📚✨ World Book Day 2026 at Our School! ✨📚

We had a fantastic week celebrating World Book Day, filled with creativity, imagination, and a whole school community brought together through a love of reading!

Each class transformed their classroom door into a vibrant display inspired by a favourite book—our corridors have never looked so magical! From colourful characters to famous story scenes, the children showed wonderful creativity and teamwork in bringing their chosen stories to life.

On World Book Day itself, pupils and staff dressed up as much‑loved characters from across the literary world. The school was bursting with wizards, adventurers, animals, superheroes, villains, and everything in between!

Our P5–7 pupils also took part in the World Book Day Big Quiz, challenging their book knowledge and working together in teams. The enthusiasm (and competitive spirit!) was brilliant to see.

Across the primary school, the children took part in our Buddy Read, pairing up with another class to enjoy stories together. It was a lovely way to build confidence, connection, and a shared joy for books.

To keep the excitement going, children were also given fun reading challenges to complete at home throughout the week—everyone was eager to see how many they could tick off!

A huge thank you to Miss Smyth for organising all these different events and a well done to all our pupils and staff for making this year’s celebration such a memorable one. 💛📖

Here’s to many more stories, adventures, and reading fun!

Pancake Tuesday: Our Very Own Pancake Olympics!

On Pancake Tuesday, we celebrated in true style by hosting our very own Pancake Olympics—and what a day it was! Each house competed in a series of fun (and sometimes chaotic!) pancake‑themed challenges. Pupils raced to collect pancakes, completed a scavenger hunt to track down all the necessary ingredients, took part in a pancake flipping competition and everyone worked brilliantly together in the spirit of friendly competition.

Our P7 pupils took things up a level with their Great Pancake Bake-Off. They made their own pancakes from scratch and then taste‑tested each other’s creations to decide whose culinary skills came out on top. There were some very impressive results—and lots of happy tasters!

To finish the day with a flourish, the staff took center stage, going head‑to‑head in a fiercely competitive pancake showdown. Although the contest ended in a draw, a few staff members weren’t entirely satisfied… so a final‑final tiebreaker had to be held.

In a tense and dramatic pancake‑blowing race between Miss Adamson and Miss Carson, the pressure was on. With determination (and excellent pancake‑propelling technique!), Miss Adamson claimed victory and was absolutely delighted.

It was a brilliant day filled with laughter, teamwork, and a whole lot of pancake‑powered fun!

This was the end of our trip to Shannaghmore. Lots of very tired children this morning which the teachers had to wake up. Today the children enjoyed Archery and Orienteering. The children had some free time before lunch for a bit of exploring around the site and it was then lunchtime and then the bus home. The boys and girls were wonderful and the staff commented on how well behaved they were and what a lovely school we have! How right they are! Home and to bed was what was needed for all the children and teachers. Thank you to Shannaghmore for the super experience you gave our children and thank you to Miss Adamson and Miss Pamela for taking such good care of our children.

Most children were up early (some from 6:30 a.m.) and full of energy, ready for the day ahead. Today, the children started by going to Bloody Bridge to do some bouldering up the river. They really enjoyed climbing over the rocks and boulders and jumping into the pools of water.

In the afternoon, they did lots of climbing and navigated the ropes course. To help build their confidence, they all started on the low ropes and learned some of the techniques needed. They then moved on to the climbing wall, the high ropes course and the zipline. Well done to the children for trying this, as some of it can be quite scary when you're so high up looking down at the ground!

In the evening, the children entertained their friends and the staff with Bessbrook's Got Talent. They finished off by watching the rest of the movie from the previous night and had some free time.

Everyone arrived at school in great time and was very excited to be heading off on their residential trip to Shannaghmore. On the first day, the children began with an Adventure Walk, which took them through parts of Tollymore that they wouldn’t usually explore. They crawled through tunnels, walked up rivers, jumped in muddy puddles, and had lots of fun.

In the evening, everyone was blindfolded and went on a Nightline through the forest at Shannaghmore, holding tightly to the rope while navigating obstacles. Afterwards, the children relaxed with a movie and some snacks before spending time in their rooms and then heading to bed.

Today we had our Harvest celebration in school where we were thanking God for all that he has given us. Mrs Laverty's class and Miss Adamson's class had prepared a short item each to present to the rest of the school. They reminded us about how we have lots of delicious food, farmers who work hard growing and harvesting it and people who use the food to prepare lovely meals. The whole school also took part by singing the harvest song they had been learning in assembly. The school council then delivered all the lovely fruit and vegetables that the parents had sent into school to Avila Nursing Home. The staff were delighted to receive the bags of food and will use it to prepare delicious meals for the residents. Thank-you to everyone who sent in items for the harvest.