We were very lucky this morning when Santa took time out of his very busy schedule to come along and see the children here. He started by walking around outside the school past all the windows, which brought about a lot of excitement in all the rooms! Our thanks to our Parents Association, who contacted Santa and asked him to come to visit. A great way to start our Christmas holidays!
This afternoon saw the first showing of our Christmas Nativity Play. The children have all been working very hard over the last number of weeks practising their singing and lines. They were delighted to see a great crowd of parents, grandparents, aunties, uncles, cousins and friends turn up to see them! Our thanks to Mrs Gavigan and Mrs McDaid for all their work preparing the children for the play, and to all the staff members who helped with costumes and props. As always, Barbara McGroary became our official photographer and her photographs will be on display here as soon as we have them. In the meantime, here are a few of our own (albeit unprofessional!) photographs.
Each year we take part in the annual Christmas Shoe Box Collection for the Team Hope Appeal, who distribute them to children in Eastern Europe and Africa who are affected by poverty. As always, the school community here at St. Naul’s showed true Christmas spirit and we had a large number of boxes donated. Thank you to everyone who helps us to support this worthy charity and give to children less fortunate than our own. Here you can see our Junior and Senior Infants proudly showing off some of the boxes we received!
All the children dressed up today for some spooky fun at School! Some great costumes were on show!
We were delighted to see some of the players from St. Naul’s GAA Mens Senior Team at the school today with the Intermediate Cup which they won last Sunday! Past pupils John Rose, Gavin Mulreany and Brendan McCole came along to show the cup to all the children. It was especially fitting to take the photographs at Fr. Seamus’ bench as today is his anniversary and while we remember him every day, today we celebrated mass for him as well.
Our school is excited to take part in the European Week of Sport. As part of our inclusive P.E. programme we are learning some new lámh signs. Class Teachers showed the pupils how to sign these action words, e.g. ‘to run’ ‘to walk’ and ‘to hop’. Each day the pupils practised these signs in class and today we completed 120 minutes of physical activity including a game of ‘Simon Says’ using the new lámh signs.
The Junior and Senior Infants learned a new sensory circuit programme this week where they enjoyed a fun exercise routine using tools to alert, organise and calm their bodies – promoting health and well being.
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 OisÃn 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!)
We held our own local elections today so that the children could get an understanding of the voting process. We had six party candidates all vying for the vote of the rest of the school. Poster were made and campaigning began! Our polling station was opened and everyone completed their ballot paper for their preferential candidates. Then the waiting began while the votes were counted and transfers worked out! It was a great learning process for our senior room and they enjoyed learning about the whole election process.
