Dear families and friends of the school,
As we come to the end of our second term, we took the time this week to celebrate Friendship and Wellbeing Week. Friendship and Wellbeing Week provides a focus to all children and staff in Good Counsel as to how we can look after ourselves and others. Ranging from Mindful Monday to Friendship Friday, Mrs. Shanahan put together many different activities and ideas to mark the week including a Morning Mindful Message over the school intercom every day, a new Affirmation Station near Ms. Behan’s room, Throw a Kindness like Confetti notice board and a Friendship Bracelet Swap in each class on Friday to name a few. Homework for the week was the Wellbeing Homework Challenge Suggestions which could be done at home with a friend or family member. Mrs. Burke and 6th class arranged some food tasting activities on ‘Think Healthy Thursday’.
On Friday we held a ‘Wear Your Bright Colours Day’. All of the girls dressed up in their brightest colours and were encouraged to donate €2 to charity. Well done and thanks to all of the girls for dressing up in such colourful outfits and for their generosity.
I think it is fair to say that life for many of us, children and adults alike is very busy and taking time to reflect and have a look at our selves and our own wellbeing is always time well spent. We hope that the week has given the girls a chance to do this and to find alternative activities away from what would be commonly chosen such as television time or time spent on devices. Regarding devices and their use, we continue to encourage all parents to be aware of what their children are doing online, to monitor both how devices are used by their children and the time spent on them. Although technology has huge benefits and is very much part of our daily lives, it is having a huge negative impact on many including children which is something that we all must be mindful of and protect our children against.
We hope all of the girls enjoyed the week and thank you to Mrs. Shanahan for all of her work in putting everything together.
Parents’ Association Easter Raffle
Our annual Easter Raffle was held by the Parents’ Association on Thursday of this week. Thanks to the Parents’ Association for all of their hard work in putting the prizes together, sorting raffle tickets and holding the raffle itself. There were 18 prizes to be won in the main raffle and Easter Eggs were raffled off in each class as well. Thank you to everyone who contributed, whether you donated a prize or bought or sold a ticket. Over €700 was raised which will be used, as always to enhance the learning experience of all of the girls here in Good Counsel.
Out Door Learning in the School Garden – Spring 2025 Update
Over last number of weeks, first class, fifth class and sixth class have been busy planting a variety of vegetable seeds. These include early potatoes, carrots, turnips, onions, garlic, lettuce and radish. In May we will plant beans. Our school are yet again involved in the Incredible Edibles Programme 2025. We are hoping to retain our Gold Standard status that we achieved last June. This year, also, we are engaged in the GIY school garden project.
A big thanks to Mark for helping us prepare the raised beds and he will be keeping a watchful eye on them over the Easter break. With the warmer weather and a little luck, we will hopefully enjoy some wonderful vegetables before long. Planting is part of our science studies, and learning about growing your own plants and vegetables is a great life skill. It’s a wonderful experience for the girls to see and learn about the seeds and to feel and to work with the soil and compost. We love looking after nature and we benefit when we celebrate its wonder.
Miss Kelly
Trócaire Lenten Campaign 2025
During Lent, our Trócaire Ambassadors from fifth and sixth classes have been busy visiting the classrooms and collecting coins and coppers for the Lent appeal. Lent is the season of preparation which comes before the celebration of Easter. The Ambassadors also presented during our Friday assembly outlining this year’s Trócaire Box story about a family in Guatemala. They told the story of IIma and Julio and their family, who are struggling to cope with the effects of climate change on their local area, their crop growth and how all this threatens their children’s chances of an education and their future. Well done girls. Thank you to everyone for your generosity and support. As we approach Easter, we wish everyone and their families a Happy Easter.
Miss Kelly
5th Class Special Assembly – Easter
Thanks to Ms. White and 5th Class who had a beautiful Special Assembly on Thursday of this week for Easter. 5th class told us all about the importance of Easter and its origin by presenting it, singing songs and finished with some ‘Lámh’ where they showed all of the girls how to sign different words associated with Easter.
Mrs. Ryan’s 3rd Class showed us their Easter Bonnets which were made during the week. The girls are so creative in putting the bonnets together as is the tradition in Mrs. Ryan’s Class. Well done all!
Basketball
Our basketball team represented the school in the Annual Basketball Blitz in Our Lady of Mercy’s sports hall on the last Friday in March. The girls played four games and enjoyed a great day out. Thanks to Mrs. Burke and Ms. White for looking after the team.
Camogie
On Wednesday of this week, we played a strong Ballyduff Upper N.S. in the schools 7 a-side final in Dungarvan GAA grounds. Unfortunately we weren’t successful on the day but the girls gave their all, learned from the experience and will look forward to other days out. Well done to Ballyduff Upper on their well deserved win on the day.
A big thank you to all of the parents and family members who made the trip to Dungarvan. Your support is much appreciated! The girls have made great progress in the 7 a-side this year having won the Eastern side of the competition – well done to you all for your hard work and dedication.
Traffic
Traffic at both drop off and collection times, although things are moving well especially with regards to entering our school, can become congested when leaving at the temporary traffic lights beyond the Abbey C.C. Thanks to parents who have been patient throughout all of the disruption. We hope that this issue will be improved when the final parts of the work are carried out on the Abbey Road and when the permanent traffic lights are set up.
Of course, if you walk to school (and are close enough to walk), you should not experience any of these issues. We see many more children and families walking as the weather gets better and encourage as many of you as possible to walk to school as long as it is safe to do so.
Dates for your Diary
Return after the Easter Break – Monday, April 28th
School Closed – Monday May 5th (May Bank Holiday Weekend)
Wishing you all a Happy Easter. We look forward to seeing you all again in two weeks after the break.
Yours sincerely,
J. Nagle
Principal
This week has been a special week in school, with us celebrating Wellbeing/ Friendship week. The girls have enjoyed practising mindful moments and celebraring having good friends and being good friends. The girls both made and shared friendship bracelets with those in the class.
We have been getting ready for Easter, with beautiful funky bunny art and going on an egg hunt for Golden Time.
The girls have progressed so well in chess, able to have timed matches against others in the class, working on developing their strategy.
I hope everyone has a lovely break and we’ll see you back in Term 3.
What a busy half term the girls have had and they are well and truly ready for a well-deserved Easter break. I hope the Easter bunny has some nice surprises for these girls.
There has been a lot going on in Maths over the last few weeks. The girls have been learning about Area and came to the conclusion that standard shapes are the best way to find the surface area of an object. They were estimating and measuring using various shapes and sizes. We then compared our answers and figured out that square units are the best way to measure area. Well done on all the problem solving and team work that was needed to do these challenges.
We moved on to Length later on and again used some non-standard items to measure the length of various distances – walls, corridors, distances from classroom to office, length of paths etc. After realising that we all get different answers, the girls decided that using the same item each with a standard measurement was the best way. We then measured using rulers, metre sticks and measuring tapes.
Following this, we did some Capacity work. The girls brought in containers and we learned to estimate and measure using various sizes and shapes. We estimated how many of one container it would take to fill another. We then went to work with our basins of water. We progressed on to using measuring jugs and the girls were able to draw conclusions during and at the end of the activities. Very good problem solving took places here.
We moved on to Graphs in Maths and we did some pictograms, block and bar graphs. We surveyed the traffic outside our school and did a tally on the different colour cars. The girls discovered that silver/grey or white were the most popular cars on the road!
As always the girls have been up and out of their seats creating Irish dramas. It’s been lots of fun for them and great to see them using and creating sentences and dramas with the Irish they know.
In Science the girls learned about friction and how smooth hard surfaces created less friction and soft rough surfaces created more friction. They did some experimenting with different materials and drove some wind up dinky cars across these various surfaces. Some were smooth, others rough, some slippy etc. They presented their findings to the class.
In Science also, we learned about oil and water and how items can be made waterproof. We did a little experiment using oil/wax crayons to do some nature rubbings, and then washed this over using watercolours. It was clear the wax crayons resisted the watercolour.
We continued this lesson learning about various materials and discovering the properties of these materials, which are waterproof, which are not, which ones are transparent, or opaque. The girls investigated and presented their findings.
We celebrated our annual St. Patrick’s Day parade in school. What a great day of fun and cheer. The ceili was great fun and it was lovely to see all the girls mixing and enjoying being part of our school.
In SPHE we have been learning a lot about being healthy and looking after ourselves. We discovered ways we are healthy and some ways that we can improve our health by making some small changes. We have some tasty healthy treats to see if we could try some new foods. There wasn’t much left on the plates at the end of this activity!!
The girls have been learning about milk in Geography. Where does it come from and what are the stages it goes through to get to our glass! We realised there was a lot more going on with milk than we had previously thought! The girls realised that the cow isn’t the only animal to produce milk that we can drink. Some girls made connections with our SPHE and realised they need to have more milk in their diet. They learned some easy ways to do this – why not make a healthy milkshake?? All you need is a blender (of some sort), some plain yoghurt, a mix of whatever chopped fruit you like, milk, whizz it up and voilá – an amazing, fresh, tasty and healthy milkshake. The girls enjoyed trying some milkshakes in class!
We finished Term 2 with a wonderful and positive Friendship and Wellbeing Week, thanks to Mrs Shanahan for organising it. We had a lovely week of mindfulness, friendship bracelets, healthy treats, meditation, mindful walks, friendship quizzes, affirmations, thankful cards and much much more. What a lovely way to finish off Term 2. The girls also discovered that the Easter bunny arrived early with a tasty treat!!
I wish you and your families a very happy Easter break and I look forward to Term 3 in a few weeks times.
Best wishes,
Mrs. Power
The girls have been working so hard recently, trying their best in everything they have been learning and being kind and helpful as often as they can. As they have been working hard they have been collecting stars for our star jar, they filled the jar last week and earned Golden Time! We had a class vote and decided to go to the park and enjoy the sunshine.
We attended a book quiz in the library for world book day
The girls had a great time for World Book Day, it was lovely to see all the girls favourite book characters come to life !
We created some amazing projects all about The Great Irish Famine. All of the girls worked so hard and their effort was admired by all the staff and students in the school.
With the help of Miss. Kelly, we have been partaking in the Incredible Edible challenge. The girls were working hard learning about the planting process and getting the soil ready for seeds.
Our classroom has turned into a mini-greenhouse. The girls have been taking great care to ensure the plants stay hydrated by watering them everyday. Our plants have been loving the sun as much as we have !!
