The children weren't the only ones keeping busy during Active Week. Some of the Parents' Association went for a walk after drop off one morning. A group of the teachers did the Howth Cliff walk on Sat the 27th to finish Active week off.
The teachers teamed up for a step challenge for the duration of Active week also. The winners received certificates.

As a school, we all learned the Clap Dance and the Haka Gaelach. We performed them together on the last day of Active week. 

We celebrated Active Week from the 22nd to the 26th of April in St Paul's this year. Both the children and the teachers spent the week in tracksuits and runners and there was no written homework for the week. Instead the children were given active homework to complete. The school was a hive of activity for the week, between classes doing extra sports with one of our parent volunteers, children completing walkway activities and children outdoing athletics and dancing in the yard. The Parents Association got involved with their own walk and the teachers even took a trip out to Howth. Along with out trip to Croke Park, it was a very busy week for all.

The weather wasn't on our side for the first day of Active Week. Some classes took the opportunity to do some writing and drawing about Active Week instead.

In advance of Active Schools Week, the children of St Paul's JNS visited Croke Park on Friday the 19th of April.  We had such a great time. We got broken up into smaller groups and we all had our own tour guide. They had lots of interesting information to share with us. We watched a short film on the preparation that has to be done by the workers of Croke Park in advance of hosting a big match. We went on a trip through the museum and looked at different jerseys through the years, all of the different trophies and lots of other interesting things. We all had a turn of kicking the ball and hitting the sliotar. Afterwards we got to sit in the changing rooms and follow the walk that the players take through the tunnel on to the pitch. Take a look at some of our photos below.

There is nothing that the children enjoy more than getting one up on their teachers, so they were only thrilled to go up against their teachers in different sporting events during the week. From egg and spoon races, javelin throwing and penalty shoot outs, there were lots of events to make their teachers look silly!! 

We are very lucky with our parents here in St Paul's JNS. We have had a few volunteers in over the last while to show us new skills and different ways to keep fit. 
Both Chris Hamilton and Christopher Mulligan from O'Tooles have shown us new GAA skills and great fun games.
Jenny Dowling and Caroline McNamara are both mums of children in first class and are sports instructors. They visited our first and seconds and did really fun exercise sessions with us.
We had Eoin Wixted and Paul Moore in also teaching us soccer skills. Both of these are also first class parents. The children really enjoyed these visitors and we hope that they enjoyed their time too.