Clare Primary School

Rev. P. McClelland kindly came to Clare today for our final assembly of the year. He read a beautiful book centred around a special message for our pupils. We provided our full attendance children with their awards, we had the final Bucket Fillers of the year and we wished Miss Henning every happiness on her upcoming wedding with a gift from the staff.
Mrs Turkington co-ordinated a beautiful book with special messages and a gift from her wedding list from the children in P6.
We look forward to welcoming Mrs Buckley (Miss Henning) to our school in September!

Friends of Clare PTA associated with Clare Primary School, received funding from Armagh, Banbridge & Craigavon Borough Council to purchase a lifesaving defibrillator for the use of both school and the local community.

Clare Primary is located at 58 Cloghoge Road, Tandragee, BT62 2HB and the defibrillator is located outside the school in a locked cabinet. It is registered on the circuit so in an emergency situation an emergency 999 operator can give out the code.

The Lord Mayor, Margaret Tinsley met with the principal of Clare, Miss Lindsay, and some of the Friends of Clare PTA group, Samantha Mackle and Audrey Docherty and their children, last week to officially promote local knowledge of the AED.

We would like to thank ABC council for this fantastic opportunity for the local rural community and Clare School.
Photo credit: Juanita from babyphotographyni

Another fantastic creation from our Lego experts, using the roles of engineer, supplier and builder to finish this beautiful underwater scene. Well done Alysha, Em-J and LJ.

SPORT'S DAY CHAMPIONS

Following completion of our Sport's Day track and field events, we awarded our P4 - P7 champions with their certificates. This morning in a special assembly we reflected on all aspects of sport and competition, and most importantly the race of life in which eternal life is the ultimate prize for all. We hope that our P7s will carry this message to their high school.

CHAMPIONS
P4 Annie (Group 1), Evie (Group 2) & Freddie
P5 Em-J (Group 1), LJ (Group 2) & Will
P6 Rebekah (Group 1), Tara (Group 2), Henry & Noah (joint winners)
P7 Rebekah, Ethan & Jay (joint winners)
P7s were also awarded the Sport's Girl and Sport's Boy trophies in their leavers' assembly yesterday.

Our children participate in all of our sporting opportunities with grit and determination, but most importantly with respect for each other and their coach. We thank you, as their parents for encouraging them to participate, and providing them with the opportunity to experience our vast after school sports programme.

Mr Wilson and the musicians kindly lead us in song to close our assembly - these children certainly warm the soul!

Keeping Clare Clean!

The Eco-committee completed a litter pick in the Clare community. They were kitted out with HI-Vis vests, gloves and litter pickers and off they went on their litter pick. The children carried out a litter tally sheet to document all of the rubbish they found both around the school grounds and around the neighbouring developments. The Eco-committee really enjoyed carrying out the litter pick, so much so, that this might become a regular occurrence for the Eco-committee…all to ensure Clare is kept clean!

We would like to congratulate our Primary 7 pupils on their wonderful leavers assembly today. We wish you every happiness and success as you move on to your new schools. Remember, you are always welcome at Clare!

Tandragee library is celebrating it’s 50th anniversary next week on Wednesday 5th July! Liz Weir, a storyteller who travels the world with her tales, is coming to Tandragee Library from 11.00 – 12.30 on Wednesday 5th July for an intergenerational storytelling event.

We hope to hear about lots of pupils in the branch setting a reading target for their summer holidays.

We would like to thank you Spar in Tandragee for their donation of resources for our sports day. They kindly gave an array of sporting goods, which we can use all year round and medals and stickers were given for us to award the children with. All this adds to the excitment of the day!

We would like to thank JD Hunters in Markethill for their kind donation of water and apples, to help keep the children healthy and refreshed after all the running (and sunshine!) during our Sports Day.

Thank you to all who voted for our school in the JD Hunters Cash For Schools over Christmas - we have won £500 of the total £5,000 prize fund!

Keep shopping local, the difference it makes is understated!

A massive thank you to JD Hunters for running such a wonderfully supportive initiative.

Primary 6 and Primary 7 were very fortunate to have taken part in the ‘Junk Kouture’ Fast Fashion Workshop on Wednesday 14th June 2023.

This fast fashion workshop was an in-school session where Ben, a representative from Eco Schools NI, came into Clare PS to deliver a workshop based on clothing waste and the effects on the environment. The children discussed countries that contribute to the high export of clothing, clothing brands that manufacture mass clothing and touched on the topic of ‘sweat shops’, which was very informative.

Ben was encouraging the Primary 6 and 7 pupils to recycle or reuse clothes instead of throwing them out so it was only right that the workshop was finished by turning our old t-shirts into bags that we can reuse time and time again!

Please see our school website for more photos.

Today we had Rev. Colin Darling join us for assembly. He explained all about Father's Day and the inclusion of our Father God in our daily life and how both fathers love and protect us. He selected the names from our Buckets of Loveliness too.

Please see our website for the photographs from Ganaway. .

Joanne, from Tandragee Library, came to tell us all about the Summer Reading Challenge 2023. She also picked out the pupils from the Buckets of Loveliness.

Mrs Bennett awarded Savannah, Lydia, Daniel and Alfie with their Reading their certificates.

Freddie, Lily, Shayla and Sophie were presented with their piping and drumming certificates in assembly as they were not able to attend their reception in Stormont.

There has been a slight delay in getting these posted on Facebook due to the residential.

The final day room inspections are complete, breakfast enjoyed by lots of tired children and we are off to do our final activities.

Wi-Fi has been poor, phone tethering not strong enough and so we have not been able to post anymore photos of your children. I am very sure you will hear all when we return! Photos will be posted on our website and some more on Facebook soon.

CHILDREN CAN BE COLLECTED EARLY FROM SCHOOL. WE WILL SEND AN EMAIL WHEN WE LEAVE GANAWAY.

Our first day consisted of the climbing wall, team games including tug of war, zip line, archery, football during free time, a beach walk and an incredible lunch and dinner was served.

The children were great at clearing and cleaning their tables, helping with supper and washing up! Time for room inspections…

A delayed update for this evening due to the very poor wifi and the extremely busy day! We are off to the beach with some very excited children!

A massive thank you to the Friends of Clare for tidying up the front of the school today.

It looks so good and gives a lovely first impression for visitors as well as giving those already at our school a real sense of pride over our school building.

Thank you all for a fantastic job!

Annie in P4 competes in ‘Beanie Tetrathlon’ with Pony Club.
Tetrathlon consists of riding, running, swimming & shooting. As Annie is Under 8 she isn’t allowed to handle a gun so throws beanbags onto a target instead.
For the beanies they jump a 40cm cross country score – max 1400 points; swim as far as possible in 2 minutes, run 500metres and throw the beanbag to try to score 1000 points.

Annie’s personal bests from all her competitions are:
XC – 1400
Run – 2mins 15 secs
Swim – 73 metres
Target – 800/1000

She placed 1st in the last Tetrathlon hosted by North Down Pony Club with a score of 3835 points. Incredibly well done Annie!

Some of our P5, P6 and P7 children had the privilege of attending a reception in Parliament Buildings, Stormont, to receive their Certificates of Achievement from the Ulster Scot's Agency. We were very well represented with 7 children gaining recognition for their piping and 12 children for snare drumming.

We thank the Ulster Scot's Agency for providing our children with the opportunity to learn how to play these instruments and for organising this wonderful evening for the children and their parents.

We also express our gratitude to our piping tutor Ian and our snare drum tutor Barney for their lessons, guidance and enthusiasm since September. The majority of these children had never piped or drummed before.

Thank you to all involved and congratulations to our fabulous children.

Congratulations to our P4 pupil Jack who won the Player of the Year award at Portadown Rugby Club's recent prize giving. We are extremely proud of Jack and delighted to see his skill and determination shining through on the sport's field. Well done.

We wanted to share with you more sporting success for Violet. She won most improved under 10 player at Armagh Rugby Club! Well done, we are very proud of you.

We had the RNLI in for assembly today - Noah was looking ready for action in his new uniform!

Chris and Steven taught us their 4 key messages for water safety:
Stop and think
Stay Together
FLOAT
Rip
Ask your children about them tonight, you may even get a demonstration! Reinforce the need to call 999 if necessary.

Please watch the website for further photos over the next day or so.

Our hockey players competed in a tournament at Ardmore, Armagh against 18 local schools. We were able to field two teams; a mixed team and a girls' team. The mixed team came 3rd in their section with amazing wins over Markethill PS and Drumhillery PS, and a draw with Poyntzpass. Our goal scorers were Noah (P6) and Henry (P6). Jay (P7) played exceptionally well in goals - especially as it was his first time. The girls' team played their very best in a competitive section. These children make us proud every day and it is lovely to see their hard work paying off. We need to thank Christine Russell (CR Hockey) who has coached a lot of these children from P1 and has developed their love for the game. We are privileged to be able to offer our after school activities to all our children from P1 to P7.

We had a fantastic day on Friday celebrating the Coronation of King Charles III. The children did a range of activities and we made 6 new classes, each one had pupils from Primary 1 - Primary 7! We will upload the photographs to our website shortly.

Congratulations to our hockey players, Rebekah (P7), Tara (P6) and Violet (P5), who were prize winners at the recent Armagh Hockey Club awards evening.
Rebekah won an award for the Best Newcomer, having joined the club in September. Tara was awarded for being the Most Improved P6 player while Violet was the Most Improved P5 player. It is amazing to see our pupils using their sporting talents in their community. Well done girls and keep it up!

Friends of Clare have an update from their Family Quiz night. They managed to raise over £2,500 (there are a few more sponsorships still coming in).

We would like to thank them for their hard work and dedication to make this event the huge success it was.

We are extremely grateful to the companies who contributed to this event too - please remember to check the photograph for any of your shopping or services needs. It is so important to shop local and support those involved in return!

We are in the process of buying new laptops with funding raised earlier in the year, so all the funds raised make a huge difference to the running and provision of high quality education at Clare Primary School!

Assembly today was all about the importance of attending school every day. Did you know a fortnight holiday every year will lead to missing a total of 3 1/2 months of education by the time a child finishes school in P7?

We are certainly glad our Lovely Bucket Fillers have been in school this week, helping us all to make Clare Primary School the special place it is.

On Tuesday 18th April Clare Primary had the privilege of having a wonderful gardening expert, Fiona, come into our school and help us plant lots of lovely plants, herbs and flowers from our school polytunnel.

Fiona had so much knowledge and we had so much fun planting, whilst learning lots of really interesting facts about all of the different plants at the same time!

We now have lots of great things growing both inside our polytunnel and in our growing ‘Sensory Garden’. We can’t wait to watch everything bloom and grow here at Clare Primary!

For more photographs of our planting day, please have a look at our school website.

The winning team this year was the Masterminds, the Wooden Spoon this year went to the Two Tigers and Elsa won the guess the mini eggs!

Refreshments are organised, kiddie corner ready, tech check done and prizes everywhere. We are nearly ready to quiz-we just need you!

The tables are set for the quiz tonight, some of the prizes to be won are already displayed, our winning cup is engraved with last year’s winning team name and is ready to add this year’s champions!

All of which would not be possible with our sponsors or the Friends of Clare team and of course our superb Quiz Master! Thank you!

We look forward to welcoming you all later!

Our amazing Family Quiz Night is back!

We can’t wait to welcome you on Friday evening - this is a community event, you don’t have to have a child in our school.

Our first Lego challenge is complete! This is no ordinary Lego build, each person has a specific role to undertake and must communicate with description and precision to the others in the team exactly which the piece is required and where it has to go. Each role is undertaken in 5 minute blocks, by rotation in one session. Watch out for our future engineers!