A soccer day…. An excellent day of activity! Jackie Hughes of Eany Celtic Soccer Club arrived early this morning and started a fun structured session with the Junior and Senior Infants; teaching them the basic drills of soccer. They all participated and were delighted with Jackie’s new equipment which was set up in the yard. After a physical workout they were eager to play a proper game of football. This session followed with the 1st and 2nd classes all practising basic skills followed by a game. A very sincere thank you to Jackie for her time spent with us encouraging physical activity.
Meanwhile, the other classes were extremely active in the yard and luckily on the grass also due to the better weather today. They continued their daily 3/5 minute-lap challenge, hotseat, 3 legged races and circuits while Master O’Donnell’s class enjoyed a very competitive game of basketball.
The dancing continued after break time in each class. Today, the novelty activity was a basketball challenge for 3rd and 4th class; how many baskets they could get in 10 minutes? Unfortunately, a rain shower interrupted this exercise 4 minutes from time with 4th class winning the challenge by 8 baskets.
In the latter part of the afternoon the soccer tournament commenced with 3rd-6th class getting to grips with the first fixture. Mr Byrne from Donegal Town football club organised a competitive six a side tournament with each team playing one game each to the sound of great excitement from the sidelines. The winning teams of each match are now through to the cup on Thursday while the losing teams will play in the shield. There were tense moments as goals were scored, and everyone is now looking forward to the final on Thursday afternoon.
Our week continued with our usual morning start of ‘Wake Up, Shake up’ and 3/5 Minute lap running challenge. All the children were smashing their records today with the number of laps increasing day by day!
The Infant classes had a very exciting day as they played musical chairs and engaged in some entertaining parachute games in the GP room which turned out to be great craic and a very inclusive physical activity.
Lots of different activities took place in the afternoon, from novelty activities for 3rd/4th Classes to chain games and egg and spoon races for the whole school.
Dancing practise continued after the breaks while some of the classes put their energies into circuits, skipping and ball games.
The senior classes’ football final was an exciting affair, with lots of goals scored and happy winners on the day. Our thanks to Mr. Byrne who coordinated this competition.
This brought another active day at school to a successful finale.
Day 5 was our SPORTS DAY!!
The sun came out and all the pupils had an action-packed day. Everyone assembled in their colours of 4 teams made up of pupils from junior infants to 6th class. Our events were:
• Wake Up Shake Up (whole school)
• Sprints (all classes boys/girls)
• Hotseat (3rd-6th class)
• Knock-Out (3rd-6th class)
• Beanbag throw (Jun Infants – 2nd class)
• Skipping races (all classes)
• Soccer finals
• Relays (all classes)
• Penalty shoot (1st-6th class)
A fantastic day of physical activity enjoyed by all the pupils and staff nicely interrupted by an ice cream break at lunch time. Thank you, Master O’Donnell!
All the pupils returned after the summer holidays energised and ready to continue with our physical activities. The dance breaks continue to be enjoyed by all the junior classes. Our Active committee all agreed that ‘The Daily Mile’ was the most popular running initiative. It was decided to commence this on 9th September for 2 weeks and we will re-visit this at that stage. Let’s get active, let’s stay active!
We have two new members on the committee, Shay and Anna who replace Karl and Lucy who have moved on to the Abbey Vocational School.
A big thank you to all the pupils and their families for collecting all the Aldi Play Rugby Stickers! We were delighted to fill three posters. Although we didn’t win the big prize in the draw, St. Naul’s N.S. received 3 Aldi Play Rugby kit bags, 12 rugby balls and 3 sets of Aldi Play water bottles. Excellent timing as this equipment arrived just in time for our Active Week!
Our annual school cycle was a great success again this year (despite the weather!). All the pupils brought their bikes to school and thanks to funding we received through the Donegal Sports Partnership, we were able to get a bicycle mechanic in to carry out a safety check on all the bikes. Our thanks to Oisín from our local Donegal Bay Cycling Club who also came to speak to the children about cycle safety
Once we knew everyone was good to go we organised the school yard with cones for the younger children to cycle their routes around, and set out with the older children for a cycle to the beach at Inver, where we had hoped to carry out a beach clean up. Unfortunately, the Donegal weather had other ideas, and sent a torrential rain shower down on us! Sadly, our idea of a clean up at the beach had to be abandoned and we had to quickly head for home!
Once we were back at school and all dried off (and the weather dried up a bit!), the older children joined in the cycling activities on the yard with the younger children. Everyone had a great day! We would like to thank the Donegal Sports Partnership for their support of the school, and the funding they granted us for our school cycle activity through the Department of Tourism and Sport and Donegal County Council. Thanks to their funding, we were also able to provide a nice hot lunch for the children as a reward for all their peddling! Great fun all round!
See below for some photos (when the camera could come out between rain showers!)
As part of our campaign to get the children more active and try difference sports, Donie and Brian from Donegal G.A.A. came to the school to show the children some hurling skills. Our thanks to Donie and Brian for their expertise.
In our parents survey, we asked what we could do to help improve P.E. in the school. Part of the feedback received suggested that we should involve the children who do not necessarily participate in team sports; in a non competitive activity. As a response to this, we organised for the pupils to travel to the astroturf pitch at Eany Celtic FC, where we organised lots of games for fun only! They had lots of laughs as they took part in the various activities. Good fun all round!
Our ‘star chart’ is going well. The children are working hard towards positive behaviour in the yard and when they are lining up. The ‘active’ prize of 10 minutes extra playtime is awarded when 5 stars are gained by the winning class. This is a great incentive to continue positive active vibes.
