When I grow up I would like to be………

This is only a short section of this great work by Junior Infants Class--check out the full story at
www.castlebar.ie/education/stpats

Our European Day Out    By Jake Gibbons and Justin Gleeson.

On the 30^th April 2004 our school went to the Europeade show at the 'Traveller's Friend' to celebrate the 10 new countries joining the E.U. later that year in May.
The Europeade consisted of traditional music and dance from countries such as, Latvia, Germany, France, Poland and the crowd favourite, Spain.Spain's act was mainly Spanish women dancing to traditional Spanish music and raising their dress', and this raised the eye lids of our sixth class teachers Mr.Waldron and Mr.Devaney.   
We all agreed that Latvia were second best to Spain, but still nothing compared to the dancing 'Senoritas of Spain', and on the way back to school Dylan Bennett got lost. There  is no truth in the rumour that he was seen on Main Street with a senorita on his arm!

School Tour  By: Paul Regan  and Niall Moran
On Thursday the 3^rd of June our class visited Ireland's capital city, Dublin for our school tour. Both sixth classes met at the train station at seven o'clock, a little earlier than usual but we survived! All fifty-eight of us jammed into one carriage and our trip began. We arrived in Heuston at about eleven o'clock and then our "private bus" brought us to Mayo's bogey stadium, the magnificent Croke Park. We saw the dressing rooms (only slightly better than our own Mitchels ones!) We saw the best views in the house from the media centre but there were two lads not too keen on the heights. I won't name names but Bomber G and LW the McHalerodian come to mind. We then set off for the National Aquatic Centre and for most footballers who play their football in Mayo they got to touch the pitch of Croke Park for the very last time!  Our "private bus" (not as glamorous as you might think) carried us to the Aquatic Centre, which was where the Special Olympic swimming events were held this time last year. The rush for lockers and changing rooms was frantic. Everyone rushed to the slides and Mr. Waldron was just about under the twenty-one stone weight restriction! Everybody enjoyed the slides which were the Dark Hole, the Green Giant and the Donut Racer.
We left for Blanchardstown Shopping Centre but traffic held us up. Everyone scurried around the place rushing into different shops finding great bargains and Bomber G again found great bargains but managed to sell them all on the way back home. Good auld Bomber certainly knows his money! Our final stop was Kilmainham Jail. We saw where all the 1916 leaders were executed and we experienced what it was like to be stuck in those cells and most of us couldn't stand it for a few minutes never mind a few years.  From there we went back to Heuston train station for our trip home.

Making Silage.    By: Brian Kavanagh. 
  
I make silage every Summer with my Dad and my Uncle Josie. Silage is used for feeding cattle. We have tractors, a bailer and a wrapper. When we make silage we start by mowing the grass in the fields, then we leave the grass lying in the fields for a day or maybe two days to dry out. The reason the grass needs to dry out is because very wet grass could make the blades in the bailing machine go rusty. So when the grass is lying on the field, we always hope the weather will be nice and sunny. While our grass is drying, we make bales for other people whose grass was cut before ours so we're always kept busy.
 When our grass is dry, we bring the tractor with the bailing machine hooked onto it into the field. We attach a power take off (p.t.o) shaft from the bailing machine to the tractor. The p.t.o shaft makes the bailing machine work. Then we rev the tractor up to 22,000 revs  and the bailing machine starts to spin and the grass gets flicked up into the bailing machine as we're driving around the field. The machine forms the grass into the round bales and it puts a net around the grass to hold it together.
 Then we bring a machine called a wrapper into the field to put a black plastic wrapping around the bales . We have nick named the wrapper 50 Cent (rapper, geddit?)