MEP Nina Carberry pays visit to Mount Temple school

Fine Gael MEP Nina Carberry paid a visit to Dolores Killian's third class at An Grianán NS in Mount Temple last Friday.

Mrs Killian's class is working towards achieving the flag for The Blue Star Programme. There are four core learning pillars of the programme: Historical, Geographical, Cultural & Creative, and Institutional

Every child in the class is studying a EU country, to include food, languages, famous people, famous landmarks, geographical and historical features.

As part of the programme, pupils are encouraged to invite MEPs to the school, and last December the class made a super-sized Christmas card and sent an invitation to Nina to come visit to showcase all their learning about Europe.

When Nina arrived on Friday, the classroom was set up like third class' very own European Parliament. She was met with all pupils holding a A3 size poster of individual letters which spelled out her name.

Following on from that there was a question and answer session from pupils on many topics from her experience on ‘Ireland's Fittest Family’ (giving fitness tips to the class), ‘Dancing with the Stars’ (she showed some dance moves), pupil-teacher ratio, to her experience as a jockey and an author of children's books. She gave some writing tips to the pupils.

The pupils had completed their very own portraits of Nina which she took home with her. Regan Kelly, a very talented artist in the class did some fantastic illustrations for Nina which the MEP is planning to put up in her office in the European Parliament.

Regan Kelly, Maeve Matthews and Kaylee McCormack got their books, written by Nina, signed. Nina Carberry looked at all of the children's artwork and projects, and was very impressed by their great work.

Ms Killian has visited the European Parliament on two previous occasions.