Our week has been dominated by our wonderful Infant Nativity ‘It’s a Nativity’.  A spectacular production involving every one of our 204 infant children. A huge thanks, once again to all staff, parents and children involved. It was a incredible amount of work but so worthwhile. We look forward this week to our Upper School Production and our Nursery Show.

Monday and Tuesday of this week our P3 & P4 parents were treated to an evening of Spiritual Reflection. Our grateful thanks to Fr. Millar for taking the time to prepare and present these two insightful evenings. Thanks also to the parents who took the time to come along, both meetings were very well attended.

On Monday all parents received their children’s work folders home giving everyone an opportunity to look over all the children’s work to date. I trust this was a suitable time to peruse the work. Friday saw all Interim Reports issued with parental feedback sheets, please endeavour to provide feedback as your views are essential to our process of self-evaluation.

Wednesday morning marked our first Advent Mass of this year, the Mass was well attended, although there is still room for more. Please try to come along on Wednesday mornings to prepare with your children for the Great Feast of Christmas. Mass begins at 8.15am and is usually finished by 8.35am ( a record for Fr. Millar!)

Thursday blew in, literally! Our children braved the elements to come along to school to learn….or perhaps it was the lure of Christmas dinner!

Our Christmas dinner was lovely, lively, noisy and delicious. Thanks to our catering staff for providing such a  delicious lunch. Thanks also to our Firpark friends for accommodating our early start.

Friday dawned calmer and quieter. This was a very special day for our school, our Patronal Feast Day. We enjoyed a beautiful Mass in our school hall and I was delighted to see so many of our parents, carers and friends of our school come along to celebrate with us. This Feast is one of the few occasions we actually get to sing all 4 verses of our school anthem. Congratulations to Primary 2 who led the liturgy so eloquently.

Friday after school we welcomed our 7 candidates for class teacher posts. We currently have 2 class teacher vacancies advertised and will know the outcome of this by next Wednesday. Good luck to all concerned.

Last week I was delighted to appoint Mrs Susan Imray in our nursery to the post of Acting Senior Early Years Worker. We look forward to Susan leading our nursery in continued excellence. This appointment means Lorna McFadden, temporary Early Years Worker will remain with us for the rest of the year. – this is more good news for our nursery.

Speaking of which, what have they been up to this week????

With Christmas racing towards us the children have been involved in lots of Christmas activities throughout the playroom.

•    In the writing area the children have started to write their letters to Santa, a variety of these are displayed in the cloakroom.

•    In the maths area they have been looking at different Winter and Christmas shapes.

•    In the art area they have been busy making a collage of Santa for the cloakroom display. They used different shapes to bring Santa to life. He will be proudly displayed by the children for all to see next week. They have also wrapped and decorated the presents for Santa’s sleigh for the Christmas show and they have started to make their own reindeers. Watch out for these coming home soon!

•    On Tuesday great fun was had by all when we dusted off the Christmas decorations and the children decorated the tree all by themselves please take a moment to look at how well they did. {Tree next to the smartboard)

•    Over the course of Tuesday and Wednesday the children were part of the audience for the infant nativity. It was a great opportunity to see other children perform as they have been busy preparing for their own Christmas show. It also gave them the chance to see some of their friends who are now in Primary 1.

•    On Thursday the Mini Movers graduation took place and it gave the children the opportunity to show off all the skills and knowledge that they had been learning over the past 6 weeks. Although the weather was horrendous lots of parents/carers turned up to see what it was all about. The children showed off their listening skills, ball skills and co-ordination skills with Nicky the coach. They then got to show off all the healthy body and healthy eating they had been learning about with Megan. Parents/carers commented about how impressed they were with the skills and information the children had learned. All staff and coaches agreed that the progress they had made stood out a mile. To bring the programme to a close the children were all given a backpack, some information leaflets, a water bottle and a certificate. Christmas came early! A whole display of the last 6 weeks can be seen as you enter the playroom. The coaches loved the display of their hard work so much that they took a picture of the display to show their colleagues.

•    Preparation continues for the Christmas show. If you have been asked to bring anything in please make sure it is in for Tuesday at the latest.

Penultimate Blog of the year, if you haven’t yet left a comment, I encourage you to do so.

Thanks for taking the time to read my Blog.

Mrs Shields