Green Schools Committee visit Laois Chambers
Our Green Schools committee spent a very exciting morning in Laois Chambers with other schools involved the Travel Cluster. We listened to talks, offered our opinions and made plans to get our school family walking, cycling and travelling sustainably to school.
We can’t wait to visit again in the summer term.
The Great Travel Challenge
Our Green Schools Committee have had a busy two weeks during the Big Travel Challenge. We have being doing our best to promote sustainable, green ways of travelling to school to reduce emissions in Portlaoise and make getting to school a safer, fun experience for all.
We had an online meeting with the other schools in Portlaoise that are taking part in the Travel Cluster where we discussed ideas to encourage as many people as possible to walk, cycle, car- pool, park and stride or take the bus to school.
We then met up again as a committee, to make a plan for our school and did out a timetable of events to take place. We surveyed parents (Huge thanks to all the parents who responded – our response rate has been the best of all the schools in the town so far!) We surveyed every child in the school three times over the course of the the two weeks and recorded the scores to see if there was an improvement in numbers travelling sustainably. We applied for more bike/scooter parking to cater for the increasing number of students needing it. We organised a whole school assembly with the wonderful Michéle from the Green Schools, to teach us more about the benefits of walking. cycling, taking the scooter, and park and striding to school. Our 5th and 6th class wrote very moving, love letters to the earth – Check out our beautiful display in the entrance to see these inspiring pieces! Our Green Schools Committee organised a colouring competition for all the classes, art lessons for younger classes and gorgeous displays with the older classes. We put an extra special emphasis on our WOW Day on the 12th of February where we all came dressed in red to show our love for the earth. This has definitely been our best WOW day to date with record numbers taking part! We finished off our two weeks with a beautiful walk in the People’s Park.
Well done to all the children and parents in our school for engaging so enthusiastically with all the activities. We can’t wait to organise some more events in the near future – Watch this space!
Winners of the Great Travel Challenge Colouring Competition
Congratulations to the lucky winners of our colouring competition. Well done to all who entered! The Green Schools Committee had their work cut out for them trying to choose a winner from each class. The winners are: Junior Infants: Ella
Senior Infants : Zahra
1st Class : Dhyan
2nd Class : Rouaa
3rd Class : Abigail
4th Class : Ava
5th Class : Izabella F
6th Class : Sinéad
Healthy Lunchbox Competition!
The school has been looking at healthy eating and we were looking at what a healthy lunchbox might look like! Ms Buggie had a fantastic idea to run a competition to encourage all the children and staff to think about healthy lunches. The children had a few weeks to design and enter their idea of what a healthy lunch would look like. Last Wednesday on St. Valentine’s Day our winner was picked. Ms Buggie and her independent judges were torn over the entries, and 10 very lucky children were picked. Congratulations all and well done to everyone who entered.
Talent Show 2023
We were very busy on Thursday as we held our schools annual Talent Show . The list was full of all the children ready to show us their talent.
What wonderful talent we have in our school! The children have such a range of amazing talents from dancing to rapping and from comedy to singing. We all had an amazing time and we are looking forward to seeing more next year!
A Christmas Surprise!
1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th class are working on a special recital for our Christmas show! We have been working so hard in our classrooms and together to learn some Christmas songs for the event! Mr. Healy’s class are really helping Ms. Grant’s class with learning the new songs! We are practicing really hard! We are sorry though to the parents for all of the practicing at home, it’s only another six weeks until the show! Enjoy the meme! 
Sports Day 2023
A very enjoyable sports day took place on the campus this week. Each class participated in three races; sprints, potato and spoon race and sack race. There was lots of laughing and falling down. We then had a parents race and a spontaneous teachers race which was very enjoyable for all… A huge thank you to Ms Gow for organising the events on the day. Also, a thank you to Ms Buggie and her wellbeing committee who organised a bouncy castle and an ice-cream van. Take a look at some of the shots taken on the day.
1st and 2nd Class Musicians in the Making
We had a lovely music lesson today when some of the very talented musicians from 3rd and 4th Class came down to teach 1st and 2nd Class how to play the ukulele. Special thanks to Mr Healy for organising this. We cannot wait to try it again.
