Donard School

Newsletter March 2018

Winner of the Wright Friendship Cup

Congratulations to Benito who is this month’s winner of the

Wright Friendship Cup. Mrs Kerr was very impressed when

you showed your friend an easy way to put on his coat!

Newsletter March 2018

Market Place Theatre

I wish to convey a huge thank you to those parents who attended the Marketplace Theatre in Armagh on

22nd March. The children put on an amazing performance. I am so proud of all that our choir achieved. We

hope to make this an annual event for our pupils.

Official Opening of School Extension

Mr D Meade, Mrs F Wylie, Mrs A Shane and Mr G Boyd played important roles in our Official Opening of the

extension made to Donard School on Monday 12th March 2018. Our special visitors made a tour of the school

and were so impressed with our children and young people. We wish to send special congratulation to Jordan

who gave his own speech on the day.

Open Day - 15th March

The school was delighted to welcome so many parents to our school on 15th March. We hope you enjoyed the

visit and got an insight into just some of the experiences and activities offered to our pupils. Thank you to

those who took time to provide feedback to school on how we could involve and support parents. Our first

meeting to plan a Summer fete will take place on Tuesday 17th April at 10.30am. Come and join us for a cup

of tea and opportunity to informally meet with other parents

Dates for your Diary

Easter Holidays will take place 29 March_ 6 April 2018 (inclusive)

School Closures 7-8 May (inclusive)

28-29th May (inclusive)

School Formal 17th May 2018

Have a lovely Easter break.

I would like to thank and congratulate our BBC School Reporters, Leona,

Millie, James, Tamzin, Carter, Angelo and Josh, for their hard work and

dedication in helping to produce this year’s news report. A great job -

well done team! Also another big thank you to our Eco Team who took

part in the report. The news report about is available to view on Donard

School website.

Julie Kerr

Early Years

March has been a fun month in our classroom. Braden

was our birthday boy and he turned a big 4!!! We have

been exploring more nursery rhymes and Old Mac

Donald has been a favourite with lots of animal sensory

trays. All the boys loved having their parents come to

visit our classroom to see some of the fun activities that

we do in school.

Class 1 Class 1 have been exploring a variety of foods and textures through

touch and during cookery sessions.

We have visited The Hub where we explored using a variety of

technology.

Story time is great fun and we all get involved.

Pupils from class 6 helped us with our Shamrock art. We dressed in green

for St Patrick’s Day.

We have been decorating eggs for Easter.

We enjoyed exploring the story of Sam’s Sandwich. We made

our own sandwiches for our break. It was great fun playing in

our role-play sandwich shop.

Class 3

Another busy month in class 3. We are now looking forward to our

Easter Holidays.

Happy Easter!

Class 4 A very happy Easter

from everyone in Class 4!

Class 5 has enjoyed the madness of March. The children has been learning about meat and dairy products. Through learning about dairy they made their

own butter and had a taste test! We have also made some beautiful Spring flow-er paintings and enjoyed lots of different Easter activities and crafts.

It’s almost Easter!

This month we have been learning about the different food groups and how these

foods are good for our body.

We made delicious toasties for sandwich day which were a big hit! We have also

made shortbread, banana oat cookies, and Lucky Charm buns for St. Patricks Day.

This month we have celebrated 2 birthdays, Daniel turned 9 and Morgan turned 10.

Happy birthday!!!

We had lots of fun on Green day, eating green food and dancing at the disco. We have had lots of fun engaging Spring and

Easter themed fine motor tasks.

Our favourite activity this month was

making funny fruit faces in art, we had a

real giggle mixing and matching different

eyes, mouths and noses on the fruit faces.

We have also been reading the Supertato

stories and we even made our own

Supertatos and evil peas...mwahahaha!!

Class 7 This month in class 7 we have been showing off our skills during the official

opening where we got to showcase the newly built ICT hub. We loved it when the parents joined in for parachute games during the open morning. But at the end of the day we still like to play with all our favourite toys although Nikki is

a meanie because she makes us work for them!!

In class 8 we have been welcoming Spring in

and hoping that the good weather will follow

soon!!!

We all enjoyed decorating our shamrocks

for St Patrick’s Day and the Juice and Jive

party.

We have been making Easter buns and

painting with carrots.

We made a lovely Spring display of cherry

blossom trees, rainbows and daffodils.

The boys have been enjoying Story bags

each afternoon.

Class 9 March has proven to be another busy month for Class 9. We have been putting

into practise all of the things we have learned to lead a healthy lifestyle. The

pupils conducted their own challenges based on healthy eating, good hygiene and

including more exercise. We took part in ‘Healthy Sandwich Day’ and ‘Juice and

Jive Day.’ We have also been considering healthy minds and enjoyed some yoga

sessions. Everyone was very productive for our recent ‘Open Day’ events. Class 9

are part of the Eco-team and decided to demonstrate how we have been making

food for our garden birds; a skill we learned as part of the ‘Grassroots Challenge’

organised by Ulster Wildlife. We hope you managed to catch our BBC News

Report about their great work. We are proud of our class members, Simon,

Tristan, Lucy, Benito and Josh, who took part in an Interschool's Concert in the

Market Place Theatre in Armagh. Well done! We wish everyone a very Happy

A few photos of some of our many activities in Class 10 during March.

Class 11 have enjoyed a variety of

activities this month that has

focused on being healthy. We have

enjoyed participating in yoga and

dance as well as tasting healthy

foods during our juice and jive

morning. We have enjoyed playing

the drums in the drumming workshop

and we are so proud of our pupils

who were excellent when performing

at the Armagh Theatre! Well done!

We have been focusing on how to

spend money well and the

importance of budgeting money in

our ‘money, money, money’ activity!

Class 12

March was all about our Mums in Class

12. We enjoyed making cards and

presents for them in class- making

raspberry ruffles in cookery. We even

did a little Numeracy shopping task for

our Mums in Tesco—picking out a gift

within a budget and working out our

change. We interviewed our Mums for

homework and now have some ‘Mum

Selfies’ on our notice board!

A lot of members of Class 12 were

involved in the official opening of the

School Extension through Welcoming

committees, Choir etc. Josh was

especially proud that his design had

been made into a sign which is now

located at the entrance door of our

School.

Spring has sprung in Class 12 and we

are enjoying beginning to care for the

plants we are growing.

What a month!

Our Leavers finished their

second module in the SRC

and undertook their third -

we are looking forward to

our last sessions, with

students taking part in Nail

Art, Car Valeting and

Horticulture (Growing Food

from Seed). I am really

looking forward to tasting

the home-grown beetroot!

This month our pupils

excelled themselves - they

demonstrated a sense of

pride with the official opening

of the school, the parent

open morning and the Spring

Concert. They have shown a

range of skills - preparing the

school for visitors, serving tea

and coffee, promoting our

Young Enterprise stall,

partaking and supporting in

the Spring Concert - each

one offering their skills and

qualities in their own

individual way - well done

Leavers!

PS Look out for our Young

Enterprise Spring/Summer

brochure catalogue coming

soon!

For more pictures and news

check out the updates this

month on our school website

BBC School Report

Yoga Workshops

Charity Juice and Jive

Official Opening of School Extension

Parents Open Morning

www.donardschool.co.uk