This last week in January we began our assembly in a very different way. We all listened attentively to a presentation by Mr Stephen Lynas from Hadden Construction. Stephen is the site manager for the new Forgewood Community Centre building. Stephen came along to talk to the children about the dangers of playing near or accessing a building site. He gave a most interesting and useful presentation.

Stephen invited all of our children to participate in a poster competition, the poster is to highlight the dangers of playing on or around a building site.

Hadden Construction has donated a sum of money to the school to purchase prizes for the poster winners. Our Pupil Council will be given this money to decide upon appropriate prizes. All entries must be in school on or before Friday 13^th February.

Winning posters will be laminated and displayed across the fence of the construction site.

Photograph shows Stephen highlighting some of the necessary safety equipment which must be worn by all who enter the building site. Thanks to Stewart McBride, our male model – not the one in the middle!!!

We look forward to seeing our children’s work on display in the local community.

In school we are continually self-evaluating and looking for ways to further improve. This year we ahve introduced ‘Our Excellent Curriculum’ books. Each class begins with an empty scrapbook and throughout the year they complile profiles of their on goiong, ever changing topic work. This is our new approach to evaluating interdisciplinary learning throughout the school. This week was the time for Excellent Curriculum Book monitoring by Senior Management Team (SMT). Children from each class are bringing their class books and talking to SMT all about the wonderful work in their class books. The work in these books is truly magnificent, this is a pilot project for this year, but so far, I have to say it has been hugely successful. Each book provides a clear walk through all of the work ongoing in class. They are informative, colourful, descriptive and most of all evaluative. The children are evaluating their work alongside the teacher – this is an excellent approach to self evaluation, and so interesting for us as senior managers to hear about and see all of the work in class. Wee done to all of our staff who have each embraced this innovative approach in their own, unique style. This is also a great learning curve for each of our staff and an opportunity to learn from each other. Each term we take time to have a look at everyone’s Excellent Curriculum Book – so eeveryone can see what;s going on throughout the school. We look forward to sharing these books with you all at Parent Evening in March.

Snow has once again been quite a feature this week and unfortunately it has impacted on our Come Clubbing @ Cathedral programme. Apologies for any inconveniences throughout the week where due to weather warnings we were forced to cancel some after school clubs. The health and safety of our chidlren is paramount and we must always make decisions based on safety.

Hopefully next week normal services will be resumed.

P6 assembly has been recorded and we are now in the process of transferring the file to make it ‘website friendly’ coming soon (hopefully). Thanks to P6 staff and pupils for taking the time to record this wonderful assembly for us all. If this recording can successfully be transferred to our website it is our intention to record some more of the assemblies and place them on the website where we can. Due to personal circumstances some children cannot have their photograph on world wide web, we will respect this and therefore some assembiles may not appear in this format.

Meanwhile, down in the nursery……..

AVALANCHE!

The igloo that the children have been building from recycled milk cartons was near completion when an avalanche caused it to collapse. However one of the afternoon grandads has offered to help rebuild it on Monday so the children can begin to use it. Any other help will be appreciated.

Our Winter theme continues this week with the snow giving the children more opportunity to use their imaginations to build snowmen, volcanoes, snow mice and other things.

Our group activities this week covered numerous parts of the curriculum.
In expressive arts they discussed the difference between cold and warm colours and painted shapes with them.
Outdoors they used the big thermometer to record the falling temperature and compared it with the temperature in the playroom and in the freezer. They discovered that Friday was the coldest day outside when the thermometer reached 0 degrees and the playroom was also the coldest on Friday recording a temperature of 18 degrees. The children discovered a huge block of ice outside and put it in the water tray to see how long it took to melt.
In literacy they were looking at different characters from snowy tales and discussing what the word character means.
In numeracy they made their own patterns using the shape floor tiles.
In snack they discussed the difference between hot and cold food and why we need hot food to keep warm in Winter.

During freeflow play the children had he opportunity to take part in the following activities.

In expressive arts they followed different patterns using paint. They explored with funnels and tubes in the water tray and watched the big block of ice melt, they made patterns with coloured fine sand on the lightbox tray.

In snack they had the opportunity to choose and order the snack using the Ipad, they prepared hot soup one day and had icy drinks the next day and compared them.

Outside they took part in some new outdoor games inspired by the Forest Kindergarten approach. “Sticky Feet” and “Who Let The Dogs Out” these games will continue next week. They also explored the snow making a number of different sculptures. With the help of Mrs Higgins our student they measured the snow using a jar and a ruler and discovered that the sandpit had 7cm of snow and the picnic table had 5cm of snow on it. They decided to make a volcana and measured that to it stood 20cm tall. They filled the jar that they used for measuring to the top with snow and left it overnight in the playroom. The next day they discovered the snow had melted and turned into water and only measured 7cm.

In numeracy they used a mixture of coloured sized bears to create their own patterns. They used the SmartBoard to follow the pattern sequence and took photographs of themselves on the Ipads with a patterned background. These will be displayed on the technology wall next week.

In literacy they read stories about baby Arctic animals and researched information about them on the Ipads. They discovered what the animals liked to eat and where they lived and how they played. By the end of the week they were able to name a variety of animals who live in cold climates.

This helped when on Friday the Thistle group were outside recording the temperature when they discoverd a huge polar bear sitting in the garden shed. He had a letter and a dvd all about friendships with other animals. The polar bear was called Pippa and Olaf had sent for her to come and help the children remember their nursery golden rules. She was a very clever polar bear as she knew that they had been learning all about different characters from books and researching all about them. She asked if they would like to make their own characters to help them remember the rules and a mindmap of all their ideas can be seen in the cloakroom. The children will take their ideas forward next week during group activities. The cloakroom wall has been updated and “OLaf” The Sory so far is now on display. Before going home the children had the chance to watch some of the DVD that Pippa had brought with her, silence fell over the playroom as they watched it. A perfect end to a week that started with an avalanche!!!

Here are some of our excellent learning experiences in photo form:

 

As always, thanks for taking the time to log in and read the blog, it would be great to know you are out there…..a wee comment would be much appreciated.

Mrs Shields & Mrs MM Murphy