What a wonderful surprise it was for one of our families out walking to find these rocks at the gate of our school! Such an uplifting, happy message to share with our community. Thank you SO much to the wonderful people who created these rocks and placed them at our gate. They have created so much happiness and inspired other people.

In fact, our Parents Association are so inspired that they are cooking up a project on this to share with you all very soon! We are so excited to see this community project led by our families.

Thank you all for being such a wonderful community. We will get through this together!

Cula4 is on TG4 each weekday at 10am.
The School Hub is on RTE2 each weekday at 11am.

They are designed to help families at home during school closures and we encourage you to give them a try!

Of interest to everyone
Caitriona is particularly excited to see that an Irish Sign Language lesson will feature on The School Hub on Thursday 30th April. They promise to teach you how to sign your name. Maybe you could practice in advance and then teach alongside Laura on the day!

Also on Thursday, Cula4 will be looking at online safety, a topic we hope that all our community are being particularly mindful of these days.

Senior Infants and 2nd Class
Cula4 are focussing on the topic of Money on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this week, just like you are! Tune in to TG4 at 10am each weekday morning to see what they get up to. Its ok if you don't understand everything they say. If you understand one word each day, that's super! Listening to Irish will help your brain get used to the sounds of the language.

1st Class
When studying length this week, you might like to look back at this episode of The School Hub where they looked at length. If you would like a bonus activity, you could try their suggestion here!

3rd Class
As you think about democracy towards the end of this week, you might like to look back at the very first episode of The School Hub to see their piece about the President of Ireland. It starts at 14 minutes into the recording.

4th Class
4th class will be particularly interested in watching Cula4 this week as the theme of the show this week is Eadai, exactly the topic 4th class are covering! Tune in to TG4 at 10am each weekday morning to see what they get up to. Its ok if you don't understand everything they say. If you understand one word each day, that's super! Listening to the Irish will help your brain to get used to the sounds of the language.

The School Hub are also focussing on Eadai on Monday's episode so you can tune in there too!

5th class
5th class might enjoy looking back at this episode of The School Hub, where they looked at area, in particular the area of a circle. Here is the activity they suggested for those who watch it. Enjoy it!

We regret to announce that we have made the difficult decision not to open our school in July for the activities that usually take place that month. This includes school-based July Provision and summer camps. We know that this will be a cause for disappointment. However, our wish is to provide as much certainty as possible in an uncertain time. Thank you for your understanding.

Please note that we don't know whether home-based July Provision will go ahead this year. The school is not involved in this, other than signing and stamping application forms, which we will still be happy to do, even if we are still working remotely when forms are released.

Our staff have had some term. We spent the winter break moving into our new building and finished the term completely changing the way we teach, learning so many new skills, all while juggling personal lives affected by the pandemic too.

During the week, we tried out Zoom in small groups and we finally got together as a whole staff this morning.

Fridays are special days in our staff room as its the one day we all get together for breakfast. We make an effort to be in early and take the chance to catch up. It is also our whole-school assembly day when we are used to feeling that wonderful Citywest ETNS community spirit.

So it was very appropriate that we chose this morning to meet on Zoom for our first whole-staff gathering.

It was so lovely to see everyone. Once we got past the teething issues at the start, we did a quick review of our term, then discussed where all the PPE is around the building as that is getting donated to hospitals and care homes today. We finished off with some fun games to send everyone off with a smile for their spring break.

All in all, a lovely morning and a great way to finish the term.

Massive, massive Thank You to all of the Citywest ETNS staff for navigating us through this term that was historic in more ways than one!

2nd April is World Autism Awareness Day. To celebrate this day, we invite you to take a walk through the class page of our Class for Children with Autism. They are doing great work at home. When at school, they love to cook and have some great recommendations for you to try at home - the parsnip chips are a particular delight and SO easy to make!

You might also like to visit the AsIAm website to learn a little about autism.

Happy World Autism Awareness Day!