st to 6th classes also took part in a bullying survey which highlighted our pupils' thoughts about bullying and aspects of bullying which can be examined in the future through class discussion and lessons. 
A big thank you to all teachers and pupils for all your hard work on such an important topic.

Ms O’Callaghan’s third class took part in the STEPS Young Engineer Award over the last number of weeks. This award encourages children to explore the world of engineering by developing an engineering project that would help improve their local community. The children had to, first, identify areas in the community that they felt could be improved through engineering. They then began to design individual projects and pitched their ideas to their groups. As a group, they decided on the project they felt that would work best, make a difference in the community and that they could construct. The children then had to sit down and discuss the logistics of their projects in relation to design and materials needed. Throughout the project, the children had to really think like engineers and work as a team. Here are the six projects they designed.


1. Little Red – created by Sophie, Tyler, Lucas, Senan and Freya
​A robot that will help clear the rubbish in Baldoyle. One arm will catch the litter and the other arm is designed to collect aluminium cans. The robot is moved through a remote- control car.

2. The Cuby – created by John, Stacy, Leah, Aras and Eliza
A robot that will help people cross the road safely as this group felt the roads in Baldoyle are very busy. This robot is controlled by a remote-control car, is painted yellow to make it bright like a high-vis and has a warning beacon on its head.

3. The Bridge 3000 – created by Charlie G, Rebecca, Andrea, Mikey and Nessa
The Bridge 3000 was designed to be a pedestrian bridge for outside Lidl. This group felt the traffic outside Lidl was always very heavy and that a pedestrian bridge would make it easier to cross the road safely.

4. The Water Filter – created by Jack, Joshua, Ethan and Eliasz
This group designed a water filter to clean the sea and stream in Baldoyle as they felt it was very dirty and constantly full with rubbish.

5. The Litter Pick-Up 2000 – created by Nathan, Emma, Alex, Kitty and Finn
This group designed a prototype to pick up rubbish as they felt rubbish is an issue in Baldoyle. They added magnetic strips to enable it to pick up aluminium cans.

6. The Planter 2000 - created by Oscar, Charlie E, Alex and James
This group created a prototype to allow for more planting of trees and flowers in the area. They felt that Baldoyle needed more trees and flowers to improve the environment.
 

This year we held a fun and festive Christmas Jumper Day to raise funds for Pieta House on Friday 10th of December. This fundraising activity was part of our application for the Amber Flag. The Amber Flag is awarded by Pieta House to schools that promote and foster Wellbeing within their schools. We raised a grand total of €1,915 and we would like to thank everyone that made a donation.
 

​Click on the gallery to see some pictures!

Mr. Griffin's First Class carrying out an experiment to investigate if milk contains fat.  

Predictions: 14 pupils predicted YES. 10 pupils predicted NO. 
We added food colour droplets to a plate of milk. We then dipped cotton buds with some Fairy washing up liquid into the centre of the food colouring. 

Result:
The food colouring dispersed into a fabulous display. The soap was breaking down the fat in this process, showing that there was fat in the milk. 

Check out the pictures in the gallery