On Wednesday May 18th at 7.30 pm we will host a positive mental health and wellbeing seminar for all our Parents/Guardians here in school. This seminar will explore mental health and wellbeing, enabling young people to lead fulfilling lives.

Parents who attend this session will:

1. Explore the factors that influence mental health and well being in their child.
2. Learn how to build and nurture resilience within their own child helping to cope with the day to day stresses of life as they occur.
3. Be given tips on how best to support their child’s positive mental health and wellbeing.

It is recognised that the family is the primary source of nurturing and support for children and plays a central role in the promotion of their positive mental health.

We feel this seminar will be hugely beneficial to all and as such are delighted to host this event and look forward to a great attendance on the evening.

We will also host a further parent’s evening in June (Date to be confirmed) on the very pertinent topic of Internet Safety. Further information will follow.

Thank you to all our customers who sampled our pancakes yesterday morning. We hope you enjoyed them. We had a very busy but exciting morning preparing them for you.

We learned so much from our service and are already looking forward to next Friday (March 13th). We’re sure our pancakes will help you all kick start ‘Friday 13th’ in style!

We also hope to introduce a new topping for your Pancake’s next week which we’re sure you’ll enjoy!

Have a lovely weekend and thanks again for supporting us.

Rang 5/6
J.E.P. ‘Pantastic’ Team

Tomorrow Friday morning we are delighted to announce that as part of our Junior Entrepreneur Programme (JEP) our mini company ‘Pantastic’ will begin selling our delicious pancakes to help you kick-start your day!

All our ingredients have been sourced locally and will be prepared fresh and cooked to order . We’re very excited to present the pancakes to you, and we’re sure you’ll enjoy them.

The pancakes will be offered to all our parents on Friday morning as they drop their children to school. We will be open for service from 9.00 a.m. on the following dates Friday May 6th /Friday May 13th and Friday May 20th.
We will offer a delivery service to all our fellow students in their classrooms in time for their small break!

The delicious pancakes we have on offer tommorrow are traditional favourites…Plain or with the toppings of Sugar and Lemon and/or golden syrup.We hope to add a new topping for each service.

You can follow our progress on our school website and we will also let you know any changes to our menu.

We have priced our pancakes at the very reasonable rate of €2, we highly recommend these as they are delicious!

We look forward to meeting you all on Friday morning.

Thank you

Pantastic. (Start your day the ‘Pantastic’ way!)

Marketing and Design team
(Karla Gavaghan, Oliwia Stecka, Kiana Callaghan, Zoe Buckley and Mateusz Brucki)

Rang 5/6 had the great pleasure on Wednesday afternoon of visiting St.Attracta’s Nursing Home in Charlestown as part of their Centenary Celebrations marking the Easter Rising.

Our students shared the story of how Ireland arrived at the point of rebellion in 1916 before the students shared their proclamation for a new generation with all gathered. This was followed by a playing and singing of our National Anthem and some musical pieces we prepared with Ms.Doherty, a lovely end to a special afternoon.

Sincere thanks to Tríona, the staff and residents at St.Attracta’s Nursing Home for their very warm welcome. Thank you also to Ms Doherty for all her help and to all our parents who helped with our visit. As always it was much appreciated.

Our week concluded at the fantastic Enterprise Town celebration this evening at the CBD Complex. This gave the wonderful Charlestown Community and its businesses the opportunity to showcase all that is good through the town and its hinterlands.

It also saw Ms.Henry’s Fourth Class receive their certificates for their Bizworld project (http://client.hovercraft.ie/fourth-class-enjoy-bizworld-workshops/) from Mickey Harte Tyrone GAA Manager and Keith Higgins.

We also had the great pleasure of enjoying Mickey Harte’s address to all assembled. An inspirational and encouraging speech which resonated with young and old alike. We are very grateful to Mr Gerard Scully Manager of Bank of ireland Charlestown who presented Ms.Henry with iPads in recognition of our participation and who also organised the Bizworld programme for us.

This was a special community evening which we were delighted to be part of. Finally well done all the local businesses and to everyone who supported this wonderful evening.

On Wednesday evening last 6th Class were delighted to attend the launch of ‘Clean Up Mayo Day’ at St.Joseph’s Community College in Charlestown.

As part of National Spring Clean/Mayo Day on April 30th we all will be encouraged to support voluntary litter clean up’s throughout the county.

Charlestown Foróige Group hosted this launch in recognition of their tremendous commitment to litter action and their great successes in recent times in ensuring that Charlestown is litter free. Also in attendance on this afternoon was Sharon Cameron Environmental Awareness Officer of Mayo County Council, Councillor Gerry Murray and Sarah McGovern National Spring Clean Ambassador.

Well done to all the Foróige club members and leaders on their wonderful achievements. We really enjoyed our afternoon!

Fourth Class were very lucky to be given the opportunity to take part in an initiative called BizWorld Ireland which is operated by Bank of Ireland. BizWorld is a not for profit organisation promoting entrepreneurial skills, while teaching key workforce and life skills such as creativity, collaboration, communication, teamwork and negotiation along with money management and enterprise in a fun and creative way.

This was a two day workshop delivered by Rebecca a trained BOI volunteer. The children were put into teams of 5/6 and had to learn and undertake tasks involved in setting up a business. They learned about the terminology of business, applying for a job in their companies and held company meetings to discuss the idea, name, logo and slogan of their company. When the groups came up with a company name and a product idea, they then had to do some market research. They came up with a poster, a TV advertisement dramatised by their company and a presentation to sell their product.

Today, day two of the workshop, the companies had to pitch their ideas to the Dragons, Keith Higgins and Gerard Scully. The Dragons, through negotiations, then bought shares in the companies and a certificate of shares was presented to the Dragon for Bizbucks (The currency used for the task). In the afternoon, the children then launched their companies and 3rd class came to look at their posters, TV ads and listened to their PowerPoint presentation. 3rd class were given 20 Bizbucks each to spend on the merchandise that each company had made to make revenue for their company idea. There was great merchandise to choose from: cookies, buns, snack packs, loam bands and friendship bracelets. It was a huge success and the children really enjoyed the experience and learned so much from it.

To top the day off Keith Higgins (Mayo footballer and Bank of ireland representative) kindly signed jerseys and had pictures taken with the students.

Keith also took time to visit all our classrooms where he again signed jerseys and answered the children’s many questions. We really appreciate his time, patience and interest in each of our students. It was a pleasure to welcome Keith to our school.

Finally we would like to thank Gerard Scully, the Branch Manager in Bank of Ireland Charlestown who organised this wonderful experience for us all.

A special word of thanks to all who helped us in so many ways of late particularly with our St.Patrick’s Day Parade entry based on the theme of the 1916 Centenary – Céad bliain ag fás ( One hundred years of growth of the state) and our Easter Sunday Bake Sale. Both were a great success and fun to be part of.

Thank you to all our Parents/Guardian’s and students who supported our parade entry in great numbers. Also a very special thank you to all who went to great trouble baking, helping with and to those who supported the wonderful Parent’s Association Bake Sale fundraiser. This was all very much appreciated.

Finally a huge thank you to our Parent’s Association for their fantastic work behind the scenes. We are so grateful for their continued hard work, effort and time invested on our behalf.
Míle buíochas!

As you are probably aware our school has been involved with Junior Entrepreneur Programme for the last 3 years. The Junior Entrepreneur Programme or JEP as it’s known, was created to allow primary school pupils in Ireland the opportunity to embrace entrepreneurship as part of their formative education. Children use their creativity to come up with individual business ideas, they come together as a class to choose one idea and then work to turn this idea into reality.

The path to entrepreneurial experience leads from:
• learning what it is to be an entrepreneur
• identifying the characteristics needed to be an entrepreneur
• researching key business terms such as market research, identifying gaps in the market, product or service development, sourcing suppliers, marketing, advertising, budgeting, managing and business expansion
• dealing with problems that may arise in company development
• delegating responsibilities within a team
• working effectively as a team
• enjoying the rewards of the experience!

In order to facilitate this journey, we have been lucky to have many exciting opportunities this year.

We have worked extensively in the classroom on learning about entrepreneurs, market research, company structure and business development.

Prior to our Easter break, we were delighted to welcome a local entrepreneur to our class to speak to us about the advantages and disadvantages of setting up a business. Mary Murphy, owner of Gymboree Mayo gave us great insight into her business journey. She has set up two businesses over the past few years and was very informative and enthusiastic in her delivery to the class.

Mary returned to participate in the Dragons Den activity, designed to choose the final business idea for the class to work on in the coming weeks. She was joined by Fr. Johnson, Mrs McDonagh and Ms. Heverin. The standard of business ideas, research and presentation skills of the students was reported by all of the “Dragons” as commendable. They found it very difficult to decide on an eventual winning team due to the potential of all of the children’s ideas.

We are so grateful to Mary for giving so willingly of her time and experience to help the children in their JEP preparation. We also thank Fr. Johnson for participating in this thrilling day with the students.

Finally please keep an eye out for our students who will launch their exciting projecr in the coming week!