Whitechurch NS makes headlines...
TWIN TOWERS COMPETITION
Fourth class pupils under the leadership of Gerard O Connell won First Prize in a History Project on Whitechurch and Waterloo. They completed a large volume of work complete with Photographs of a field Trip, models of both towers and a detailed account of the history of Fr Matt Horgan who designed both Churches and towers.
The prize was a train trip to Dublin for the winning Class.
Blarney Castle Competition
Building for the Future
In 2003 We completed a whole school Project on Blarney Castle. Each class took a different aspect of the Castle. Poems were written. The majority of pupils were brought down to the Castle to study the remaining ruin. American visitors thought they were dreaming when they saw pupils from Second class dressed up as Lords and Ladies of the Manor. Interviews were done by sixth class. Sketches and paintings were drawn of the castle. The history of the castle was researched in great detail. 40 Staff and pupils went to Dublin to collect our prize of €20,000 courtesy of the Independent Newspaper.
Irish Examiner May 3rd 2010
Pupils egg-static as knitting efforts raise vital funds for two charities
A GROUP of young classmates were so affected by illnesses of their friends’ relatives that they hatched their own plot to give a helping hand. Proving that charity doesn’t just begin at home, the third and fourth class pupils came up with a novel way of raising money for groups working with sick people.
The group of almost 40 children from St Pádraig’s National School in Whitechurch, a few miles from Cork city, used their recently-acquired knitting skills to make little chickens to hold Easter eggs during the last school term. They reaped rich rewards for their efforts and last week presented cheques worth almost €900 to Marymount Hospice, which helps cancer patients in Cork, and the Irish Motor Neuron Disease Association.
Fourth class teacher Maria Buckley explained that the fundraising efforts were totally the children’s idea. “A number of our pupils had family members who died of cancer and many of them had been in Marymount. And there are three cousins in the class whose grandfather is ill with motor neuron disease,” she said. “They decided they wanted to do something to help other people with these illnesses and approached us with their plan,” Ms Buckley said.
The class had only been learning how to knit since last autumn from herself and colleagues at the school. The entrepreneurial bunch were her fourth class and colleague Ger O’Connell’s mixed group of third and fourth class, and help was also provided by resource teachers Pat Murphy and Jo Smiddy and special needs assistant Mary O’Callaghan.
“We just gave them the patterns and they went away themselves and spent an amazing amount of time at home and after school making the chickens. “Three weeks later, they set up outside the local church on the Sunday before Easter, and raised €880 selling the chickens, cakes they had baked and other items,” she said.
“It was really great to see this initiative of kindness coming from the kids themselves, but it’s also lovely them using an old tradition of knitting which is getting popular again now among boys and girls,” Ms Buckley said.
