Last week in school was, as always, a most successful, enjoyable week for all.

On Monday we enjoyed a visit from our Quality Improvement Officer, Mr Robert Dalzell. Mr Dalzell was most impressed by our innovative approach to evidencing our Excellent Curriculum. Each class now has an Excellent Curriculum book in which they record the children’s interdisciplinery experiences, their thoughts and feelings and the opinions on what they have learned. Parents will have opportunity to peruse these books at all future parent evenings.

On Tuesday Mrs Jacqueline Carr attended a meeting in SCES (Scottish Catholic Education Service) where we registered to participate, once again, in Pope Francis Faith Award. Our P6 volunteers will be enrolled in The Pope Francis Faith Award at our Mass in December where we celebrate our School Feast Day.

Once again our week ended on a ‘high note’ Our Primary 4 pupils and staff presented the most amazing assembly based around saving our planet and riasing awareness of the need for us all to be actively involved in this process. This was a truly magnificent display of learning in context. The children were fantastic as they sang, rapped and danced their way through The Amazon Rainforest. A HUGE thanks to our P4 pupils, staff and parents who all contributed to the great success of this assembly.

Meanwhile in every school base and in the nursery playroom their is vocal evidence of preparation for all of our Christmas shows. Our children are all working very hard to learn lots of song words, scripts and dance moves to entertain everyone at Christmas. Please help your children with this learning then you can sing along at the shows!

Speaking of the nursery……..Here’s the latest gossip from Mrs Margaret Mary Murphy:

Our new topic is “Light and Dark” The children have been discussing the change of the season/weather and the sky and the differences between day and night.

Outside the children planned, designed and gathered the resources to make a dark den. They used the quadro to build the frame and different materials to cover it to make it dark. They explored the den using glow sticks and a torch and listened to a story about nocturnal animals who live underground.

Over in the literacy area they listened to and used puppets to sequence the story of the “Owl Babies.” The display in the story corner has been created by the children to reflect their own understandings of the story.

In the numeracy area they looked at the difference in size of the mummy owl and the three babies. They played a game on the SmartBoard where they had to sort things you saw during the day and at night.

In the expressive arts area they made their own twinkly stars and moon pictures. They moulded tea light candle holders from salt dough, painted them and added some sparkle. Some of these can be seen displayed on the art wall.

In the snack/home corner they had the opportunity to make Autumn soup using seasonal vegetables. This proved a very popular snack for the children with many coming back for a second helping.

The lending library is now in full swing with each group being allocated a specific day. Below is a reminder of the day for each group.

Terrific Thistles           Monday

Fantastic Foxgloves    Tuesday

Happy Heathers          Wednesday

Brilliant Bluebells        Thursday

Super Snowdrops        Friday

During group activity time we continue to practice for the forthcoming Christmas show.

As always, thanks for taking the time to read the Blog, all comments gratefully received.

Mrs Shields