Our week culminated in a wonderful Mass this morning.

Congratulations to our 32 Primary 6 pupils who have chosen to participate in the inaugural cohort of Pope Francis Faith Award. Each of our candidates was today enrolled in the award during the 11.30am Mass in Our Lady of Good Aid Cathedral Church. This was a lovely ceremony where our children, their parents and we as a staff pledged our support, encouragement and our prayers for our candidates.

Well done to all of the boys and girls who have elected to show their commitment to our Faith and who will, over the next year and a half, by virtue of their actions demonstrate their Faith in a variety of ways working at home, in school and with the parish.

Please remember our candidates in your prayers. We wish them every success as pioneers on this initial programme of the Pope Francis Faith Award.

Over this week we have been delighted to welcome some of our colleagues from our locale to our school. Tuesday morning we welcomed Mrs Audrey Burke, DHT at Knowetop Primary School. Mrs Burke had asked to come to see some active maths lessons throughout our school, thanks to all classes who welcomed Mrs Burke and demonstrated an excellent example of contextualized learning within the mathematics curriculum.

On the afternoon of the same day we welcomed Mr Robert Dalzell, our link Quality Improvement Officer to our school. Mr Dalzell met with myself to discuss our progress in fulfilling the components of our Improvement Plan.

Mr Dalzell was most impressed by the commitment of so many of our staff to engage in developing the curriculum and taking forward sector leading aspects of learning across the school. Well done to our forward thinking, inspirational staff.

Tuesday evening our school hosted a meeting lead by senior management from Our Lady’s High School. Mrs Sinclair, HT and Mrs Donnachie, DHT presented to our P6 & P7 parents providing all with a flavour of secondary education. This meeting was very well attended and our thanks to all of the parents who took the time to come along. We enjoy a very close relationship with OLHS and our children experience a most robust programme of transition ensuring a smooth, trouble free transfer to secondary education.

Wednesday morning and afternoon we welcomed our prospective P1 parents. Mrs Duffy, DHT (acting) led two parent workshops discussing our next steps in nursery and our transition plans. Mrs Duffy also discussed with parents how best to prepare their child for coming to school. Thanks to all who came along, both meetings were very successful.

Thursday morning our CaFi Council met together to discuss up and coming events. As a campus we are taking forward ‘World Book day’ celebrating reading for enjoyment (one of the components of our Improvement Plan). Watch our for more details coming soon. World Book day is March 6^th.

Friday dawned and once again we welcomed many parents and friends of our school to our P7 Coffee Morning – their last one- Awwwww.

The coffee morning ran very smoothly (as always) thanks to our faithful coffee morning ladies who organize all of the food, drinks, raffles and children!

Our coffee mornings are a wonderful chance for all in our community to come together for a chat and a welcoming social gathering, thanks to all who came along. It was great to see such a range of parents/carers and grandparents from right across the school, a most delicious, enjoyable morning. Thanks also to all who took the time to bake and donate to our morning.

On Friday we also welcomed some children from Muir Street Primary, who came along to play in an informal football tournament on our pitch.  Sadly on this occasion, we weren’t the winners, but Mr McBirnie, who trains our footballers, said our pupils played very well and their behaviour was excellent.

Friday lunchtime we were overjoyed to welcome young Matthew Laird to our school. Matthew was born 12 weeks early at just over 2lbs. He is now a very healthy 8lbs and looks fabulous, he is perfect. Congratulations once again to Mrs Laird on her beautiful new baby. Mrs Laird was also looking very well and she has asked me to pass on her thanks to everyone in school for their good wishes and their prayers.

Meanwhile, very strange happenings in the nursery!!!

• Ahoy Me Hearties! It has been a very exciting week in nursery. On Monday the entrance to the playroom looked like a cove and a very large treasure chest was sitting in the middle of the nursery. Inside it the children discovered a letter which was from a very worried pirate who had been imprisoned and his treasure had been stolen by a scallywag called Blackbeard. Fortunately Blackbeard was not as clever as he thought as he left clues to the whereabouts of the imprisoned pirate. The children followed the clues and discovered a treasure chest in the school library. The excitement gathered momentum as the children thought they had found the stolen treasure but when they opened the chest they found Pirate Pete quivering inside. Pete was so glad that he had been rescued and asked the children if they could help him get all his treasure back. The children quickly came up with ideas on how to do this. “Build a ship, make a map, put a message in a bottle” and lots of other ideas. (Mindmaps of these are on display). The children returned to the nursery and got busy with their ideas.
• The house corner was transformed into a pirate ship with its very own cannon and plank to walk, the tree in the middle of the playroom is now a mast with a crow’s nest and there are more transformations to come!
• In the writing area the children sent messages in a bottle with their ideas on how to recover the treasure. They wrote pirate words, played pirate games on the smartboard, read pirate stories and sang pirate songs. Some of their work can be seen on display throughout the playroom. They also painted the name they had chosen for the ship on a flag “The Neptune”
• In the maths area they got busy designing their very own treasure maps with directions, palm trees, sand and of course X marks the spot. All of their hard work can be seen on the maths wall.
• In the art area they made pirate flags, hats and telescopes. They painted pictures of pirates and found gold coins in the sand. They made models of ships from recycled junk in the junk modelling area. If anyone has any kitchen roll tubes or hanky boxes please bring them in as the children will continue to create their own models over the next few weeks.
• Outdoors the children were equipped with metal detectors or metal protectors as one child called them. They went into the grounds of the school and discovered some arrows which they followed and found gold coins and sparkly necklaces. They counted all the coins they found and brought them back to Pirate Pete but he told them that was only some of his treasure and that there are many more coins still to find. During this activity the children learned that the metal detectors only buzzed when they found metal, they then embarked on an experiment to see what other things outside were made of metal. Pictures of their discoveries coming soon!
• In the snack area they made palm trees using bananas, kiwi and apples. They made pirate pizza and palm (ham) sandwiches. They roleplayed pirates on the ship and made each other walk the plank.
• In softplay they built a ship and played a pirate game “Who stole the treasure”

This theme has sparked the children’s imagination and the playroom has been a hive of activity all week and there is more to come!

Once again, thanks for reading. All comments most welcome.

Mrs Shields