As part of our Active Schools Campaign and also our Mental Health Initiative, the Junior Classes in the school enjoyed participating in some yoga based lessons with Mrs. Mc Guirk. We learned how to relax and unwind and also explored techniques to help us stay focused. Everyone enjoyed the Yoga Bears sessions.
Well done to all of the boys and girls who took part in our Read-A-Thon. You raised an incredible €1400 to purchase books for our school.
Every child who returned a sponsorship card was then entered into a raffle for a €50 Smyths Voucher. Congratulations to our winner Seán – happy spending!!
Food Dudes is an award winning curriculum-linked evidence-based healthy eating programme, developed to encourage children to eat more fresh fruit and vegetables. It is based on repeated tastings of fresh fruit and vegetables, rewards and positive role models.
The boys and girls were delighted to take part again this year, and enjoyed plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables. Well done everyone!
On the Wednesday before our mid-term break we learned how to play tag rugby. We had so much fun!
During our school closure due to Covid -19, we were very conscious of the impact the virus was causing on our students and whole school community. As both a Health Promoting School and Active School, we decided to introduce an initiative called Wellness Wednesday to support children and families in maintaining fitness and mental health!
Every Wednesday, children and their families were encouraged to get active by choosing an activity from the list of Wellness Wednesday activities provided or doing something active of their own. See below some of the activities our pupils and families got up to!
We also introduced Zoom P.E. as part of Wellness Wednesday, where staff, pupils and their families got active each Wednesday by partaking in fun games and exercises guided by an online coach! To mark the end of our school year, we even held a Zoom Sports Day – which everyone really enjoyed.
The children in our in our school really enjoyed their first session of Relax Kids on Thursday 30th January 2020 and are excited about their next class.
The sessions are aimed at primary school children and run in 6 week courses.
They involve warm up and movement, relaxing mindfulness games, stretching and breathing exercises, massage, affirmations, storytelling and visualisations.
The sessions take children from high energy to low energy and encourage them to relax while developing their creativity and imagination.
Each session has a theme which brings the child on a different adventure each week, from pirates to outer space to wizards. The sessions not only enable the child to learn the beautiful art of mindfulness but also equip them with tools to deal with stressful situations and anxiety, building their emotional resilience and self esteem along the way.
A huge thank-you to Olivia Monaghan for coming and teaching our children such wonderful skills, in such a fun and meaningful way. This is another initiative which goes hand in hand with our ongoing Health Promoting Ethos in our School.
We got active for our Health Promoting Schools Campaign on Thursday 24th October 2019. We looked terrifyingly good as we did our various circuits.
Well done everyone for your participation and a huge thank you to all our active leaders for leading the events.
Our children continue to focus on Health Promotion and continue to practice our Active Flag Initiative as they take part in soccer skills with Euan Treanor during September and October. Have a look at some of their activities below!
Thanks to Euan for visiting our school and sharing his knowledge and expertise with us.
On Friday 21st June 2019, we were very fortunate to be offered a free taster session from Bike Green by the Monaghan Sports Partnership. Junior Infants, Senior Infants and First Class got to learn many valuable cycling skills, using balance bikes.
A massive thank you to Seán and Francis for coming to visit us today and providing the children with this fantastic opportunity!
There was huge excitement in St. Michael’s National School on Wednesday 19th June 2019 as we came together as a school community to raise three very important and well-deserved flags. Both staff and pupils have worked extremely hard and have shown huge dedication and commitment to achieve a flag for Water Conservation and Preservation, a flag for recognition as a Health Promoting School and also a flag for achieving Active School Status. We had a fantastic day gathering together to mark our success.
On the day we also opened our beautiful new friendship garden. A sincere word of thanks to our parent’s association for making our friendship garden possible – your unending support doesn’t go unnoticed!
A heartfelt thank you to everyone who attended the Flag Raising Ceremony and who contributed in any way to making the day a memorable one. A special thank you also to our special guests ‘Hiphopical’ for their fantastic dance display and to Drew Wylie from the Monaghan County Team who raised our three flags for us.
Well done to everyone! Our staff and pupils are very proud to be flying the flags for St. Michael’s N.S. Donaghmoyne.
