Newsletter 14/10/24

Dia duit a chara,

We hope you have had a blessed weekend and that you are receiving many blessings from Our Lady of the Holy Rosary this month. There are so many blessings to be received from praying the rosary, and Our Lady of Fatima has asked us to pray this beautiful prayer every day. This devotion is especially pleasing to Our Lady since she is the queen who has bestowed this great instrument of grace upon us. Thank you, Our Lady! Our Lady of the Holy Rosary, pray for us!

The history of the rosary goes back a long time, but the Dominicans and St Dominic are especially famous for this devotion, and this being case, it is a fitting time to share some of the work being undertaken by the Dominican sisters with our students. The older children are learning about virtue this year with a new programme, ‘Virtues in Practise’; they are also continuing to learn about and practice Lectio Divinia, illumination of scripture by learning calligraphy, and chanting the Psalm of the day. The middle classes of children have been learning about the Holy Rosary, whilst the younger classes have been exploring the chasuble. Thank you very much, sisters, for the great catechesis that the children are being blessed with!

We shall continue our exploration of our Music curriculum this week. As previously mentioned, Music is a great way to promote culture. The promotion of Catholic Culture and Irish Culture are central to our school’s mission, and this is enlivened in a unique way by the celebration of Irish and Catholic music. We are blessed with many different teachers of Music in Stella Maris School. Some of our students are taught to sing by the Dominican sisters, Canon Henry teaches Gregorian Chant, whilst hymns in English and Irish are being taught by three of our new lay volunteers. This rich inculturation into the different musical traditions of the Catholic Church is of great benefit to our pupils, academically, humanly and spiritually.

We wish you all a blessed week. Please keep us in your prayers, and know that we keep all our benefactors in our daily morning prayers, too.

God bless you,

Richard Casey

Headmaster of Stella Maris School

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Newsletter 30/9/24

Dia duit a chara,

We hope you have had a blessed weekend and that the Archangels may bless you and your loved ones during this time after their feast. Did you know that we have St Michael the Archangel displayed in our classroom? He is our defender and a very powerful angel to invoke against the Devil. St Michael the Archangel, pray for us!

The boys and girls have been blessed to visit the park and the playground most days during September, despite some mixed weather! The boys and girls have had great fun playing, relaxing and socialising, which are all of great importance during recreation time in school. Friendships are formed during these times which may blossom into lifelong friendships in the faith. Socialising on a daily basis with good Catholic children is a wonderful way to grow in the faith and to develop in a healthy, happy environment.

We were blessed to have Mass celebrated by Canon Henry last Thursday. The boys and girls sang the ‘Salve Regina’ at the end of Mass to our Blessed Mother. This has been practised by the boys and girls in their Gregorian Chant lessons. It was a very beautiful and moving experience to see the pupils honouring our mother in such a pleasing manner.

This leads nicely into our next curriculum discussion, which is of the importance of the arts in our educational provision. We will begin by discussing music. Music is a vital way of transmitting culture. Songs and musical pieces are very enjoyable to listen to and we all know what it feels like to get a song ‘stuck in our heads’. This facet of our human nature can be used for good or for ill. If we fill our minds and hearts with good songs and beautiful hymns and music then our minds and hearts will be full of this goodness and beauty, or the opposite can also be true. This is why we pick beautiful music to focus on and memorise in Stella Maris School, so that our children can grow in goodness and beauty each day!

We wish you all a blessed week. Please keep us in your prayers, and know that we keep all our benefactors in our daily morning prayers, too.

God bless you,

Richard Casey

Headmaster of Stella Maris School

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Newsletter 16/9/24

Dia duit a chara,

We hope you are having a blessed summer, and that you have been able to have some time for rest and relaxation with family and friends! We are delighted to have returned to school and I am glad to inform you that our students are refreshed and were very happy to come back to Stella Maris School.

We were very blessed last week to have the great opportunity to visit the relic of St Bernadette. The boys and girls were told about Our Lady’s appearance to St Bernadette and how she prayed the rosary with her. Her self-declaration of being ‘The Immaculate Conception’ was taught to the children. We hope that the visit will help us all to grow in holiness and in the virtues lived out by St Bernadette and Our Lady of Lourdes.

Thank you very much to all those who donated to our recent Go Fund Me campaign. This was a huge help to pay for some of our essential start-of-year expenses. Thank you very much for your great generosity.

Before we return to our curriculum exposition, we will discuss some of the activities that the boys and girls will be engaged in this year. The boys and girls will continue their Catholic readers and grammar books this year in English, as they continue to develop their literacy skills in a way that encourages their faith. The boys and girls will continue to engage in their Maths programme this year which is complemented by our mental Maths and tables programmes to ensure their numeracy skills are as sharp as possible. Our Irish team will be added to by Ms Casey this year, her experience and singing ability will be a great blessing to our children’s Gaeilge and Irish singing! In Catechesis, the Dominicans, Fr Bernardino of the Franciscan Friars and Canon Henry of the Institute of Christ the King will be teaching the children about the faith. As well as the teaching of these four main subjects, we will continue to teach our other nine subjects: Geography, History, Science, Art, Music, Drama, PE, Latin and French.

We wish you all a blessed week. Please keep us in your prayers, and know that we keep all our benefactors in our daily morning prayers, too.

God bless you,

Richard Casey

Headmaster of Stella Maris School

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Newsletter 8/8/24

Dia duit a chara,

We hope you are having a blessed summer, and that you have been able to have some time for rest and relaxation with family and friends!

With just a month to go until school returns, we are happy to announce that we have new students joining us in September! Two families will be joining us shortly, with a third hoping to enrol their children as soon as possible. This is very positive news for Stella Maris School and we thank you for your prayers!

It is very encouraging to know that the great work of Stella Maris School is being talked about by people around Munster, and even abroad! Recently, after Mass, an elderly sister who has been living out her vocation devoutly in Liverpool with the Little Sisters of the Poor, congratulated Master Casey on the great work being completed in Stella Maris School and encouraged him to continue this most important work of traditional Catholic education. More and more people are hearing about Stella Maris School, and more and more families are hoping to send their children to our wonderful school in the future. Thank God for this option for traditional Catholic education which is making a huge difference to these children’s lives and is a source of great hope for many for the future.

In order for Stella Maris School to continue to provide its stellar education for its current and incoming students, we are still in need of generous benefactors to help allay the cost of some of our major expenses during the year. Two of these expenses come at the beginning of the school year, as we have to buy new books for our students and to pay €1,700 for the insurance for our school. Your spiritual and material support at this important time of the school year is greatly needed and appreciated! Please donate here, and share this link with your social media groups! https://gofund.me/bd63b178

We have a new wonderful teacher, Ms. Casey, joining us this September. Ms. Casey will be involved in teaching Gaeilge, Music and Catechesis. This wonderful addition to our school will provide the children with new inspiration in these subjects, as well as being another example of a devout young Catholic teacher. Perhaps you are in a position, or know someone who is in a position, to teach a subject in Stella Maris School; if you are interested in teaching a subject, please contact us at info@stellamarisprimaryschool.com If you are a primary or secondary school teacher and would be interested in helping for an hour or two, we would be delighted to hear from you. We are also particularly looking for a teacher to help with the teaching of Art. Perhaps God has blessed you with another talent that you can share with the Stella Maris School community, like administration; we are also in great need of a cleaner as our wonderful cleaner can no longer help us, this position would be for 30-45 mins a week. Any help that can be provided to us in this regard would be hugely appreciated by students, parents and staff!

We wish you all a blessed summer. Please keep us in your prayers, and know that we keep all our benefactors in our daily morning prayers, too.

God bless you,

Richard Casey

Headmaster of Stella Maris School

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Newsletter 18/6/24

Dia duit a chara,

We hope you are having a most blessed month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Just today we were given a new beautiful sign of the Sacred Heart to display in our school for the month of June, proclaiming, “June is dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus”. This adds to our beautiful Irish flag with the Sacred Heart, which is hanging proudly in our school window. There is no doubt about the commitment of Stella Maris School to the Most Sacred Heart of Our Lord! Public displays of piety and devotion help to strengthen our students and staff in our faith on a daily basis.

We are delighted to inform you that we had our sports day last Thursday. The children had wonderful fun taking part in many different races. They were engaging in sprinting races, as well as taking part in the three-legged race, the wheelbarrow race, the sack race, the egg and spoon race, before taking on the headmaster and some local priests in a game of soccer. A last-minute equaliser in the soccer game meant that the game ended in a draw; we will have to continue the game again next year! We also had a chance to play some table tennis, which the children really enjoyed!

After the sports day, which was held in the local park, we had the presentation of certificates for completion of the academic year in Stella Maris School and medals for taking part in the sports day. The children were delighted to receive these great tokens of recognition for their excellent effort during the day and the entire year. The children and parents also had the joy to reminisce on their year in Stella Maris School by looking at a presentation of many of the photos and videos taken throughout the year. Finally, very sadly, our sixth-class student, Maja, is leaving us this year. We are very thankful to Maja for all her great work throughout her time in Stella Maris School and wish her very well in Secondary School! Maja was presented with beautiful gifts by the school and a wonderful cake was designed for Maja’s graduation. Thank you again to all those who helped to make this celebration and the whole day a resounding success!  

We have had a wonderful day trip in Limerick City today, visiting the library, the Treaty Stone, St Munchin’s Church, and getting ice lollies after a long walk around the city. Please see some pictures below of the boys’ and girls’ fun day trip!

It is now the end of the school year and we are planning for the 2024-2025 school year. Our school is developing very well, year on year, and the compliments we are receiving from our parents, our school community and from followers of the school from around the country, and abroad, is most heartening. Please continue to pray for our school, and to support us financially; we greatly appreciate you making this school dream into a reality! Or, perhaps you are in a position, or know someone who is in a position, to teach a subject in Stella Maris School; if you are interested in teaching a subject, please contact us at info@stellamarisprimaryschool.com If you are a primary or secondary school teacher and would be interested in helping for an hour or two, or even for half an hour, we would be delighted to hear from you. We are also particularly looking for a teacher to help with the teaching of Art and French. Perhaps God has blessed you with another talent that you can share with the Stella Maris School community, like administration; we are also in great need of a cleaner as our wonderful cleaner can no longer help us, this position would be for 30-45 mins a week. Any help that can be provided to us in this regard would be hugely appreciated by students, parents and staff!

We will continue the exploration of our curriculum in the next academic year, with the focus firstly being on the arts subjects. We all know how much the arts subjects bring beauty into our lives, and for this reason, the arts subjects play a special role in a classical curriculum. We look forward to exploring our wonderful curriculum more with you next September!

We wish you all a blessed summer. Please keep us in your prayers, and know that we keep all our benefactors in our daily morning prayers, too.

God bless you,

Richard Casey

Headmaster of Stella Maris School

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Newsletter 11/6/24

Dia duit a chara,

We hope you had a blessed Feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and of the Immaculate Heart of Mary! May Our Lord and Our Lady bless and protect you and your loved ones over the coming week.

We are delighted to inform you that we had our school tour in Ardee yesterday. The House of Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary gave the boys and girls some great spiritual fun activities to engage in, like rosary bead making, and crowning Our Lady with a crown of beautiful garden flowers. As you may know, the convent has beautiful grounds, and so the boys and girls were delighted to be able to play games and explore all the beautiful gardens in the convent. The main part of the day was the celebration of Mass, which gained great graces for us all. The day was extremely enjoyable from start to finish! Thank you, Sisters, for such a great day!

We will also have our sports week this week. This will be a great chance to exhibit the learning we have garnered from our PE lessons this year, as well as having fun teachers v pupils’ games and maybe even a race with some of our parents! Providing this holistic education in Stella Maris School is the key to the development of our pupils physically, emotionally, socially, academically and spiritually.

We will continue the exploration of our curriculum this week, focussing on science. A science, as defined by St Newman, is a body of knowledge. Thus, any subject is a science in its own right if it contains a body of knowledge. In more recent history, the physical sciences have acquired the name ‘science’ for themselves. Thus, when we speak about science in our curriculum, we are talking about the physical sciences or the science of the natural world. In this sense, science integrates and overlaps in many ways with geography. The teaching of science can overlap with many areas but it especially can overlap with geography. The different strands of science can be explored through the use of a good school program like we have in Stella Maris School. The use of a good program ensures that all the major areas of science are studied by our students. Science, even in primary school, also lends itself in a particular way to discovery learning, active learning and experiments. These are always fun for our students to engage in, as well as being educational!

We wish you all a blessed week. Please keep us in your prayers, and know that we keep all our benefactors in our daily morning prayers, too.

God bless you,

Richard Casey

Headmaster of Stella Maris School

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Newsletter 27/5/24

Dia duit a chara,

We hope you had a blessed Feast of the Most Holy Trinity. The doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity is at the centre of our faith, and blessing ourselves in the name of the Most Holy Trinity is how we begin each school day. Glór don Athair, agus don Mhac, agus don Spiorad Naomh, mar a bhí ar dtús, mar atá anois agus mar a bheas go brách, ó saol le saol. Amen.

Please see below two newspaper publications on Stella Maris School’s unveiling of their new school sign!

https://www.limerickpost.ie/2024/05/18/stella-maris-a-shining-star-in-limerick-education/

https://www.limerickleader.ie/news/home/1505973/new-sign-of-hope-for-limerick-primary-school.html

https://www.instagram.com/limerickpost/p/C7HTUMus2vl/

It is a very busy time in primary schools at the moment, school tests, reports, school tours, sports days, and many administration tasks all need to be planned for. It is wonderful to be able to offer up all this work for love of God and for the salvation of souls! The children in Stella Maris School experience such a joyful education only due to the work of many different people and organisations working with us in all these ways. Thank you to everyone who helps to provide this stellar education for our students, we are greatly indebted to your selfless sacrifices!

May is the month of Mary and we have been visiting churches in Limerick to offer Our Lady a bouquet of rosaries! We will shortly visit the Augustinian Church to say the rosary and have also visited St Savior’s. Please see below the children praying the rosary recently at Sacred Heart Church, too.

We will continue exploring our Geography curriculum this week. Geography is a very important subject for children to develop a sense of space and place. We do not innately understand the physical world and we need to be educated in understanding how the world works, how it is shaped and how we operate in it. Studying maps and engaging in Atlas work is an important methodology used in our geography lessons, as well as learning by heart the counties, rivers, lakes and mountains of Ireland.

We wish you all a blessed week. Please keep us in your prayers, and know that we keep all our benefactors in our daily morning prayers, too.

God bless you,

Richard Casey

Headmaster of Stella Maris School

Newsletter 20/5/24

Dia duit a chara,

May the blessings of the Holy Ghost be with you and your loved ones this Pentecost! We give thanks to God for the power of the Holy Ghost which is at work in Stella Maris School. Just as the Holy Ghost appeared in the forms of tongues of fire on the heads of the Apostles, the Holy Ghost is at work bringing His fire into the lives of the students and community members of Stella Maris School. The heat of the love of the Holy Ghost has been stoked in the hearts of our students, and the light of the Holy Ghost is filling their minds! Come, Holy Ghost!

This week we will give you a sneak preview of the press release from our recent sign unveiling with Councillor Emmett O’ Brien! Articles about the unveiling will be released in Limerick newspapers and national media outlets over the coming week! Keep a watchful eye out!

Please see the press release below:

Stella Maris School, a new independent primary school in Limerick City, had the official unveiling of their new school sign on Tuesday 14th May by Limerick Councillor, Emmett O’ Brien. Students, parents, teachers, and members of the school community all gathered together to celebrate the wonderful occasion at Stella Maris School, Windmill Street, Limerick City.

Stella Maris School began in September 2022, for the purpose of providing authentic classical Catholic education to the children of Limerick and the surrounding counties. The School Principal, Richard Casey, has stated that his school provides a learning environment that ensures standards of excellence throughout the school, based on classical education principles, and which is ultimately centred on the person of Jesus Christ.

The event began with Headmaster of Stella Maris School, Richard Casey, speaking about the vital importance of receiving a quality education. Mr Casey is also a doctoral student in Mary Immaculate College, where he is studying the educational philosophy of Saint John Henry Newman. He stated that a Catholic and classical education (which Newman strongly advocates for) is the best type of education which can be provided for children.

Mr Casey asserted, “We believe that we are providing the best possible education in Stella Maris School, and are so thankful to our students, parents, teachers, volunteers and benefactors for making this dream into a reality for our students. Our next goal is to provide this education for an increasing number of students over the coming years.”.

The students of Stella Maris School then exhibited some of their learning by beautifully reciting a poem about the Eucharist, before proudly singing the Marian hymn, ‘Star of the Sea’. The standard of the children’s performance was of a very high quality, this being in part due to the large emphasis placed on memorisation of inspiring poems and songs as part of traditional classical education.  

Next, Councillor O’ Brien spoke about how important education is in forming the future generations. The formation that one receives as a child stays with them for their entire lives, said Mr O’ Brien. He reminisced on the quality education he received from his primary school principal and spoke highly of the admirable vision of Stella Maris School, and of the great results achieved so far by Richard Casey. Mr O’ Brien praised the inspiring performance of the children, saying that it brought a tear to his eye when the children so beautifully sang for Our Lady.

There was a wonderful community spirit to be found amongst those in attendance throughout the day. Even the bad weather could not dampen the high spirits of those who were in attendance, although it did lead to a last-minute change of schedule with the performances and speeches taking place inside rather than outside. Overall, this important landmark in Stella Maris School’s history signifies their hopes to become a high-quality alternative to public schooling and home-schooling.

Enrolment for Stella Maris School is currently taking place. All those who are interested in finding out more about the school, or who wish to enrol their children, should contact the school headmaster, Richard Casey, at info@stellamarisprimaryschool.com

Stella Maris School is an independent school, meaning it receives no governmental financial support. The school depends greatly upon donations from the public for its income. If you wish to help provide the gift of authentic Catholic education for children in Ireland, which will help to glorify God and save souls, then you can find donate via Paypal or Go Fund Me at Stella Maris School’s website: www.stellamarisprimaryschool.com. “We are in great need of monthly benefactors in order to continue to provide this essential and priceless education to Ireland’s youth”, stated Mr Casey.

The unveiling of the new school sign in Stella Maris School could well be a sign of things to come for Catholic education in Limerick and in Ireland, as the country becomes increasingly secularised and divestment attempts remain at a very slow pace. The future of Irish education and the role of the Catholic Church in Ireland is certainly unclear; however, there are undoubtedly new signs of hope.

We wish you all a blessed week. Please keep us in your prayers, and know that we keep all our benefactors in our daily morning prayers, too.

God bless you,

Richard Casey

Headmaster of Stella Maris School

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