What a fabulous week ending with a magnificent first assembly of the school year, and what an assembly it was. Primary 5 treated us to a fabulous display of knowledge, music, dance and drama. Congratulations to every child in Primary 5 who shared their talents with a most appreciative audience, it was fantastic. A huge thanks to Mrs McCarthy, Mrs McLaughlan, Mrs J Murphy, Mrs S Murphy, Mrs McCoy and all our support staff who worked so hard to script the assembly, source the music and provide the children with a wonderful platform for performance. I am always amazed at the high standard of scripting and performance in our assemblies, it is a wonderful way to ensure a deep, life-long learning opportunity for our children. Taking learning and teaching outside the classroom and away from textbooks and jotters allows all of our children a unique learning experience.

On Monday all of our children had their photograph taken by John Wilson, our school photographer, these will be with parents shortly. John will come back to school on 2nd October to take P1 class group photographs. Thanks in advance to John for providing thumbnail images of all of our P1 pupils which will allow us to update our beautiful This is Our Faith photographic display in our entrance corridor.

Tuesday evening our senior management team were delighted to be invited to Our Lady’s High School Awards Ceremony. It was a super evening and such a delight to see so many of our former pupils collect awards and accolades for their hard work and positive attitude to learning. As a managment team we were all very proud to have been a part of these young peoples lives and learning. As Mrs Mullen said: It is where they started their school career which has allowed them to become such successful learners and we all proudly nodded in agreement!!! Although I do think some credit has to go to the excellent teaching and learning in OLHS as well : )

Wednesday heralded our Hoola Hoola Hulabaloo. This was a most successful sponsored event with every child from nursery through to Primary 7 and all staff members  having opportunity to improve their fitness levels in a most unusual fashion. It was great fun. A HUGE thanks to Mrs McCoy and Mrs Loose who danced, sang, ran and hooped their way through the day taking only 15 minutes for lunch – poor souls must have been exhausted. Thank goodness we have such young, fit teachers. Thanks also to our parent helpers who so bravely not only assisted but took part too.

Thursday we all enjoyed participating in our dining hall Pirate Day. Congratulations to our Pirate Hat winner – Natalie Jackson and our 5 runners up: Roarke McShane, Maria Moss, Evan Foster, Charlie Foy and Maria McGhee.

This has been a really enjoyable busy week which whizzed past at an incredible speed.

There are some more changes to our personnel. I am delighted to appoint Mrs Katie Loose as Acting Principal Teacher, fulfilling the role vacated by Mrs Marie Clare Duffy who has joined our senior management team as Acting Depute Head Teacher. We welcome Katie to our managment team and look forward to her valuable input in the life of our school. Within the office Mrs Marie Seggie, who joined us in August has decided to take up post elsewhere, closer to home and with fewer hours. We look forward to a new member joining our office team later this week.

Within our nursery we extend our heartfelt sympathy to Ms Lesley Murray, our senior early years worker, on the sudden death of her mum. As a school community we will pray for Lesley and her family and will do all we can to support Lesley when she returns to work. In the interim we have welcomed Mrs Lorna McFadden to our nursery on a temporary basis.

Here’s Mrs Margaret Mary Murphy with all that’s been happening in the nursery….

Our Golden People are now displayed in the nursery for everyone to see. The children are very proud of them and described their efforts in making them in great detail in the floorbooks this week. To continue reinforcing the Golden Rules that the characters represent, some of  the children have designed Golden Helper badges in the creative area, these badges will give each child the responsibility to be their own group’s representative and with this goes special duties. Each child will get the opportunity to be the Golden Helper throughout the term.
Continuing on the theme of “All about Me” the children have been busy writing their names and describing their families and their pets in the writing area. This theme continued in the art area where they designed eggheads of themselves. These will be coming home next week.
On Wednesday everyone took part in our sponsored Hulahullabalou, it was a huge success and a fantastic time was had by all. The children listened well and followed the instructions given and enjoyed every minute of it. Have a Look at their efforts.
In the snack area the children made vegetable soup, they cut and chopped all the vegetables themselves and while doing this they discussed the names of each vegetable.
Outside our Eco programme continued please see our Eco board to see what is happening everyday outside.

Thanks to all who take the time to read my blog each week, feel free to leave a comment even if it’s just to re-assure me someone does actually read it!

Mrs Shields