This was a unique week in school, it was eerily quiet without our Primary 7 pupils who were all busy, coasteering, skiing, canoeing, mountain biking, hillwalking, rock climbing, gorge walking, going on safari……the list is endless and as you can see from the photographs on previous post a fantastic time as had by all.

Meanwhile in school we have continued to rehearse for The Lion King which is coming very soon!!!!!

Primary 4b were the last of our sacramental classes to enjoy a beautiful class Mass, grateful thanks to Mgr. Millar who provides such excellent spiritual support for all of our children and their families.

Although our daytimes have been relatively quiet our evenings have been very different. This week our Solo Singers performed in The Glasgow Music Festival. They all enjoyed great success:

On Wednesday our girls from P6 & P5 all earned themselves exceptionally high marks and well deserved winning places.

1st place – Ellie Hutchison

Joint 2nd place – Katie McLaughlan & Mollie Jeffrey

3rd place – Maria Moss – Maria is only P5 but as they Festival works with specific age groups she sang with the P6 girls. Go Maria!

On Friday evening our P5 pupils excelled themselves with their beautiful singing and their incredible confidence, again all being placed.

1st place – Esme Colenso

2nd place – Katie Hendry

3rd place – Matthew McGurk – out only boy!

The children are all trained by Mrs Jacqueline Murphy and Miss Jillian Green, our grateful thanks to our talented staff who work through their own time to prepare our pupils and to encourage our children to be confident in this media. Singing all by yourself on that stage in Renfield St. Stephen’s Church takes great courage. I think sometimes mums and dads are more nervous than the children! Well done to all of our solo singers who did us proud.

A wee mention for our P7 solo singers (all 7 of them) who should have been performing on Tuesday evening but unfortunately the date clashed with Kilbowie. However, our girls will have opportunity to perform at our Magical Musical Morning later in the year.

A good luck mention to our fabulous choir who will take to the stage in Royal Concert Hall on Monday morning. I know they will be brilliant, they always are!

Friday of this week our Lenten Charity had a different focus. No money was donated this week, instead we requested non-perishable foodstuffs – we are delighted with the incredible generosity from all in our school community. A HUGE thanks to all in nursery and school for such active participation. The foodstuff will now be boxed, wrapped and distributed around the local area to those in need. Great to know we are helping those who live in our own locale – Charity does indeed begin at home. Many thanks to Miss Stack, the Enterprise Committee and our Classroom Assistants who were all involved in organising all the foodstuff and transferring it into hampers.

Finally on Friday Primary 6 had opportunity to ‘monitor’ in the absence of Primary 7. Poor P6 had been wishing for wet weather all week to give them this opportunity. All good things come to those who wait! Hope you enjoyed the experience Primary 6.

Our nursery children have been incredibly busy this week, here’s all the gossip from Margaret Mary Murphy our Senior Early Years Practitioner…

The Lion King/Jungle theme continues in the nursery and the children are bringing in lots of facts, photographs and soft toys for our forthcoming group presentation. Antoni’s mum provided a book of many facts about Lions in Polish and she translated all of the facts into English for the children. On Friday she read all these facts in Polish to all of the children and the children asked how to say Lion in Polish and a range of other Jungle animals. E.g Lion – Lew, Lion King – Krol Lew, Giraffe – Giraffa, Snake – Waz. A big thank you to Antoni’s mum more providing the children with this experience.

This week the children were out and about in the community visiting Brannock vets practice in Newarthill. The children took Rosie and Jake along and the vet weighed them, scanned and x rayed them before treating their injuries. The children were taken through to see some recovering patients, an elephant with a sore trunk, a pig with a sore ear, a sick cat and a real dog recovering from an operation. Please take a minute to look at all the fantastic photographs of the visit displayed in the cloakroom. The practice pulled out all the stops for our children to have a fantastic experience. A lot of thought and planning had went into the visit creating a very educational trip. A big thank you to all at Brannock Vets for the time they spent with the children.

Back in the playroom the transformation continues. Outdoors and indoors the children painted a huge giraffe which has taken up residency right in the middle of the Jungle, they laid down next to it to compare size, its body alone was x 2 children. HUGE!!!

Outdoors they started to create a Jungle in the garden, this is a work in progress and will continue next week. The children used the new tree stumps to play Jungle games and songs.

In the art area the children continued creating the characters from the Lion King. They painted Timon and Mufasa and used collage to create his big mane. They used feathers for Zazu, stripy collage for the zebras. They stuffed tights to make branches and made handprint leafs for the tree on the big display.

In science they made a volcano for the display and then made two volcanoes, one from papier mache and the other from playdough. They took their time creating both and they had great fun erupting one of them on Friday. They will get another chance to erupt both volcanoes next week.

In numeracy they have been busy with the new Jungle jigsaws and watching the ‘Lion Guard’ on the big SmartBoard.

In literacy the children have been sequencing the story of the ‘Lion King’ on the interactive wall and in music they have been listening to the songs from the film. On Tuesday we had another visit from ABC music who provided the children with some African drum music and used the instruments to keep to the beat. This popular activity continued each day thereafter at the children’s request.

Over in the snack area they baked animal biscuits using their fingers to make paw prints in the dough. They made trees and grass for the entrance for the Jungle vets in the home corner.

Wednesday dawned and it was a beautiful day for the children taking part in Block 3 of the forest Kindergarten programme. As always the feedback from children on their first visit has been great. The Forest Kindergarten display has been updated and the new floorbook has been created with their thoughts and ideas, please feel free to have a look.

On Friday we were overwhelmed with the generosity of all parents who donated non perishable goods for our Easter appeal hampers. A big Thank You to all.

And here’s the photos

As always, thanks for reading. Please leave a comment.

Mrs Shields