Our school has just received news that we have been awarded the GAA 5-star school of excellence flag for our promotion of Gaelic Games within our school.​We are very proud of all of the children and staff for achieving this.  They have worked hard all year.  A special thank you to David Murphy, our Games Promotion Officer for all of his help with the organisation of GAA coaching throughout the year.

The GAA 5 Star initiative aims to support and recognise Primary Schools that provide pupils with 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous Gaelic Games activity per week in a manner that ensures the children will experience fun, friendship, fairness and ultimately improve their fitness.  Recognition as a “GAA 5 Star Centre” is awarded to Primary Schools that undertake to deliver a programme of Gaelic Games activity that is age-appropriate and meets the developmental needs of children within the school.

The GAA 5 Star Centre is a key initiative of the GAA’s Play to Stay WeLL (Wellbeing & Lifelong Learning) Programme. Ms. Dalton went to Hawkfield to collect the flag on behalf of our school. We are delighted to get the flag and it is testament to the school's drive to improve the physical fitness and well-being of our boys and girls. Everyone is doing a super job a promoting Killina as an Active School.

​Many thanks to everyone for the support of our Sponsored Walk.  It was a wonderful morning and we hope that everyone enjoyed it. We had a good turnout of families from our school and the boys and girls were fantastic as always. We are very grateful to the many members of our local community and our wonderful staff who came out to support this special event in our school calendar. Special word of thanks to the Parents’ Association who put a big effort into organising and facilitating the 5k. They are continuously working on behalf of the children of our school and we really appreciate everything that they do. Thanks also to Drehid for supporting us with this event and for organising lovely goodie bags for the children at the end of the race and thanks to Bergins for providing us with lots of fruit for our event participants. It was a great morning for our school and another lovely way for us to promote the Active School tradition of Killina National School. If you have not already done so, could you please return your Sponsorship card before Friday 31st May. 

Gaelic football has kicked off in Killina. Declan, our coach from Carbury GAA has been putting all of our students through their paces and teaching them lots of new skills. Declan pays great attention to ensuring that our children are aware of the importance of each new skills and he is giving them lots of opportunities to improve (and perfect them!) The children are really enjoying the coaching sessions.

Keeping up with the Active School ongoings of our school, the boys and girls engaged in a range of active orienteering activities which also doubled up as fun Easter Egg hunts. Great fun was had by all, not forgetting to mention the joys of collecting a sizeable amount of chocolate to bring home!! 

Well done to both the boys and girls teams who travelled to Hawkfield to take part in the inter-school cross country competition. These children have been busy doing 'laps' in preparation for the big race and they certainly did our school and themselves proud. It was lovely to see how well the team supported each other and how they represented our school with pride. We're all part of a great big team in Killina National School. Maith sibh!!

​That's a wrap for Ms. Dalton's Six Nations Tag Rubgy league. For the last six weeks boys and girls from 1st to 6th class have been enjoying tag rugby matches during lunch break. The fun and excitement that this tournament has created around the school has been truly wonderful. Our school has worked really hard this year to promote Active Lifestyles for our students whilst also striving to improve well-being at the same time. This tournament has certainly achieved this and to listen to our boys and girls talking about their matches, their scores, their near misses, the injuries and the "craic" has been fantastic. Well done to Scotland for topping the Six Nations tables and well done to all six teams for their participation throughout. You all did super! Many thanks to Ms. Dalton for organising this tournament and for keeping the Active Flag ambitions of our school alive. Keep up the great work Killina!

In keeping up our Active School tradition, our boys and girls have been busy practicing their 1,2,3s in preparation for our "Damhsa Mór". We have been expertly guided by Lennon (our 4th Class in-house dancer) and he has helped up all to improve over the last few days. There's definitely a Riverdance team in the making in Killina!! 

Ms. Dalton and the children in 5th and 6th have been busy sorting teams for our Six Nations Tag Rugby blitz. Children from 1st to 6th have been included in teams for this exciting lunchtime Tag Blitz. It will give all of our children a chance to put their tag rugby coaching sessions to good use! Who will win the Grand Slam???

The Active Squad introduced our boys and girls to another exciting initiative as we strive towards getting our Active Flag. For February and March the children have been set the challenge of skipping to the top of the tallest mountains in Europe. Every skip that the children do counts as one metre of a climb. At the rate the children are skipping they will have reached the summit of the tallest mountains in the world! They really are having a great time! We have a skipping surprise in place for May to reward the children's hard work. Keep an eye on the blog to see how we are getting on. We also encourage families to try this out at home and to see how many mountains you can climb. Best of luck...

In keeping the Active School initiative alive in our school, the Active Squad ran a poster competition. This competition asked the boys and girls to design a poster which promotes the benefits of active living. The children had great fun designing the posters. The winners each received a skipping rope as a prize. They were delighted with the prizes as it means they now have a personal skipping rope for our Skipping initiative for February and March. Well done everyone.