We all enjoyed last week which was the first time we had the opportunity to all be together from nursery through to P7. It was a super week which began with our Monday morning Assembly – although P1 didn’t join us for this – but they will this coming week.

Please try to remember to bring something to contribute to our Missio Appeal which we collect every Monday during assembly. Thanks to those children who have already been contributing. Every penny helps to make life just a little bit better for those who have nothing.

On Tuesday of this week Primary One all smiled for the camera. Alan from Motherwell Times came to photograph our P1 pupils. You can see these photographs in forthcoming editions of Motherwell Times and this will also give you the option to purchase the photograph as a memento.

Wednesday we enjoyed our first Joint Management Team meeting with our Firpark colleagues. Each month we meet before school to discuss how best we can work together and give both sets of children an excellent learning experience.

Already we have decided to continue with our Joint Pupil Council (CaFi council) following its great success last year. We have also made a decision to continue with our joint weekly gardening group. My thanks in advance to Mrs Collins for volunteering to oversee this group. This year P4b are going to be joining our Firpark friends in their P6 to participate in Clyde in The Classroom Project.

We are also looking to explore some other joint after school working, presently we have after school joint football but we would like to broaden our horizons and are considering  cookery. Any ideas you may have would be most welcome.

One new initiative is for our children to be invovled in Firpark Speedway Cafe. This is a weekly event where Firpark children take responsibilty for ordering, setting up, serving and clearing away, indeed all aspects of cafe life. We are going to give 6 of our children the opportunity to take part each week. We will begin with our CaFi council members and then give this over as a reward for those children whom staff feel have earned an additional treat.

On Friday morning we enjoyed our first school Mass of the year. This was a beautiful, uplifting experience. I am so proud of our children’s behaviour and their active participation in our Mass. It was great to welcome back Fr Krzysztof (although not for long ), Canon Millar and Martin – our deacon. Thanks to all parents, grandparents who joined with us in this celebration. It is clear our weekly hymn singing is paying dividends, the children’s singing was lovely.

We have purchased a small gift for Fr Krzysztof in recognition of all of his hard work in our school. Not quite sure when we will present this, but we hope to do this prior to Fr Krzysztof leaving us. He has been a tremendous support for all of our children, staff and parents and we will greatly miss him in our school. We wish Fr Krzysztof every success in his new Parish, let’s hope he doesn’t become a stranger and continues to feel part of our community.

Meanwhile……down in the nursery we have had a fabulous week. It is great to get to know all of our new charges, they are wonderful children and really friendly parents. Mrs Murphy gives us the weekly gossip….

The majority of children have now settled in well and are starting to enjoy their nursery experience. This week they all got a chance to design and personalise their own seats for use during group time. This has proven to be a good settling in tool as the children are now eager to find their own special seat at the start of welcome time. They have also all had a chance to discuss in their groups and in a larger group the nursery Golden Rules. The ideas that the children came up with were fantastic and the results of this discussion can be seen on the cloakroom wall. Please take time to look at all the children’s suggestions. In the writing area they have been busy making their own special  book of Golden Rules which will continue this week and when finished it will take pride of place in the library in the cosy corner so that they can look at it at anytime. In the numeracy area the children have been measuring each other to see who is the smallest and who is the tallest. This will also continue into next week when all of the results will be displayed on the maths wall. The majority of children have now had their indoor shoes painted with their names on them. The children got to choose the colours they wanted and were encouraged to add a little design of their own. Don’t they look FAB! This will help children, parents and staff to identify their shoes quickly and easily. On that note could we please remind parents of the importance of putting names on their children’s clothing especially the nursery polo shirts and sweatshirts.
For information of what is happening in nursery each day please take a moment to look at the whiteboard in the cloakroom which is updated daily and gives a breakdown of what is happening in each area of the nursery.

Here’s how we learn all the names so quickly! It’s Shoe Time!

I don’t want you to think i’m jealous but Kilbowie photographs have 9 comments. My poor wee lonely blog has none: (

Mrs Shields