Scoil Mhuire celebrated their annual Christmas Concert in St Mary's Church on Wednesday the 18th of December.  Preparations began well in advance of the big days with musical arrangements created , carols sung and most importantly sheep headpieces made!

On the big day the weather was not exactly Christmassy and stormy conditions m​eant a quick dash to the church was in order. As always in our school we are so lucky  as some amazing parents came to our rescue and drove chairs, music stands and bags of donkey ears over to the church. We were very grateful to them!

.A crowd of parents, grandparents and some little brothers and sisters gathered to hear the beautiful music.  Ms Hennessey must be commended here for the amazing arrangements of the songs. She gathered a group for guitars and added bells and instruments to other songs. She was helped with this by Ms Murphy who played the piano beautifully to accompany our superb singers.

Each class chose a different part of the nativity to represent, angels, sheep, shepherds, stars, donkeys and kings. Readers from each class narrated parts of the story of the First Christmas.

The audience were treated to songs in English, Irish, Spanish and "We Wish you a Merry Christmas" using "Lámh" a form of sign language.

 After the concert, the Parents Association organised a fantastic reception for all families of the children of the school with goodies and a nice warming cup of tea after the wet walk back to the school!
The Parents Association also organised a ​raffle with some fantastic prizes. We even had some staff members as winners!
Overall a lovely festive day was had by all to get us right in the Christmas spirit.
(Videos to follow)​​

 Scoil Mhuire and the village of Knockraha are lit up by the most beautiful Christmas Tree outside the school.
We must say a huge note of thanks to the Parents Association for organising the tree. Peter Whooley (Pete's Christmas Tree Farm) donated the 14 foot tree and Ted Keating and Jonathan O Callaghan organised the lights on the tree and on the school.

Of course with such a huge tree a lot of decorations were needed! As a Green School we are very conscious of the amount of plastic waste generated at this time of year and we decided not to contribute to this.
On that note  each class was tasked with creating decorations out of recycled materials.
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Junior Infants used lollysticks to make stars.
Senior Infants/First Class used coffee pods to make bells.
First/Second Class used pine cones and corks to make Christmas trees.
Second/Third Class used jam jar lids to make baubles.
Fourth/Fifth Class used lollysticks to make snowmen.
Fifth/Sixth Class used wood offcuts to make Rudolph.

Beautiful decorations with no harm to the environment!​​​​​​

We were very lucky to receive a visit from two members of the victorious Cork Minor Footballers Eoghan Nash and Nathan Gough who brought with them the Thomas Markham Cup.
The students decorated the school in red and white in eager anticipation of their arrival.

The boys and their coach gave the students a fantastic speech on the importance of sport, fair play, team work  and working hard. Our future All Stars listened very carefully!

A few questions answered correctly earned some of our students a signed poster.

Attention then turned to Knockraha's own successful ladies! Past pupil Kiera and some of our 5th and 6th class pupils showed off the trophies they had won at county level for camogie and football.

Huge thanks to all for making such a special occasion for the children to enjoy!

Wow! O.ur 5th and 6th class have been taking part in the Daily Mile challenge. Since they returned in September they and their teacher Ms  O Sullivan have run a mile a day (which equates to 12 laps of the school yard)/
On Friday the 18th October they reached 26 miles which meant they had run the equivalent of a marathon.​

The whole school joined in to run the final mile!!

After they completed their run they were presented with medals and certificates to mark their achievement .

Well done to Ms O Sullivan and the 5th and 6th class.

The future astronauts of Scoil Mhuire enjoyed this weeks Space Week. All classes took part in a wide range of activities over all curricular areas to learn more about this fascinating topic.

Some classroom work from the week.

Our little artists were hard at work!

Our fantastic athletes took part in the Cork City Primary Sports in CIT. Ms Hennessy and Rose accompanied them to the huge event, As can be seen from the pictures above their was a few trophies won but most importantly all ran their absolute best and thoroughly enjoyed the day.

The fantastic students in Scoil Mhuire have been very busy this month.

Huge congratulations are due to sisters Nessa and Clodagh Martin for their sugarcraft creations.
Nessa (Junior Infants) and Clodagh (Third Class) came second in the Cork Sugarcraft competition for their ages.
Well Done Girls.