Welcome to a new term and a brand new website!

Over the holiday period Mrs Campbell has been working very hard, behind the scenes, creating a brand new website ensuring we are up to date with all avaliable new technology.

A HUGE thanks to Mrs Campbell for all of this ‘unseen’ work which makes such a difference to our school communication. She’s a star. It would be really great to hear your thoughts on our ‘new look’, go on, make Mrs Campbell happy and leave a comment or two. Thanks in advance.

We have all enjoyed a lovely, sunny first week back to school and nursery. This week we have really made full use of our wonderful outdoor and indoor facilities, it is great to see our children having such a wonderful space in which to play and learn.

You may have heard from your children (or maybe not) this term our focus is on active health and well being and mathematics. We are endeavouring to marry the two together and create a fabulous, outdoor, active, contextualised approach to mental maths. Mrs Duffy and Mrs McCoy are both providing non-class contact time to all classes on the topic of active, mental maths, ask your children all about it.

Within our focus of active health and well being we are encouraging our children to ‘get fit and stay fit’. This coming Wednesday we are launching our ‘MOVE A MILE IN MOTHERWELL’. On Wednesday every child in our school community will have opportunity to walk, run, skip for a mile (or a mini mile if you’re in the nursery) around our fabulous pitch. Come and join the fun, as always, we welcome everyone in our school community, young and previously young! to come along a be part of all we do. To join your children/grandchildren/ nieces/ nephews…anyone….Come along to school in your trainers and walk, run or skip with the children. Timetable is below.

9.10 – 9.40am                   Primary 7

9.40 – 10.10am                 Primary 1

10.10 – 10.40am              Primary 6

10.45 – 11.00am              Nursery AM

11.10 – 11.40am              Primary 5

11.40 – 12.10pm             Primary 2

1.30 – 2.00pm                   Primary 3 & Primary 3/4

2.00 – 2.30pm                   Primary 4

2.30 – 2.45pm                   Nursery PM

Also on this day we are delighed and honoured to be joined by Counsellor McNally, our new Convenor for Education. Cllr McNally will be in school from 11am until around lunchtime to come and see our fabulous children, staff and our brilliant facilities. Hope he brings his trainers.

MOVE A MILE IN MOTHERWELL is  a sponsored event. We are endeavouring to raise £10,000 to purchase a Trim Trail to allow our children furrther opportunity to enjoy being active and fit. Let’s hope it doesn’t rain on Wednesday, however if it does we shall carry on regardless. Hoods up and off we go!

Throughout last week our Primary 7 pupils have continued to set an excellent expample participating in our Young Leaders initiative whereby the P7 pupils are trained to lead lunchtime fitness and fun sessions for our younger pupils, a fabulous initiative which has seen our P7 pupils demonstrate magnificent leadership skills and our younger pupils have all benefitted from additional fitness sessions. Well done Primary 7. Well done also to Mrs Duffy amd Jenny ‘Duracell’ Thompson for all their hard work training and organising these lunchtime events. Great work all round.

Last Wednesday all in our school community had opportunity to learn about the work of SSPCA. Three officers from SSPCA came to school to deliver thought provoking and insighful presentations to our children and staff. A most successful learning curve for all involved. Thanks to SSPCA personnel for giving so generously of their time to promote safety and dignity for all animals in our world.

Also on Wednesday P6 pupils enjoyed a special treat with a visit to Firpark Stadium where they enjoyed a workshop from Glasgow Science Centre focussed on health and well being – all very topical at the moment in Motherwell.

Staying with the theme of active health and well being, this coming Monday each child will come home with a ‘fob’ and a map issued by North Lanarkshire Council. This is a new 6 week initiative called ‘Beat The Street” where children and adults are encouraged to walk all round Lanarkshire and track their progress by ‘fobbing’ at various stations throughout the area. You may have noticed some children from other schools already doing this – our resources only arrived on Friday so we’ve a couple of days catching up to do! I’m sure we can manage this. Each time a child or adult uses their fob our school amasses points and as the old saying goes……what do points make?…..Prizes! There is a cash award for the school which has the most points throughout the 6 weeks of the programme so……come on…get ‘fobbing’. I will keep you up to date on our place in the league table each week on our Blog.

Friday of this week I was delighted to be invited to the Patronal Feast Day Mass in Our Lady’s High School. This annual event is always a great pleasure and Friday was no exception. The Mass was truly uplifting. It was wonderful to see so many of our former pupils involved in reading, offertory procession, altar serving, choir and band members. Themusic was simply outstanding. Special congratulations to Beth Cunningham (John in P7 big sister) who performed a solo clarinet piece during the Offertory Procession – it was superb. Well done Beth.

Meanwhile….the nursery has been incredibly busy. Here’s all the news from Mrs MM Murphy our Lead Early Years Practitioner.

Before Mrs Murphy begins can I take this time to say congratulations to Miss Amanda Adam, Early Years Practitioner who gave birth to baby Stanley during the holiday period. Stanley arrived (5 weeks early) weighing in at 5lbs 15oz. Both mum and baby are doing great, Amanda came in on Friday and we all got a wee cuddle from Stanley, it was lovely, he is perfect. We wish Amanda and Stanley many years of good health and happiness ahead.

Take it away Mrs Murphy:
We welcomed the children back on Monday and after listening to all their holiday stories we got busy discussing our new topic. The children have decided to go ‘Under the Sea’ Mindmaps were made with all their ideas about sea creatures and what they want to learn about. These mindmaps are displayed in the nursery. They gathered the sea creatures and put them in the water, they found the big sea shells and put them in the sand.

The children decided they wanted to make a variety of sea creatures so they got busy both indoors and out painting and creating jellyfish, puffer fish, rainbow fish and an octopus. They painted Ariel and some of the characters from ‘The Little Mermaid’ These are all displayed in the art area. They will continue this week with the larger sea creatures.
“We are going to need a bigger boat” Jaws 1975.

The weather has been fantastic this week with the children creating their own sea using the large tuff box. They filled it with blue water, gathered grass for seaweed and stones for rocks and floated sticks as boats.
They took out the large fishing roads and the numbered fish always a popular activity. By the end of the week they had started to create their own ‘Under the Sea ‘ scene outside, they threaded the fish they made and hung them up. Please stop and have a look.

In the Literacy area they read ‘Shark in the Dark’ and read and used the puppets from the story of ‘Shaun the Shy Shark’ They drew pictures using visuals and scribed the names of the sea creatures for the display and turned the tree from the previous display into an octopus. Please take a minute to have a look at their hard work. They have also been singing some Sea Shanties. This will continue throughout the topic.

In Numeracy they used the small fishing game to catch the fish and place them in the correct number spot working on number recognition. They explored the ocean and sealife jigsaws and watched and copied some action songs from ‘Under the Sea’ on the big SmartBoard. They used the cake board to identify numbers to shapes. In construction they used the lego to make their own castles and boats.

Over in the house corner the children made a mindmap of how they could turn the area into an underwater display. They gathered a treasure chest and filled it with hidden treasures. By the end of the week they had started to create a boat and Ariel’s castle. This is a work in progress and will continue next week. In snack they made a mindmap of all things fishy that they would like to eat. This is displayed in the snack area.

Mrs Duffy accompanied the children to the forest on Wednesday and what a beautiful day it was. The children took on their responsibilities as usual and showed off their knowledge and some of the skills they have learned. They had the opportunity to plant some seeds that we will be able to take care of and watch grow. This activity will continue next week too. They also practised their balancing skills on the big tree branch. They drew pictures to take back to the nursery. All their adventures are in the floorbook in the cloakroom.

And now in glorious technicolour:

 

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

Mrs Shields