St. Patrick’s Parish Skerries
Dear Parent(s) / Guardian(s),
We hope you are keeping well and safe during these difficult days.
As a way of supporting you at home and helping you pray with your children, we are providing a space on Wednesday evenings for families to join us for Bible Stories and Prayer.
The family prayer time will be on the parish webcam (visit www.stpatricksskerries.ie and follow the webcam link) as well as the parish radio (87.5FM) and will begin at 7.30pm each Wednesday evening beginning this Wednesday April 22nd.
Each family prayer time will focus on a Bible story with ways of praying based on the story and will cater for all children attending school.
We promise we won’t keep you too long and we hope that you can join us as a way of linking parish, home and school during these days of ‘separation’.
During these uncertain days for us all, praying at home is a great way of uniting your family. Even if they don’t seem to pay attention, nothing of what you do as a parent is lost, every little counts, and contributes to building up your child’s faith. By seeing you pray, they will also learn to pray.
Remember - When you pray with your child:
And always remember…
With every good wish and blessing,
Fr. James & Fr. Melvyn
Survey on the development of Music Education for Children & Young People
Dear Principal & Teachers,
I would like to send a message of support and solidarity to you and your colleagues, pupils and families affected by the current crisis. Fingal Arts Office endeavors to sustain arts development in Fingal, and within this context I bring your attention to public consultation for the development of music education for children and young people in Fingal.
If you have access, I invite you to complete a survey for schools/music education providers below. If you are communicating with pupils/families remotely, I invite you to share this email with those families, who might like to have their views heard. There is an added bonus for children and young people who can opt in to a draw to win a €50 voucher for one of Fingal’s Arts Centres.
Have Your Say!
Performance Music Education for children and young people in Fingal.
Fingal County Council, in partnership with the Dublin and Dún Laoghaire Education and Training Board, invite you to complete a survey that will help us understand your views regarding access to performance music education for children and young people in the county.
This research will support a submission to Music Generation, the national performance music education programme, to extend and enrich the partners’ commitment to children & young people in Fingal.
Your views are important to this process and will enable the partners to develop and deliver music education programmes that suit the needs of those aged 0 – 18 years, now and into the future.
There are three surveys to choose from:
We invite Children & Young People to complete this survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/FingalMusicYoungPeople
We invite Schools, Music Education Providers & Musicians to complete this survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/FingalMusicProivders
We invite the General Public to complete this survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/FingalMusicGeneralPublic
Should you require assistance or alternative mechanisms to complete a survey please email Fingal County Council’s Youth & Education Officer julie.clarke@fingal.ie
Deadline for survey submission: 5pm Wednesday 22nd April 2020.
Be in with a chance to win!
Children and Young People are invited to opt in to a draw to win a €50 gift voucher for one of Fingal’s Arts Centres - Draíocht and the Séamus Ennis Arts Centre, upon survey completion. See information within Children &Young People survey link.
Please feel free to get in touch if you have any queries,
Kind regards,
Julie
Julie Clarke, Youth & Education Officer, Fingal Arts Office, Fingal County Council, Grove Road, Dublin 15.
Tel: 018905960
twitter: @fingalarts
Agri Aware, Ireland's agri-food educational charity have relaunched their popular primary school programme Incredible Edibles and opened it up to families to participate during this time of isolation and school closures.
Since food has been flying off the shelves in many supermarkets across Ireland, Agri Aware are encouraging families to learn all about where that food comes from and the importance of consumption of Irish fruit and vegetables, for a healthy balanced diet.
There are five tasks to complete in this Family Challenge, on topics such as food origin, identifying Irish food, planting, cooking and healthy eating week. Any parent can sign up their kids for free and on completion of the 5 tasks, may be in with a chance to win some prizes worth up to €175.
Parents are simply asked to take pictures of the worksheets given and write a simple description on what they did for each task. There are also two levels to facilitate different abilities of learning, beginner and advanced.
To sign up to this free project, or for more information, visit: www.incredibleedibles.ie
Please note: This is an add on to the project to adapt to current times and encourage those at home to participate in agri-food education. We would like to get as many students participating at home as possible and would greatly appreciate if you could help us spread the word by sending this out to your students if possible or sign up yourselves with your own family!
Kind Regards,
Eilis Greene
Programme and Events Manager
Agri Aware
We are equally aware that there are many students and parents in Ireland for whom English/Irish is not their first language.
With this in mind, the Department of Health and the HSE have produced Covid-19 resources in a range of languages other than Irish and English which you can access below:
The languages currently available are Chinese, Italian, Spanish, French, Arabic, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Latvian and Lithuanian.
An announcement was made this morning by the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar TD of the closure from Friday 13 March, of schools, pre-schools and further and higher education settings, for a period until 29 March 2020, to support efforts to contain the spread of Covid-19. This will take effect from 6pm this evening, Thursday 12 March. This is in line with the advice of the National Public Health Emergency Team.
All pupils and students, from pre-school to third level are urged to practice social distancing, and to minimise physical contact with each other, to help avoid the spread of Covid-19. This should include minimising social contact, avoiding meeting up and keeping physical space between them. Parents and guardians are urged to support their children to maintain this approach.
In order to minimise the impact on teaching and learning all schools will be asked to continue to plan lessons and, where possible, provide online resources for students or online lessons where schools are equipped to do so. Schools are asked to be conscious of students that may not have access to online facilities and to consider this actively in their response.
Schools are asked to prioritise supporting exam classes to continue to prepare for State examinations.
Physical classes in universities and higher education facilities will not be held during the closure. Institutions can make other arrangements for teaching and learning and other activities in line with their business continuity plans and contingency planning.
Minister for Education and Skills Joe McHugh TD said:
“I am deeply conscious of the impact that school and education setting closures have on students, on families and on the wider community. This is a necessary and proportionate measure that we are taking as a pro-active measure to help contain the threat of Covid-19.
“This is the right decision at the right time. It is taken in the best interests of our children, our young people, our school and college communities and our wider society.
“At this point in time the closure is planned for two weeks, from tomorrow until 29 March. The Government, in conjunction with the public health authorities, will keep the situation under ongoing review. Any change to that date will be communicated widely.
“Pupils should take their books and learning materials home with them this evening.
“This is a very challenging time for our pupils, our teachers, our students and our colleagues in further and higher education.
“Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine – we all live in one another’s shadow. If there was ever a time for us to appreciate how closely we are connected, how much what we do maters to others, how much we rely on each other, this is it. This is a time where we all need to work together for the best possible outcome for our students. The support of everyone across the sector is vital, as we all strive to ensure that this threat is dealt with as effectively as possible.”
The Department of Education and Skills will remain open and will continue to provide supports to the education sector at this time.
The Department of Education and Skills has been liaising closely on a continual basis with the Department of Health in relation to Coronavirus/Covid-19 since early January. This will continue.
Ireland is operating a containment strategy in line with WHO and ECDC advice
How to Prevent:
The symptoms > A Cough > Shortness of Breath > Breathing Difficulties > Fever (High Temperature)
The following link gives up-to-date information from the Department of Education
There will be an internet Safety Speaker coming to the school on Tuesday 3rd March to speak to pupils in 2nd - 6th classes about internet safety and cyber bullying. Following this there will be a Parental Session in the school at 7pm, which will run for approximately 90 minutes.
All Parents are welcome to attend !