A big thank you to everybody who supported the annual St. Vincent de Paul Collection. By donating these items, you are helping families and individuals enjoy a special Christmas meal. The Strokestown branch of St. Vincent de Paul will distribute these food items to the many underprivileged children and families in the area, in the coming days.
Our concert last night was an outstanding success. Everyone of the children were stars, performing their parts with confidence and enthusiasm. The whole production was an extravaganza of music, drama and song which kept the full house entertained. The story of the Magical Christmas Jigsaw describes the magic that happens when five children (Katie, Lyndsey, […]
The Senior Room recently attended the Musical “Beauty and the Beast”, which was performed by the pupils of the Convent of Mercy Secondary School Roscommon. This was a fantastic production and we thoroughly enjoyed it.
A big congratulations to Jasmine and Lyndsey who were winners in the recent Credit Union Art Competition. The standard of entries was very high and it was a wonderful achievement for both girls to receive prizes in this competition. Jasmine came 2nd in the 8-10 year category and Lyndsey came 2nd in the 11-13 year category. Well Done Girls!!
Ms. Taylor and the Junior Room are extremely busy exploring the theme of the building site and ‘Houses and Homes’. We are very busy! We set up a building site in our home corner. We have a building site at the back of our school at the minute while our fantastic Multi Use Games Area is being constructed.
We really enjoyed the presentation the landscaper Colin Delaney of Midland Landscaping and Sports gave to the whole school. He explained the stages in the construction of an astro turf pitch from foundation stage to completion. We have lots of future Engineers and Builders in Ballagh no doubt.
The Senior room have photographed the timeline of the construction project.
Thank you so much to our wonderfully committed and hardworking Parents Association who recently held a very successful Quiz night in Rattigans. They are always so busy fundraising for great things to benefit our school. Thank you to our local community who are so generous also.
We recently held a Science Fair in our school. Thanks to Ms. Taylor for all her hard work in preparing the experiments. We did lots of Physics and Chemistry experiments. As you can see, we had a great fun trying out these experiments.
We love STEM subjects in Ballagh NS.
Thank you to all the parents and children for taking the time and making the effort to fill a shoebox for the Team Hope Christmas Shoebox Appeal. A large collection of shoeboxes were collected from our school this week and will make some little girls and boys very happy this Christmas. Well done everyone!
We participated in Maths games, Maths stations and a Maths Trail in our locality. We enjoyed collecting real life data – we carried out a traffic survey and calculated our average distance and time. We integrated the Measures Strand into our Maths Trail. We used lots of Maths language during the week in homework activities. We also used ICT in our Maths learning. We no doubt love Maths games and Maths, what magnificent Mathematicians we are.
What is the Food Dudes Programme
Food Dudes is a programme developed by the University of Wales, Bangor, to encourage children to eat more fruit and vegetables both in school and at home. It is based on positive role models (the Food Dudes characters), repeated tasting and rewards. It is ultimately designed to enable children to enjoy eating healthy diets, and to create a healthy eating culture within schools.
Who are the Food Dudes?
The Food Dudes are four young super-heroes: Charlie, Tom, Raz and Rocco. By eating their favourite fruit or vegetables, the Food Dudes gain special powers which enable them to save the world and the Life Force from a gang of baddies: The Junk Punks. General Junk and his side-kicks, Miss Demeanour and Master Disaster, are trying to drain the energy of the world by depriving it of nutritious fruit and veg. With their special powers, given to them by carrots, tomatoes, raspberries and broccoli, the Food Dudes feed the Life Force and foil the Junk Punks.
There are two main phases to the Programme:
Phase 1 is an intensive intervention which lasts 16 days. During this time, children in the junior classes were given fruit and vegetables while they were read a letter and/or watched a specially designed DVD of the Food Dudes. These super-heroes save the life force from a gang of baddies whose objective is to take away the energy of the world by depriving it of nutritious fruit and veg. Each day the children were rewarded with stickers or small rewards and get a tick on the classroom wall chart for successfully eating the fruit and veg. This phase is primarily school based, although children keep a diary of fruit and veg they have eaten at home. The senior classes take part in 4 tasting days during phase 1, also get read a letter and/or watch a DVD episode and are rewarded with 4 rewards.
We are currently working on Phase 2 . This aspect extends the home element of the Food Dudes programme by encouraging the children to bring their own fruit and veg to school every day in special Food Dudes containers Classroom wall charts continue to be used for the junior classes and are introduced to the senior classes to record progress and children receive Food Dudes certificates upon reaching goals. We hope this phase maintains fruit and veg consumption in the longer term.
We are learning about the benefits of fruit and vegetable consumption-
Why should we bother with our 5 a day rule?
Fruit and vegetables :
To get all the goodness you can from fruit and vegetables choose a wide variety of colours and aim for 2 servings of fruit and 3 servings of vegetables every day.