Hello again everyone,

If you have a child in P1-3, I hope that you have found the information shared with you earlier in the week useful.  The teachers have been in school this week and we are all ready and very much looking forward to seeing our P1-3 children on Monday.  As the children will be enjoying lots of playing and learning outdoors, we would be very grateful if you could please provide your child with a change of outdoor footwear suitable for all weathers. These can, if you wish and it is easier for you, be left in school and we ask that they’re put in a named plastic bag so that they’re easily identified. Thank you. I hope all your wee ones are looking forward to Monday as much as myself and the staff are. 🙂

For our P4-7 children who will be continuing to use our Hub provision going forwards, we are planning to take our pupils outdoors, as often as possible, to take part in P.E. lessons and outdoor learning in order to provide an additional challenge and enjoyment to their learning, as well as being mindful of course of promoting positive health and well-being. We would therefore be very grateful if these children could bring a change of outdoor footwear, in a plastic bag, and a warm jacket with them to school whenever they are joining us in the hub each week. Thank you for your help and support with this.

As we continue to provide Remote Learning for our P4-7 children just now, we have been very keen to take on board any suggestions and feedback from children, parents and also of course my staff in order to ensure that we are mindful of the ongoing well-being of all.  Thank you to the parents who were able to join us at the live parent meets this week and for sharing your ongoing very positive comments and also some useful ideas and suggestions which have been great too.  We are therefore going to introduce a “Step Away Friday Fun Time” for stages P4-7. During this afternoon, the children will be provided with a variety of non-screen activities to complete and teachers will ask the children to choose what they would like to engage in for the afternoon.  These will include some suggestions for getting outdoors, art work, listening to set pieces of music, yoga, following a special interest project and lots more ideas but… they won’t involve looking at a screen.  Teachers will really look forward to hearing from their children throughout the week, what they have been choosing to do during the Friday afternoons and will explain this more fully to their classes on their Google Classroom.  We hope that the children will enjoy these activities and that this will also allow some breathing space for families.

East Renfrewshire Active Schools are challenging anyone with a connection to East Renfrewshire – school pupils, parents, grandparents, staff – to walk, cycle or run to Tokyo (5759 miles) and they would like your help! Active Schools are tracking the miles using an app called STRAVA.  If your family would like to take part in this challenge, it is free to sign up for a STRAVA account. Strava will ask you if you want to pay for the app – but there is no need to as the free app is absolutely fine for this challenge. IMPORTANT INFORMATION: To download and use the STRAVA app you need to be at least 13 years old, so an adult will need to download the app and accompany primary children while they are taking part, making this a family challenge rather than solely for our pupils. More information and details on this challenge can be found in the attached document ‘Let’s Get to Tokyo’.

Each year, East Renfrewshire Education Department produces their Standards and Quality Report for the previous school session, in this case 2019-20. If you would like to read the report, you can do so by clicking on this link https://www.eastrenfrewshire.gov.uk/department-performance-information.

Have a good weekend everyone, take good care of yourself and also each other, please get in touch at any time if you need anything at all or if you would like to discuss anything to do with your own child.

Mrs Yvonne Donaldson

Hello everyone,

We hope that the snow didn’t interrupt too many of your plans this week and that you took the time to be able to just have some fun. Sometimes it’s good to put all your plans to one side and just laugh, feel the cold on your cheeks and appreciate the simple things, we know we did while playing with the children in the snow in the Hub on Wednesday morning.

This morning nursery staff have attended a virtual puppetry workshop hosted by Starcatchers, Scotland’s National Arts & Early Years Organisation. We are working with Starcatchers to devise activities to develop creativity both indoors and outdoors and in the local community. We will be in touch soon to share resources and activities to try at home or in the local community. If you would like to find out more about the work of Starcatchers please click on the link: https://www.starcatchers.org.uk

We hope that your family will really enjoy joining in a Google Classroom Bookbug session with Mrs Flower and Mrs Greig next week. We would also like to say thank you to one of our nursery parents who had a great suggestion. As such, we look forward to sharing lots of recordings produced by various staff, from your child’s building, reading stories on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in addition to our usual daily Google Meet. We’re sure your child will love seeing some more familiar faces in addition to their keyworkers.

We are pleased to advise that the new online Early Learning and Childcare application process is now live for new three or four year old children on the East Renfrewshire Council website: https://www.eastrenfrewshire.gov.uk/nursery-places   Applications require to be submitted by 28 February 2021.

If you have any enquiries regarding changing attendance patterns or days for 2021/21 please direct them to earlylearningandchildcare@eastrenfrewshire.gov.uk

We will be in touch again towards the middle of next week, subject to the First Minister’s update on Tuesday regarding the arrangements for nursery children’s return on Monday 22^nd February. We also look forward to seeing you, if you are able to join us, on Thursday morning at 10am for our second Live Parent/ Carer Meet.  Link to follow.

Have a lovely weekend with your family everyone.

Yvonne Donaldson (HT) and Angela Kerr (PT)

Hello again everyone,

I hope you have all managed to enjoy some fun outdoors, playing or relaxing in the beautiful snowy weather that we have had recently.  If you pop onto our Twitter Feed you may even see some school and nursery staff having fun in the snow ourselves this morning. J

As this has been a short week, and also as we are currently waiting on the next Scottish Government update on Tuesday, I don’t really have a great deal to update you on this week.  I will of course be in touch again next week to share any relevant information in relation to this update.  If it is decided by the Scottish Government that P1-3 children will return to school on 22^nd Feb, I would like to give the P1-3 teachers an opportunity to come into school ahead of this date, in order to prepare their classrooms for welcoming the children back.  As such, I have allocated each stage of teachers a day for this – P1 Wednesday 17^th, P2 Thursday 18^th and P3 Friday 19^th, and on each appropriate day teachers will of course still provide remote learning for the children which will be posted on GC in the usual way, however there will be no live meets for that one day. Thank you for your support and understanding with this.

We are very much looking forward to welcoming all parents and carers who would like to, and are able to, join the Leadership Team at the next round of Live Google Parent Meets over the course of the next two weeks – the link for these will be sent out to you the evening before.  Please remember, these are informal opportunities for you to “come along” and ask any general questions that you may have just now.  As always, if you would like to discuss your own child, please do get in touch with us and we will be happy to help in any way that we can.

The next Netherlee Parent Council Meeting will take place, virtually, on Wednesday 24^th February 2021 at 7pm (agenda to follow).

PTA-social-info.

Have a good weekend everyone, take care.

Mrs Donaldson

Hi everyone

We hope that if you have been able to join in with your child on any of our daily Google Meets that you were pleased with how responsive staff were to the interests and “chat” of children. Whether encouraging them to share their news, reciting nursery rhymes solo (as no one joined in!  J), playing French games or singing the children’s favourite songs and dancing, the staff have shown such enthusiasm and commitment to making the children feel listened to and connected to each other and the nursery during this unusual time. We are very proud of how the children have grown in confidence while attending the daily Google Meets and how they happily talk to each other and share news about life at home.

If you haven’t yet had the chance to pop in to the meets, these sessions are a really good way for your child to re-connect with some of their friends and their teachers. Please do get in touch if you need any help with how to get this set up etc.  We look forward to seeing lots of the children again soon at our Google Meets which are at 2.30pm each day from Wednesday 10^th February.

As it is a holiday weekend we will post our next ‘Learning Links and Home Learning Ideas’ on the Google Classroom on Tuesday 9^th February at 7pm.

Have a lovely, long weekend.

Warm regards

Yvonne Donaldson (HT) and Angela Kerr (PT)

Hello everyone

Just a slightly shorter email from me today ahead of the In-service Day tomorrow and the long weekend holiday on Monday and Tuesday of next week.

I am sure you will agree it will be nice to be able to switch off our digital devices, at least for some of the time each day and to relax and try to unwind a little from all of the busy, tight schedules and routines that you, and we, are all living through right now.   I know that I have said this already however I really do want to thank you once again for your enormous support, time and energy over the last weeks since returning to school and nursery in January.  I really do take my hat off to each and every one of you, as well as of course my fantastic staff and pupils- what a Netherlee Team!  Whilst I completely agree that none of this is or has been easy for any of us, together we have been able to do our very best to keep the Netherlee children safe and well whilst also moving their learning forwards.  I know how much they really enjoy and benefit from being able to see their teachers and friends during the live meets and please believe me when I say how much the teachers value being able to see their children too and being able to make sure they are “OK” – this really does means a great deal to the staff as well.

Please find attached the dates for our next round of Live Parent/ Carer Drop In Meets.  We will still go ahead with the P1, P2 and P3 sessions too as I feel this will be a good opportunity for any parents within these year groups to have an opportunity to ask any questions you may have in relation to the scheduled return to school.  The P4-7 sessions will be similar in format to the last round so we look forward to seeing anyone who is able to “virtually drop in” then.

With the 6 Nations starting on Saturday, Mr Aitken has started a virtual rugby club for P5-7. This will run for the duration of the 6 Nations. Details of how to join the club can be found in your child’s Google Classroom. Active Schools have challenged us to name a team of the week during the 6 Nations. Mr Aitken and the children in the club will choose their team of the week and share this and other fun facts each week through a ThinkLink – https://www.thinglink.com/card/1412752054597713922

In January the Specialist Children’s Services Community Occupational Therapy Team launched an advice line where parents/carers, school staff, social care staff, voluntary organisations or other health professionals can seek advice and support for children and young people who are having difficulty joining in with the activities that they need and want to do every day. Please follow this link to find the new advice line: https://www.nhsggc.org.uk/media/264679/ot-advice-line-poster-in-pdf-for-primary-school-age.pdf

So, have a lovely, long weekend everyone.  I will be in touch again next week and I will hopefully also be able to share some more detail in relation to our nursery and P1-3 pupils returning to school, if it is safe to do so of course, on 22^nd February.

Warmest regards

Mrs Donaldson