Two Blogs this week, we’ve already posted about our Brilliant Netball Team, well done to all involved. See previous Blog for all the details and the photographs.

Our current and future Primary One pupils have dominated this week. Deservedly so.

Tuesday and Wednesday of this week we warmly welcomed our brand new Primary One pupils to our school for the very first time. Both mornings were exciting, happy events. It was a delight to welcome our 81 new pupils and their families to our school. We said hello some ‘well kent’ faces and got to know some families who are new to our school.

Equally excited were our new Primary One teachers:

P1a     Mrs McCarthy

P1b     Mrs Gillespie

P1c      Mrs Laird

P1d     Mrs McLaughlan

All four teachers commented on how happy and settled our new pupils were and all the staff were overwhelmed by the maturity and enthusiasm of their new pupils. We look forward to this coming week when we, once again, welcome all of our future P1 pupils and their families.

Big thanks to Mrs Mellon, classroom assistant, for assisting with all of our P1 pupils in class and to Mrs McCoy who presented an excellent overview of ‘A day in the life of Primary One’.

We utilised this opportunity to welcome our new Primary One pupils and their families to our Primary One Mass on Friday of this week. I am so pleased a number of them came along, I’m sure they were extremely impressed by our current P1 pupils, their excellent behaviour and enthusiastic, active participation in The Mass.

Our Primary One Mass always holds a special sentimentality as this is clear evidence of the excellent progress and learning which has taken place over this most important first year at school.

Well done to our readers:

Grace, Declan, Ellis, Zophia, Orla, Agata, Stephen & Callum

Our offertory procession:

Ellie, Sophie, Ashyn & Niamh

Indeed a HUGE well done and congratulations to each and every one of our Primary One Pupils, they prayed and sang so beautifully. One very poignant moment for me was seeing the pride on the faces of our Primary One teachers; a special, memorable moment.

Meanwhile, our nursery has been making the most of the beautiful weather. Here’s all the gossip…

A beautiful sunny week which gave the children the opportunity to take all of the nursery outdoors. The majority of activities below took place outside this week. Sunhats and sunscreen were a must.

In Literacy the children read the story of the ‘Rainbow Fish’ and they created a huge 2d rainbow fish from papier mache and tissue paper. This will be displayed in the nursery this week and you won’t miss it.

In numeracy the children have been exploring symmetrical patterns. They drew flowers, painted symmetrical sea turtles to display and created their own symmetry patterns using the Lego bricks.

The art area was abuzz with smaller rainbow fish made from colourful collage which they cut and pasted onto their fish. By the end of the week the children had created a huge ‘Rainbow Fish’ for the display in the far corner of the playroom. They used a variety of resources to make this display such as tissue paper, shiny paper and cd’s. They made a sign for their display and filled bubbles with facts from the story. Please pop round and take a look.

The children had snack outside. They were introduced to our new portable water fountain which they can access on their own. Snack always tastes better outdoors and the fruit disappeared very fast. Some children had the opportunity to make rainbow cakes as a follow up from last weeks snack activity but as soon as they had made them they headed out to the garden.

Outdoors has been very busy this week with the children exploring a range of outdoor resources. On Thursday we welcomed parents and grandparents into the garden to help with our annual Groundforce day. This helps to tidy up and prepare the garden for planting and growing. A Huge thanks to all of our volunteers who gave up their time to help Miss MacMullen our very own Green Goddess with this process. The children have started planting already.

During the garden tidy the children were out on the pitch with Mr Munro an athletics student who put them through their paces. They played a warm up game, a throwing and catching game, he expanded this by bringing in hoola hoops and a mini basketball net where they had to use an underarm throw to get a point. These activities all help to develop the children’s eye to hand co-ordination skills. Mr Munro will be with the nursery for 3 weeks.

The challenge of the week is gaining momentum with more children taking part this week. Look out for these super gold stickers.

The Forest Adventure this week took place on Friday due to the P1 inductions. The children discovered a spider sitting on it’s eggs under a rock, they were very interested in this and watched the spider for some time before they put the rock gently back into place. They then discovered an egg on the ground, they discussed what they thought was in the egg and decided to make it a nest, they gathered twigs, grass and leaves to keep the egg warm. A fantastic show of imaginary play.

And here’s the photographs highlighting a great week.

Many thanks for taking the time to read out Blog, keep in touch.

Mrs Shields