A huge thanks to all of our musical tutors – detailed above – who contributed so enthusiastically to our Magical Musical Morning (MMM) on Thursday morning. These talented adults are responsible for the fabulous array of musicality within our school. I am indebted to them for their time and patience in ensuring our children have opportunity to learn so many musical talents and skills.

Our instrumentalists, solo singers, choir and P5 Kodaly pupils demonstrated the range and high standard of their musical abilities at our MMM. I was immensly proud of all of our young musicians, they are a credit to our tutors, our school and their families – not least themselves.

Suffice to say, initially our Magical Musical Morning lasted for 20 minutes, this year in order to present the enormous range of talent it took us 1 hour 30 minutes! abolutely fantastic, it was an incredible morning enjoyed by all who attended and performed.

Our display of talents and skills continued on Friday morning with what has to be one of the highlights of our year. Our Primary One Assembly.

This was a triumph! A brilliant display of confident, successful little learners who entertained, sang, laughed, joked and danced their way through the journey of milk. I was so incredibly proud of each and every one of our Primary One pupils who clearly loved showing their talents and skills to their school friends and most importantly their parents. A wonderful morning thoroughly enjoyed by all who watched and participated. It was a laugh out loud experience.

A huge thanks to Mrs McCoy, Mrs Murphy, Mrs Tominey, Mrs Mellon, Miss Falconer, Mrs McAllister and all of our staff who assisted in the preparation, dressing, face painting and ‘prompting’ of our fabulous 5 and 6 year olds. Thanks also to all parents and carers for their assistance with costumes and props.

A great end to seven very different and most successful assemblies throughout which every single member of our school community has had opportunity to perform and share their classroom learning. When you consider each of our teachers begin with a blank sheet of paper and then endeavour to relate all they do in class onto a stage performance it is incredible. What a talented staff we have. A special thanks to Mrs McCoy who assists with all stage assemblies as part of her Principal Teacher remit, she is fantastic.

Meanwhile on the football field our female footballers were demonstrating their team skills on the pitch. The girls participated in Friday’s Firpark Football Festival and I am delighted to say they won every game. However, more importantly, Mrs Ellis from Firpark, reported that our girls were ‘outstanding on the field, they were great team players and wonderful ambassadors for Cathedral Primary School’. Well done girls. Thanks to Mrs Ellis for overseeing our girls on the pitch – standing out in the rain cheering them on!

This Monday our parents will enjoy seeing all the in-class learning of our children as we send home our jotters and workbooks to keep our parents fully informed of all of our school work. We look forward to your comments.

Final end of year reports will be issued on Friday of this coming week. I am sure the majority of parents will be delighted with their children’s progress, once again, we look forward to your feedback.

Down in the nursery, here’s what has been happening……

Our farm topic continues and this week in the literacy area the children used the ABC music programme to enhance their knowledge of sounds of the farm. They used the resources to match the sounds to the animals and the machinery. At the end of the week they red the story of The Little Red Hen and this has sparked their interest so the children have decided to make some of the characters from the story next week.

In the art area they completed their big tractor project which they made from recycled materials. This is now on the wall in the art area giving a 3d effect. From this activity the children went on to paint detailed pictures of the tractor, some of these can be seen surrounding the big tractor on the wall. They also made wheels for their tractors using the farm playdough mats.

In the numeracy area the children used a grid to measure the sizes of different farm animals from smallest to largest and played farm games on the iPads. They continue to explore a variety of different farmyard jigsaw puzzles and board games.
In the science area some of our little tadpoles have now turned into frogs and the children recorded this in the tadpole diary that they have been keeping. They had begun to climb on the rocks in the tank and by Thursday were climbing up the wall in a bid for freedom. In keeping with our love of nature the frogs and remaining tadpoles have now been returned to their own environment to carry on growing. The children said a fond farewell to their little friends. The science area is now housing two snails that the children have brought in and they have been getting up close to our new nursery additions. The children will continue to take care of them.

Outdoors in between the torrential rain the children managed to plant some vegetables in our new planters this will continue this week.

In the cafe in the farm shop the children continue to make food that they get when visiting garden centres with their families. This week they made wraps, sandwiches and baked biscuits. Role-play continues in the farm shop using real fruit and vegetables.

On Thursday and Friday the children had the opportunity to see the P1 assembly which was all about the farm. They were a great audience and couldn’t believe that it related to their topic and they learned all about the journey of milk from the cow to the supermarket which sparked discussions on return to the playroom. A great example of joint learning over two stages.

Wednesday is our very first ‘Big Bonanza day’ all letters have been issued with information regarding this.

Graduation practice continues for the forthcoming graduation ceremony on Friday. A very busy week ahead for our early learners.

As we come to the final month of a most successful year of blog after blog after blog…..please, please, please let me know what you think. A wee comment would be much apreciated.

Mrs Shields & Mrs MM Murphy – desperate for feedback