We have had such bad weather this week that the children have hardly been out playing. We did manage one snow play though! Great fun for everybody and Room 12 won the best snowman competition.
P1-3 have been very patient boys and girls while we organise their new school dinner system. Today they managed to get out to play for a wee while before coming in for lunch and then back out for a short play before the afternoon session bell rang. Hopefully next week they will get a chance to get used to our new system. Dinner numbers have increased dramatically so it is taking us a bit longer to get everyone fed, however we now have lots of children taking a school lunch for the first time. Well done boys and girls.
P4 have been looking at food – they have planned lots of investigations, they have even volunteered to come into school without breakfast to take part in memory and concentration tests – their idea! They are also going to weigh the food waste next week so we are all interested to see what they come up with, we are going to compare waste per stage and then we are going to let each class know what their average waste is. This will highlight how much food is being thrown away each week.
The upper school parts have now all been cast for our production of Alice in Wonderland – rehearsals have begun and everyone is having a great time learning their parts. Some great singing evident already – we are really looking forward to bringing all of this show together. Details of times, tickets etc will be issued later in the term.
We also have our first Pupil Voice sessions of the year today (Friday). All children in the school are now part of a group who will meet every four weeks. The purpose of this is to hear what the children have to say about a range of topics within the school. They will then report back to our whole school assembly with their suggestions and agendas. This way everyone in our school community is involved in taking the school forward.
This week coming:
Please remember that our Sacramental Meeting for parents of children in P3 and P4 will take place on Wednesday at 7:00pm. If your child is at either of these stages please make sure you come along to discuss our preparations for the forthcoming sacraments.
Also this week Primary Four will visit Glasgow Science Centre to begin their Trout in the Classroom project. Thank you to our parents who have volunteered to join us as parent helpers. Please remember to give your child a packed lunch for this visit.

We are delighted to welcome everybody back after their Christmas Break. The children have all commented on how good their holiday was and now they are really buckling down to some serious hard work.
Primary 6 and 7 have been busy this week preparing their audition pieces for our forthcoming production of Alice in Wonderland. Primary 5 pupils will be involved in the chorus of this production and they will be joining rehearsals shortly. As we are doing this as a whole school production all pupils in the school will be using this as the basis of their social studies work this term.
Primary 4 are also beginning their food topic and will be tying this into their Clyde in the Classroom Project. They will be visiting Glasgow Science Centre later this month to learn how to care for their fish eggs. Hopefully we will be able to release lots of trout into the Clyde when they have all hatched.
If your child is in P1-3 you will be aware that they are now entitled to a free lunch in school. We are delighted with the uptake of this so early in the term, our infant dinner numbers have increased substantially, however we now need to look at the best way to manage this to ensure that all children also have time to play at lunchtime. We have been trying out a few different ways to manage the time this week and hopefully by Tuesday of next week we will have a systematic plan in place to ensure that all children have time for both lunch and play!
If you know of any child who is due to begin school in August please remember that our enrolments begin on Monday 12th through to Wednesday 14th – every afternoon from 1:30 until 3:00. Please pass this information on to any family/friends whose child is due to begin school.

Parties and Christmas shows all done and everybody had a great time.
As our year draws to a close I would like to thank all of you for your support this term. The children in the nursery and in the infant department have had a ball practising for their shows. All performances were very well received. Then it was onto party time – great fun and a huge thank you to Tony McCabe who provided our disco for P6 and 7. We are also delighted that ‘Santa’ was able to come to our nursery and P1-3 parties too. It was the highlight of the day! If you want to have a look at our party photographs please check out each class blog as Miss Lewis has posted photographs on individual class blogs.
P7 are preparing for our final event which is our joint Carol Service with Calderbridge Primary School – we hope that as many of you as possible will come along and join in the singing.
Primary 6 have now been enrolled for the Pope Francis Faith Award and already we have a number of pupils contributing to the first Mass of Christmas in St. Aidan’s Parish. Well done boys and girls.
P1 had their enterprise fayre this morning and have raised over £100 with their Christmas Craft – well done Primary 1 a great effort from the boys and girls with super support from Miss Ramage, Mrs Bell and Mrs Ivey. We are letting them spend their well earned cash on items for their own class.
We are now looking forward to our well earned rest and I would like to thank everyone within our school community for their hard work and dedication since August. We are hoping to have a very restful Christmas and hopefully the weather will allow us to get some winter sunshine too.
We will finish on Tuesday at 2:30 but before that we have to do our final carol service and our Christmas Singalong.
We will all return on Monday 5th January at 9:00

We are delighted to announce that Caitlin Shear in Primary Six is the winner of the Sunday Mail Front Page competition. Caitlin’s referendum report has now been published and is available to view within the school. A great achievement for Caitlin also well done to the runners up. Brendan from the Sunday Mail was very impressed with all submissions and we are very grateful for their support.
As we come into Advent we will now be starting our Mondays with our usual Advent service. Primary 4/5 will lead us in the first week, as usual we are very much looking forward to the Christmas season.
We have also been asked to be in Phase Two of the Pope Francis Faith Award programme and our Primary Six pupils will be enrolled into this at 10:00 Mass on Monday 8th December all parents and family are invited to join us for this special Mass.
If your son or daughter is in Primary One – watch out they are going all out to have their very own Christmas Fayre – more news to follow on this shortly.
We are all off to the pantomime next Tuesday to see Cinderella at Motherwell Civic Theatre – infant pupils will attend the morning performance and the rest of the school will go to the afternoon. We have heard that it is great fun. Please remember that the afternoon children will not be back until 4:20 and need to be collected from school.
Our Primary Five children begin their swimming block this coming week. I know that, as ever, their behaviour will be exemplary and I am looking forward to hearing great reports of their progress from Wishaw Baths.
As we come into December we will be getting into the Christmas Spirit. Our infant show ‘Jesus’ Christmas Party’ is in full rehearsal mode and sounding great – tickets go on sale from the school on Monday priced at £2.50. The children will perform this on Tuesday 9th and Wednesday 10th December at 1:30 I do hope you can come along and enjoy the fun.
Our nursery singalong will be held on 12th December and they are sounding great too.
Our annual joint carol service with Calderbridge Primary School will be held in St. Mark’s Church this year on Monday 22nd December at 1:30. All members of the community are invited to attend this special joint service which will be led by Primary Sevens from both schools.

We all had great fun last week having our Sponsored Dance. Many thanks to everyone who has donated Sponsor Money, we are currently sitting at just over £800 with some more money to come in. We will be looking to use some of this money to subsidise bus costs for outings to sports and cultural events in the new year.
I am delighted to tell you that our Primary Six pupils have been accepted into Phase Two of the Pope Francis Faith Award. This is an eighteen month programme which runs in conjunction with St. Aidan’s Parish and culminates in an award in Primary Seven. The children will be enrolled into this programme once we have consulted with Canon Clements. If your child is in Primary Six they will be telling you of all that it involves.
Primary Five, Six and Seven enjoyed a wonderful Superhero Science Roadshow on Tuesday of this week. Ms Laura Richardson who is currently a PhD student at the University of Glasgow came along and enthralled the children with her tales of superheroes and links to development of DNA. The children were very enthusiastic listeners.
Our Primary Seven pupils attended their Partnership Evening in St. Aidan’s High School on Thursday. Having spoken with them they are all so enthusiastic about the activities they were involved in and very much enjoyed meeting up with S1 pupils who left us in August. A very successful evening indeed!
Primary One, Two and Three are now in the middle of their rehearsals for their nativity show which will be presented on the afternoons of 9th and 10th December. Great singing and I’m sure super acting once they have all learned their difficult lines!
You will have received the pro forma for your child’s photograph. Please ensure that these are returned to school as soon as possible as John Wilson Photography will be collecting them at the end of next week.
Please remember that we will soon be visiting Motherwell Civic Theatre for our annual Panto. Primary 1-3 will attend the morning performance and will return to school for lunch. Pupils in Primaries 4-7 will attend the afternoon show and will have a late return to school, normally around 4:20. Please make sure that you make arrangements for your child to be collected as there is no school bus at this later time.

October 31st
We are delighted that Miss Quinn has joined us as class teacher in Primary 5/6 this will allow Miss Lewis to be out of class to cover the DHT remit vacated by Mrs Shearer. This change of staff will now run until June 2015.
Great Halloween fun in school today! All classes came up to the hall to perform their songs and poems. We also had lots of fun admiring all of the fabulous costumes the children were wearing. Staff joined in too – this year the theme was ‘Where’s Wally’ which gave the children a great chance to find Wally in St. Aidan’s today!
Since returning after the October week the children have all been getting their teeth into their new interdisciplinary topics. The upper school are studying World War One and this ties in with the Centenary this year. They are already planning a memorial garden and are looking to make ceramic poppies to be displayed outside.
The Titanic has come to life again in the middle school. Already we have an array of super display in Rooms 9 and 10 and the children are really enthused by the events surrounding this famous ship. You can see them reading about it even during their lunchtime.
Our infant classes are looking at times gone by with the project ‘When Gran was a Girl’ so be prepared to answer questions from them about things that happened in the past!
Our choir has been very busy preparing for a competition in Our Lady of Good Aid Cathedral Primary on November 15th. They are going all out to win!
Our Out of School Hours Learning continues with Miss Lewis providing football on a Friday, Mrs Donnelly takes a Liturgy Club every Monday and we also currently have basketball for Primary Five on a Tuesday – this is taken by Senior Pupils from St. Aidan’s High School. We are hoping to offer Rugby for Primary Six in the very near future. Throughout the year a range of Out of School Hours Learning opportunities will be available for all pupils.
Photographer
Please remember that John Wilson Photography will be in school on Friday of this coming week. He will take class pictures for display, if you wish an individual or family photograph please remember to return the slip indicating your preferences. Only children who have returned their slips will be photographed individually.
Also coming up soon will be our Sponsored Dance event – any money raised from this will go towards school funds as we are currently trying to upgrade our ICT capacity for all pupils. We will also use any remaining money to fund transport for pupils attending festivals, sports outings etc. I hope you can all help us.

I would like to begin this week by reminding you that our Curriculum Evening will be held on Wednesday 24th September at 7:00pm. We will begin the evening with an introduction to the new RE resource God’s Loving Plan. All parents will have an opportunity to see the DVD which will now be shown to all pupils in Primary Six and Seven. This covers all aspects of Sex Education with the context of our faith. Following on from this parents will be able to visit classes and see the resources that will be used throughout the year. This is an excellent chance for you to see what activities your son/daughter will be involved in throughout this year.
Rooms three, four and five have had great fun this week continuing with their Fairyland topic. Their artwork is looking really good and already lots of writing has emerged. Well done boys and girls.
Rooms six, nine and ten have been hugely involved in looking at the rights of the child and the need for rules within society. We are hoping that they will soon be able to present their finding at our school assembly soon.
Finally our senior pupils discussion and debate has in increased focus this week as we await the outcome of the referendum. They have shown a real maturity in discussion and they have seriously considered both sides of the argument.
If you have been in the school grounds recently you will have seen the great work done by a group of our parents. We are really grateful to them for transforming the front garden. We will now be working hard to ensure that our plans for our vegetable beds, berry and herb beds come to fruition. We are very fortunate to have secured a grant from Education Scotland to develop food technology within the school. I am delighted to tell you that we are having our kitchen refurbished and brought up to date, furthermore we will be able to purchase a range of induction hobbs to support the children’s cooking skills. Look out for budding chefs in the months ahead.

Please remember that the children do not attend school this Thursday as it is an Inset day for all pupils. We will reopen on Friday when the children will enjoy our first whole school Golden Time of this school year. Lots of new activities are on offer from all staff. We hope they enjoy their new choices.

Can I remind you that if you have not returned your data information sheet we need this back as soon as possible to keep our records up to date.

Another busy week for everyone in school, especially Rooms 12, 13 and 14. On Tuesday we were privileged to have our pupils listen to the Deputy Editor of the Sunday Mail. The hot topic of discussion was the referendum and all pupils were engaged in lively discussion prior to holding their very own referendum. In St. Aidan’s the children voted ‘No’ we are now interested to see what the national result will be in just over a week’s time. The Sunday Mail team were so impressed with our children that they have invited them to submit a front page which will be printed as a ‘real front page’. All children were eagerly planning and designing their pages this week. I must also commend the children on the intelligent questions they asked during discussion.
As part of our Health and Wellbeing programme all children were invited to participate in a dance workshop. Audrey Clark school of Dance were in school for two days leading the children in creative dance – a great success.
Our Parent Council held their first meeting of the school year on Tuesday evening. Please remember that we have three vacancies on the Parent Council for this coming year and these are open to any parent of the school. You must return the slip indicating you are interested by Friday 12th September at 3:00 pm. If we have more than three people, in line with the constitution, names will be drawn from a hat. Please remember that our Parent Council are now on Facebook – you can keep up to date with everything that is happening in the school by checking out this page.
Also please note in your diary our Curriculum Evening on September 24th at 7:00pm. At this time you will be able to come along and meet your child’s teacher, have a look at the resources your child will be using this year and find out about the interdisciplinary topics your child will be engaged in. We have also invited Mr Tony McDonald, Principal Teacher of Mathematics in St. Aidan’s High School along, he will be able to give an insight into the planning and progression from P7 into S1 in Mathematics.
Our first Out of School Hours Learning group is now up and running – Mrs Donnelly offers all children in the school a Liturgy Club on Mondays during lunchtime. We will also be working closely with St. Aidan’s High School senior pupils this year, as part of the Sports Leader Awards a number of sixth year students will be in school throughout the year offering a variety of different activities. We are really grateful for their support.

Welcome to the first blog of our new school year. The children all looked fantastic last week in their new school clothes. We are delighted that our new Primary One pupils have settled in very quickly, already we can see them becoming increasingly independent and getting used to the school routine. If you have been out in the playground in the morning or at home time you might have noticed the variety of fruit that has been growing in our orchard areas. We are delighted that so far this year we have been able to harvest potatoes, radish, peas, cabbage, plums apples and pears. We have been busy cooking lots of food and the children have really enjoyed eating their own produce. On Thursday of this week everyone had a pancake with home made plum jam! You will see that already we are in the process of clearing out the beds for our next round of vegetables and Mrs McGeough and Mrs Bridge have involved every class in researching what foods we will be able to plant in the autumn for harvest next spring!
Thank you also to Mr McAuley, Mr McAveety and Mr Todd for clearing out the garden area. We have decided to grass all of this for ease of maintenance and over the next few months we will be tending our new grass and planning our pots to give us a bright array of colour next spring.
This year we have introduced a new play area for the children in the infant department. We have allocated a session for every child in the inner quadrangle and pupils from Primary Six will support them to enjoy a range of games over the coming months.
Primary Seven are already showing great maturity in taking on their many responsibilities, they are shaping up to be a great class – well done Primary Seven.
We opened our school year formally at Mass on Friday, if you attended this Mass thank you for coming along I’m sure you will agree that the children were fantastic.
In class the infant pupils are looking at Fairlyland this term – they will be taking a look at the moral of many fairy stories as we embed our Health and Wellbeing programme. Primary 3, 4 and 4/5 are studying Children around the World and again taking a look at the rights of the child through this approach. As you would expect we are involving our Senior pupils in looking at Rights, Rules and Responsibilities through the Referendum and the implications of the outcome of the vote. We are delighted that this week we have the Deputy Political Editor from the Sunday Mail coming along to speak with the children on this hot topic.
I hope that you will all find time this year to check out both this blog and Mrs Shearer’s nursery blog to keep up to date with events in school. We are all looking forward to a great year ahead.

Fun in the sun!

With our term drawing to a close I would like to give you a final round up of our goings on over the past two weeks.

Our school sports day was great fun – please take time to have a look at the pictures on our website. Primary Seven have now completed all of their transition activities and are ready to leave us to take their next steps in their educational journey. We had a very emotion final Leavers’ Mass on Friday 13th followed by an even more emotional final assembly – we did think we would need to bring in emergency tissue supplies last week! They have been a brilliant group and we will miss them enormously but we know that they will do us proud in the future.

Our Maths Challenge team collected the winners’ trophy at St. Aidan’s High School Award Ceremony on Thursday night too – a tremendous achievement – well done boys!

Divided City is just about ready for the actual performance, lots of dialogue and songs have been learned and the staging is looking very good – Room Thirteen will be performing this twice on Tuesday of next week.

We had our final music assembly on Tuesday of this week. We were entertained by our Primary Fives who performed their Kodaly work, the woodwind group performed and showed us how much they have developed their musical abilities over this year – well done boys and girls and our choir performed their winning song from the Glasgow Music Festival. We are very proud of all of them.

All children visited their new classes and met their new teachers on Thursday of this week. Reports have been issued and we are now very much looking forward to our long summer holiday and the start of our new school year.

Our outings today have been a great success with glorious weather and excellent behaviour as usual!

Please remember that on Monday of next week P1,2,3,4 and 7 will be walking to the end of Coltness Road from 11:30 to catch a glimpse of the Queen’s Baton Relay. We will be having a much later lunch on Monday so would ask that all children remain in school for lunch as there will be no crossing patrol after 1:00pm.

Finally please remember that on Friday school will close at 1:00pm