School News

Here’s what’s been happening in Gracehill

Musicians of the Month

Well done to our March Musicians of the Month!

We love your hard work and dedication.

Keep it up!

7-a-side Finals Day

Our 7-a-side football team played at the Ballymena Finals Day on Wednesday 18th March. They beat Carniny, St. Colmcilles and Ballykeel to make it to the final against Buick. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be against a very strong Buick team who beat us 1-0.

Our boys played some fantastic football and should be very proud of their silver medals. Well done.

Orchestra Concert

Congratulations to our school orchestra of P5-P7 pupils who put on a wonderful concert for family and friends on Wednesday afternoon.

You should be extremely proud of how well you performed and how professional you sounded and looked. Well done!

Celebrating Our Fantastic Readers

Well done to Amy and Jack who are our first Word Millionaires of the year! This is an amazing achievement and we hope to see you enjoying many more books over the rest of the year.

Here are our fantastic competition winners from World Book Day!. Enjoy your prizes and we look forward to seeing your enthusiasm for reading grow. Well done

World Book Day

What a wonderful day celebrating reading.

Thank you to all who dressed up as their favourite character, to those guest readers who came in, to the competition entries and to the dinner ladies for putting on a special lunch!

Here are some snapshots of out day.

Planet Neve

P1-3 enjoyed a music show with Neve. The children had fun learning about pitch, tempo and rhythms through lots of different songs.

Hockey Tournament

On Wednesday 4th March a squad of P7 girls headed to Parkhall to compete in an area hockey tournament.

The girls played with grit and determination and did Gracehill proud!

Well done girls, you're amazing

Cookery Club and the Great Outdoors

Cookery club joined with the great outdoors club on Tuesday to build and light and campfire and then toast marshmallows to make s’mores!

Ballymena Festival

Our school choir entered the Ballymena Festival on Thursday 26th February.

They sang two beautiful pieces and were awarded with 3rd place out of 8 schools.

An amazing achievement and well done to Mrs Logan and Mrs Cousley for their musical expertise.

Listen to Naughty

Listen to Pure Imagination

Musicians of the Month

Well done to our February Musicians of the Month!

We love your hard work and dedication.

Keep it up!

Ballymena Netball Tournament

The P7 girls had a great day representing Gracehill at the ‘Ballymena School Netball Tournament’ in Ballymena Leisure Centre. As always they had great fun and enjoyed themselves, the girls lost, drew and won matches ending with a 4-1 win! They should be so proud of themselves, well done girls!

February Football

There has been a lot to celebrate this month. Some P5s got a taster of school football at an event organised by the IFA at Ballymena Showgrounds.

Our P6 and P7 team qualified for the Senior Cup finals day by winning against St. Brigit’s Primary 5-1 and Fourtowns PS 3-0.

Well done to all the boys involved!

Champions!

On Thursday our boys travelled to Antrim Forum to compete in the Ballymena Primary School 5-a-side competition.

They played amazingly well and came out as eventual winners! A real achievement coming first out of 17 other teams in the area. Very well done boys!

Musicians of the Month

Well done to our January Musicians of the Month!

We love your hard work and dedication.

Keep it up!

Term 2 Clubs

We are delighted that our clubs for this term have started and the children are getting to experience so many new extra curricular activities.

We have cricket on Mondays, rugby, hockey, cookery, craft and ‘The Great Outdoors’ on Tuesdays, orchestra on Wednesdays, Scripture Union, netball and football on Thursdays. Many thanks to all the teachers, Oran from Randalstown RFC, Aaron from Northern Cricket Union, Coaching for Christ for helping deliver such a fantastic breadth of extra curricular activities at Gracehill. Photos will continue to appear as the weeks go on.

Sky Blues Visit

This week P6 got to meet players David Toure and Ali Gould and coach Glenn Wilkinson from the Ballymena United football team. The boys and girls took part in a short training session and enjoyed learning new skills and taking part in team games. They were delighted to be presented with a signed Ballymena United shirt. Thank you Sky Blues 🩵

Primary 6 Swimming Certificates

For the past term P6 boys and girls have been attending Ballymena Leisure Centre for swimming lessons once a week. Today they celebrated getting their certificates for water confidence and swimming lengths of the pool. A super achievement by everyone, well done!

The Choir is Coming to Town…

Our school choir have had a wonderful time spreading Christmas cheer with our performances at Radio Cracker and Creative Gardens. Thanks so much to all the parents, family and friends for their support in coming along to these events and to all the children who have worked so hard over the last number of weeks in preparation for these events and our upcoming Carol Service.

Outdoor Learning in Primary 4

Mr McBurney's P4 class enjoyed using iPads to identify a huge variety of birds in our local area. Who knew Gracehill was home to so many species of birds?

Dreamspace Ambassadors - Term 1 Update

Our 8 Dreamspace Ambassadors (DSA) have been getting trained up online by Neeve and Matty from Microsoft Dublin and W5 respectively.

They have learnt how to code and today were learning how to use AI through Minecraft Education Hour of Code.

After their training session today, our DSA’s then became the teachers! They taught P6 how to send secure encrypted messages from one Microbit to another using the radio feature. P6 have been studying WWI and they were imagining how you could create a useful gadget for the front line.

They have been super learners and teachers.

Musicians of the Month

Well done to our November Musicians of the Month!

We love your hard work and dedication.

Keep it up!

Primary 6 & WWI - Visit from Rev Jim Francis

This term in P6 the boys and girls have been learning all about World War One. We had the pleasure of having Rev Jim Francis from St Patrick’s church in Ballymena come in to talk to us about being a Chaplain in the British Army. It was very interesting to get an insight into training, life in war zones and what his job entailed. Jim told us lots of stories all about chaplains from WW1 and WW2. It was great to hear about how being on the army has changed since World War One to today. Thank you for sharing your experiences with us Jim.

Little Miss Muffet Visits Gracehill

We had a wonderful morning watching the pantomime in our assembly hall.

Our P1 - P7 children loved watching the story of Miss Muffet unfold. Thank you so much to Centre Stage for coming in and getting us into the Christmas mood.

7-a-side Football Success

Well done to our 7-a-side football team who won the local tournament at Fourtowns Primary School on 27th November. The boys came up against some very tough opposition in Buick Memorial, St Mary’s Portglenone, Groggan, Fourtowns and the Diamond.

They did extremely well not to concede a goal all afternoon but score 13! Buick and Gracehill were drawn on points but the trophy was awarded to Gracehill as we had scored more goals on the day.

Both Buick and Gracehill will progress to the Ballymena 7-a-side Finals Day after Christmas. Well done boys!

Hockey Team compete at Ballymena Academy

Our P6 and 7 girls represented our school at the Antrim area Ulster Hockey Blitz tournament on Wednesday 26th November at Ballymena Academy AstroTurf pitches.

Well done girls!

Netball Tournament

Our P6 and P7 girls had a great day representing Gracehill at the ‘Newbies Netball Tournament’ in Ballymena Leisure Centre. It is a new sport for all the girls and they learned lots of new skills and made a great improvement from getting beaten in their first few matches to winning 3-0 in their final match. They should be so proud of themselves, well done girls!

Football Club visit Carniny

Gracehill took three football teams (40 children) over to Carniny Primary School on Tuesday 18th November. They played three games against a Primary 7 team, a Primary 6 team and a mixed team. The boys and girls did brilliantly winning all of their games and conceding no goals. Thanks to Carniny for hosting and we look forward to many more good contests this year.

Kindness Week

As part of Kindness Week (10th - 14th November), we wore odd socks to celebrate how each one of us is unique.

We will be hearing in assemblies, and in our classrooms, about how we can be an even kinder school.

Check out some of our amazing odd socks below.

Rugby Club -

New Tackle Pads

Children at our rugby club had good fun learning to tackle last week. Many thanks to Mrs Henry, Miss Millar and Mrs Robinson for organising the purchasing of the new tackle pads. Watch out!

In Loving Memory

We were honoured to be presented with two new pBone beginner trombones by our Brass Tutor Mr Graham Murray and his daughter Rowan, a past pupil of Gracehill, in memory of our much-loved Brass Tutor Mrs Beverley Murray, who sadly passed away in February of this year.

The pBones were bought from the generous donations received in Bev's memory and are a very fitting, living legacy and tribute. We are most grateful to receive these fabulous new instruments and wish to express our sincere thanks to the Murray family.

Pictured are our P4 pupils who have started to learn to play the pBones, with Mr Murray their tutor.

Musicians of the Month

Well done to our October Musicians of the Month!

We love your hard work and dedication.

Keep it up!

I would like to express my gratitude and thanks to everyone who contributed to our harvest assembly. We collected 114 shoeboxes and a full carload of food items to forward to Ballymena foodbank. You can be assured that those less fortunate than ourselves will benefit greatly from your generosity and your gifts will make a big difference to those who receive them.

I would also like to thank Eve, from Scripture Union NI for speaking to the children and to our Primary Six children for leading our assembly so confidently.

Mr Radcliffe

Harvest Assembly

Owen Daley 7-a-side Football Tournament Success

A massive well done to our school football team who competed in the annual Owen Daley 7-a-side tournament.

They played 8 games and scored 14 goals including a bicycle kick from Rory to top their group.

They met Buick Memorial in the semi-final and two super strikes from Logan and Rory helped them into the final against St. Mary's Portglenone. Unfortunately, it wasn't to be as St Mary's scored a winner in extra time.

However, our boys can be extremely proud to have made it to the final 2 teams out of 18. They played with freedom and creativity and it was a joy to watch them during the day.

You represented our school brilliantly, well done.