CatherineMom's Blog

The Department of Education and Skills has appointed Educate Together as patron to five new secondary schools in Ireland. Due to open between 2015 and 2016, these second-level schools will be located in Cork, Celbridge, North Wicklow, and Balbriggan and Ballinteer in Dublin. They plan to provide a community that will nurture each student’s academic potential while attending to their personal...

Plans to encourage outdoor learning among children will be rolled out across Ireland. The first Forest School Leadership course will be introduced to Co Wicklow and led by two trainers from the UK. The aim of this course is to help children build a rapport with the natural environment in a way that will engage all their senses. The idea to take pupils out of their classrooms once a week proved to...

A new survey has found that domestic chores and hectic work schedules aren't leaving mums and dads with much time for family fun. Research conducted by IKEA found that the average family spends just over half an hour of quality time a day due to their busy schedules. In a year, a typical family will spend just 15 days together, with Christmas and the occasional Sunday the most popular days for...

A principal described his move from books to tablets as an "unmitigated disaster" when his students’ devices were not up to standards. Pupils at a community school in Laois, experienced major difficulties when school books were replaced with HP Elite Pad tablets as a way of keeping up with trends. Students experienced technical problems such as tablets randomly switching off, tablets failing to...

Research shows that children today are not as fit as their parents were. A study of global fitness reveals that children’s cardio fitness has declined drastically since 1975. The study’s lead author, Dr Grant Tomkinson, said: “If a young person is generally unfit now, then they are more likely to develop conditions like heart disease later in life.” He believes that the decline in fitness...

Researchers say that relying on the internet increases levels of forgetfulness. In a series of tests, scientists found that people who believed information had been erased from a computer were more likely to remember it than those who thought the information was stored. In a similar experiment, Harvard University researchers asked students to answer trivia questions both with and without the...

Plans to change adoption laws in the country will allow same-sex couples to adopt children. The new Children and Family Relationship’s Bill will allow all couples who are unmarried or in a civil partnership to do the same. While there are concerns that this will cause controversy among religious groups, the Minister for Children, Frances Fitzgerald said these laws have the full support of Fine...

New research has found that testing protein levels in pregnant women before 35 weeks is highly accurate in identifying those at risk of developing pre-eclampsia. Pre-eclampsia is a severe type of high blood pressure in pregnancy that can be fatal. Currently, high blood pressure and the presence of protein in the urine are used to diagnose it but the test is unreliable and can take days to confirm...

A recent study found that music lessons in childhood can help with your child’s hearing later in life. Playing an instrument can also help keep the brain active in adulthood, and even though we usually associate deafness in the ears, the brain is important to ensure we hear clearly. If the brain processes sound more slowly, it can be more difficult, to say, hear clearly while chatting on the...

The latest Growing Up in Ireland report has recommended greater support for parents suffering with depression or stress. The report, based on the study of 11,000 children from the age of nine months since 2006, also found a need for more help for women at risk of giving birth to premature or low birth-weight babies. “Even from a very young age, the sensitivity that parents show when interacting...