Hello everyone,

We are so relieved and pleased that we will, once again and very soon, be a complete school and nursery community with the return of our P4-7 pupils on 15^th March.  This is a very welcome step and we really can’t wait to see them, and to have all of our children and staff united again within Netherlee.  We are just finalising our plans for the P4-7 return and I will of course send further, more practical information eg early/exit gates out to parents who have children in these year groups, next week- hopefully on either Tuesday or Wednesday.  I would like to give the P4-7 teachers an opportunity to come into school one day next week, ahead of the return on 15^th March in order to prepare their classrooms for welcoming the children back.  As such, I have allocated each stage of teachers a day for this – P4 Monday 8^th, P5 Tuesday 9^th, P6 Wednesday 10^th and P7 Thursday 11^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.

You can see from the below and attached, that this week’s update includes some very interesting and useful information from both Netherlee’s Parent Council and PTA as well as a letter from our Director of Education, Mark Ratter and as such I am going to keep my contribution into this week’s email bundle slightly shorter than usual.

Firstly from our Parent Council…

Have your say!
The Parent Council is keen to get the views of all parents.  They have created a very short survey to look at how parents can most easily engage with the Parent Council. There is also a very important question to find out what your priorities are for the school going forward.

The results of the survey will be used by the Parent Council to guide ongoing communications with the parent body and to direct the focus of discussions for the next year.  Mrs Donaldson is keen for the findings to also be shared with herself and school and nursery staff in order that they can be taken into consideration when putting together the School and Nursery Improvement Plan (SNIP) for the coming year, Session 2021-2022.

The findings will be fed back to all parents so that you can see how your views are being used.

Thank you very much for your time in completing this survey which can be accessed at the link below.  Your opinions really do count.

https://forms.gle/oJgtChmKjKgxC4wf7.

The survey will be closed in the evening of Sunday 21st March.  If you wish to contact the Parent Council at all in the meantime, then please don’t hesitate to email: netherleeparentcouncil@gmail.com   Also, please find attached the first issue of the new Parent Council Newsletter.

​And now from the PTA…

​Please see the attached flyer for the PTA March events. Thank you to the P5-7 pupils for completing the survey which has allowed us to plan some events you will enjoy. The PTA zoom links for the P1-4 discos will be circulated again by WhatsApp and school mail. The link to register for any of the P5-7 PTA events is Netherlee PTA (pta-events.co.uk)  All the events are provided free. If you can donate to the PTA then please do so on the following link;  https://localgiving.org/charity/netherlee-primary-pta/

​And finally, back to myself….

​Over the course of the next few weeks, I will include in my Friday Updates some, hopefully useful, descriptions around how we are, and will continue to, support the children with both their well being and their learning and also how we will deliver the curriculum moving forwards.

​Thank you to those parents who have got in touch with us to share any important information in relation to their child and how they have settled back into school if in P1-3, or ahead of your P4-7 child returning to school soon.  We are here to help and appreciate that many of our children will have lots of conflicting emotions right now so please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us in relation to this or any other matter.

​Have a lovely weekend everyone.  Take care.

​Mrs Yvonne Donaldson

Head Teacher

Netherlee Primary School and Nursery Class

Hello everyone,

We’ve had a really lovely week with the children having so much fun while playing with the outside taps, making sock puppets or paper bag puppets, baking, exploring with shaving foam, using tools and being very busy wee people! You may notice that lots of soil has been delivered to the Acorn garden. We are really excited to share that this area is being developed into a growing space for fruit and vegetables. In the next few weeks we will be having raised beds built and then the fun will start as we prepare for the growing season. In preparation, one of our wonderful parents, Helen Cross and her family, have very kindly planted fruit trees and berry bushes in the garden. We also had two wormeries delivered, one for each nursery building, and have been learning about how to feed and care for our new, wriggly residents.  These fantastic opportunities are being provided as the school and nursery applied for, and were granted, a financial award from the Scottish Government’s Community Climate Asset Fund.

As you know, we often ask for feedback from you and we are always grateful of suggestions from parents. One of the parents kindly asked us to remind everyone to go on Google Classroom as this is where you will find the weekly ‘Learning Links’.

We would like to remind you that children who attend nursery between 9am and 3pm must be collected just before 3pm please. If you have children to collect from primary school please collect your nursery child first, prior to collecting from school. The children who are in nursery after 3pm are only those who attend 8am-6pm.  Thank you.

Recently we’ve been buying lots of baking or cooking ingredients, items for the garden, woodwork tools, wood, compost and lots of other exciting resources for the children.  Our voluntary nursery fund, £2.00 per week or £20 per term, is your contribution to enable us to continue to be able to buy the children’s daily morning snack and to offer a wide range of resources to the children. We appreciate that these are difficult times financially for lots of families and we really appreciate any contribution you can make at this time. Contributions can be paid through ParentPay. If you have forgotten your ParentPay login details please just let the school office know, via email, and we can very easily help with this. Again thank you.

Next week our staff will be phoning parents to share information about how your child has settled back into their nursery routine as we know that transitions can be tricky for some children. Mrs Flower has responsibility for medication in nursery and will be calling some parents to review the procedures for administration of medication in nursery.

Below and attached, is some very interesting and useful information from Netherlee’s Parent Council and also a letter from our Director of Education, Mark Ratter.

From Netherlee’s Parent Council…

Have your say!
The Parent Council is keen to get the views of all parents.  They have created a very short survey to look at how parents can most easily engage with the Parent Council. There is also a very important question to find out what your priorities are for the school going forward.

The results of the survey will be used by the Parent Council to guide ongoing communications with the parent body and to direct the focus of discussions for the next year.  Mrs Donaldson is keen for the findings to also be shared with herself and school and nursery staff in order that they can be taken into consideration when putting together the School and Nursery Improvement Plan (SNIP) for the coming year, Session 2021-2022.

The findings will be fed back to all parents so that you can see how your views are being used.

Thank you very much for your time in completing this survey which can be accessed at the link below.  Your opinions really do count.

https://forms.gle/oJgtChmKjKgxC4wf7

The survey will be closed in the evening of Sunday 21st March.  If you wish to contact the Parent Council at all in the meantime, then please don’t hesitate to email: netherleeparentcouncil@gmail.com   Also, please find attached the first issue of the new Parent Council Newsletter.

​We hope you have a lovely weekend with your family.

​Yvonne Donaldson (HT) and Angela Kerr (PT)