We would like to wish Miss. Murray all the best in her future career as a teacher. It has been a pleasure to have her in the school for the last 11 weeks!! We will miss her dearly!! She brought a lovely cake for all the staff & pupils!
Dear parents,
The Book Fair will be arriving in school soon. We haven't had a Book Fair the past few years due to restrictions. We are happy to have one again and you are welcome to come view the books and stationary. Every book you buy helps our school to get FREE BOOKS for our school library!
WHEN: Monday 5th December- Friday 9th December @ 8.55am-9.10am
WHERE: Ballinacarriga National School (Outside Catherine’s Office)
If mornings don’t suit, you can come and view the books at collection times (1.50pm-2pm, 2.50pm-3pm). Please note the Book Fair leaves on Friday afternoon.
Books can be purchased by gift vouchers or cash.
Gift Vouchers available at www.celtictravellingbooks.com/parents.
Please note: If you are paying by gift voucher, no change will be given but the children can buy stationary with the balance.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Kind regards,
Claire Nagle
Dear Parents,
We are currently preparing for the Christmas play which is on the 1st of Dec 2022 in Ballinacarriga Hall. We would ask that you begin to prepare a costume for your child. Some of the 5th and 6th class will have specific costumes. Unless your child has been told to get a specific outfit, you can follow these guidelines to prepare an outfit:
Sherlock & Cinders is set predominantly in the fictional land of Armour. There is mention of fairy-tale characters and the play definitely has a fairy-tale feel to it, but the time period is non-specific and could be any time between 1600-1900. As such, costumes can be cobbled together from any number of historical periods. This hotchpotch approach will hopefully make costuming relatively straightforward. For example, work clothes, aprons, shirts, ties, long dresses/skirts, braces, waistcoats, short pants, shawls, princess dresses, etc.
Anything goes – be as creative as you wish (or not!)
Also, we would kindly ask you to have a look out for the following items in your home or charity shop:
• ball gown/mini-bridesmaids dress to fit 11-12 year old
• Inverness cape (Sherlock)
• Deerstalker hat (Sherlock)
• tail coat or jacket for 11-12 year old
• chef outfit/white coat and apron for 12 year old
• any colourful scarves/shawls
• any funny hats
• frilly shirt (any size)
• petticoat (any size)
• corset (any size)
• superhero outfit (any size)
• clown outfit (any size)
• combat gear (any size)
• altar child gown (any size)
• pirate outfit (any size)
• Clothing rail
• pipe (for smoking)
• Cinderella outfit
If you would like to donate any of the above items, please send them to school as soon as you wish.
Many thanks,
Róisín Hurley
Principal
Dear parents,
I hope this finds you well.
I would like to thank everyone for their participation in Tuesday’s internet safety talk. It was without doubt an eye opener and food for thought. We will send on the information in relation to internet safety when it comes.
Every year, we like to take part in the Team Hope Shoebox Appeal. You are asked to fill a shoebox with appropriate items for children in countries that are affected by war, famine, etc. We have enclosed one leaflet per family that provides all the information if you would like to take part. A part of this leaflet is attached to the shoebox, when it is ready, indicate what age group it is meant for. Please return the leaflet if you are not planning on taking part. Extra leaflets will be available if you would like to prepare more than one box.
We are also enclosing a book club leaflet. This is completely optional and may be disposed of if it is not of interest to you. If you would like to order books from it, please follow this link. https://schools.scholastic.ie/ballincarriga-mxd-n
The books will be delivered to the school and distributed accordingly. If you would like to order books, please do so before the 20th of October. This is of benefit to the school as we get a commission for each book that is bought to spend on books for the school.
Yours sincerely
Róisín Hurley
Principal
Dear Parents,
We are all really looking forward to our first WellFest here at Ballinacarriga National School.
It will take place this Friday 23 rd of September in school, a fun filled day based on well-being activities. The children will get to enjoy Zumba, smoothie making,disco, fairground games,
storytelling, art, face paints, yoga, drama, and more!
Can you please let the school know of any food/ face paint allergies ahead of Friday. We will be using "Snazaroo" face paints. We will be giving the children fruit and yogurt smoothies, flapjacks and ice-cream.
The children can dress up in “festival gear” so shorts, dresses, hats, headbands, anything goes!
Yours sincerely
Róisín Hurley
Principal
Dear Parents,
I would to welcome you all back to the new school term. We look forward to a successful year and hope that we will remain safe in our school setting all year. A huge welcome to our 15 new junior infants, they are settling in very well!
School bills for book rental and school activities such as tinwhistle, dance, swimming will be sent to you in the coming weeks.
We are delighted to announce that we will be holding a Christmas concert this year (in line with any guidelines that might be!). This will take place on the evening of Thursday 1st December in Ballinacarriga hall – put it in your diaries now! To help us prepare for this extravaganza, we will be enlisting the help of Cathy Sweetnam for dance/drama on a Tuesday, starting on Tuesday 13th of September for 12 sessions. Ger Wolfe will be teaching tinwhistle also on a Tuesday from Tuesday 6th of September until next May. The children will need tinwhistles and music folders every Tuesday for the year. We will provide a tinwhistle to any child without one next Tuesday. If you have one at home, please send it with your child on Tuesday.
We are hoping that 1st-6th class will go swimming from 23rd February – 30th March for 6th weeks in Dunmanway Swimming pool. We are awaiting confirmation from the pool and bus prices, we will inform you of same when we have them.
We are planning Wellfest Ballinacarriga 2022 at school on Friday 23rd of September. On this day, the children will take part in yoga, dance, a DJ rock concert, nature art, meditation/story telling, drama, healthy eating snacks and much more! Children can wear “festival gear”, so shorts, wellies, dresses, anything goes! We hope that this will get our mental and physical wellbeing off to a good start this school year.
We will be holding an internet safety talk by Ger Brick on Monday Oct 10th at 7.30pm for ALL parents. Ger Brick is an experienced facilitator who delivers Cyberbullying / Internet Safety talks to Primary Schools across Ireland. We would highly recommend that at least one parent from every family attends. He will cover many issues, including how to stay safe online, what kinds of apps the children are using, etc. Please see his website for more information. https://inetsafetytalk.com/
If you need to contact the school, you can ring us on 023-8845944. Catherine, our secretary is in on Monday-Thursday 9am-2pm. The phone may not be answered outside of these times but please leave a message and we will get back to you.
Teacher’s emails if needed:
Infants: Ms. Nagle and Ms. Kelly: infantclassroom@ballinacarriga-ns.ie
1st & 2nd class: Ms. Jennings: amy@ballinacarriga-ns.ie
3rd & 4th class: Ms. Murray: niamhmurrayarch@gmail.com
5th & 6th class: Mr. O’Driscoll barry@ballinacarriga-ns.ie
Special Education teacher: Mrs. Hurley roisin@ballinacarriga-ns.ie
Yours sincerely
Róisín Hurley
Principal
Dear Parents,
I hope this email finds you well. We look forward to welcoming the children back next Wednesday 31st of August.
At this time, I would like to remind you that school starts at 9.10am and children can be dropped from 8.50am-9.10am.
School finishes at 2.50pm. To alleviate the parking situation at home time, this year we will have a collection period of 2.50-3pm, this mean that the children from 1st-6th class (74 children) will leave their classrooms at 2.50pm and will wait in the front yard until a parent/guardian arrives during the 10 minute window. This is the largest number of children we have ever had leaving at 2.50pm and it can be hectic and dangerous. We urge you to PLEASE park in the car park across the road, as cars parked on the same side of the road obstruct the view of children to oncoming cars. Please cross the road and accompany children to their car. We are in contact with the local council engineers to help us with our collection time safety but until they have agreed to a solution, we need your cooperation to ensure pupil safety.
Our water well is testing higher than usual for manganese at the moment and we are in the process of further testing and possibly getting a filter to resolve the issue. Therefore, we ask that children bring enough water/drinks to carry them through the school day. We will have water drums to refill where needed but as you can imagine, this would take quiet a bit of time out of our day if we were to re-fill all the bottles.
The children can wear their PE informs on Thursdays and Fridays, including the first week back. Junior infants can wear any comfortable clothes until their PE uniform is ready.
The school hoodies are in stock in school and Catherine will issue you with a order form the 1st week and we will give you the hoodie immediately. Shorts can be worn for the month of September if the weather is warm. We do not have specific uniform shorts, the children can wear any colour shorts (but please not too short).
For the new junior infants on the first morning of school, 2 adults are allowed to accompany their child to the school yard but we would appreciate if only one adult would accompany the child into the classroom because unfortunately we are not blessed with big classrooms!!
Ger Wolfe will be restarting tin whistle lessons with every class on Tuesday 6th of September so please pull out the old ones if you have them and if not, we will provide a tin whistle at a cost of €5.50/whistle in the school bills.
The school bill will be issued towards the end of September and we will keep the increasing cost of living in mind as much as possible when supplying the bill.
Yours sincerely,
Róisín Hurley
Principal
Just a reminder that children cannot be dropped to school until 8.50am. The children are not insured to be on the school property before this time and on a more practical level, the teachers use this time to prepare for the day and we would really appreciate if you could respect this.
Parents, please find information and support that you may need to ensure your child makes the most of their time online and stays safe when interacting with others online. Also, it shows you how to set up parental control over your children's devices.
https://www.webwise.ie/parents/
