Down Draw Thursday 27th June 2024

Prizes Winners

1st           2 Tickets for the Tailteann Cup final on 13th July 2024

                Croke Park, Dublin  - Shenna Fitzpatrick

2nd          Signed Down Jersey - Henry Woods (Mrs Woods Son)

3rd           Signed Down GAA Ball - Emily Rose Quinn

4th           Hurley Bag   - Timmy Donnelly

£216 raised which will go towards PE equipment for school.

We would like to thank Miss Phillips for organising the prizes.

We are going to say a goodbye, good luck and a huge thank you to Sarah as she finished her placement with us in Holy Cross.  We wish her all the best in the future.

Congratulations to Ava in P3 who came 3rd place it the P1-3 St Louis Vintage & Family Fun Day Art Competition.  She is pictured along side the other children who were highly commended for their artwork.  Wonderful to see all the budding artist.

We would like to wish a huge congratulations to Miss Cunningham in Primary 1/2, who will be getting married at the weekend and will return as Mrs McComiskey in September

Miss Cunningham was presented at assembly with some lovely cards that all the children from P1 to P7 had made.

We wish you every happiness on big day

GAA coaching sessions

The children have enjoyed their GAA coaching sessions with Down legend Benny Coulter this term. They had lots of fun learning some fundamental football skills and practicing their drills! We are looking forward to seeing the children progress in the time ahead, hopefully we’ll have some stars of the future! 

Down Minor All-Ireland final

Today we had our past pupil Cormac Small who played on this Down minor team along with Sean Cunningham who was a selector/coach visiting the school with the Seamus Heaney Cup, with some other members of the Atticall GAC.

The Down Minor All-Ireland final was played on June 2024 in Cavan, between Down and Westmeath.

The children really enjoyed Cormac visiting each classroom followed by a special assembly outside with Q&A sessions.

Awards Presentation

We held our Awards Presentation today for our winners at our Sports Day on 7th June.  Congratulations to all our winners, however we are all winners for taking part🏆 Well Done!!

Followed by our end of year awards.  All children were treated to Brennan's Ice cream afterwards, special thanks to our Friends of Holy Cross for organising this. 

St Louis Grammar Netball & Football

On Friday 14th June, some P6 and P7 pupils travelled to St Louis Grammar, Kilkeel. The girls’ netball team reached the semi-finals in the Shield competition.  A fabulous effort from all the children.   

Scoil Spreagtha Accreditation

Over the past year our school has taken part in the new accreditation scheme "Scoil Spreagtha" which was piloted by Gael Linn, one of the main organisations for the promotion of the Irish language across the island of Ireland. The scheme aims to provide recognition, support and resources for selected English medium school who are interested in making an effort to incorporate Irish into the daily life of their schools. We were delighted to have taken part in the scheme and have been amazed by the interest sparked within our pupils through the Irish language inside and outside of the classroom as a result of this exciting imitative right from our youngest primary 1 pupils to our school leavers now in primary 7. Our children have integrated the Irish language into their daily routine within school.

On Tuesday past (11th June 2024) we were delighted to have been awarded an official accreditation by Gael Linn and the University of Ulster for our participation in the scheme for 2023-24. In addition to this, "Holy Cross PS" were delighted to have been awarded one of 9 special awards for our integration of Irish into our school. Achieving this Silver award is a huge achievement for our school and is testament to the hard work and interest in the language by our staff and pupils. Working closely with our local Irish Language Community Organisation "Conradh na Gaeilge Boirche Íochtar" who have supported us throughout the scheme we hope to continue to encourage and celebrate the use of Irish within our school in the coming academic school years ahead. Our thanks also to Atticall GAC for their support in assisting with funding an Irish Teacher for the school one day per week over the last year to assist with our efforts in integrating the Irish language into Holy Cross PS and the wider Atticall Community. 

Pictured with our student's is Ruairí Ó Donnáin, Irish Language Development Officer for Conradh na Gaeilge Boirche Íochtar and past pupil of the school who visited our school to celebrate our successful achievement. 

McKibben Shield Winners 12 June 2024

Well done to the P6 & P7 boys football team who won the McKibben Shield today in St Columban's.

The boys reached the final against St Colman's Primary school. The boys played some great football throughout the day. Well done!

Cookery Demonstration 

The boys and girls in P6 were delighted to be treated to some Chilli Beef Pasta today when Patricia from the Livestock and Meat Commission came into school! Patricia demonstrated cooking a recipe using Northern Ireland Farm Quality Assured Beef and encouraged the children to sample what was cooked. Yum Yum!  She talked to the children about the ingredients used, with the emphasis on choosing local food, cooking from scratch, and of course how the ingredients used will contribute to a healthy diet.
Thank you Patricia!

We were delighted to welcome Nick Hanrahan from Trócaire to school to be presented with a cheque following our fundraising during Lent.

Nick was amazed at the fantastic sum of £657.34 which was raised by the children in our school.

The children heard how the money will go towards the "Too much and too little water" Impact of climate change in Malawi campaign. 

W5 Dream Space

Primary 6/7 had a wonderful day at W5 Dream Space. They completed lots of fun activities around all things STEM. They looked at coding and used microbits make melodies. We also became engineers for the day and used paper & straws to create rockets. We had such a fun day and learnt so much. We look forward to returning to school and continuing to use these STEM skills. (13/5/24)

First Holy Communion

The Sacrament of First Holy Communion for the Primary 4 children took place on Saturday 11 May 2024.

Thank you to everyone for your participation in such a lovely service. The children were amazing on the day and we hope that you all had a lovely day. Special thanks to Fr Dillon for leading the service and the Friends of Friends Of Holy Cross Atticall for the refreshments afterwards.

Netball Tournament St Columban's PS

After a morning of competition, our girls' netball team secured their spot in the semi-finals against St. Colman's. With six games under their belts and a highest score of 12 points.  The final game went into extra time with St. Colman's gaining the points. 

Well done to our girls who were runners up in this competition.  

Special thanks to Rachel Quinn for coaching the girls this term.

(8th May 2024)

Congratulations to our children of Primary 7 who received the sacrament of Confirmation on Wednesday 1st May 2024.

Well done boys and girls, you all did fabulous.

‘Red & Black Day

Today we held a ‘Red & Black Day’ in support of the Down senior men’s team who take on Armagh in the semi-final of the Ulster Championship this Saturday!

Special thank you to Conor Laverty, Down Manager for visiting us today and taking time to chat, sign and show us some training drills!!

Well done to our raffle winners Annie & Lillie-Mae who got the closest to the score of the Down Game, pictured with members from our school council.  

Usborne Book Buddy

Many thanks to Martina Murphy, Essence's of Beauty who very kindly sponsored books for Holy Cross PS through the Usborne Book Buddy scheme. All books received support mental health and well-being for children. Thank you to Laura Johnston, the book buddy representative for Usborne in our area.  Pictured with Laura is Martina's 3 nieces Eva, Faye & Niamh.

Primary 7 Leaver's hoodies

It gave great pleasure to present our P7’s with their leaver’s hoodies. We hope the children love wearing their new hoodies and it will always remind them of all the good, fun times they had during their time here at Holy Cross.😊  There was great excitement as they were finally delivered.  Don’t they look great?
 

RNLI

Today we had Stephen & Chris from the RNLI to teach the the children how to stay safe in, on and around the water and to still have fun!

We heard about the 4 fundamental water safety messages, which are: 
- Stop & Think  
- Stay Together 
- Float 
- Call 999 

Special thanks to Rory Donnan from Cnag boirche ioctar who came to school this morning to present the winners of their Easter Colouring In competition

On Friday we held our tern Spelling Bee competition. Children from P2-P7 have been practicing for the last few weeks. Many congratulations to our winners this term.

We were so lucky to have a special guest just before the Easter holidays! The Easter Bunny hopped on by and brought the children some eggs! We would like to say a big thank you to our guest, the smiles show just how delighted the children were!  Also a special thank you to our Friends of Holy Cross!

Cancer Fund for Children March 2024

A cheque of £860.02 was presented as a donation to Aisling from the charity organisation, Daisy Lodge Cancer Fund for Children. This was made possible because of the children’s generous sponsorships from our Readon which took place on World Book Day. Many thanks to everyone who left in sponsorship forms for this worthwhile cause. Well done to Kobi & Eden-Rose who got a voucher from Aisling for raising the most money.

Green Day 15th March 2024

All pupils came in today dressed for Green Day Celebrations! ... We also celebrated St. Patrick's Day with a whole school assembly!

Well done to all the children!

Congratulations to our P6 and P7 boys and girls who participated in the Primary School football Blitz through Irish on Friday 8th March 2024 at Atticall GAC.

The aim of this Blitz was to provide an opportunity for primary school children to use their Irish socially.

Thank you CnaG Boirche Íochtar for organising this blitz- a fantastic experience!

We celebrated “World Book Day” on Thursday 7th March 2024. We were encouraged to create a prop to support our favourite book. We all had the opportunity to speak to our peers about our book and why we chose it and then about our prop and how we made it. Lots of Talking and Listening Skills in practice. There were some fabulous and very imaginative props on display, ice dragon eggs, castles, guitars, golden tickets, octopus, hot air balloons, potions to name a few.

We also took part in the annual “Read-On Challenge” in aid of the Cancer Fund for Children. Thank you so much for your very generous donations for this extremely worthy cause. 

Science met Art at P6’s etching and printing workshop on Monday 4th March.

We started with a tour of Bagenal’s Castle and the museum exhibits which provided us with inspiration for our own art work, we then:

1. sketched a few ideas before choosing the one we were happy with

2. coated a metal plate with hot wax

3. etched into the wax our chosen sketch

4. set up an etching station, which involved creating a circuit, using a battery, a salt solution and leads

5. submerged our metal plates, the wax prevented the acid solution reaching areas of our plate

6. observed the changes taking place during the submersion before taking out and cleaning our plates.

7. Finally, inked our plates and used a press to create a print from our plate.

It was a wonderful opportunity to work alongside professional artists, Mary and Ann and also to see around and learn about the role Bagenal’s Castle played in the history of our local area from Declan, the Educational Officer at the Museum!

Cumann na mBunscol quiz

Well done to our school team who competed admirably at the annual Cumann na mBunscol quiz in Kilcoo GAC this morning. Jack, Raymond, Brandon and Daniel were proud to represent the school and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.  Special thanks to Jack's mummy who offered to transport the boys this morning.

Well done to our camogie team who played in the camogie tournament in Burren GAC this morning. The girls reached the semi final and played brilliantly against St Dallans.

A Huge Thank You to all the pupils and parents for the amazing support in our recent Valentine’s Raffle.  We raised an incredible £510 to go towards our Sensory Markings in school.

Mass in Attical Church, Wednesday 14th Feb 24 @ 9:30am - Whole school in attendance

Well done to our Hurley team who played in the tournament in Burren GAC this morning- 2/2/24

Grandparents' Mass

On Friday 2nd February the whole school will celebrate a special Mass for our Grandparents.

We invite our Grandparents to attend the school Mass, where we offered prayers and then they were welcomed into school for refreshments. It  is a lovely celebration which we all enjoy.

Grandparents

Few can bring the warmth

We can find in their embrace,

And little more is needed to bring love.

Than the smile on their face.

They've a supply of precious stories,

Yet they've time to wipe a tear,

Or give us reasons to make us laugh,

They grow more precious through the years.

We believe that God sent us Grandparents

As our legacy from above,

To share the moments of our life,

As extra measures of His love.

 Author Unknown

Credit Union Quiz

Our school was represented at Kilkeel Credit Union Quiz by five teams from Primary  6&7 at St Colman's Primary school on Monday 29th January 2024 at 7pm.

We are so proud of all the children who answered a range of questions on general knowledge, local and world knowledge and current affairs.

Camogie Coaching

We are delighted to introduce Edel Magee, Atticall GAC who will join us on on Monday to coach our P3-P7 girls. 

Our girls are having great fun and working on their core strength and hand to eye coordination during our camogie coaching with tremendous interest being shown by the young camogs.

Hopefully their confidence and skills will improve every week.

Shea & Cohen

We have Shea & Cohen over in the big school today showing all the boys and girls a lovely chair that they have been busy building all by themselves in playtime.  They will be taking orders shortly!!

MOURNE HURLING INFORMATION

Clann Mhúrn held our second indoor hurling taster session at Longstone last Sunday with a large number of primary and post primary boys in attendance (PHOTOS). We would like thank guest coaches Marty McNeill, Daithí Young and Joseph Young for helping out. It was great to see a number of new players trying hurling for the first time.

Indoor Practice returns to Dunavil this Sunday p1 to p5 at 10am and p5 & Secondary ages 10:45am. Hurleys and helmets will be provided as needed.

Clann Mhúrn are delighted to host a Coach Education session on Monday 29^th January 7:30pm in the Kingdom Sports Hall. This is aimed at anyone new or recently involved with coaching underage Hurling or Camogie. This will focus on basic fundamentals of the game and will be facilitated by Danny Toner of Ulster GAA. No need to register beforehand and no charge.

Danny Toner Ulster GAA has started coaching in Grange PS on Wednesday morning until the Easter break.

There will be coaching on Mondays after Easter in the Gaelscoil p1 to p2 from 1:30pm and p3 to p7 from 2:30pm for 8 weeks.

Martin Fogarty will facilitate a practical ‘coaching the coaches’ workshop at An Ríocht on Friday 2^nd February 7pm to 9pm & Saturday 3^rd February 9am to 1pm for camogie and hurling coaches. Martin managed Kilkenny to two u21 All Irelands and was a selector with Brian Cody between  2005 and 2013 when Kilkenny won six Senior All-Ireland Hurling Championships. He was the first GAA National Hurling Development manager 2016 to 2021.

Our School Council with the help of Primary 7's organised a 'Winter Wonderland' for the whole school.

What a lovely treat for all the children!!

Watch our photographs below:

Congratulations to all the boys and girls who won the December Spelling Bee! Keep up all the hard work! 

Christmas Plays 2023

Two brilliant performances of our children this week. Well done to all the children and staff, who worked very hard to create two super shows. 

Blythswood Care Shoe Box Appeal 2023

36 Shoe boxes were collected today (8/12/23).  Thank you for your kindness and generosity.

Your gift truly makes a difference.

Woolly Hat Day 2023

Everyone had great fun with Woolly Hat Day on Friday 10th November. This fun fundraiser helped raise vital funds for the amazing, local charity Mourne Stimulus.  Roberta from Mourne Stimulus was presented the cheque for £100.