Thank you to everyone who slipped into their slippers today and raised money for AGE NI. We were pleased to raise over £370! We had a fun day of activities and it was lovely to hear of the special conversations our pupils had had with someone older in their life. Thanks to everyone who got involved.
We are proud to present our recently elected Eco Committee for this academic year. The committee comprises a representative from each class from P4-7. The committee will work closely with Mrs McKeown promoting our Eco topics across our school.
The committee:
Chair Person: Lydia P7
Deputy Chair Person: Nico P7
Other committee members:
Joni (P6) Emily (P6) Tom (P6) Ellen (P5) Sophia (P5) Eliza (P5) Nao (P4) Torin (P4)
We look forward to the great ideas and intiatives they will bring to our school this year.
Last Thursday Finn, our Eco Committee Chairperson, and Mrs McKeown represented Holywood Primary School at a 30 Years of Eco Schools Celebration and Green Flag Awards at Stranmillis University. We are very proud to have our eight Green Flag. Well done to all involved!
STEM success
Well done to Room 5 and Room 19 who are joint winners of our Waste Free Wednesday Competition, the pupils of the winning classes received a packet of wildflower seeds each as their prize. Thank you to everyone from P1-7 for working hard to cut down their single use wrappers. Let’s keep working together to swap single use items for reusable containers.
We are thrilled to have confirmation that we have been successful in being awarded our eighth Eco-Schools Green Flag! The Eco-School’s team were very impressed with the hard work of the Eco Committee and wider school community. A big thank you to all the parents and relatives who have volunteered to help with gardening and the local community groups who have partnered with us including Men’s Shed, the Ulster Conservation Volunteers and Ards and North Down Council. Let’s keep working together for the environment.
Ards and North Down council parks department have kindly given HPS some new tools and gardening equipment as part of their Growing Club scheme. P4, Room 14 enjoyed meeting Ryan today, an expert gardener from the council. He came with the new equipment and helped us prepare the polytunnel for growing some fruit and vegetables this Spring. We look forward to working more with Ryan in the coming months.
Meet Tony the turtle
A busy morning for our P6 & P7 ECO Committee
Last week we had our HPS Autumn Sweep, this involved a big tidy up of the school grounds in preparation for Winter. We want to thank the great team of parents and relatives who got involved! Our Eco club also pitched in with weeding and planting bulbs. We also want to thank Bill, Sam and the team from Holywood Men’s Shed who have built a picket fence to mark off the construction play area for the P1 and 2s and created a lovely log border for one of our wildflower areas. Sam was remincising that the last time he was at HPS was in the 1950s as a pupil! Lovely to have you back Sam! Here are some photos of everyone’s hard work.
We were blown away by the generosity of our school community in our Harvest Collection in aid of Operation Christmas Child. Lots of toys, pencils, paper, books and hygiene products were brought in. These have been packed into shoe boxes and will be sent to children in other parts of the world who lack basic necessities. A big thank you to Laura Blacklock and the 3EN Group in Holywood who kindly added a generous donation of toys to our collection. Another big thank you to Mr and Mrs Armstrong from Operation Christmas Child who came in and spoke to our pupils about where their donations were going and collected the items. They were able to assemble ninety one boxes with your donations! Thank you Holywood Primary School!
We are proud to present our recently elected Eco Committee for this academic year. The committee comprises a representative from each class from P4-7. The committee will work closely with Mrs McKeown promoting our Eco topics of Biodiversity, Healthy Living and Marine Life as we work towards the renewal of our Green Flag in June.
The committee:
Chair Person: Finn P7
Deputy Chair Person: Harry P7
Other committee members:
Miller P7, Jamie P6, Harrison P6, Ella P5, Ellen P5, Ellie P4, Jack P4 and Evie P4
We look forward to the great ideas and intiatives they will bring to our school this year.
Well done to our Wildflower Sign Competition winners! The school council and the Eco committee were involved in judging the competition, they were very impressed by the time and effort the P4-7 pupils put in. It was a very high standard of entries! Each of our winners won a packet of wildflower seeds to take home and we are planning on displaying these signs in our wildflower areas.
First place: Emma P6 R9
Second place: TJ P7 R11
Third place: Molly P6 R10
Fourth Place: Susanna P5 R8
Well done everyone! We are very excited to see our wildflowers starting to grow in this lovely weather.
We’re excited about our next ECO venture
Each class from P4-7 have elected their Eco Committee representative. The committee will work closely with Mrs McKeown towards our Eco Schools Green Flag award and will be involved in promoting enviromental initiatives in our school. Pupils who were interested in the role in each class had an opportunity to share why they felt they would be suitable for the post before the class voted. We are really pleased to have the following pupils onboard our committee for this academic year.
P7 - Evan (R12) and Emily (R11)
P6 - Natasha (R13), Ella (R10) and Marnie (R9)
P5 - Kate (R8) and Eden (R7)
P4 - Ella (R6), Lucy (R14) and Euan (R19)
Congratulations - HPS is the Green Team!
Our Eco committee followed up their meeting with NI water in April by completing a survey from P1-7 to see how many pupils regularly use reuseable water bottles. They were really encouraged to find over 83% of HPS pupils use reusable water bottles. This is really encouraging but our aim is to get it over 95%. NI water have provided a free reuseable water bottle for every pupil in the school. These are BPA free. The boys and girls were very excited to receive them and it’s been great to see them getting lots of use in the last week or so! Let’s work together to cut down single use plastics!
Let’s play our part
On Monday performers from the Lyric Theatre in Belfast came to Holywood Primary school to perform for the P5 year group. They performed A Walk is Not Just A Walk by Jess Williams and Michael Beigel. The play follows five friends on an adventure through their local park exploring themes of littering, plastic pollution and global warming! It was a helpful reminder of how our actions can have global implications which is part of Global Perspectives Eco Topic.
Last Friday our P4’s came to school dressed as evacuees for WW2 Day. They carried their gas mask boxes around all day just as they would have done during the war. They enjoyed skipping and old games and songs that were popular at the time. They used their ration coupons from their ration books to enjoy a few treats as part of our VE Day celebration. Our special thanks to Gillian Spence (Mrs McKeown’s granny) who was unable to come into school in person but recorded a special video about her experience growing up near London during the war. Here are a few photos of the day, they may be black and white but if you look closely you might just see some familar faces.
