This week in school and nursery has been most exciting in a whole variety of ways.

We have been delighted to have to re-organise our library to fit in more chairs to accommodate the large number of children and adults coming along to our Lenten Masses which are at 8.15am every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday throughout the season of Lent. This is a beautiful way to start the school day and we are indebted to Fr Millar and Canon O’Mahony who take time out of their busy schedules to celebrate Mass with us in school.

Our Young Leaders have continued to grow in confidence as they lead a variety of sporting sessions for our younger children. The P7 Young Leaders, under the guidance of Mrs Duffy and Jenny Thomson (Active Sports Co-ordinator), are thoroughly enjoying leading the learning and sharing their talents and skills with our younger pupils. A fabulous initiative.

Primary Seven are currently studying World War II and this week they have enjoyed a range of people with a variety of expertise coming along to share their experiences with P7 to ensure a deep learning curve for all of our children. Our thanks to Sgt Major Andrew McLaughlan, Mr O’Raw and the staff of Motherwell Library. This has been a wonderful learning curve for our children giving them true insight into all aspects of World War II.

Tuesday of this week Mrs Ellis (Firpark) and Mrs Duffy met with our CaFi Council to plan lots of exciting adventures for both of our schools and our nursery to become involved in….watch this space.

Wednesday Mrs Duffy (my she’s had  a busy week) hosted pre-school workshops for the parents of children in our nursery who are preparing to make the big leap to school. This was a practical based workshop offering parents and carers ideas as to how best prepare their children for school. Mrs Duffy also detailed our differentiatied nursery curriculum which is in place to provide our pre-schoolers with learning opportunities which will ensure a seamless transition to school.

Wednesday morning we welcomed Mrs Pearl Smillie from Police Scotland. Mrs Smillie presented to our P7 pupils on the subject of Internet Safety and Social Media. My grateful thanks to Mrs Smillie for this very insightful and realistic presentation. Our P7 pupils are now equipped with the knowledge of how to keep themselves safe when using the Internet and they have been made very aware of the dangers of Social Media and Cyber Bullying.

Also on Wednesday we welcomed the author of Badger – The Mystical Mutt to our school – indeed I am led to believe Badger himself paid a visit!!!

Our P1 to P4 children had opportunity to hear all about Badger and his many adventures and were delighted to be able to purchase signed copies of the books. A big thanks to Miss Phee for organising this motivational experience for our children. We are continually looking for ways to promote and encourage our children to enjoy reading and this most certainly did!

Thursday saw our Cross Country Children take on a new challenge……Mrs MM Murphy, Mr R Leach, Mrs A Close & Mrs K Harrison – our cross country coaches were hoarse on their return having cheered and encouraged all of our young runners.

Here’s what happened…

28 children took part in the cross country trials at Coatbridge Outddor Centre on Thursday. Every child completed the course distance of 1200m. All the effort the children put into their Monday night training session paid off.
The criteria for qualifying for the final was the first 15 children through the finish line.
A big congratulations goes to the following 9 children who all qualified for the final.
P5
Kian Scullion (1st) Connor Swan (3rd) Carlina Mccarthy (3rd) Dylan Beggs (10th)
P6
A Liam McQuaid (1st) Liam Duffy (2nd) Abbie Freel (10th) Beverley Mackin (12th)
P7
Joey Leach (1st)
We await with baited breath to see how many teams will qualify for the final in March.
Monday nights session will be a funfilled session to reward all the children for their hard work and effort put in this Winter.

And here’s the photos….

A huge congratulations to all involved.

Friday of this week was a fantastic highlight. Our Primary 2 pupils entertained a very large, enthusiastic audience with their unique tour of Scotland. This was a fabulous assembly which made us laugh, encouraged us to sing and provided a real flavour of Scotland. Primary 2 performed for an amazing 35minutes, they sang, danced, recited poetry, told jokes and scared us all (Mchakka). It was outstanding. When you look at how young our children are it is incredible how confidently they perform, how many lines they remember and how entertaining they are.Well done to all of our Primary Two pupils who were as proud as punch on Friday – and quite rightly so!

A HUGE thanks to Mrs Loose, Mrs Gillies, Mrs McDonald & Mrs Munro (whom I forgot to mention on Friday – apologies) for their incredible work. Thanks also to Mrs McCoy & Mrs Campbell whose talents and skills are behind all of our assemblies. A parent asked if it was a script we had purchased. I think it is important to remember the answer to this is NO. Our staff begin each of their asemblies with a blank piece of paper. The creativity of our school and nursery staff is incredible. We are very fortunate to have such a talented staff.

Meanwhile, in the nursery……

Disaster. The igloo has melted!
The children have had great fun playing in the igloo but unfortunately it started to melt and Olaf and Pippa the polar bear have been left homeless and virtually out in the cold in more ways than one. You can see from the photographs that the children and their siblings have all had a chance to explore the igloo. Through the construction of the igloo the children have been learning the importance of recycling. This week some of the group activities reflected this.
The children have been learning about the different colours of recycling bins, they looked at the recycling logo and were then given a variety of household items to place in the correct bin on the interactive wall and finished the activity off by singing the eco song.
In the snack area they discussed what items they could put in the brown bin and each group made a list of these items for their floorbooks.
In the literacy area they explored the big storysacks.
Outdoors they fed the birds and tidied up the garden.
In the art area they followed the instructions to make playdough and made models from junk. One of the models made from junk this week was a time machine. The children’s imagination never ceases to amaze the staff.

The Winter topic has ended and the children have decided that they want to learn about nursery rhymes and stories. They chose Humpty Dumpty as their first one. So as usual they got busy.
In the art area they painted bricks for Humpty’s wall and made their own Humpty Dumpty characters. They took down the Icy displays and put up Humpty’s wall at the far end of the playroom.
Outside they made their own Humpty, sang nursery rhymes and roleplayed falling off the wall. They visited the softplay area and roleplayed falling of the wall there as well.
In the literacy area they started writing their own versions of Humpty Dumpty and read the nursery rhyme over and over again.
In the numeracy area they played a Humpty Dumpty board game, played games and rhymes on the SmartBoard.
In the house corner they continued to explore real food, spreading and chopping a variety of fruit and vegetables.

The Challenge of the Week this week was a numeracy one. The children had to build a tower using the correct number of bricks from 1 to 5 and from 1 to 10. If they completed the challenge they got a gold sticker and if they had a good go at it they got a green sticker. The children are showing a great interest in these weekly challenges.
On Wednesday Mrs Duffy delivered a Pre-school parental workshop to give parents an insight into the pre-school activities that their children will have the opportunity to take part in after the Easter holidays. A variety of resources that will be used were on display. They also had the opportunity to view a DVD on the benefits of the Forest Kindergarten approach. The first 4 week block of forest sessions will start on 4/3/15. The children involved in the first block have already visited the site and are looking forward to spending more time in the forest.

A very long Blog this week, thanks for taking the time to read all about our exciting week. As always…..feel free to comment.

Mrs Shields & Mrs M M Murphy