A HUGE congratulations to Mrs Tominey and our wonderful ECO Committee who gained our third Green Flag on Friday. I am so proud of everyone in our school and our nursery for their hard work and dedication to ensuring our school campus is ECO friendly. Mrs Anne Black was the assessor who came to our school on Friday morning spending 3 hours looking all around, questionning the committee and thoroughly going over Mrs Tominey’s work. The morning assessment culminated in a re-run of our Primary Two assembly ‘reduce, re-use & recycle’. Once again an amazing performance from our Primary Two boys and girls and staff, how they managed to remember all of their lines, movement and song words after all this time is truly remarkable – or perhaps it is simply the result of excellent teaching. Mrs Black, the assessor, contacted me at 2.45pm to say well done to everyone involved and to award us our third Green Flag. Mrs Black loved her morning in the school she said it was very clear we were all committed to our world from the little nursery people through to p7 and our staff. Our whole school & nursery approach was highly praised. Mrs Black’s words were:

‘My only difficulty is trying to decide on recommendations as everything is perfect’

How fabulous is that????? Well done to everyone in our school and nursery community. What a wonderful way to end the week.

Meanwhile on Wednesday of this week there was great excitement in Primary One as they all set off on an educational trip to Colzium House. Another example of taking our learning outside of school and putting it into the context of the real world. All had a fabulous day out, many thanks to the great number of parent helpers who came along to support the children. Outings such as this are greatly encouraged in our school but they would not be possible without the volunteer parent/grandparent helpers who ensure we overtake the required ratio of pupil to adult required to ensure a safe passage for all. Many, many thanks to our parent helpers. Thanks also to the parents helpers who give so freely of their time every week to accompany our P5 children to swimming, again this out of school learning opportunity would not be possible without our magnificent volunteer helpers. Throughout every day in our school and nursery you can find a number of adults assisting in a variety of ways encouraging and supporting our children’s learning. Our school and nursery is truly blessed with committed parents who are so very keen to work with the school to allow us to offer our children such a diverse range of excellent educational experiences. Thank You.

Normally at this time of year we are looking forward to saying thank you in a practical way to all who assist in our school with our annual ‘Social Evening’. This year we will be delaying this celebration until September as on our proposed date we have been asked to give over our school to assist with the celebration of The Installation of Bishop Toal. A worthy event, I’m sure you will agree.

Thursday of this week, once again, our parent helpers proved invaluable accompanying our children to celebrate Ascension Thursday Mass in Our Lady of Good Aid Cathedral Church. Our Primary 1, 2 & 3 pupils were bussed to church whilst our P4, 5, 6 & 7 pupils walked to Mass. Thanks to everyone involved in the Mass, our P6 pupils who read so well, our staff who work so hard to assist our children’s spiritual development, Fr Millar for his continuous support for all we do in school and to our community police who ensure a safe journey to and from church for all. This Mass was a magnificent celebration, we were all in church for 9.50am and for the 10 minutes before Mass began there was absolute silence in the church. I was so proud of our children’s reverence and exemplary behaviour, I cannot praise our children enough, they are magnificent. The singing and spoken Mass responses were also superb, again another example of the excellent teaching on-going in our Catholic school. It was a most beautiful, uplifting experience. Well done to all of our boys and girls.

In the meantime our nursery continues to flourish. This week our nursery staff all gained new titles. Early Years Workers, Mrs Imray, Mrs Little and Mrs McFadden are now Early Years Practitioners and Mrs Murphy our Senior Early Years Worker is now entitled Lead Early Years Practitioner – why the change? I have no idea! But change it has.

Our Lead Early Years Paractitioner gives us all the weekly gossip from the nursery……

The nursery mini-beasts topic came to and end with the Ugly Bug Ball where the children had a mini-beasts hunt on the pitch, danced to bug music and had the opportunity to taste everything that the Very Hungry Caterpillar ate in the story. This was a fantastic learning experience for all of the children and through Leggy Lug the Rhyming Bug they are beginning to grasp the concept of rhyming.The nursery caterpillars are now all safely tucked up in their cocoons and the children are observing them daily to watch for any changes. Hopefully this week we will have some beautiful butterflies.

On Wednesday a package was delivered addressed to the nursery. It had came all the way from Trinidad and Tobago. When we opened it out came Fizzy Cole (Physical) a torch and a backpack full of all clues to why she was here. She was wearing a tracksuit and some very cool trainers. She had a passport, a measuring tape, a stopwatch, a gold medal, a letter and an envelope for each group. In the envelopes there were flags from different countries. Fizzy explained that she had come to Scotland to learn about the country and all about the Commonwealth Games being held in Glasgow. She has set all groups the same challenge to learn about a different country that are taking part in the games. Each envelope had a flag from a country she wants to learn more about. The first one of course was Scotland and the Terrific Thistles are going to help her learn all about their own country and each group has taken on their countries name for this topic. The Super Snowdrops are researching Australia gidday mate! The Brilliant Bluebells are hiking up the Rocky Moutains and learning all about Canada, the Happy Heathers are off to the beach to explore Jamaica and finally the fantastic Foxgloves are studying India, the culture and the food.

On Thursday we set off to help Fizzy fulfil her requests.
Outdoors the children took the measuring tape and the stopwatch and used them to record running and jumping activities.
In the maths area they looked at the shapes and the emblems on the flags and made their own flags. These will serve as bunting throughout the topic.
Over in the literacy area they researched the different countries on the SmartBoard.
In the art area the children started to make their own Commonwealth torches and batons.
At the beach In the snack area they made Jamaican smoothies full of tropical fruit.
All these activities will continue next week.

On Friday the nursery children showed off their knowledge of recycling to Mrs ann Black who was visiting the nursery as part of the whole school eco programme. They sang their very own eco song and impressed her with their eco wall, daily eco tasks and their knowledge of recycling.

What a lot of learning goes on in our school and nursery – and that was only a four day week!!!

As always, thanks for taking the time to read my blog, and many thanks to those who comment, I love to hear from all of our parent forum, I hope you are as proud of children as I am.

Mrs Shields