A warm welcome back to all. I hope everyone enjoyed a revitalising break.

We began our week, as always, in prayer as a school community of faith and learning. This first week of term our assemblies are always a little different as we do not have our Pupil of the Week or Good Work Wall celebrations. We make good use of this time to remind all of our children of the high standards we expect from all of them and encourage them to use this new term as a new beginning – a time for further improvement. Our children are always positive and embrace the challenges set out. We discussed our uniform requirements, our timekeeping and attendance expectations and our ambition for all of our school stakeholders. We strive to promote forward thinking, confident, aspirational young people who believe in themselves and each other. – This week our children have shown themselves to be excellent examples of the afore mentioned.

One young person in particular deserves an individual accolade.

Niall Burke – one of our Primary 7 boys competed in the World Championships in Irish Dancing. Niall travelled to Killarney in Ireland to compete, accompanied by his mum.

Niall came first in his solo Jig, winning the gold medal, and was awarded 6th place in the overall championship, which is judged by 5 world adjudicators, who can award up to a maximum of 100 points each, Niall’s final total was 259.

This is an amazing achievement and as a school we are delighted for him, especially as he was suffering from an injury to his ankle, his mum wasn’t sure if he was going to be fit enough to dance, however he bore the pain and his hard work has paid off.

Niall agreed to share his talents with the whole school community and on Wednesday of this week we were all amazed at this fabulous talent. Niall danced four different dances and he was incredible. This was such a great skill for all of our children to see and celebrate – well done Niall, a fantastic achievement.

Look out for Niall in the Motherwell Times and Scottish Catholic Observer.

Our week continued with further successes being celebrated within classes, I have been inundated with children coming to my office to share their great work. These moments are always the highlight of my week, to see pupils try so hard and be so proud of their achievements – no matter how small. This is what gives our children a wondeful sense of self worth and motivates them to continue to improve.

Friday of this week we hosted the first of our Football Festivals for this session, as always our girls and boys did us proud. Great sportsmanship.

Good news came to all those pre-school children who had applied for placing requests to our school – all were granted giving us a proposed P1 in August of 70 children. We look forward to welcoming all of our new starts to school on Tuesday 12th and Tuesday 19th May. Invites in the post.

We have also invited them all to come and join us in the celebration of the Mass this coming Friday (1st May @ 10.00am in school) where our current Primary 1 will lead the liturgy. As always we welcome everyone to join us in our school Mass.

Speaking of pre-schoolers, here’s what has been happening in the nursery this last week.

Mrs Margaret Mary Murphy, lead Early Years Practitioner reports..

On Monday the children were welcomed back after what seemed a very long restful holiday. They were full of exciting stories of adventures they had been on over the Easter holidays and the nice weather added to all their adventures.

This week the children have been talking about Spring and New Beginnings. Their ideas of what they want to learn about can be seen on the mindmaps in the cloakroom. One idea was to turn the house corner into a garden centre selling seeds plants and flowers. On Friday they started the transformation and this will continue into next week. The good weather was a big plus this week and the whole nursery went outdoors.

In literacy the children read the story of ‘ A Seed in Need’ and then sequenced the events in the story from seed to flower. Their hard work will be displayed on the wall this week. They also looked at baby animals and discussed the different names e.g Sheep-Lamb, Cow-Calf. The children made a small display in the story corner using puppets and cuddly toys. They discovered a Spring box full of giant insects and this sparked their interests, the bugs can been seen hanging over their display and the children decided to go on a bug hunt next week.

In numeracy the children were learning about the Life Cycle of a Frog and hopefully the children will be able to see this up closely shortly. They also looked at an assortment of baby farm animals and matched them to their mums. They made their own farmyards using the blocks in the construction area and used the wooden farm house to roleplay.

Over in the art area the children used a variety of materials to make an assortment of Spring flowers and outdoors they used the paint brushes to clean up the garden furniture, an activity that is always very popular.

Outdoors the children were busy digging the garden using different garden tools, they watered the plants and made their own mud soup, stirring and pouring until it was nice and thick.

The pre-school activities started on Tuesday with the activities based on the popular story ‘Going on a Bear Hunt’ they sequenced the story then went on their own hunt to find the clues in the correct order. On Thursday they matched number to quantity and sequenced the flower number washing line.

The second block of Forest Kindergarten sessions started on Wednesday evidence of what the children have been learning about and experiencing in the forest can be seen in the floorbook in the cloakroom.

The Easter Fayre was a huge success raising £730 this will be put to go use throughout the nursery. A big Thank You to all who gave generously to make it so successful.

 

As always, thanks for taking the time to log in read all about our wonderful school and nursery.

Please comment on this or any of our blogs.

Mrs Shields