Credit Union Quiz
Well done to our under 11 and under 13 teams who did brilliantly in the Kilkenny Credit Union quiz finishing in 5th place. Thanks to all the parents who supervised on the night.
Grandparent’s / VIP Day
On Wednesday 30th of January we celebrated Grandparent’s / VIP Day with mass in St. Fiachra’s Church followed by activities in the school. The children interviewed their Grandparents and played some board games. We also had a brilliant Question and Answer session with two past pupils Sean and Dick who attended the school in the 40’s and 50’s and also with our chairperson Paddy. Thanks to our wonderful Parent’s Council for providing all the refreshments, Fr. O’Farrell who celebrated mass with us and our teachers for organising the event.
ESB Science Blast Project – RDS Dublin
The Senior Room are in full swing as preparations continue for our entry into the ESB Science Blast on the 6th of March in the RDS Dublin. So far the children have undergone three different fitness tests and also three reaction tests using sound, sight and touch stimuli. We must now analyse our data and figure out if there is a relation between levels of fitness and our ability to react to different stimuli.
New LED Interactive Touchscreens
The school purchased and installed new LED Interactive Touchscreen units into all of our classrooms after the Christmas holidays. The new devices are proving to be hugely beneficial resources for teaching and learning.
Opening of All-Weather Pitch and M.U.G.A. + Raising Green Flag + Ball Wall Challenge
On Sunday the 3rd of March (weather permitting), the school plans to host a number of events after 9:30am mass in St. Fiachra’s Church. All families (past and present) and wider members of the community are invited to attend. The planned events are as follows:
1. Raising of the School’s Fourth Green Flag for Water.
2. Opening of our new All-Weather Pitch and our new Multi-Use Games Area. Dick Blanchfield who attended the school himself and who is the only All-Ireland Senior Medal holder in the parish presently will cut the ribbon. Fr. O’Farrell will also bless both of the new facilities.
3. We will host the finals of our Ball Wall Challenge on our MUGA and the Final of our Inter-Class Spring Hurling League on the pitch. Children from Gathabawn and Lisdowney National School’s are welcome to take part in the Ball Wall Challenge. So get practicing! Click here for rules.
Early Christmas Present
Scoil Naomh Fiachra has just received great news. We have been successful in our application for summer works. This project worth between 35 – 40K will deliver upgrades to the existing older parts of the school building. The work will include insulation, flooring, window upgrades, replastering and much more. We hope to complete this work over the summer break 2019.
Our New Multi Use Games Area (MUGA) and Sports Wall
After great anticipation, the children in Scoil Naomh Fiachra finally got their first chance to play in our new MUGA. This area will be used for volleyball, tennis, badminton, hurling, Gaelic Football, handball, soccer and many more games. We hope to purchase the tennis net and paint targets on the sports wall in the coming weeks. Thanks to everyone for their patience and support while the work was being completed. We hope everyone has many years of sporting fun on our MUGA and on our new all weather sand based pitch which was completed last year also. A special thanks to Diarmuid Bergin (Lodgepark Landscapes) and Mick McCarthy (Local County Counsellor) for all of their work with this project. Well done to all involved.
New All-Weather Pitch
After a lot of anticipation, our pupils finally began using our brand new all-weather pitch this week. We have been looking forward to this all year long and are now finally getting to enjoy this wonderful new facility which will benefit the children of our school for many years to come. Thanks to everyone for being so patient!
Coding and Robotics
We delved even further into the world of coding and robotics this week with a very worthwhile visit from PDST who spent a full day in our school working on Scratch Coding with 2nd/3rd Classes and Mindstorms Programming and Robotics with 4th/5th/6th Classes. Thanks to Ann and Michelle who made the experience so enjoyable. They will be back in the new year to see how we are progressing with our projects.
Christmas Plays 2018
On Tuesday 18th of December we held our Christmas Plays. A brilliant day of entertainment was had by all. A huge thanks to all our teachers, parents and of course our children who were the stars of the show. Everyone worked extremely hard to ensure that everything ran smoothly. Thanks to Paul Phelan who built our stage again this year and to the Parent’s Council who organised the Christmas Trolley raffle and DVDs. From everyone in Scoil Naomh Fiachra, we wish you all a Happy Christmas.
Christmas Shoebox Appeal
Thanks to everyone who supported our Christmas Shoebox Appeal 2018. Our school donated 60 shoeboxes. Well done to everyone who contributed to this very worthwhile cause.
Monster Mile
Well done to all of our students who participated in the Monster Mile Walk on Friday 26th of October. Thanks to all of our wonderful parents for their help with the costumes!
Visit From The Mounted Gardaí
On the 10th of October, ten members of An Garda Síochána visited our school with two very special members of their team, Oscar and Donnadh who are two of only twelve Garda horses in our country. The children had a great time listening to the mounted unit talking about their special work. Thanks to An Garda Síochána for visiting our school.
School Calendar September 2018 – June 2019
Please click here to view school calendar September 2018 – June 2019.
Cooling Down After Active Week!
Thanks to our wonderful Parent’s Council who organised for the ice cream van to visit the school after our very busy Active Week.
Our Top Attenders 2018
The children below were awarded for their regular attendance this year.
The children below were awarded for their unbroken attendance this year.
Graduation 2018
Congratulations and fair well to our twelve wonderful 6th class students who graduated this year. Thanks also to all of our wonderful families who leave us this year after many years of involvement in the school.
Active Week 2018
Thanks to everyone who helped to organise our biggest Active Week yet. We had a brilliant week. See below for some of the activities and photographs.
Outdoor Activity Day in Jenkinstown Woods
School Tour to Adventure World
Sports Day


Swimming Gala Medalists
Confirmation 2018
Congratulations to all of our wonderful Confirmation candidates who received the sacrament on Sunday. Well done to everyone involved and thanks to all of our parents who helped with all of the preparations. We hope everyone had a great day!
Scríobh Leabhar
Well done to the children from first, second and third class who recently took part in the Scríobh Leabhar competition. They all created fantastic books and all received a certificate and a pencil case from Foras na Gaeilge. There were five winners chosen from our school who were then invited to an awards ceremony in the Watershed. The children were presented with medals and got to see the band Seo Linn perform. A great day was had by all.
New Resources for Our School
A huge thank you to our fantastic Parent’s Council and Board of Management who provided funds for the purchase of some much needed P.E., Science, Literacy and Aistear Resources. Have a look at the pictures below to see a selection of just some of the magnificent resources which have been purchased. Thank you to everyone who continues to support our Parent’s Council and Board of Management in their fundraising efforts in aid of these beneficial teaching and learning resources.
Internet Safety Talk
An internet safety workshop will take place in the school on Thursday 12th of April @ 8pm. It is important that at least one parent from each family tries to attend as this is an increasingly challenging area for parents and teachers. Thanks to Peter Levins who has organised this very worthwhile event for the school.
Coder Dojo
We recently invited Karen from Coder Dojo Kilkenny group to come and speak to students and teachers about the work they do in their coding club. Our school prides itself on our capabilities in ICT and we have been coding in our school for the past number of years. Karen showed us new approaches to delivering coding lessons and demonstrated new coding software. She provided the school with a huge amount of new coding resources and ideas. We all really enjoyed it. Thanks to Karen for giving up her morning to deliver this workshop. There are some big coding events taking place this year. Please see the links below for further information on these events.
www.facebook.com/dojocon
www.twitter.com/dojocon
www.dojocon.coderdojo.com
www.coolestprojects.org
Art & Handwriting Community Games Medalists
Well done to all of our students who won medals in the Lisdowney Community Games Art and Handwriting competitions. They will now go forward to represent Lisdowney in the county Community Games Competition in the coming weeks. Good luck to everyone. Thanks to Collette Bergin for organising the competitions.
Child Safeguarding Statement
Scoil Naomh Fiachra has recently ratified its Child Safeguarding Statement. For a copy of this statement and relevant notification please check the policies section of this website.
Community Games Quiz
Well done to our six pupils who travelled to the Rower to take part in the under 14 Kilkenny Community Games Quiz to represent the parish of Lisdowney. They ended up coming third after a tie breaker and sudden death. Well done to them on holding their nerve under pressure. Thanks to all the parents who travelled such a long distance to get them there.
NCBI Clothing Collection
The school is delighted to inform everyone that it raised 750 euro in association with the National Council for the Blind Ireland in it’s recent Clothing Collection. We collected 159 bags of clothes and textiles. Well done to all of our parents, staff and wider community members who contributed to our collection.
Standardised School Year
Standardised School Year – please see the following link for standardised closures and school holidays for 2017, 2018 and 2019 school years. Click here for dates.
RDS Primary Science Fair
On Friday 19th of January, our 3rd to 6th class students travelled to Limerick to attend the RDS Primary Science Fair. We had a brilliant day and learned lots of new things about chemistry, physics and even slime! We plan on going back next year to exhibit in the projects section. Thanks to our parents Karena, Sabrina and Anne who volunteered to help us with the day.
Food Dudes
Over the next three weeks, our classes from Junior to Sixth will participate in the Food Dudes Healthy Eating Programme. Please encourage your child to participate fully and to keep the good eating habits up after the programme finishes. For more information see www.fooddudes.ie
Christmas Plays 2017
On Tuesday 19th of December, the school held the annual Christmas Plays. This year the Junior Room performed “Midwife Crisis”, the Middle Room performed “A Star Was Born” and the Senior Room performed “Cinderella”. Everyone was brilliant on the day. Thanks to all of our staff, parents and of course our fantastic actors and actresses for their work in getting ready for the big performances.
The Late Late Toy Show
Best wishes to our senior infant Tádhg who will be on The Toy Show this Friday. We all wish Tádhg the very best of luck and hope that he enjoys his special night. Everyone in Scoil Naomh Fiachra is looking forward to the big night!
Friendship Week 2017
This week in Scoil Naomh Fiachra we celebrated “Friendship Week”. We carried our lots of activities such as “Buddy Time”, “Random Acts of Kindness”, “Compliment Boxes” and writing poems about friendship. We also promoted the use of our “Worry Box” and our “Friendship Bench”. All of our classes took part in SPHE lessons based on friendship and bullying prevention. This proved to be a very worthwhile week in the school and we thank all who worked so hard to make it such a success.
Team Hope Christmas Shoebox Appeal
Well done and thank you to all of our parents and students who took part in our Christmas Shoebox Appeal. This is the school’s fourth year to participate in this very worthy cause and we are very proud to say that we donated 63 shoeboxes this year. These donations will no doubt make it a very special Christmas for the children who receive them.
Halloween Monster Mile
On Friday before Halloween, we all dressed up in our costumes and walked a mile as part of our Active School’s flag. We had great fun and a few scares along the way!! Thanks to all our parents for helping with the brilliant costumes.
School Calendar 2017-2018
Click here to down load the school Calendar September 2017 – June 2018
Standardisation of School Year
Click here for further details regarding Primary Schools for the years 2017/18, 2018/19, 2019/20.
New Primary Language Curriculum
The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment has developed a new language curriculum which will be phased in next year. For more information and support for parents please click on the following links: www.curriculumonline.ie, www.helpmykidlearn.ie and www.cogg.ie.
Field Trip to Kildangan Stud
On the 22nd of September, the senior room went on a Field Trip to Kildangan Stud Farm in Kildare. We learned a lot about how a top class stud farm is ran. We got to explore all of the facilities, learn how to shoe a horse, meet some world class stallions and as part of our Green School’s project we looked into how the farm handles all of its waste water. We would like to thank Aimee who is a parent in our school for arranging this fantastic field trip for us.
End of Year Awards 2017
Camogie Medals: Well done to our victorious camogie team who were presented with their medals by Senior Kilkenny player and All Ireland winner Aoife O’Carroll. Thanks to the Lisdowney camogie club who sent the ice-cream van as part of our celebration. Well done to Ms. Brennan, Ms. Fennelly and the players on their fantastic achievement this year.
Swimming Gala: Well done to our team of 26 swimmers who represented the school in this year’s Gala. Congratulations to Orla who came second in the under 10 front crawl and Corey who came first in the under 12 front crawl. Thanks to Deirdre Dunne, Fiona Perry and Rita Phelan for all their help on the day.
Hurling Blitz Winners: Well done to our 2017 hurling blitz winners.
Sport’s Day Winners: Congratulations to the orange team who came in 1st place on Sport’s Day.
Attendance Awards: Well done to our pupils who received certificates for their high levels of attendance this year (first picture) and also our twelve pupils in the second picture who didn’t miss a single day this year.
Enrolment for September 2018
Parents wishing to enroll pupils for the school year 2017- 2018 may do so by contacting the school for Enrolment Application Form and copy of the school’s Enrolment Policy.
Tel.: 056 8832417.
Contact us by email.