Ready for big school

Just like that, Éamon has finished his two years in his Achill naíonra (playschool for Gaeltacht areas). Work meant I had to miss his last day, but thankfully we were well represented, with my parents coming down to accompany Aisling, Frankie and Séimí for the ‘graduation’.
He and his friends all sang their songs, got their presentations and went on their way, all ready for ‘big school’! His will miss his three brilliant teachers, but the passage to national school will be made easier with a good group of his naíonra friends heading to the same school.
The end of naíonra was illuminating for us too in terms of how he fared out.
Éamon wouldn’t be as loquacious as his older sister, especially when you would ask him about how his day at naíonra was and what they did. He would give nothing away. From talking to other parents, they had the same challenge, as if the kids had agreed a code of omertà!
On a good day, I might manage to get out of him who he was sitting beside, but if I ask him that the next day, I am swiftly told ‘You know that’, and he storms off as if I’ve gone too far!
But upon leaving naíonra, his three teachers had prepared a folder for all the kids – and it is a treasure trove.
There’s enough arts and crafts to cover five fridges, and we finally got to see the bóin dé (ladybird) Éamon had talked so excitedly about.
There’s pictures of all the various activities and games they played. He’s carving a pumpkin at Halloween, baking, singing karaoke, talking to Santa, hearing all about the RNLI, looking in amazement at frogs and frogspawn and playing outside with his friends.
He’s smiling throughout.
Then there’s a lovely chart of ‘ciorcal cómhra’, or conversation circle, where the kids sat around and said what they had been doing at the weekend. It’s a fascinating insight into the tempo of the year and what memories were the strongest in his mind.
There were trips to Breaffy, his cousins in Galway, and very strong memories of a visit to ‘Teach George’ in Louisburgh (my mother’s cousin) and playing in the rivers there, one of which is the famous clapper bridge just down the road from George’s house.
He recalls a few football matches he went to, playing with his new train after Christmas and, in February, ‘Bhí mé ag an ospidéal agus chuaigh mé san othercarr’ – he wasn’t forgetting his bout of pneumonia anyway!
You’d love to know how many of these memories will last. I went to playschool in Milebush, Castlebar, run by a lovely lady called Mary Loftus. I remember being really happy there, but specific memories are few. I do recall getting into trouble when I pushed a table against another boy, pinning him to the wall. My mother hasn’t forgotten that either!
There were, we think, no such incidents with Éamon. Not that he’d tell us anyway.