If you’ve passed by our school recently you may have noticed the addition of some colourful Christmas lights near the main entrance and some more on the porch at the entrance to right of the building. You may also have seen Santa Claus and The Snowman Family decorating our school. This wonderful display is thanks to Frank Staples and Wexford County Council. Many thanks also to Jenny Bates, who put us in touch with him. The children have been having great fun posing for photos!

Art Competition For Invitation

In the run up to our Carol Service the children were asked to put on their creative hats and enter a competition to make the invitations to our show. It was a colouring competition in the Junior end of the school while the Senior classes designed their own invitations. As always, it’s amazing what children will come up with when given the opportunity to create something. Some of them even made fold-over cards with pop-ups inside! The standard was very high, so much so that in some classes teachers whittled it down to a few finalists and resorted to picking a name out of a hat because it was so hard to choose. Nonetheless, a winner was picked in each class and they received a selection box for their efforts.

We would like to invite you to our ‘Virtual Carol Service 2020’.

Whilst we are disappointed that we can’t welcome you in person to St Martin’s Church this year, we hope that you will still join us in an evening celebrating the very best of the Christmas season, from the comfort of your own home!

This beautiful service will feature music, carols and readings, with performances from our wonderful students at Piercestown National School, with some special appearances from staff too!

Join us next Thursday night, by singing along, and listening to the readings and music, making this event the perfect start to Christmas!

You will be invited to join in the singing of a selection of well-known traditional carols, as well as listening to both traditional and innovative music. We can assure you, you will not be disappointed!

A link and code to our show will be emailed via Aladdin on Thursday, 17th December at 7pm. The show will be broadcast via Youtube. This will enable those with smart TVs to access the video easily and share with family and friends. The video will go live on Thursday night and can be accessed using the code in the Youtube ‘search bar’, and will remain public until Friday morning. From Friday, the video will only be accessible using the link or via our school website. The code will no longer be active.

See you all then!!

Christmas ceremonies are among the most important ceremonies in the church year. Unfortunately this year, under Covid 19 restrictions, there will be a limited number of people allowed to enter the Church to attend Mass. Because of this Fr. O’Reilly will celebrate a Drive-In Mass on Christmas Eve at 6pm in St. Martin’s pitch. This will allow more people from the communities of Piercestown and Murrintown to come together to celebrate the birth of our Lord. It promises to be a very special event and all are invited to attend. We look forward to seeing there!

Our Schools Admission Policy has been updated over the summer months, in line with new legislation for all schools. We have been informed that our schools Admission Policy CANNOT be published until all new legislation has been commenced. The hope is that this will take place in the coming month or so.

All schools have been asked to adopt 14th January 2021, as the date on which the school will begin accepting applications for admissions for the coming year. The Admissions process cannot begin therefore, until after this date.

Keep an eye on our website for any further updates about our Admissions Notice and Admissions Policy.

We look forward to hearing from you and planning for our next new cohort of students in 2021-2022.

In the meantime, if you have queries, please do not hesitate to contact us on 053-9158854.

The weather has been kind to us and even though the temperature is dropping, we are so delighted to be back in school together we have a warm feeling inside our four walls!

It is was with the greatest excitement that we reopened our doors on Thursday 27th August! We had a busy summer to ensure our school was safe and ready for your return. Our children have been amazing adapting to any new measures put in place and the happy atmosphere around the place is tangible from the moment we as a staff step inside our building.

While we feel sad, that our ‘open’ door policy is less ‘open door’ this year, we are working hard to come up with alternative options to continue our open communication.

We are rolling out Aladdin Connect, we will be updating our website regularly and don’t hesitate to contact us by phone or email should you need us at any point. In the meantime, stay safe and we continue to work as a team as we navigate our way through these unprecedented times.

This video was brainchild of the staff of Piercestown National School and ably assisted by some local famous faces to wish our ‘Class of 2020’ a virtual farewell on what should have been their last day in Piercestown National School.

We hope you enjoyed it as much as the ‘Class of 2020’ did!

Huge thanks to Miss Sinnott for her technical mastery and Ms. Hearne for her co-ordination and all who contributed in any small way.

Now sit back, relax and enjoy the show!

Congratulations to the Class of 2020!!!!!! See you on the 23rd July for a face to face goodbye.

And with that, COVID 19 and the 12th March abrupt halt became a distant memory. Playgrounds have re-opened, children are back playing in the green spaces and laughter and chat can be heard around the place again. The sun is shining and for all of the parents and children we can finally say, SCHOOL IS OUT FOR SUMMER!

Never before and probably never again, will our country experience such events. The aim of the game was to stay safe and thankfully our school community remains in tact. It will go down in history as our biggest ‘victory’ to date. For that, we will be forever grateful.

Now it is time to take a deep sigh of relief and look to the future. While social distancing still remains, we look forward to the summer months, 99’s, BBQ’s, no homework, no homeschooling, and after a well earned break the sound of our school bell again and the hustle and bustle as we meet back together! There is SO much to look forward to.

For the ‘Class of 2020’ we salute you. You have even more fun times ahead. We will zoom at 10am this morning, and you can open your surprise post. We will see you back in your old stomping ground on July 23rd and while it may be slightly different we look forward to a ‘face to face’ graduation. And from there we will look ahead to our Confirmation on July 25th and then you fly the nest……..bid us ‘farewell’ and head to new pastures!!!! We are so proud of you!

And so people don’t miss out on the interim ‘virtual’ farewell, this blog will be followed in an hour or so by a final blog to celebrate the ‘Class of 2020’ on what should have been their last official day in Piercestown N.S. 26th June 2020!!!! Watch this space.

But finally, on behalf of all the staff at Piercestown N.S. ‘go forth, be strong and never feel alone, because Piercestown National School will always be your home!’

And finally, after many months of blogging, it is time for me to bow out for the summer. Boys and girls you have been superb, parents you have been AMAZING! Staff you have been a credit to your school. So without further delay, on behalf of myself as principal and the Board of Management, we thank you for ALL YOUR EFFORTS, wish you a restful summer and look forward to seeing you when we return after the summer months.

Stay safe, have a great summer and have fun! We miss you already 🙂

For those of you scratching your heads over some of the riddles since Monday, here are the answers:

1. Which is faster hot or cold? (and why?) Hot- you can easily catch a cold!!!
2. Forwards I am heavy, backwards, I am not. What am I? Ton
3. What question can you never answer ‘yes’ to? Are you asleep?
4. What has teeth but cannot eat?!?!! A comb
5. What kind of dog never bites? A hotdog
6. What wears a cap but has no head? A bottle
7. Why is 6 afraid of 7? Because 7 (8) ate 9
8. What country is popular on Thanksgiving day? Turkey
9. Which table doesn’t have legs? A vegetable
10. What starts with e, ends with e, and only has one letter? An envelope
11. From what number can one take half and leave nothing? !!! 8
12. Why is a river rich??! Because it has two banks!
13. The more you take away, the bigger I become. What am I? A hole

I will be back tomorrow with the final farewell wish. Have a good day and enjoy the last sleep before the holidays!!!!

Welcome back everyone, I hope you had a lovely weekend. I have no doubt that all of the Dad’s and Grandad’s were spoiled over the weekend and got the benefit of it being the longest day of the year too!

I can hardly believe that this is our last official week of school. Normally, we enjoy this week so much with the buzz of assembly, outdoor learning, teddy bear picnics, 6th class ‘end of year fever’, to name but a few events. Instead, we remain seperated but filled with hope of a fun filled summer with restrictions being lifted and the excitement of our reunion in our next school year.

It may be our last week, but it is still all go in Piercestown N.S. The postman will be busy around Piercestown today and tomorrow as he makes his way with all of our school reports. As always, any parents who wish to check in with the teachers having read the reports can do so on the staff professional email addresses. Some children will receive slightly heavier post with their 100% attendance medals also in the post.

Our newsletter with LOTS of information will wing its way through cyber space this week to all families. Our stationary lists will be sent out before the end of the week and our much awaited class allocation (who is teaching what class?!) next year will also be diseminated. Our Board are meeting on Thursday, our school is being deep cleaned from today and some staff are preparing for our doors to be opened for July Provision beginnning next Monday 29th June.

We are also busy making plans for the next school year already, booking events, coaches, getting ready to welcome new children into our school family, ensuring our schools is prepared to the best of our ability for our return and so much more!

And while your teachers have not sent your usual academic work this week, they wanted you to have some fun activities to keep you busy over the duration of the week so your parents will have all received this yesterday.

As always, we are happy to continue to receive photos and will update the blog. Why not send us your ‘end of year smiling faces’! We would love to see them! ‘Class of 2020’ why not send in some pictures of your last week as ‘official pupils’ in Piercestown N.S. We look forward to updating the ‘Class of 2020’ this week with the finer details of their upcoming Confirmation on July 25th and their Graduation that has been postponed until July also. Do not fear however, we are not letting this Friday go unmarked!!!! ‘Class of 2020’ we have a few treats in store!

In the meantime, if you are at a loose end why not give some of these fun activities a go……

Why not ‘chalk it down?

Try out some of these fabulous illustrations on your driveway, pathway, patio outside. Be as creative as you like.

Don’t forget to send us some photos to principal@piercestownns.com

If chalk is not your thing, but you feel like doing some summery art, check out this website for some simple but effective ideas.

https://www.projectswithkids.com/summer-arts-and-crafts/

Or alternatively, choose one of these items to draw:

If you’re more into the brain training why not try out a few of these riddles?I will update the answers later in the week:

1. Which is faster hot or cold? (and why?)
2. Forwards I am heavy, backwards, I am not. What am I?
3. What question can you never answer ‘yes’ to?
4. What has teeth but cannot eat?!?!!
5. What kind of dog never bites?
6. What wears a cap but has no head?
7. Why is 6 afraid of 7?
8. What country is popular on Thanksgiving day?
9. Which table doesn’t have legs?
10. What starts with e, ends with e, and only has one letter?
11. From what number can one take half and leave nothing? !!!
12. Why is a river rich??!
13. The more you take away, the bigger I become. What am I?

Finally, if literacy and writing is more your thing, why not try to put pen to paper and write an acrostic poem about Summer.

For some help go to this website : https://www.playfullearning.net/resource/summer-acrostic-poetry/

As always, have a lovely week and if we can be of any assistance or you want to send us some photos for the blog, please do so on principal@piercestownns.com