(Dec.2015)Notes from the Principal’s Desk ……. Good health and happiness to all members of our school community as 2015 comes to an end.Since our last newsletter Music week was held and as usual was a fun week with some talented visitors and the ever popular talent show and discos. My thanks to Pat for co-ordinating the week’s events.

Our Student Representative Group has had a busy term. They have been selling our lovely calendar, organising World Food Day and doing the announcements at our recent concert Christmas Around the World.

I’d like to thank the huge number of parents that cooked dishes for our very successful World Food Day. Over 18 countries were represented on the day and of course our pupils and staff thoroughly enjoyed it.

Our 5th classes entered the annual Young Scientist Competition held by INTEL. The judges were very impressed not just by the high standard but also by the children’s ability to discuss and explain all about their work. Well done to Elaine and 5th class.

Our newly formed Board of Management for 2015-2019 met recently for the first time. I’d like to sincerely thank our outgoing Board of Management members for their time, energy and dedication to the school during their tenure. Our new Board of Management members are:

Michael Costello (Chairperson & Patron’s Nominee)Sinead Kehoe (Treasurer & Community Nominee)Paula Carroll (Secretary & Community Nominee)John Cradden (Patron’s Nominee)Maria Alcazar (Parents’ Nominee)Enda Martin (Parents’ Nominee)Jenny McCarthy (Teachers’ Nominee)Rita Galvin (Principal)

Thank you to the parents who put themselves forward for election recently. When our Parent Teacher Association is formed in the new year, there should be even more opportunities for involvement.

On behalf of all the staff I’d like to wish you all a lovely Christmas break and may 2016 be filled with happy times. See you back @8.40.a.m on Wednesday January 6th 2015.

Thank you to our parent body for all your help and support all year.

www.nketns.ieemail: office@nketns.ie

IMPORTANT NOTICE – We wish to remind parents that during low temperature/icy weather conditions the roundabout leading to the school can be treacherous to drive on! Even when temperatures are above freezing, the roundabout area still remains very icy – so please drive with extreme caution upon approach from St. Wolstan’s Community School, and again when leaving the N.K.E.T.N.S. Dates for your Diary Offer of Junior Infant places for 2016/2017 will commence on Wednesday 6th January. Swimming lessons for Senior Infants will commence on Tuesday 12th January. N.K.E.T.N.S. Science Week – 25th to 29th January 2016 6th Class trip to Places of Worship – Tuesday 26th January 2016 (details to follow) 6th Class trip to The Dail – Wednesday 10th February 2016 (details to follow) Junior Infants and Graduation Photos – Wednesday 17th February 2016 (details to follow) As previously advised in our October newsletter, Parent-Teacher meetings will take place on

Friday 5 th February and Thursday 11 th February 2016 . You will be notified of your appointed time approximately two weeks before either of the above dates. These meetings will be held after school hours on both days.

CHRISTMAS HAMPERSThank you all for your generous contributions to our annual Christmas Hamper Appeal. Since we started our appeal back in 1998, we have donated 345 hampers. This year we managed to make up 21 hampers! Thanks to the following volunteers who assisted with packing and wrapping the hampers – Aisling Gallagher, Angela Walsh, Eva Copeland, Julia Melia, Audrey Phillips and Terri O’Brien.

We would like to express our sincere thanks to Colortrend who have donated boxes and tape to the school to make up our hampers, since 1998.

CHRISTMAS AROUND THE WORLDThe first term came to a musical conclusion with a whole-school

performance entitled Christmas Around The World. There were two concerts, one in the afternoon and one at night and both were packed with parents and grandparents. Junior Infants talked about the history of the Christmas tree and sang O Tannenbaum (in German!). Not to be outdone, Senior Infants sang Feliz Navidad in Spanish while explaining about Christmas traditions in Spain. First Class told the story of the nativity and sang Jingle Bells while Second Class talked about Christmas in Sweden and the winter solstice and sang Santa Lucia (partly in Italian) and Here Comes The Sun. Our Outreach classes performed Santa Claus Is Coming To Town and talked about the varied incarnations of Santa around Europe.

Third Class studied the history of Christmas music and sang two contrasting songs: a traditional carol in the form of Deck The Halls and a modern Christmas pop classic, Wham’s Last Christmas. Fourth Class did a dramatic rendition of Charles Dickens’ A

Christmas Carol and Fifth Class also performed a drama – The Story of Babushka, after explaining about Christmas traditions in Russia. Finally Sixth Class talked about how Christmas in a multi-cultural society has a secular aspect and is celebrated by people who are not Christian. They sang Merry Christmas Everyone and a song of their own composition, Turkey On The Go!

We are grateful to Bernard Larkin of BL Neonsigns (father of our Fourth Class teacher Grace) for providing us with the backdrop, including neon lights. Thank you also to everyone who bought raffle tickets and calendars. The total amount raised for the school exceeded €2,700 which will be a great help. Thanks again to Paul and Orlaith MacCourt for their help in producing the calendar and to Aoife Finegan and Sarah Downes for the calendar photography.

Raffle winners were:

Fergus Haverty-Stacke (GoTab Tablet), Dermot Gildea (Case of Wine), Sinead Connolly, Patricia Quinn, Naomi Clancy and Michael Wallace (each receiving a Windsor Motors car servicevoucher), Donal Bolger (Newgrange Crystal), Arlene Higgins (Shawl), Radha Chava and Maria Alcazar (both receiving a hamper of wine and chocolates), Fiona Kyle and Audrey Phillips (Box of Biscuits each), Anita Regucka-Kwasnik and Liz Hayes (Digital Camera), Sam Carty (Igloo cake), Elizabeth Scanlon (Decoder & Headphones), Sue Smith (Lego), Hadas Lahav and John Corry (Pot of Gold Race Game), Kate McGrath (Bathing/Body lotions), Ashling Devlin (2 NKETNS Calendars) and Arwen Carroll (Box of Notelets.

HELPERSIt cannot be stated enough how much all our helpers/volunteers are appreciated. By having parents in to help, the teachers can draw on a wealth of talent and skills for their classes. Visitors add excitement to the class and they are always well received.

SCHOOLBAG POSTWe would like to remind parents to check your child’s schoolbag on a very regular basis (at least twice a week) to ensure that you do not miss any notices from the school. Please remind your child that when given any note from a teacher to immediately place it in their schoolbag – we do remind them of this but it would assist us if this could be reinforced at home too.

Notices (including those distributed in the schoolbags) are also placed in our Community Noticeboard which is situated opposite the main Reception door.

TEXT-ALERTPlease ensure that you notify the school office if you change your mobile number. In order for the text alert communication system to work effectively, it is necessary to ensure we have up-to-date mobile numbers.

MUSIC WEEK 2015Music Week took place this year during the first two weeks of December. As always, the week was greatly enriched by the visits of parents and relatives to the classrooms to share their musical talents with the children. Damien Farrell, father of Ryan in 5th class came in to sing and play the guitar. Vincent Dickson’s father Jonathan brought his guitar and Tibetan singing bowl into both 2nd and 4th

classes and was accompanied by Vincent himself on the fiddle. Anne Delargy, who teaches violin to a number of children in the school, brought her pupils to different classes to play Christmas tunes. She was accompanied by Daniel Herron (6th), Anna Herron and Eabha Hourihane (4th), Ella Corry and Oscar Hourihane (3rd) and Gracie Hourihane (1st). These visits are a highlight of the week for the children and are greatly appreciated.

In addition to classroom visitors, 2nd, 3rd and 4th classes had a dance workshop in the hall with Cathy O’Kennedy as part of the Kildare County Council Artist for a Day programme. Some classes also used their digital projectors and stereo sound systems to watch a musical.

The Junior and Senior Infant and 1st and 2nd class discos were great fun as were the discos for both 3rd and 4th classes and for 5th and 6th classes. The week was rounded off by the Junior and Senior talent shows. The full range of talent at NKETS was on show, from singing to playing instruments to telling jokes. We also had gymnastics, contortions, interpretive dance and magic tricks! All in all, it was another successful Music Week in NKETNS.

ONE DAY TOGETHERYou will recall that we held a Coin Trail to help raise funds for the Educate Together National Office. Every child that brought in €2.00 had their names entered into the Grand Raffle, consisting of ET schools that participated in the fundraising drive. They were: 1st M Kummianski from Firhouse ETTickets to see The Snowman in the National Concert Hall and an overnight stay in the Maldron Hotel in Dublin for a family of 4 on 19th December 2nd M Hassine from Middleton ETA pass to Fota Wildlife Park and an overnight stay in The Rochestown Park Hotel in Cork for a family of 4 3rd A Redmond from Ballinteer ET An iPad donated by Eversheds 4th J O Hare from Mullingar ETAn annual family OPW National Heritage Card

COFFEE MORNINGSWe had a series of coffee mornings for all our classes during this term, and thanks to the parents who were able to attend. It’s a great way of meeting each other for the first time or getting re-acquainted

GREEN NEWS During the festive season, don’t forget to hold on to any used aluminium cans, wasted batteries, old mobile phones/chargers and printer cartridges and bring them into school for our various recycling banks. .

Keep an eye on your local newspapers for details of where you can bring your Christmas Trees after the festivities are over for shredding and recycling.

Don’t Forget to keep your paper and card waste for our Recycling.

GO RAIBH MAITH AGAIBH…..Donations - Chloe Smith (Jenny’s Jnr. Infs.) brought in a beautiful bird house for the class garden, which was made by her grandfather. Audrey Beatty donated ribbons and materials for our art store. Maisy Brady, Helena McMahon and Julie Lyons dropped in a selection of books and encyclopedias (We would like to advise that we currently have enough books for our class libraries so do not need any donations at this time. We will, of course, let you know when we need to replenish our stock. Thank you) Helpers – Thanks to our Garden Group, Lorna Green, Terri O’Brien, Sonia Brett and Fiona Kyle who hold work/planning days every second Friday here in the school. Parents are very welcome to come along and join them any of the days they are here. Just bring your garden gloves and tools, weather permitting! Garden planning takes place on wet days.

5th class were given a treat on the 11th November when some parents came in to help them bake scones with a variety of toppings. They were Leona Creighton, Naomi Clancy and Christine Farrell.

On 3rd December, 2nd class were assisted in their art lesson by Leona Creighton, Catriona O’Connor and Sonia Brett. They made Christmas Trees out of wrapping paper and they look amazing. The class had great fun.

Shirley Shmuel and Nelia McCann came into the school on 14th December and helped both Junior Infant classes decorate their snowmen. They look beautiful!

Catriona Molloy and Ashling McEvoy helped our Junior Infant classes to decorate Christmas Cookies on 18th December Yum!

Thank you parents for taking the time to come in and work with the classes and teachers. It is one of the features of the school that makes it special! CLEAN UP DAYThe SRG organized a Clean-up Day on Wednesday 25th November. Each class were given an area to clean up – this ranged from classrooms, corridors, sensory garden, playground etc. The school looked amazing afterwards. Well done to the SRG and to everyone for their work.

AFTER SCHOOL BASKETBALLSarah and Sinead would like to thank everyone for their wonderful enthusiasm and participation during the first term of basketball. Congratulations to the winning team of our basketball blitz (Audrey, Jan,

Jack & Arwen from 6th class and Amy & Shane from 5th).Well done to Joe (5th) and Ella (6th) who were rewarded for their great team work and commitment.

COMPETITION WINNERMany of our pupils from 4th 5th and 6th classes took part in the inaugural Celbridge Manor Hotel Pumpkin Competition held on 24th October. We are delighted to say that Amy Auden (4th Class) came 1st in and won an Ipad. She carved a ‘Spiderman’ pumpkin. Well done Amy!

FIRE SAFETY TALKIn 2007, the Dept. of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government launched a Community Fire Safety Schools Programme. This programme is designed to be delivered to school children when they reach 3rd class.

Unfortunately, last year’s 3rd were did not receive their fire safety talk. So on the 9th November, they finally did, when a Fire Officer attached to Leixlip Fire Station arrived at the school. He spoke to them for approxi 1 hour about the importance of smoke alarm ownership, raising awareness of fire hazards in the home, family escape plans and setting homework for the children to involve the whole family. The children received a fun pack including a certificate, stickers, home safety checklist and a board game for the family to play. All these items, although fun to use, carry the important messages regarding fire safety in the home. We look forward to seeing a member of Leixlip Fire Station with us again next year

SCIENCE NEWSFifth class once again took part in the annual Intel Mini Scientist Competition for fifth classes in local schools. The competition complements the Science curriculum for the senior classes in primary school and children can work in groups or present an individual project.

The whole project takes about one month to complete with work being done both inside and outside of school. When the projects are complete, they are put on display in the school hall and two judges come from Intel to view the projects and to talk to the children. This gives the children the experience of explaining their work and answering questions about it. There was a great range of projects exhibited and the Intel judges were very impressed at the high standard and had great difficulty deciding on the winners. 1st Place: Neasa Farrell and Sophia Toole – Electrifying Magnetism 2nd Place: Rhea Donnelly and Dylan Stoeckhardt – Terrifying Tornadoes3rd Place: Eoghan Connelly, Shane Corry and Yvonne Lawlor – Genes (Why we have them)4th Place: Niamh Barnes – Sound (How we hear)

Neasa and Sophia went forward to the Regional Finals in Intel with other schools

from the area on 11th December. Intel commented that the standard this year was particularly high with many very impressive projects. Well done to all the children who worked very hard and thank you to their parents who drove the children to and from Intel.

SCHOOL INFECTIONSWe would like to remind parents to let us know if your child becomes ill with a contagious infection e.g. chicken pox, measles etc. It is necessary for us to inform parents of other children in your child’s class to be aware of such an infection, and to avoid it spreading throughout the school.

Please ensure that your child brings their towel into school each day, and don’t forget to change the towel regularly.

HEALTH & SAFETY NOTICEFor reasons of health and safety we would like to remind parents and guardians that no medication of any kind is to be brought into school in children’s schoolbags. These include strepsils, calpol fast melts, cough sweets, lozenges, medicated creams etc. In keeping with our medication policy – no medicines of any description are allowed in schoolbags. It is not possible for staff to monitor the consumption and possible sharing of over-the-counter medications and is therefore a health and safety issue. Please DO NOT send in any medicated

products with your child, to protect all pupils.

SRG – WORLD FOOD DAY1st December was a day when the pupils and staff of the school dined in style, as many of our parents brought in dishes of food popular in various countries. We had a fantastic response from our parents and it was great to see so many parents help a hand at the event, and they, with the SRG, ensured that it ran very smoothly. A selection of dishes were Patatas Bravas (Spanish tortilla), Bara Brith (Tea cake), Haggis, Sang Choy Bow, Babotie, Burekas, Colcannon, Milk Tarts, Chilli Con Carne, Daal and Rice, Pizza, Roast Beef & Yorkshire pudding….to list a few. They were all delicious!

FAI FUTSALOn Tuesday 24th November 18 children from 4th class took part in the FAI Futsal Competition in The Mill, Celbridge. Futsal is indoor five-a-side football, played with a less bouncy ball. The children had a great day out and represented their school superbly on the day. Although not winners, our boys and girls teams gave an excellent performance against some larger schools. Great skill and determination was on show as both teams went close to winning the tournament.

The children who played on the day were Alison Carroll, Hannah Wollmer, Ruthvik Chava, Kaleb Smith, Isibeal Costello, Rachel Murray, Jamie Norris, Rishitha Chava, Jack

Dromgoole, James Smith, Jane McHugh, Jake Lyons, Adam Kelly, Conor Jean, Saul Knight, Emily Kelly, Molly Glasheen and Liam Folan-Healy.

WORKSHOPSThree workshops took place during November. On 9th November we were visited by Julie Duane who gave a workshop called ‘Wonderful Word Wall’. Our Junior Infants, Senior Infants and 1st classes actively engaged their imaginations and prior learning by creating word walls using shape based movement with sound and body percussion.On 26th November Johnny Phelan ran his fun, fast-paced, highly interactive and exciting workshop. This engaged the pupils on a physical and mental level and was thoroughly enjoyed by our Outreach, 1st, 2nd and 3rd classes. Dance was the order of the day for 2nd, 3rd and 4th classes when Cathy O’Kennedy came to give them a Dance Education and Inclusive Dance workshop on the 30th November. This dance experience provided opportunities for students and teachers to learn, explore and enjoy contemporary and creative dance.

In January we will be visited once again by Niall de Burca, storyteller extraordinaire – always an eagerly anticipated visitor to the school.

BOARD OF MANAGEMENT NEWS

VOLUNTARY CONTRIBUTIONS – The Board of Management would like to thank all parents for your financial support for this year. The voluntary contributions by means of standing orders give us a guaranteed income and open the door to raising money via the tax refund scheme. If you wish to contribute to your school this way, please contact the school office for a Standing Order Form, or you can also give by cash or cheque.

Our Hamper Packers – Julie, Eva, Audrey, Terri, Angela and Aisling.

Thanks to Julie, Eva, Audrey, Terri Angela and Ashling – our Hamper Helpers!

1st Class drew and wrote their thoughts about Winter. Here are two beautiful drawings from Casiana Stan and Tara Kane

AchievementsPlease remember to tell your child to come to the school office to tell Adrienne about their achievement, so that it can be put into our newsletter. We are always happy to hear about the children receiving certificates, medals, trophies etc. in any competition.

Congratulations to the following childrenA little drawing that Liam Folan-Healy (4th Class) did for John Rocha (Fashion Designer) is included in the John Rocha portrait - which was unveiled on Monday 14th December in National Gallery. Liam has been' helping' John out for years in the run up to London Fashion Week. Liam drew this picture when he was 4 years old, in the bottom left hand corner of the portrait. in> National Gallery Beit Wing.Erin Kyle and Aoife O’Reilly (both 3rd class) who took part in the North Kildare Speech & Drama Feis in Maynooth on 29th November. They came third in their poetry and dual-log sections. Dylan Barnes (S.Inf.) and his sister Niamh (5 th) also took part in the same Feis. Niamh came 1st in her age group and Dylan got a 2nd and 3rd placement. Alessia Miceli (3rd class) is a member of Excel Gym Club and on Saturday 21st November she took part in a gym competition. She participated in the floor, bars and beam exercises. Amy Auden is also a member of Excel Gym Club and she completed her Level 4 gymnastics on 13 th December.Maeve Wollmer won a medal from reading buzz for reading 10 books.Oscar Hourihane is a member of Celbridge GAA U9 Football Team. He was given a medal for continued good practise, effort and sportsmanship.Certificates of Appreciation were handed out by Celbridge GAA Club on 12th December, for outstanding performance and lasting contribution to 2015 U-9 Celbridge Camogie Team, and some of our pupils received them. They were Sienna Field, Ella Corry, Hannah and Maeve Wollmer and Jane McHugh.

Well done to all of you.

Mini-Scientists (Niamh Barnes – 5th Class)

Mini Scientist was great fun, but also tricky because we had to make a poster, booklet and experiment with lots of information.

Two judges came to us to judge all the different projects. There were 15 groups and we all got our own table to set up. It was very nerve-wrecking experience at first, but then we settled into it nicely. When the judges were finished judging they took 10 minutes to decide who was going to Intel. Eventually, they told us that the runners-up were me (Niamh), Rhey, Dylan, Eoghan, Shane and Yvonne. Our projects were on Tornados, Sound and Genetics.

We were all very excited. The winning project was Electro-Magnetism by Neasa and Sophia. There were so many interesting projects from the class. My project was on sound and how you hear things. I learned so much and loved doing it. I wish Neasa and Sophia lots of luck at Intel on December 11th.

continued/

Below is an extract of Nicola Lipinski’s contribution to her group’s project on Ancient Egypt.

Junior Infants have been learning lots about the Post Office. They even wrote some letters. Here is Chloe’s (Jenny’s class)

2nd Class wrote some amazing Christmas poems – here is Sophie McNiffe’s poem on a beautifully decorated page.