I’ll begin at the end!

We ended our week with a fabulous assembly presented by our wonderful Primary 4 pupils. Primary 4 have been studying The Romans, and having watched their spectacular assembly, I can confirm they have learned lots and lots and lots! Primary Four guided us through so many developments lead by The Romans, we learned all about Roman Gods and we were thoroughly entertained all the way through. An outstanding performance from all of our P4 children, they were brilliant. The slow motion fight between Celts and Romans to the tune of Chariots of Fire was amazing, I love it all. A huge thanks to our multi talented children who so willingly shared their talents and skills, thanks also to all staff involved, most especially our classroom assistants; Mrs Mellon, Mrs Stevenson, Mrs McMillan, Mrs Harrison, Mrs Lamb and Mrs Burns. Our P4 teachers; Mrs Murphy, Mrs Cassidy, Miss McAvoy & Miss Cawley.  Not forgetting  Mrs McCoy,  Principal Teacher, our assembly guru and Mrs Campbell, DHT, our musical genius.

At the beginning of the week we held a meeting for our P7 pupils and their parents to discuss the exciting prospect of Kilbowie. Kilbowie is an outward bound centre owned and run by North Lanarkshire Council. Each year our P7 pupils have opportunity to spend a week at Kilbowie learning a plethora of new skills, meeting new friends and gaining confidence in themselves and their abilities. Kilbowie is siutated just outside Oban, on the banks of the river. A beautiful setting and a wonderful opportunity for our P7 pupils. This year P7 are of to Kilbowie on Monday 7th March until Friday 12th March. Thanks in advance to staff who have volunteered to go along for the week to support and encourage our young people. Staff attending are:

Mrs McCoy ~ Principal Teacher

Mrs Carr & Miss Green ~ P7 teachers

Mrs McDerment ~ P2 teacher (and an experienced Kilbowier)

Mrs Stevenson ~ Classroom assistant (and experienced Kilbowier)

Mrs Feenan ~ parent

Our children will share Kilbowie Centre with the P7 pupils from St Bernadette’s and St Brendan’s, a great opportunity to get to know their new S1 group for this coming year. Good luck to all, we look forward to hearing all about it.

For next session we have been allocated a September slot so it will be an exciting start for our new P7 in August of this year.

Meanwhile lots of exciting learning experiences continue in school. Our P7 pupils are forging ahead with their Young Leaders Training, Our P5 pupils are lapping up their swimming lessons, our P3 pupils have begun their intense preparation for the forthcoming Sacrament of First Reconciliation, our senior pupils are attending Farm to Fork, healthy food workshops at Tesco, many of our children continue to actively participate in our wide range of after school and lunch time clubs. A busy school indeed.

This week our teaching kitchen was installed in what was (and may well be again) our Science room. The teaching kitchen has been installed at the back of the room allowing for a flexible working environment. We look forward to our pupils, staff ans parents making great use of this new facility. Further details once our oven and fridge arrive. A HUGE thanks to Mr Stephen Moore, Continuous Improvement Officer in North Lanarkshire Council, who has provided the funding for this project.

Our nursery pupils, staff and parents will also be utilising the teaching kitchen once it is all up and running…Watch this space.

So, what else is happening in the nursery. Here’s the latest from Mrs MM Murphy, with a few photos too!

A lovely start to the week, the snow had fallen over the weekend and the children were full of stories about building snowmen, sledging and throwing snowballs.

On arrival at nursery on Monday we noticed that our friendly fox had paid a visit over the weekend and left lots of footprints for us to see. The children used a sheet showing a variety of animal tracks to see if they could identify the footprints and low and behold it was the tracks of not just one fox but a whole family of foxes. The children also made shapes in the snow and snow angels before it began to melt. As the week progressed the children went on a shape hunt in the school campus and found a range of different shapes and by the end of the week they had the opportunity to look at the patterns on their wellies and took part in a welly printing activity.

Over in the home corner it has been transformed once again. It has now been turned into a pet shop and the children chose the pets to put in the pet shop and made a price list for each individual aniimal. They made a sign saying ‘Please give us a home’. The children queued up to buy their pets and lots of language went on as they discussed who had the smallest, cutest and who had the nicest pet.

 

In numeracy they continued making different models using the 3d shapes. They then played the animal sound lotto where they had to listen to the animal sound and cover the picture of the correct animal and this progressed to an animal matching game where they children had to spot the matching animals.

In literacy the children made a nursery rhyme display of their favourite nursery rhymes, they painted Humpty Dumpty’s wall, made Humpty himself, created a spider and water spout for Incy Wincy and made the clock and the mouse from Hickory Dickory Dock from different materials. They then wrote a variety of rhyming words that can be seen on the display. Please take a look at their hard work.
In music they used different instruments and sang their nursery rhymes. They also roleplayed building Humpty’s wall with the giant lego bricks.

In the art area on Monday they explored the snow in the water tray and lots of discussions arose from this experienc. These are some of the words the children used to describe the snow. “Cold, melting, squishy, squashy, slushy, freezing and soft”
On Tuesday they made their pets from playdough using googly eyes, feathers and lollipop sticks and by the end of the week the children were producing paintings using different patterns.

As always the children are encouraged to tidy up the nursery at the end of each session, so this week we have included a photograph of the children tidying up.

Week 2 in the forest and the children had the opportunity to experience the hammock. great fun was had by all and that includes the staff and the parents/carers who have signed up to help each week at the forest. A few photographs to see what they got up to this week. Evidence of all their adventures can be seen in the floorbook in the cloakroom.