“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.

All Set!

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!

On Wednesday the 3^rd of October the senior room took part in the mini 7’s. We travelled to The Connacht GAA Centre in Bekan where we teamed up with Meelickmore National School. We had a very successful day with both teams winning all their matches. Both teams are progressing to the next stage scheduled for Tuesday the 9^th of October. We will keep you all posted.

On June 21st, we went to Horizon adventure centre in Westport. We arrived at 10 o’clock and had great fun playing laser tag, archery and tackling the climbing wall and high ropes. Aeroball was fantastic and we competed against each other for points. We also played night-line which meant we had to go into the forest blindfolded and holding onto a rope. We completed obstacles and had to crawl through tunnels and climb through ropes to reach our destination. It was a brilliant day and we enjoyed it so much!

The Grow in Love programme is the new religious education series from Veritas. It is a colourful and fun way for children and families to learn about faith, both in school and at home. It will replace the Alive-O programme in every Catholic primary school in the country.

It includes illustrations to accompany every story with online videos and weblinks for further study. Our school was chosen to dramatise the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard. The following video is the result of much practice and will form part of the Grow in Love national video database.

The pupils in the senior room performed their roles extremely well and we are very proud that their achievement will be viewed in schools nationwide for many years to come.

Link

Everybody here has become so excited about space. This is our short video which shows the different space activities we took part in over the past two years. First, we made a lego replica of the ExoMars Rover. We took it to Portugal and showed children from our other European partner schools how to make it. You can learn more and view videos of our trip to Portugal here. Then we had a star-gazing party where we looked at some constellations. Fifth class pupils visited Mount Etna in Sicily where lunar robots have been put to the test. They took part in various science experiments, games and activities related to space. You can view videos from the trip to Sicily here.

The infants performed an experiment to learn how craters were made on the moon. We read the classroom edition of The Martian by Andy Weir and also launched a helium space balloon which travelled 28km into the stratosphere before returning to Earth and landing in Athboy Co Meath. You can view a 360 degree video of the space balloon journey by clicking here. This is our video to show why we think space is amazing!

Link