About a month ago Don Conroy visited the school to award a prize to a 1st class child who won the "Esso Wildlife Challenge". He was a very comical person and he told many stories about when he was young. One thing everybody found funny was his description of all the people he knew when he was young. For example he said his teacher had "Hair like Bart Simpson," his postman that he called "Postman Peter," because he was so grumpy and he thought this girl in his class was so pretty that whenever she walked past a mirror it would hold her reflection.
One of the stories he told was that he went to his Great Uncle's house and he was out on the farm when he heard a "Wooooo.." sound. He looked up and he saw a barn owl right above his head.
He also told us about the time he won a wildlife book in a drawing competition. His aunt in England entered his picture in the competition. A few weeks later the postman knocked on the door with a parcel for Don. He thought the book was from the queen of England when he looked at the postage stamp!
He also gave us a rowan tree (mountain ash), which he planted, on the school grounds. He told us a lot of stories about the tree. Some interesting things he told us about the rowan tree was that it would keep EVIL SPIRITS away. The rowan tree is a particularly lucky tree. He also told us that if you walk around the tree three times it cures any illnesses.
Our Dutch visitor Recently we had a visitor in the school. His name was Cas Van Dyk and he is from Holland. He comes from a city called "The Hague" and he said that there are half a million people living there. He told us that the capital of Holland is Amsterdam. Another name for Holland is the Netherlands.
He told us that there are sixteen million people living there and it is only the size of Munster! In an area as big as Clare there are ten million people living. In Western Holland there are a lot of dykes, which are walls to keep the water out of Holland.
There is a story that in the 1600's a young boy saw a trickle of water coming out of one of the dykes. He stuck his finger in the dyke and saved Holland. In 1953 there was a bad storm and a Spring tide in Holland an area from Ennis to Galway was flooded and 3000 people drowned.
There are a lot of tulips and other flowers in Holland because their soil is very fertile. There are even some bulb fields in Holland.
In Holland for children of four years school is compulsory. The school day starts at 9.00a.m. to 12.15p.m, then it begins again at 1.15p.m. until 3.30p.m. Parents in Holland realise the importance of being able to swim so every child in Holland is taught to swim. I was amazed to discover that peppers don't need soil to grow; they can grow on artificial compost. There are a lot of playgrounds, play amenities and theme parks in Holland. There are six big zoos in the part of Holland, which has the area of Clare.
Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the visit and were interested in all the information he gave us. Below is a picture of Cas, the Dutch flag and ourselves. Note the colourful clogs also!
Burren Wildlife Rangers On an annual basis we invite the wildlife rangers to talk to the children on the local environment flora and fauna emphasizing the importance of their role in caring for the environment. Here are some pictures we drew in response to the lesson with our teacher. We chose our favourite animals from the local environment.
Hedgehog
Field mouse
Blue Tit
Our local wildlife rangers are Conjella McGuire and Rob Steede.
Limestone pavement of the Burren home to our flora and fauna
