Well we have finally reached Summer with May day tomorrow and the bank holiday weekend to enjoy! On this weekend each year the WOI Women’s Mini Marathon takes places usually in Castlebar but this year like many other events it is happening virtually. The Mini Mini is the children’s fun run that is held at this annual event. Our class have been amazing in this year doing their 2kms therefore I registered them for this event and today at school we completed our 2km in our fabulous Mayo Day t-shirts kindly given to us by Mayo Sports Partnership with great help from Deirdre Donnelly.  This year the theme for the fun run is ‘Kids just run for fun’.

If you are in a position to, your child can complete the fun run over the weekend and if you wanted you can make a donation of €2 to a children’s charity of your choice.  I have provided a 2021 race number where you can write in the hero you are running for. Mayo Sports Partnership are asking that you send your pictures and videos in to them of you or your child taking part if you want to share in this great celebration.  Pictures can be emailed or posted on Social Media using hashtags #Mayoday #WOIMM

As a participating Creative School with our focus on “Music”,  Junior and Senior Infants went to the Linenhall Arts Centre in Castlebar today to see the musical show, Rockin’Rhymes. This performance is part of the RoolaBoola Festival and was presented by Branar Téatar do Pháistí. Original songs based on the well-loved nursery rhymes will be performed by a live 5-piece band, accompanied by animated illustrations by artist Maeve Clancy and directed by Marc Mac Lochlainn. The children really enjoyed this performance, joining in singing, clapping to the rhymes and wriggle dancing in their seats!

Our Junior room school tour 2019 was such fun! We started our day at the Galway Atlantaquaria in Salthill where we were given a guided tour of the National Aquarium of Ireland. Firstly we met the baby Sea Bream in the big splash tank. Then we learnt about some flat fish and entered the submarine!  Next we saw the adult Sea Bream followed by touching some Rays and Sharks!!! This lead us onto the lovely Sea horses and Clown fish, Conger eels and large lobsters. We learned about the Cuckoo Wrasse and we looked at the harbour scene and its inhabitants. The children also saw some larger sea creatures in the seawater tank. We saw lots of Cod which most of the children love to eat with chips and then Mr. Octopus.

Upstairs we learnt all about Jellyfish and some freshwater fish. We saw a manmade weir for the trout and we got to feed them. We also got to feed the Carp and Koi. In the Tropical fish section, we saw beautiful colourful fish and Piranhas. We fed bread to lots of Mullet fish who splashed us all. Lastly but not least the children were allowed to hold starfish and a spider crab.

As the day was lovely we spent some time in the playground before going for lunch in Supermacs. After this we all needed a walk along the prom before returning home again. We thoroughly enjoyed our day out, looking forward to the next trip already!! Please take a few minutes to watch a photostory of our day out, thanks.

“80% of children, currently, are not active enough”

(Children’s Sport Participation Study and Physical Education Study 2010).

This year, we are working towards getting an Active Schools Flag for our school. The aim of the Active Schools Flag is to encourage schools to be more active, more often. It links in with all of the work we are doing throughout the year on Healthy Living – being active, getting exercise, and mindfulness.

We had great fun launching our Active Schools Initiative today. We had an active Halloween fun day!

All the children came to school dressed up in their Halloween costumes to take part in our ‘Spooky Walk’. We walked for 1 km and we really enjoyed it and felt energized afterwards. We walked mindfully and took great notice of the nature and sounds around us.

The whole school got moving together in our ‘Active lines’ at 10 am.

We lined up class by class and we did jumping jacks, frog hops, bunny hops, windmills, high knees, running on the spot, etc. It was great fun to get the whole school moving together!

We will be engaging in many activities throughout the year and we look forward to becoming more active and having great fun along the way!

Happy Halloween!