Summer News Letter

Artist in Residence

This year our school was lucky to be one of only ten schools in Limerick to be chosen for the Artist in Schools scheme, organised by Limerick Arts office. Jeanne O'Connor, a qualified primary school teacher, is currently on career break from Monaleen National School and is pursuing acting full-time. She holds a MA in Dance Education from UL and we were very lucky that she was able to come to our school and teach dance to the Senior Infants, First and Second Classes. The Artist in Schools scheme is a collaborative project between the school and the artist. Both the artist’s and teacher’s skill sets were required to make this an enriching, meaningful and lasting experience for the children. The children worked extremely hard over a number of weeks and here are some of the fantastic pieces they created. Thank you Jeanne for all your help. The children absolutely loved it!

Our Irish Music and Dance Performances

As you all know, the boys and girls have been working incredibly hard learning the tin-whistle this year with their music teacher, Carmel O'Leary. To showcase their talents, we held an Irish music and dance concert over in the parish hall this week. If you weren't able to attend, take a look at some of the pictures and videos of the event below. 

Raising our Green Flag

What a special day in school today, as we welcomed back past pupils and teachers, parents, and sporting stars for the official raising of our fourth Green Flag. Big thanks are owed to Ms. Murphy who put in Trojan work to achieve the flag, and Ms. Fitzgerald who continued her marvellous work while Ms. Murphy was on maternity leave. Also, a big thank you to our principal, Ms. Cleary, our deputy principal, Ms. Hanley, and all the teachers and staff in the school, along with all the boys and girls-it is through your hard work and co-operation that we have reached this proud milestone. We were very excited that local sporting hero, Donal O’Grady, could be here to share in our special day, and also to Kevin Kennedy, our Chairperson, for his support today too! Lastly to the parents who, through supporting our many Walk To School events throughout the last two years, have helped us achieve our flag also. Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir!!

Collecting our Fourth Green Flag

Walk to School Day

A big thank you to Ms. Fitzgerald who organised such a fantastic and successful Walk to School Day

Look who came to visit...

Fáilte romhaibh go léir ar ais! A big thank you to Mrs. Murphy who came back to visit us with her two lovely children, Matthew and Aoibheann on Friday. It was lovely to see you again. We were delighted to see Mathew for the first time, and to see how big Aoibheann has gotten!

Science Day 6/05/2015

Adieus and Welcome Backs

We’d like to extend a big thank you to Miss Barry who was a tremendous addition to our staff over the last few months, and also to Ms. Hanley who did a fantastic job in her role as Acting Principal.

Welcome back to our principal Mrs. Cleary, who is returning from maternity leave- it’s great to have you back!

First Holy Communion

Massive congratulations to the boys and girls in 2nd class who made their communion on the 2nd of May here in Ballingarry. You all looked fantastic, and I’m certain you had a great day, despite the weather not being the best. Big thanks to the children who sang in the choir, and to the parents and teachers who prepared the children for this day, especially Miss Curtin and Miss Fitzgerald.

Ballingarry's Boxing Champion

Big congratulations to Fiona O’Keefe in sixth class, who won the Munster Boxing Title last weekend! A fantastic achievement for Fiona, who now qualifies for the All Ireland Championships in May. Katie Taylor watch your back!

Healthy Eating and Fitness Week

Fitness and Healthy Eating were on the agenda for us here in school from the 2nd – 6th of March, when we celebrated Fitness Week. We undertook many activities throughout the week to promote fitness and eating right. We learned about the food pyramid and how to look after our teeth. Lunch monitors on the junior side of the school made sure that no treats snuck into our lunch boxes during the week, and on Friday we sampled some tasty and delicious fruits and snacks such as melon, pineapple, passion fruit, humous and granola. Some children were shocked to find out that they really enjoyed these foods!

The Fitness aspect of the week included Hurling with Tommy, Drop Everything and Dance, Skipathon Tuesday and of course a game of Dodgeball against the teachers on Wednesday (we wore them out!).

Thanks to Ms. Curtin and Ms. Casey for organising such an enjoyable week!

 

Friendship Week 2015

(Adapted from Ms. Hanley’s class blog…)

Last week from the 9th-13th of February, we celebrated Friendship Week in Christ the Saviour N.S. We did lots of lovely activities which explored the idea of friendship. 

On Monday evening, Garda Kathy Healy and Garda Pat Holland visited the boys and girls in 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th class and Garda Healy spoke to us about the dangers of cyber bullying. We learned a lot about cyber bullying from her visit. She spoke to us about social media in particular Facebook. She said if you take a silly photo and upload it to Facebook it will be there forever. The Gardaí can retrieve photographs even if they are deleted if they are investigating a crime. She also told us to think before you post a comment and not to say something on Facebook that you wouldn’t want on the front page of a newspaper!!! You can’t put a photo of someone else up on Facebook without their permission. It was an informative talk and we learned a lot. 


As part of Friendship week, Mr Keogh sold Friendship bands in aid of Amnesty International. In total €300 was collected for this organisation who are fighting for human rights all over the world. 
We read a story about Ishmael, a young boy who was a child soldier in Sierra Leone. He is now a human rights activist and he wrote a book about his awful experience as a child soldier. Organisations like Amnesty International and Unicef help child soldiers like Ishmael. 

Some other activities included:
The Rainbow Fish: Each class heard the story of the Rainbow Fish and watched the video of it. This showed the children the importance of caring for others.

The Friendship Fish: Every morning, each child picked a name of someone in their class out of a box. During the day, they did something nice for that child. Then they wrote what they had done on a scale, and stuck it to the school Friendship Fish at the front of the school. By the end of the week, the fish had all his scales!

 

Collaborative Games: The children played games that promoted co-operation and working together. They had great fun trying to make bridges, and pass hulahoops around the group!

 

Friendship Lessons: In class, the children talked about ways they could be helpful and respect others. They also played friendship games, such as Friendship Bingo.

 

Friendship Bracelets: Each student had the opportunity to buy friendship bracelets from Amnesty International, which had messages promoting friendship written on them.

 

Friendship Sheriffs: Every day, boys and girls in the classes acted as Friendship Sheriffs, where they patrolled the yard, with lovely badges, and made sure everyone had someone to play with!


We really enjoyed friendship week. We learned that in order to be a good friend it is really important to share, respect, care and be kind to all. A big thanks to Mr Keogh and Miss Tangney for all their creativeness and organisation in helping us to celebrate and enjoy Friendship Week in Ballingarry. 

 

Community Games Talent Competition 2015

Picture

Grandparents' Day

Today was Grandparents’ Day in our school. A lot of children's grandparents came in to share their life experiences with us. We asked them questions about their childhood, then compared them to ours. We sang them a lovely song, took some pictures, and then said a prayer to all the grandparents who couldn’t be with us. It was a great day and we all enjoyed it. Written by Ellen McMahon.

Catholic Schools' Week, January 25-31st, 2015

Catholic Schools Week 2015-01-26

This week, from the 25th-31st of January, we are celebrating Catholic Schools’ Week. There will be many activities in our school to celebrate Christ the Saviour National School being a centre of Catholic Faith.

Some activities taking place this week include a Prayer Service in our GP room on Monday, the 25th, and Grandparents’ Day on Wednesday, 27th of January.

Also there will be numerous class based activities throughout the week to celebrate our catholic faith.

A big thank you to Ms. Fitzgerald and her class for all the preparations!

 

Christmas Assembly

Christmas Newsletter

Photos from our Christmas Concert...

Christmas Concert Fever Reaches Record High in Ballingarry...

Wow hasn’t the year flown so far, and as we approach 2015, we here in school are ready to go out with a BANG! As you all know, our Christmas Concert is taking place tonight in Ballingarry Hall, and we’re all so excited to perform for our families and friends! Ms. Lyons and Ms. Tangney’s classes are performing ‘Ralph the Reindeer’. Mrs. O’Neil and Ms. Fitzgerald’s classes are doing ‘Stable Manners’, while Mrs. Murphy and Ms. Hanley’s classes are performing ‘Cinderella and Rockerfella’. It’s going to be an entertaining evening to say the least! Hoping you all have a great night. See you later!

A Visit from Derry O'Connor...

Our Visit from Derry O’ Connor

On the 28th of November our teacher Mr. Gleeson organised a visitor to come and talk to our class. His friend Derry O' Connor, who is on the Young Munster rugby team and is also a member of the Limerick Gaelic football team would be coming in to see our class. During the week we made a poster for Derry. We wanted to learn about Derry’s sporting life and also his future prospects.The poster was full of questions that our class wanted to ask him such as “who is your favourite rugby player and who is your sporting hero”? Also some students in our class were assigned to complete a sixty second quick-fire interview with Derry. We were all prepared and couldn’t wait for Derry to come to our school.

When the day arrived, my class and I were buzzing with excitement. We were so lucky that we had a sportsman like Derry coming to visit us as he was a very busy man. He splits his time between college, work and sport. Shortly after 11:30 Derry arrived at our school. We all sang Amhrán Na Bhfiann the moment Derry walked into our classroom and he answered some questions from the poster we had made throughout the week. After that, we had planned to complete a 60second quick-fire interview with Derry. The two candidates who were doing these interviews with Derry were Ellen and Darragh. The interview turned out to be a great success and Derry managed to answer all of the questions that Darragh and Ellen had asked. Derry had brought in a blink band and signed the poster we had mad for him. The two prizes were raffled and Fiona won the blink band and I (Grace Sheehy) won the signed poster. If the day couldn’t get better we got to do aP.E. session with Derry. We played ‘rugby volleyball’ and we learned how to properly complete a ‘solo’ which is a skill used in Gaelic Football. After P.E. we took a ‘selfie’ with Derry on the schools i-pad. Overall I had a great day and would love it if Derry came into the school more often.

Raffle Goodies!!

Bake Sale

Christ the Saviour Parents’ Council are hosting their Annual Cake Sale and Coffee morning on Friday, November 14th, 2014 in the Village Hall, Ballingarry, from 12pm-3pm.

All are welcome to bake or buy and your continued support is greatly appreciated!

Come and join us for a tea/coffee, and as always there will be a raffle with plenty of great prizes (take a look at the picture!)

The hall will be open from 8.45am on the Friday morning to receive your baked donations.

Parent Teacher Meetings 

Parent Teacher meetings will be held on the 18th of November (next Tuesday) from 3-7pm. A letter with information in relation to times will be sent out this week. If a certain time isn’t suiting you, we will endeavour to find a more suitable time. Looking forward to seeing you all!


Welcome back!

We’d like to welcome you back to school and we hope you all had a lovely mid-term break. It’s now time to mention the ‘C’ word! YES! You’ve guessed! Christmas is well and truly on its way. We’ll be very busy in the next few weeks with Christmas plays and festive fun- what a lovely time of year! Is it time to say it yet?- MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY!!

-Halloween-

On Friday Oct 24th the Parents’ council in conjunction with the staff and pupils of Christ the Saviour School, Ballingarry hosted a Halloween event. All the pupils and staff turned up in great style to school – witches, zombies, skeletons, vampires and a multitude of other scary ghouls and ghosts appeared out of the woodwork. The pupils had been hard at work leading up to this day – pumpkins were carved and creatively decorated by each classroom. Junior Infants painted their pumpkin black and decorated it with gold and silver. Senior and 1st class also painted their pumpkin and added glittery spiders and cobwebs to it. 1st and 2nd class carved a fierce face and painted their pumpkin lid black. One of the older classes created a ‘man eating’ pumpkin which was quite frightening as all that remained on the ‘man’ was half a leg! The final pumpkin was bedecked in a Halloween wig! The 3rd class up to 6th class pooled their creativity in their classrooms and competed in the ‘create your own monster competition’. Using their iPads the pupils trawled the web for inspiration for their creations. Keeping in mind the recycle mantra of reduce, recycle and re-use they used art class to create unbelievable costumes. 3rd and 4th class created Frankenstein using old shoe boxes for feet as well as a dramatic costume and facepaint. 4th and 5th re-created Dorothy and the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz and yet again there was plenty evidence of creativity and re-cycling in the manufacture of the Tin Man’s costume. 6th class had two entries – SpongeBob square pants in a very striking yellow box, hand-painted expertly by all the class and our old favourite Mrs Brown with her good friend Aggie by her side. Ebony Kittikins pounced into school ably assisted by her three helpers. She visited all the pupils from Juniors to 1st where she unsuccessfully hunted for mice. Being a scaredy cat she was quite afraid of all the strange creatures she encountered but thankfully there were no dogs in the school! She chased her tail and took a few catnaps before heading up to the General Purpose room to judge the Costume competition. After conferring with the helpers the difficult decisions were made – joint first for Frankenstein and Wizard of Oz and joint second for Sponge Bob and Mrs Brown and Aggie. A big thank you to all the parents, staff, pupils and parents’ council members who made this Halloween event a huge success, not forgetting the pupils in 6th class who toured the school painting all the faces they encountered!

September/October News

This year the boys and girls in Ms Hanley and Mrs. Murphy’s room are participating in the MS Readathon. The MS Readathon encourages boys and girls to read books, learn about multiple sclerosis (MS) and raise funds to help people living with Multiple Sclerosis. For more information about this great project click on the link.

This September we were deligted to welcome two local sporting heros to our school. Fiona Hickey and Mairead Fitzgerald bothed played a major role in Limerick becoming Intermediate Camogie Champions for 2014. They travelled to our school with the Jack McGrath Cup, and answered questions about their hard fought battles throughout this year’s Championship. Fiona told us of the importance of perseverance, determination and training! We wish the girls luck in the senior Championship next year and who knows- maybe we’ll be welcoming you with the O’Duffy Cup next year.

Also in September, we were very lucky to get a visit from Mr. Liam O’Neill, the current President of the GAA. Mr. O’ Neill told us how important it was to play sports, and encouraged us to get involved in the the GAA through hurling, camogie, gaelic football, handball and rounders.  He told us that as a youngster he dreamed of lifting an All-Ireland trophy. However, being from Laois he realised that this might not be a possibility. The next best thing, according to Mr. O’Neill, was presenting the cup to the deserved champions. He realised this dream on the 4th of September  2011 when he handed the Liam McCarthy Cup to Brian Hogan of Kilkenny.