On Tuesday the 13th of February the children took part in the annual tradition of Pancake Tuesday. The 6th class children helped Mary and Mrs Callaghan to prepare the pancakes for everybody in the school. Strawberry syrup, nutella, lemon juice, chocolate sauce and sugar were just some of the toppings the children put on their pancakes. The pancakes were delicious and everyone really enjoyed them. The 6th class children even got time to practice flipping some pancakes.
Everyone in Threen National School is delighted and proud of our achievement of winning an award at the Roscommon County Council Tidy Schools Awards. Our school won the ‘Most Creative Upcycled Garden Award’ for 2017. Well Done Everybody.
On Wednesday the 20th of December we held our Christmas show in the Trinity Arts Centre in Castlerea. The children performed a drama called ‘The Apprentice’ during the first half of the show. ‘The Apprentice’ is a story based around the nativity and the children loved taking on the roles of all the different characters. During the second half of the show, the children performed a variety of songs and instrumentals that they had learnt with their music teacher Martina Walshe. We are very lucky to have such talented children in our school.
Congratulations to Sarah Joyce on her recent success in the Irish Christmas Tree Growers Poetry Competition. Sarah won first prize in the Connacht region with her wonderful poem ‘The Christmas Tree’. Sarah won a Christmas tree for our school and also a Christmas tree for herself. As a regional winner she also won a cash prize of fifty Euro. We are all so proud of Sarah and her wonderful achievement. Below is Sarah’s winning poem:
The Christmas Tree
The Christmas tree
was all alone,
He sat in the forest
On his own!
He waited and waited
Until the day,
A family came
And took him away.
They put him in the living room,
For everyone to see,
He was so beautiful
The little Christmas tree.
On the 21st of November 2017 the senior room went on a tour to see some historical sites in Trien. On our tour we were accompanied by the Historical Group from Trien.
Our first visit was to Kilkeevan cemetery. One of the first things we saw was a place outside the cemetery where babies who weren’t baptised were buried. We then went inside to look around the cemetery and we saw lots of unmarked graves. There was also church ruins inside the cemetery which dated back to the time of St. Patrick. We also saw a tomb in the cemetery where the Kings of Connacht (The O’Conors) were buried.
After visiting the cemetery we went to see The Méaróg stone in Cloonkeen. The historians told us that a giant threw the stone from the Hill of Brockey. The giant was trying to throw it at another giant on the Hill of Fairymount but it landed instead in a field in Cloonkeen. On the stone is the giant’s handprint. We tried to move the stone but we weren’t strong enough.
The final site we visited was a Mass Rock which is located in Willsbrook. This rock was where people celebrated mass during the penal times in the seventeenth century. During this time it was illegal to go to a catholic church so people instead went to mass in an isolated area such as the one at Willsbrook. We had a great day and we learnt lots of interesting things about our local area.
Once again we were busy this year filling up shoe boxes to help vulnerable children who live overseas. Each shoe box was filled with a variety of different things. Items included something the children could use in school like a pencil, copy, eraser etc, items the children would use to wash themselves like a toothbrush, toothpaste, soap etc, something the children could wear like gloves or socks and also a wow item which would be a treat for the child like a toy, sunglasses, a game and so on. We hope that our shoe boxes help these children to have a little bit of joy and happiness at Christmas.
We undertook the Food Dudes programme in October and early November. Food Dudes is an initiative that encourages children to eat fruit and vegetables. Some of the foods we tried included mandarins, bananas, peppers, cucumbers, carrots, mange touts, grapes and apples. If children ate both the fruit and vegetables every day they won prizes like a pencil, an eraser, a drink bottle and also a lunch box. We will be continuing food dudes over the coming months as the children will continue to bring in their own fruit and vegetables every day.
We have been busy planting bulbs in school. They come in all different shapes and sizes. When we planted the bulbs we planted them with the stem facing up. We covered the bulbs with clay and in Spring we will have lovely crocuses.
Third, fourth, fifth and sixth class were learning more about their home county Roscommon in Geography. The children were split up into groups and each group did some research on Roscommon. The children learnt learnt lots of interesting things about Roscommon including that the population is 64,336, it is an inland county, it is the eleventh largest county in Ireland, Seltnasaggat is the highest point in Roscommon and Clonalis House in Castlerea, Kings House in Boyle and Lough Key Forest Park are just some of the tourist attractions Roscommon has to offer.
On Friday the 27th of October there was a fancy dress day in school. Children dressed up as clowns, zombies, skeletons, witches and many more scary creatures. Everybody had great fun trying to guess who everyone was. It was a fun way to end the first term in school.
