What a fantastic start to our Annual Festive performances. Primaries 1,2 & 3 provided us with such a joyful, musical and fun filled Nativity. Well done to everyone involved. Photographs coming soon. All of our infants were fabulous stars, who have shown themselves to be extremely confident on stage (and off), great singers and very successful learners. They were amazingly polished in their performances. A special thanks has to go to Mrs Brenda McCoy who has so creatively choreographed and directed the whole show.

Alongside the triumph of the Nativity our Enterprising entrepreneurs were out in force. Huge thanks to Miss Stack and her Enterprise Committee who, over the past number of weeks have been busily making lots of Christmas goodies which they duly sold after the Nativity. To date their profit margin is in the region of £200 +

I do hope as parents you were all delighted with your one child(ren)’s work in their folders and are also very pleased with each of the reports. We look forward to your feedback.

Each Tuesday our brand new active school co-ordinator; Jenny has been busily training our P7 children to be young leaders. This will allow our children not only to participate in after school/lunch time clubs but also to lead such clubs. Onwards and upwards! A fantastic learning curve for our children and a super opportunity. We welcome Jenny to our school and look forward to working with her.

Thursday saw our wonderful sporting facilities being utilised by the local schools for a festival of football, another great success.

Continuing on our sporting theme our netballers, ably led by Miss Lafferty and Miss Kane, enjoyed their first ever festival at Coltness High School. Another chance to wear our brand new (worn once) sporting Cathedral jackets provided by our Fabulous Fundraisers. Big thanks to Miss Lafferty and Miss Kane, our two probationer teachers for taking on such a great team sport for our girls.

Meanwhile doen in the nursery business is busy as always……

December has arrived and the children have been getting into the spirit of Christmas by decorating both inside and outside preparing for the forthcoming celebrations.

They looked out the decorations from last year and some were a bit worse for wear so a walk up to the shopping centre to replace these was a must. Off we set with the children and on the way they saw shops with flashing lights, christmas scenes and lots of glittery sparkly decorations, this sparked lots of different conversations about the decorations they put up in their own house and visits to see santa Claus. As the week progressed the children decorated two trees indoors and our big tree in the nursery garden. Outside they changed the “Owl Babies” nest into Santa’s grotto and had great fun using their imaginations and role-playing in the grotto.

On Tuesday the children had a visit from Amy from ABC music. She brought along with her some props to help them to listen to different types of music, sounds and  tempos. The children were totally engaged in the games that she played with them. Amy was very impressed with the children who took part and is looking forward to a further visit in the new year.

In the literacy area they had lots of different Christmas stories to look and listen to. They started writing their letters to Santa and used colourful Christmas stampers on the envelopes then posted them into the nursery post box.

Over in the maths area they have been playing Christmas positional, shapes and matching games on the SmartBoard. They have built snowmen using the interactive screen and got out the big Gruffalo floor puzzle and worked together to complete it.

The expressive arts area has been taken over with Christmas activities. The children made paper chains and hung them all over the playroom this activity was a good one to develop their fine motor skills as it was quite tricky threading them through each other. They decorated pine cones with sparkly paint and glitter and hung them up. They made a “Shed” (stable) for their nativity scene and  made colourful glittery Christmas playdough and used it to decorate the trees on their playdough mats.

The children continue to choose their healthy Winter snacks in the snack area using their senses to touch, smell and taste some scrumptious food.

Each day the children have the opportunity to listen to their Christmas show songs or practise for the forthcoming Christmas show “Its A Cracker” on the 18th December 2014. Please continue to support the children with their lines from the show.

As always, thanks for taking the time to read the blog, all comments welcome.

Mrs Shields