Active School Flag

Welcome to the St. Ciaran's Mixed Ns Active Flag update page!

We are aiming to get an Active Flag for our school. Meet our committee members:

Joe, John, Emer, Caoimhe, Shauna, Max, Oisín, and Oscar. Ms Murray is our Active Flag co-ordinator.

The Active School flag committee has 3 aims:

To make sure that everybody takes part in some kind of activity during or after school, e.g. walking, cycling, swimming, running or just playing.
To help children to be more active inside and outside of school. It is recommended that children have at least 60 minutes of activity every day.
To make sure we have fun while getting more active. It’s much easier to be active if you’re having fun doing it.

We are also prioritising athletics as part of our Active school Flag this year.

Hi everyone,

Welcome to the Active School section of our School Website.

We as the Active School Committee would like to show you what we have been getting up to to help the levels of activity in our school.

We have meetings every couple of weeks to update our classes on the Active initiative we are working on, and throughout the year we run events and activities to help promote physical activity.

We have Active Suggestion boxes in all classrooms so if there are any suggestions they can be put in these.

We have activity bins for both the Junior and Senior yard, which our Active School Committee bring out to yard everyday at break. They have badminton rackets, hula hoops, skipping ropes hurdles etc in them to ensure everyone is being active and having fun during break.

We also have made an Active Walkway in our School.

If you walk one lap of our basketball court that will total up to 100metres. We had great fun working out how many laps we would have to walk to reach 1 kilometre!

Euro 2024 - Junior Classes

Our 1st to 3rd class had a great time partaking in our school version of the European Championships.

Everyone was put on a team and represented the different countries playing.

We had lots of fun and our eventual winners were Italy after a very closely fought final.

Active Schools Week 2024 - 13th May - 17th May

This year we had great weather for our Active Schools week, which we held on the week of the 13th May. We had introductory dance lessons with Deirdre, we had PE coaching with Seán, swimming on the Monday, and a whole school walk on the Thursday which was a firm favourite event! We also did a 'Wake Up, Shake Up!' warm up activity at assembly on Monday.

We were also very lucky to have Pius from Offaly Sports Partnership come into us to give us a talk on living a healthy lifestyle. Pius brought in some of his Athletics medals to show us his achievements and we had a question and answer session at the end. We really appreciate Pius taking the time to visit us from his busy schedule. Pius is also the Chairman of Ballycumber Healthy Club in collaboration with Irish Life so he informed us of all of the wonderful things that are happening to help promote activity levels in the community.

We also had a girls football match on the Thursday refereed by a very special guest. Thank you to Darren our SNA for taking the time to referee this match for us.

Our next initiative is 'Jump for June' to focus on the jumping strand in Athletics, where we will learn to skip and record our skips as a whole school challenge. Our priority skills are running and skipping,

Wake up! Shake Up!

As part of our Active School week we did a 'Wake up, Shake up!' Activity in our assembly on Monday morning. We did 5 exercises of 30 seconds on 20 seconds off. We really enjoyed these and think the teachers did too!

Dance workshops

Our school has started dance lessons with Deirdre until the end of term. We learnt some dance poses such as pike, butterfly, and star and we incorporated these dance poses into our movement. Everyone is really enjoying dance and the songs we get to groove along to! See below some photos of our workshops and also some impromptu macarena moves from Ms. Warburton's Class!

Healthy Club Talk

We were very lucky to have Pius Devine of Offaly Sports Partnership come to visit us in school as part of our Active Week events on Wednesday 15th May. Pius works with Offaly Sports Partnership and is also Chairman of Ballycumber Healthy Club. He held a very informative talk on healthy living and the benefits of exercises. We had a question and answer session at the end. Thank you Pius for taking the time to speak to us and for showing us some of your Athletics medals.

Girls football match Thursday 16th May

Our School Walk Thursday 16th May

60 minutes test your limits!

Science Blast - Ms Warburtons 4th and 5th Class

School Relay Marathon

As our priority strand for Active Schools is Athletics, we decided to take on marathon as part of our efforts!

Our school Marathon took place on Friday 23rd February.

Children from every class took part and collectively as a school we ran 42,195 metres in 2 hours, 53 minutes, and 21 seconds!

This was an excellent fundraiser and we raised a grand total of €3,325.00 This money will go towards updating of IT equipment and resources in the school.

Thank you so much to everyone who donated and also to Ballycumber GAA who very kindly sponsored refreshments for every child for their participation in the marathon. Also a big thank you to Ciaran from Fitter Younger Ireland who helped us in the setting up of the Marathon.

See some photos of the day below.

Active school members Max, John, Shauna, Caoimhe and Emer before the big race!

Our three oldest students Owen, Emer, and Eanna, together with our youngest student Maisie ran the final lap together. A big well done to all who participated!

The Active School Committee accepting a very generous donation of refreshments for after the marathon from Ballycumber GAA.

On Friday 23rd February we are running a marathon in keeping with our Active Flag endeavours. We aim to run a grand total of 42,195 metres and raise money for upgrading of our IT equipment in the process.

Sports Hub Wednesdays

From Wednesday 20th February for a period of four weeks pupils from all classes in the school go down to the sports hub for PE. We enjoy this time and do various games, activities and circuits relating to our Athletics stand which we are prioritising this year.

We also enjoy the short bus journey to Ballycumber! A big thank you to Pius and Denise from Offaly Sports Partnerships for facilitating us.

60 minutes test your limits!

Our first job as Active Committee was to find a slogan that encourages physical activity. We ran a slogan competition and the overall winner was Kaya in Ms. Warburton's class with the slogan "60 minutes, test your limits!"

Fitmas 2023 - Festive fun with a fitness twist!

Our next action as Active School Committee was to organise an Active Fitness week, which we named 'Fitmas'.

The Active School committee organised a full week of activities for the week of 18th December.

We did a Christmas music Dance-athon during big break, did a decorate the tree relay, feed the reindeer game, and christmas musical hula hoops! We also did a Christmas walk where we got to wear Christmas jumpers and a festive hat! See below some photos of our festive walk. We also got a lovely treat of hot chocolate and marshmallows at the very end!