Each May as the the sun shines, our school staff and students from St Joseph’s NS, Hacketstown enjoy a week of exciting fun activities to celebrate Wellbeing Week. The memories created during this fun filled week last forever.

With bouncy obstacle courses, dance, circus workshops, mindful walks, gardening, trips to the playground and so much more – it’s a week we all look forward to.

We feel fortunate to have the incredible Biodiversity Garden Hacketstown within walking distance of our school. The volunteers there do remarkable work and we are fortunate to have parents of children in our school who organise workshops in the Biodiversity Garden, which promote sustainability and respect for our surroundings in a beautifu and tranquil setting.

Our senior students take on the task of organising a Bake Sale during Wellbeing Week – this Bake Sale is used to raise funds for those people less fortunate than ourselves.

We adore celebrations of any kind here at St. Joseph’s and Halloween is no exception – and that’s not just because we are heading into our first mid-term break of the year – honest! There is always great excitement and chatter about what we might dress up as and how we will celebrate at home and in school. Each class enjoys a variety of Halloween based activities including spooky art, cooking and much more throughout the week. The atmosphere is always spooktacular!

We love love love to celebrate Christmas at St Joseph’s – but we promise to wait until Halloween is over before we start decking the halls of our school and singing Jingle Bells. We have the most amazing talent in our school – and we don’t like to hide our light under a bushel. Each Christmas we aim to mesmerize our audience with our singing, dancing and Christmas cheer by performing for our families on stage in our lovely hall- no wonder we are always at the top of Santa’s Good List.

We are extra excited on the Monday after the Late Late Toy Show – because we know the elves will have visited our school -painted Christmas scenes on our classroom windows, put up the Christmas tree, placed the Nutcrackers at our front door, and displayed our crib in pride of place. We are blessed to have a creative artist on our staff, who works with elf-like secrecy each year to create our own Winter Wonderland at St Joseph’s. We are truly blessed in our school.

Autumn brings with it our annual Break for the Border. The principal, staff, pupils and parents of St Joseph’s NS, Hacketstown come together each year to organise the most enjoyable fun-run of the year!

The annual fundraising run enjoys the incredible support of the local community, which continue to exceed our expectations year after year. Businesses and clubs come out in force to generously sponsor this event.

Every student and (almost every!) teacher in St Joseph’s NS runs the race class by class and receives customised medals and goodie bags sponsored by O’Reilly’s Service Station and Londis Ireland. All funds raised go directly back into the school for much-needed equipment and resources.

Parents, family members and students from the school dig deep and fill in sponsorship cards, which raise welcome funds for our school.