Marist Primary School

The Infants, 1st and 2nd class have been taking part in a project called, "The Great Plant Hunt".

They have become very aware of the birds, minibeasts and flowers in our environment with each class level learning about different topics.

The children regularly tell of things they have spotted on the way home or in the local parks. They have a better awareness of the need to be kind to all living things. 

They have also completed many different interesting art projects based on our themes, including paintings, drawings, and even minibeasts made from junk art!

As part of our work for our green flag on biodiversity, we are planning to start a wildflower garden, using native Irish flowers, so we hope to be able to locate identify many different types of flowers, butterflies and bees in the near future!

We had an excellent guest speaker, Paddy Madden, in school to talk to all our classes about biodiversity and each class is had a guided nature walk with him to highlight the huge amount of biodiversity in our school environment

We have 4 raised beds which have been replanted with flower bulbs and have been repainted to give the front of our school a new lease of

We have also been busy planting! 

Junior Infants have spent the last couple of weeks working in the garden centre as part of Aistear. They have learnt all about planting seeds and bulbs, and how to care for their growing flowers and vegetables. We have created a wigwam for our mangetout to grow up, and have planted some of our growing bulbs into a raised bed. We are bringing some home to our Mams also!

Senior Infants have also been growing peas in old gutter pipes.  

"We put in soil. Then we planted the seeds in a zigzag line." They now have a Pea Patrol in operation. The Pea Patrol are responsible for bringing the gutter pipe out to the windowsill for some sunshine during the day, making sure the seeds are watered, and then returning it to the classroom for the evening.

1st class are growing beetroot in their sunny windowsills.

2nd class have lettuce sprouting up. 2nd class particularly were taken with learning about the Pied Wagtail as we have 2 resident in our school environment.

3rd class have carrots growing in their classroom and our 4th and 5th classes have a crop of potatoes planted!

Here's to a great beginning!