We had a great day away at the Cross Country County Finals in Buncrana. Over 20 children from St. Naul’s qualified for the finals and we were delighted to have some medal winners on the day! Congratulations to our U13 boys, who won gold medals and the cup as county champions; and our U13 girls and U9 boys, who won bronze medals.
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.
As part of our P.E. Programme, one of the strands is ball games. 3rd & 4th Classes were very enthusiastic with the new games this term!
Here at St. Naul’s National School we are delighted that Jackie Hughes of Eany Celtic football club has returned to coach Ms. McGroary’s class on Friday mornings. The pupils are encouraged to maintain physical activity while enhancing their teamwork skills.
Congratulations to one of our parents, Samara, who has won the Aldi Brown Bread Competition at the National Ploughing Championships. Samara is a great supporter of our school and is always willing to bake for any of our events, so it is great to see her receive national recognition for her talents. Well done Samara!!
Thank you to all the parents and pupils for collecting stickers for the Aldi poster competition. We will once again be in the draw with a chance of winning the big prize.
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 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.
