Harvest Collection

We were blown away by the generosity shown in this year’s harvest collection for Blytheswood Care. Thank you boys and girls, mums and dads and everyone who donated. The items will be packed into shoe boxes and sent to boys and girls in Eastern Europe who have very little. We know this will mean a lot to them this Christmas.

Let’s Look After Our Beaches!

Two of our H.P.S pupils, Dylan (P5) and Zara (P4), were troubled by the litter and mess left by the crowds on their local beach during the bank holiday weekend at the end of May. As part of their home school learning, they decided to be proactive and write to local MLA Andrew Muir to express their concern not just on how this behaviour might spoil a beautiful spot but also on the effects it might have on the local wildlife. Earlier this week they received the following response from Mr Muir and this sign has been recently erected near to the area. As an Eco school we are proud to see our pupils speaking out to protect our beaches and local wildlife and we hope that in future these areas will be treated with more respect. Well done Dylan and Zara!

H.P.S Eco Schools Status renewed for the sixth time!

At Holywood Primary School we are passionate about the difference we can make as a school community in looking after our local environment. This is a whole school effort involving pupils, staff and members of our local community. We have been working this year on the renewal of our Eco Schools Status for the sixth time (this comes round in two year cycles) focusing on the topics of Waste, Biodiversity and Outdoor Learning. In term one and two our Eco committee were working very hard on conducting an environmental review of our school and promoting Waste Free Wednesdays and our school recycling schemes. Other year groups got involved too with our P7 Room 10 leading the way with bringing in metal straws and P1-6 participating in National Outdoor Classroom Day in November. We submitted an online submission for the renewal of our Eco Status in January and were due to receive an assessment visit in the spring. Due to Covid 19, Eco Schools have made their decision on the basis of the paper work and evidence we submitted in January and have granted Holywood Primary School their Eco status for the sixth time! We have held this status for over a decade now and are very proud of the pupils, parents and staff who have contributed to this. Congratulations H.P.S!

Spring is on its way!

 We have begun to see the first signs of Spring as our bulbs donated to us by ‘Hannah’s Courtyard’ last year have begun to resurface this year! We have spotted daffodils, crocuses and snow drops already! Eco club have been busy weeding and looking after these flower beds.  

Our Second Waste Audit

In February 2019 we conducted a school waste audit and found large proportions of food waste and recyclables in our classroom bins. As waste is our current major Eco school topic we have promoted taking food waste home and disposing of it in green bins and cutting down the use of our single use plastics through Waste Free Wednesdays. In the past year we have had also had assemblies raising awareness of the problems with landfill sites and disposing of plastic. P7 Room 10 have also bought and taken responsibility for washing out metal straws to replace our plastic ones. Here are photos of ECO club conducting our second audit of our classroom bins a few weeks ago. It was great to see an overall reduction in our waste, especially food waste. Our P6’S are currently compiling the results and we hope to share these with you soon. 

Waste Free Wednesdays

 At the start of January, we started Waste Free Wednesdays to work to reduce our use of single use materials and encourage each other to buy in bulk and use reusable containers. Thank you to all the parents and pupils who have been working hard to achieve this! Here are some pictures of our reusable containers in P4 room 16! Let’s try to keep this up! 

Outdoor Classroom Day 2019

Thursday 7th November was National Outdoor Classroom Day! Over 690,000 children were involved in outdoor learning across the UK and Ireland! Unfortunately for us in NI it was pretty wet on the Thursday but P1-6 took their learning outside at some point that week or the week after! It was a great success! Between Autumn walks, leaf hunts, clock and fraction work and even making poppy pictures out of leaves, the pupils really enjoyed it and engaged well. P5 even put out bird feeders as part of our ECO focus on developing our school’s biodiversity! Take a look at some of the photos we took!

P4 Space Models

P4 have just finished their Space topic this week with a junk models homework. Waste is one of our current ECO topics and we were so impressed at how our P4s creativity reused old items and junk to form these exciting models! We had a whole range of rockets, planets, astronauts and the International Space Station. The models are currently on display in the foyer for the next few weeks. A big thank you to all the parents who gave a helping hand.