Totem Pole

One of our projects came to fruition this week with the assembly and placement of a Totem Pole in the ground to the front of the school. This was a project funded by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and completed by the children and parents with the help of the artist Katie Blue.

Messy but Good!

Todays Art Activty with our new paint balls. Needless to say a huge hit with the children!


Best Kept School Awards

We were pleased to be Awarded Runner Up in the Best Kept School Awards, Pre-Primary category. In the last nine years since we have been entering the competition we have won it three times and been Runner Up the remainder, a record we are very proud of. The Best Kept Awards, in conjunction with SupaValu, judged in April and the awards were presented this month. The judges comments were:

'This school never fails to impress with its range of iniatives and the appearence of new features every year.'


Award of £2500 from EAGA

Energy efficiency company EAGA has given us £2500 towards buildng proper vegetable beds in our garden.

Lisa who was presented with the cheque explained that 'Activities like this help the development of the children across a broad range of skills'.

'They learn maths and science through the maintenance of the vegetable garden and even at this young age we broach topics like photosynthesis'.

'Problem solving is a big part of activity too – like learning how to distribute the vegetables evenly around the garden so they grow to the best of standards'.

'Our school has been carrying out activities like this for a while on an ad-hoc basis – for example we've grown potatoes in pots and sacks, but this gives us the chance to really implement a proper structured programme'.

Lisa also stressed the importance of the project to the family lives of the children, saying 'Parents are invited to help harvest the vegetables and we produce a special pack with nutritional and environmental information which helps life long learning at home'.

A big thank you to EAGA for their responsible approach to helping us develop our vegetable garden. In these times of difficulty for the private sector they provide a great example of corporate social responsibility in action.



Doing our bit for the BEES

These are some of the Alliums we have in our flower bed along the front of our Fairy Forest. They're reckoned to be pretty rich in nectar so hopefully will encourage some Bees, which seem to be in short supply of at the moment.


Little Green Fingers

The pupils are starting to reap their rewards from our new vegetable beds. We planted beans, cauliflowers (above), lettuce, radishes and potatoes. So far we have have picked some lettuce and the radishes.
When it came to the eating the pupils preferred the radishes to the lettuce.

Got any NUTS?

We had a visitor today.