Collect fresh eggs, bottle feed pet lambs and hold baby chicks and ducklings. Guided tours at 2.00, 3.00 and 4.00 p.m. Bring a picnic to the large play area or enjoy our own teas.

Entry: €8 for an adult, €4 for a child, €20 for a family ticket (two adults and two children).

All proceeds will be divided between Barretstown and the Kildare and West Wicklow Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

For more information and directions visit www.stonebrookpetfarm.com

So here’s how it works…

We have a limited number of books of 10 tickets that you can buy from us at €100. You then sell them to your family and friends for €10 each and off you go to Tayto Park. It’s a cinch – you get a great day out and Barretstown gets €100 that goes straight into helping children with serious illness rebuild their lives.

Simply contact Bernie on fundraising@barretstown.org or on 045 864115 and order your book(s) of tickets.

A lovely treat for the family and you might just meet some campers and famileis you met at camp!

The kids and trainers and parents have been hard at work over the past year organising and running fundraising events including a 5k run, a sports day and social night and a Q&A session with the Leinster team.

Here’s one of the Barretstown parents Rosie collecting the cheque from the Under 10 team – well done lads!

Since losing his son Adam, Benji has created a whole world of family fun and magic through a series of books and Adam’s Cloud website with lots of fun family activities.

Through sales of his award winning books, which take Adam on many magical adventures Benji has raised a whopping €20k for Barretstown. Benji, Jackie and their children Harry, Robbie and Molly visited Barretstown this week to hand over a cheque. Take some time out to visit Adams Cloud where you can buy the books and visit Benji’s blog to read about lots of magical moments.

Specifically designed to run in hospitals HOP allows children who cannot travel to Barretstown to experience the benefits of the Barretstown programme. Trained volunteers, who have all worked at camp before, set up in the hospital and run activities for the children applying the techniques of the Therapeutic Recreation model. HOP recently ran in Cork University Hospital with a pirate theme.

A BIG THANK YOU to all the volunteers and to the staff at the hospital who helped make the magic happen!

Billy, who was 6 took part in our Hospital Outreach Programme (HOP) in Liverpool last week. Billy saw our giant Jenga game set and straight away asked to play with it. As you can imagine I was under the impression we would be playing standard Jenga where by you build a brick tower and then take turns removing individual bricks until the tower tumbles. Billy had other ideas. He brought the blocks over to one side of the play room and began building his masterpieces.

The first piece was a standard Jenga sofa/couch/futon

Next was a jenga bed complete with easy access step!!

And finally a bridge where Mufasa the Lion can get from one chair to the next.

Genius???????……………I think so.

The inaugural Rock n Roll Half Marathon hits Dublin this August Bank Holiday Monday (5th) as part of it’s European Tour. A really scenic course around Dublin City Centre, taking in all the major sights that Dublin has to offer and you will be entertained the whole way around by live bands! Every mile will mean a smile with great bands blaring out tunes to keep you motivated and your spirits high!

If you’ve already run a 10k why not challenge yourself to a few more miles OR if you’re a first timer what a great way to start! Barretstown will have lots of runners on the day and we’d love YOU to be part of the team.

You can sign up online on the Rock n Roll Half Marathon Website and then contact Bernie in our fundraising team on fundraising@barretstown.org or on 045 864115 for your fundraising pack.

Every mile you run means we can bring more kids and families to Barretstown for some Serious Fun!

Come on – join the team:)

We are looking for volunteers to work in our creche for our weekend family camps in the Autumn

which start in September. You’ll have great fun, meet a great bunch of people and be helping children with serious illness and their families have some Serious Fun at Barretstown:)

Visit our Volunteer section where you’ll find the camp calendar and application process.

When applying please write Creche on the top of the application form. Applications to be submitted by mid June.

For further queries please do not hesitate to contact us on recruit@barretstown.org.