RMDS
15th September 2021
From the Principal’s Desk….
Today we had a wonderful whole school assembly to celebrate Black History Month. Following on from World Mental Health Day last Sunday we are encouraged to be grateful for the good people and things around us. I was so grateful this morning for a beautiful, dry, bright autumn morning which allowed all the children and staff in our school to come and celebrate outside together. We spoke about many black people both living and deceased who have made huge contributions to our society over the years. Perhaps your child would like to share some of the stories we heard today with you. Ask them to also share our call and response song we sang together with you - Che Che Kule! Many thanks to Rang 3, with the help of Ms. Blayney and Mr. Fairbrother, who led our assembly this morning. Check out our Twitter page - @RMDS_Ranelagh for a snippet of us singing! 
A reminder that class photos are now ready for purchase! Photos can be ordered through the link shared in the corresponding email during the week. The last day for ordering will be strictly Friday, 22nd October. If you have any queries please email Michelle at michelle@mosphotography.com
A reminder to all parents to please be mindful of our neighbours at drop off and collection times. If at all possible walk, scoot or cycle to school and if you do need to bring the car, be mindful of where you are parking, taking care not to block any private entrances, mount footpaths or double park.
We are also so lucky to have Jackie, our school traffic warden, to help all children get across the road safely. Please make sure to cross the road with Jackie at all times. Do not cross at the bottom of Mount Pleasant Place as traffic comes around the corner very quickly. We are currently working with DCC to get a School Zone assigned to our school to improve both traffic congestion and improve air quality in our area.
A reminder that we will be closing for midterm break next Friday, 22nd October @ 2.10 p.m. and will reopen on Monday, 1st November @ 8.30 a.m.
As always, if a child has any new onset symptoms and feels unwell or seems off-form, do not send them to school and contact your GP for advice if necessary.
In addition, do not send your child to school if they have:
Wishing you all a lovely weekend,
Rosemarie
From the PA….
Halloween Raffle
Halloween is fast approaching and that can only mean one thing: the Halloween Raffle! As always, there’s a spooktacular hamper up for grabs for each class. Tickets are available from rmdsevents.com with the big draw to come on Friday the 22nd, so get your tickets before then! Proceeds from the raffle will go towards the RMDS Sensory Room - a multisensory space in the school for when children need a space outside of the busy classroom. More details and photos of the room are in the Latest News section at rmdsevents.com where you'll also find RMDS merchandise for sale.
Junior & Senior Infants Meet-Up!
Parents and guardians of Junior and Senior Infants classes haven't had much opportunity to meet one another, so if you are a Senior Infants or Junior Infants parent / guardian please note the following events!
There will be a coffee morning at the school for parents/guardians of Senior Infants on the 12th November after drop-off. If you can, bring some nut-free goodies to share. We'll provide the coffee and tea.
Parents/guardians and children of Junior Infants are invited to Dartmouth Square at 1.10 p.m. on the 22nd October for a get together and maybe a treat!
Class WhatsApp Groups
Most classes in RMDS have a WhatsApp group for the parents of each class. They’re set up and administered by one or more parents and are a great way to keep in touch with each other and share information about class matters such as homework, class parties, etc. We also use them to distribute information from the PA. Joining these groups is entirely optional, but it’s important to be aware that:
Thank you to the outgoing PA Committee….
We'd like to express our huge thanks (on all of your behalf) to outgoing PA Co-Chairs Rachel Sirr and Oscar Carolan, and to outgoing PA Secretary Lorraine Hackett, all of whom did great work in their roles over the past three years. As mentioned previously, Cormac Ó Foghlú remains as Treasurer, but we’re actively seeking his replacement as this is Cormac’s last year in RMDS. Please get in touch if you have any interest! Thanks to Amanda Holzworth for taking on the role of Secretary and to all Class Reps.
Gráinne Fahey & Joss Moorkens
From the Green Schools Committee....
An Coiste Glas - Rang 2
We were lucky to get a native Irish cherry sapling from the Tree Council of Ireland which the Green School Committee of Rang 2 planted on behalf of the whole school. We were going to plant it in Linear Park but it’s small and we were afraid it would be trampled on. We’ve planted it in a big pot on the roof terrace. It’s deciduous so it will rest over winter and it will start to grow again in spring. We will water it and take care of it until it’s big enough to be planted in Linear Park.
Eco Tips….
Save Energy
When LED bulbs first came on the market, they were more expensive and gave out poorer quality light than existing types. This is not the case now and there are few reasons to still be using Standard (incandescent), Halogen or CFL (fluorescent) bulbs. LED bulbs save energy and are long lasting. Aldi and Ikea sell excellent quality bulbs very reasonably.
Clean
Clean your windows to allow more natural light in. This will reduce the chance that you need to turn on your lights. Especially on dull days. Dust off your light bulbs now and again to ensure you get full brightness.
Lights Off
It's not always easy to get children into the habit of turning off lights. Leave Post-It notes above light switches with a kind reminder. And lead by example!
Retrofit
If you are doing building work at home, consider installing Sun Tunnels and installing Motion Sensor lighting. Lighter wall colours reduce the amount of lighting required also.
Roland Ramsden
Andrea Scott
Green Schools Committee Parent Representatives
From the Wellbeing Committee….
It was World Mental Health Day on Sunday 10th October. In order to mark this occasion and to raise awareness of mental health, classes in RMDS have been busy!
The Wellbeing Committee requested that all classes take part in some way. Each class completed a gratitude journal each morning and we hope this will be something classes will continue. We made daily mindfulness a major focus for the week and asked that classes make it a priority. For homework children were asked to find a sit spot and spend at least 5 minutes a day sitting quietly listening in their sit spot. Other classes had some different mindfulness activities. Using positive affirmations were a focus and we practised getting comfortable saying and using these. Each class created posters or completed mindful colouring with positive affirmations on them.
The Wellbeing Committee have lots of great plans for the future and will be organising more events in the coming weeks.
PLACES MUST BE CONFIRMED BY THE MANAGER BEFORE PAYMENT
| Child’s Name: | |
| Child’s Class: | |
| Email: | |
| Parents/Guardians: | |
| Allergies/medications: | |
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Please pay through the RMDS website - Go to Afterschool Childcare and click the easypayment button.
PRICE: €70 / 2 Siblings - €130 / 3 Siblings - €190
Dates: Tuesday, 26th October - Friday, 29th October
Time: Camp 9.15 a.m. - 2 p.m.
GAMES, ART, CRAFTS, Halloween fancy dress up AND MANY MORE ACTIVITIES
THIS WEEK’S
News from around the Classes…..
Junior Infants
We do mindfulness every morning. We are learning different breaths, the bunny breath, the bee breath, the elephant breath and the lion breath.
We poured paint over ghost pumpkins and then we painted them. We made cool colours and a bit of a mess as well.
In drama we met a frog called Fidelma. We have been telling her all about school and how to be a frog. We are very good at jumping like frogs.
Lucia and Anna are our news reporters this week. Here is what they enjoyed this week in Junior Infants.
We are looking forward our assembly today! We love the song Che Che!
Senior Infants
We’re preparing for Halloween and we’ve turned our classroom into a scary dungeon. Enter at your own risk!! We were finger painting in art this week and we made owls. We love writing our news and drawing a picture of the news.
Rang 1
We had a great week in Rang a hAon this week and have started preparing for Halloween in the classroom! On Monday, we went for an autumn walk in Linear Park to look at the fallen leaves and collect some for an art lesson. We have been learning about maps in geography and looking at the world from a Bird's Eye View. On Wednesday, we played new games out in the yard using different PE equipment. It was lots of fun!
This week's Classroom Correspondent is Robert O'Herlihy:
"I went to Linear Park. I looked at Google Earth and I saw Dublin Zoo, New York and Sydney Harbour. I had a good week."
Rang 2
I thought we could start this week's news with a joke!
Why did the king leave his castle and go to the dentist? To get his teeth crowned!
This week in Rang 2 was Castle week.
We learned some great vocabulary about the different parts of a castle such as:
Dungeon, Portcullis, Moat, Drawbridge and Turret.
We looked at life in a castle in these times and a bird’s eye view of a typical medieval castle.
We are almost finished building our castles from found materials and are very excited to finish them for next week. Thanks to our reporters Hubert and Danielle for the lovely photos.
All the leaves are brown and the sky is grey. It must be autumn! The weather is changing and the leaves are turning beautiful autumnal colours. In our art lesson we explored how trees change with the seasons. They are really lovely. Well done Rang 2!
We also focused on autumn during Gaeilge. ‘An fómhar atá ann’ is how to say ‘It is autumn’ as Gaeilge.
Rang 3
The highlights from this week were Forest School and preparing for our assembly!
In Forest School we did a range of activities. We found our ‘sit spot’ and had 5 minutes sitting in silence listening to the sounds around us. We used lots of the tools again and drilled holes in the conkers. Some of us made necklaces and others made decorations for our special tree. We also got to use the big saw and cut through large pieces of bark to make a flat piece for our floats. We also made signs and posters for our dens and formed tribes, to protect our dens! We had lunch and hot chocolate, as always, and wrote in our diaries. We are looking forward to next week already!
In maths we have been looking at ‘Lines and Angles’ and can identify parallel lines, horizontal and vertical lines. We can also identify right angles and straight angles.
In English and Core Curriculum we were reading and writing about famous black people in history who have achieved great things. We will have told the school all about this in our assembly today, Friday. We look forward to showing you some pictures of our assembly and art work next week.
Our kindness monitors have been catching people being kind and also we have been looking out for our secret person all week.
It was Mental Health Week also this week in school and we celebrated by doing extra mindfulness everyday focusing on positive affirmations. We also made posters to put up with positive affirmations that we say to ourselves to help us feel better. Examples are: I am kind, I am intelligent, I am strong, I am brave. We also focused on sending kindness to others that we find it hard to get along with. We sent them wishes like: May you be happy, May you be healthy, May your life be filled with joy. We found this hard at first but it is helping us to change our mood when dealing with others.
Rang 4
This week we finished learning about lines and angles in maths. We also started subtraction. We also drew our names on a piece of paper and stuck them on the door. We did a collaborative artwork activity where we made ‘Frankenstein Monsters’. Everyone drew the head of the monster, folded the paper and passed the drawing on. Then we did the same for the torso and legs. At the end we had 30 very unique creations! Ms. Delaney thought we were so creative and we had a lot of fun.
This week was Mental Health Week so we did positive affirmations and completed a gratitude journal every day. We did a drama of ‘An Timpiste’. We learned about Black History month which is the month of October. We learned about some notable Black Irish people. We are doing a very important engineering project and we have been doing a very fun Viking project.
By Nina and Beau
Rang 5
Last Friday after we sent our newsletter we did still images and thought tracking in drama. A still image is where you pick a moment in time (often as another character) and freeze in the position of that moment. Our classmates then try to guess the moment and guess who each character is. Thought tracking is where you say what your character would be thinking in that moment. We had read about Katie Taylor in our ‘Girls Play Too’ book so we did our still images on her Olympic final win in 2012.
Over the week we have been working on Number Theory in maths. In P.E we practiced one-handed catches and we played a big game of rounders, which was really fun. It was Mental Health Awareness week here in RMDS so we completed our usual mindfulness in class but we also had mindfulness for homework. Each night we tried out a different mindful activity. We have a whole school assembly on Friday which we learned the call and response song ‘Che Che Kule’ for.
On Wednesday members of An Garda Síochána came to speak to us about safety at Halloween and they gave us high visibility bags and arm bands. They answered loads of questions for us and we are excited for them to come back soon. After the Gardaí left on Wednesday we pushed back all the tables and chairs and played drama games. We played ‘Heads down, thumbs up’ and ‘Blink Detective’. We also played drama games on Thursday morning before putting our tables back to normal. Lastly in art this week we made spooky haunted houses using paint. You can see some examples of these in the pictures below. We had another great week in Rang a Cúig! Thank you for reading!
Rang 6
We have had a very interesting week in Rang a Sé. We have been reading ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ for the last couple of weeks and are a good bit of the way through. Last Friday we had art and we did 3D drawings. On Monday we started doing long division in maths. It is a hard topic but we are doing well. We are doing WWI projects in school and will present them today and tomorrow. We are also making ‘Reel-life’ science videos to enter into a competition. On Wednesday we practiced our geography and atlas skills with a challenging crossword. On Thursday we had PE where we worked on our throwing and catching skills and played rounders. It was great fun!
By Milo and Jack
Ranelagh Multi-Denominational School, Ranelagh Road, Dublin 6, D06 Y658
Telephone/Fax: (01) 4961722 ● E-mail: secretary@rmds.ie
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Roll No. 19928Q ● Principal: Rosemarie Stynes
