Green School

Eco Week– Learning, Exploring and Taking Action!

September saw our school come alive with environmental awareness and creativity as we celebrated Eco Week as part of our Green Schools initiative.

Eco Week provided the perfect opportunity to nominate our new Green Schools Committee, who will help lead our environmental projects throughout the year. This year, we are working towards achieving our next Green Flag for Global Citizenship – Litter and Waste.

Throughout the week, pupils took part in a wide range of exciting and educational activities. We engaged with ECO-UNESCO's Eco Week programme, learning about the importance of protecting our environment and becoming responsible global citizens.

Our classes enjoyed exploring nature on Mini Beast Hunts in the Phoenix Park, where they discovered a variety of fascinating creatures and learned about local habitats. We also visited the Biodiversity Centre in Phoenix Park, where pupils had the chance to become animal detectives, investigating wildlife and learning about the importance of biodiversity.

Back at school, everyone played their part in caring for our environment by taking part in a litter-picking initiative around the school grounds. It was wonderful to see such enthusiasm and teamwork as pupils worked together to keep our surroundings clean and tidy.

Creativity was on full display during our Junk Art and Colouring Competitions. Pupils transformed recycled materials into imaginative works of art and showcased their artistic talents through a range of colourful and inspiring creations. The standard of entries was exceptional, making it very difficult to choose winners!

Eco Week was a fantastic success, combining fun, learning, creativity and environmental action. It was inspiring to see our pupils embrace the theme with such enthusiasm as they explored ways to make a positive difference to the world around them.

And to put the cherry on top, we have recently been informed that our school has been awarded the Green Flag for Global Citizenship – Litter and Waste! This is a fantastic achievement and a testament to the hard work, dedication and commitment shown by our pupils, staff, Green Schools Committee and wider school community throughout the year.

Well done to everyone involved – we are incredibly proud of this wonderful achievement!

Here at St. Patrick's National School we have been working hard to achieve our sixth Green Flag for Global Citizenship - Litter and Waste.

The flags we’ve earned to date are in the following areas:

Biodiversity
Litter & Waste – Reduce , Reuse, Recycle
Energy – Conserving Energy
Water – Water Conservation
Transport - promoting sustainable Transport Modes.

We want to show you some of the work we have done for our school to reach the Biodiversity Flag!

This was our old garden and bug hotel!

Our new Garden

After a lot of hard work from our Green Schools Committee, we have created a new garden full of plants to attract pollinators and have made them a beautiful new hotel to stay in!

Our Action Plan

We had a poster competition!

Everyone had so much fun making up their own slogans for our green schools! Look at all of their amazing ideas and posters that they made!

This is our Habitat Map!

We looked around our school grounds to find places to increase our Biodiversity around our school!

Our first Habitat Map!

This was the map we used to decide places on our school grounds that could be used to increase Biodiversity.

This is our updated Habitat map!

This is our updated Habitat map. It shows where we have placed bird feeders ( red circles), new plants/bulbs (yellow triangles) and our bug hotel (blue star).

Biodiversity Survey

We asked each child who knew what Biodiversity is. The Green Schools Committee made it their mission to increase poeples knowledge and awareness about what Biodiversity is and how they can help improve it. After raising awareness, making improvements around the school and the committee presenting a powerpoint to each class. The committee completed the survey again and the results were amazing! Take a look!!

Electricity Vampires

Our green schools committee have a very important job each day. During the break times, our committee members make sure each class have turned their lights off, turned off their interactive boards and closed their doors to save electricity. If they have forgotten to do these tasks they will received a vampire on their door.

WEEE Battery Recycling Challenge

WEEE Ireland’s Battery Recycling Challenge is urging everyone to become battery recycling champions at home, at work, in school and in your community! We are recycling our waste batteries in our Blue Battery Boxes to help tackle climate change, protect our environment.

SuperValu - Grow It Yourself

Senior Infants and Second Class have been very busy planting! This year they received the SuperValu - Grow It Yourself

kits! Together they have planted Peas, Corn, Lettuce, Cress, Pumpkins and Sunflowers!

Just look at all of their hard work! We cant wait to see what sprouts this Spring!

Junior Infants were planting!

Junior infants were planting their cress seeds! They are so excited to watch them grow!

Junior Infants Butterflies

Junior Infants had so much fun learning all about the Life Cycle of a Butterfly! Look at all their beautiful artwork!

Senior Infants are hopping into Spring!

Senior Infants have been working really hard. They are learning all about the Life Cycle of a Frog! Look at all their hard work and amazing artwork!

First Class Cherry Blossoms!

First Class have been very artistic lately and created these beautiful Cherry Blossom trees!

Second Class - Dissecting Daffodils

Second class had lots of fun dissecting Daffodils.

They worked in pairs to find and name each part of their Daffodil and learned about the function of each part.

3rd Class - Birds & Weather Dials

3rd Class have been very busy learning all about different species of birds. They gathered all of their information and made these beautiful projects!

They were also learning all about the Climate of Ireland and created weather dials to show the weather each day!

4th Class - Life Cycle of an Apple Tree

4th Class have been very busy learning all about the Life Cycle of an Apple Tree! 4th Class learned how the apple begins as a seeds, then sprouts into a mighty tree where it flowers before becoming an apple and beginning the process all over again.

5th Class - Biodiversity Posters

5th Class worked very hard to create Biodiversity posters to put up in the school. They were trying to raise awareness about how Biodiversity can be enhanced around the school grounds and at home!

6th Class - Water Cycle

6th Class were very busy learning all about the Water Cycle! They drew lots of beautiful pictures and diagrams!

6th Class - Posters and Slogans

6th Class were very busy creating posters and slogans for our Green Schools Initative.

Woodies Budding Gardeners!

The children are super-excited to be involved in the Woodies Budding Gardeners initiative. St. Patrick's NS Chapelizod is an urban school and our small yard is almost completely covered in tarmac apart from a couple of very small flower-beds, so we had to get creative!

The children and SNAs decided to create a 'Suitcase Garden' to remind us all of our holidays. They made their garden during the week of the two big storms so it was nice for everybody to be able to dream of sunshine - indoors - when we were unable to get outside! The boys and girls planted up the flowercase with dahlia bulbs and decorated it with lots of additions. Home-made windmills, painted shells, turtles, fairy lights, tropical birds and a smiling Mr. Sun decorate our cheerful display.

Junior Infants 2022

Junior Infants had so much fun learning all about the Life Cycle of a Butterfly! They even had caterpillars come to their class! The Junior Infants were able to watch the caterpillars grow into their cocoons and emerge as beautiful butterflies!

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