This week we embraced National Science and Engineering Week, and what a fabulous learning experience our children have enjoyed. Every child from nursery through to P7 had opportunity to visit the planetarium and learn all about the wonders of the sky. Each class also enjoyed Science workshops then, as a school we marvelled at our Science Roadshow. Huge thanks to Professor John Davies – our external science expert – who delivered the lessons, providing all equipment and even bringing his own planetarium! The cost of bringing Professor Davies in is substantial but he offers a unique, specialist set of learning experiences, which we feel are worthwhile to all of our children and staff. Thanks to Mrs Marie Clare Duffy – our internal science expert – who organised all the activities and timetabled ensuring everyone had opportunity to enjoy this wonderful learning experience. Another great, fun filled way to learn.

Tuesday evening was our bi-annual Parent Evening, which provides every parent an opportunity to look around their children’s class, and indeed the rest of the school, and marvel at all of the magnificent work on display. Parents are also invited to peruse their own child’s work in jotters and workbooks etc. I am delighted at the outcome of Parent Evening for a number of reasons. Firstly, over 90% of parents came along which is a fabulous % to achieve – although I do still worry about the 10% of parents who did not manage to come and be amazed and delighted at their children’s work. Please remember if the time allocated or indeed the Tuesday evening does not suit your situation simply call the school and we will happily arrange an alternative. NO child should miss the opportunity for their parent to come along and see their work and their learning environment.

Another one of the highlights of this parent evening was the success of our first ever Easter Fayre. Our Enterprise Committee organised and implemented a huge number of activities for every class to complete and these were then collated and displayed for sale on the evening. Our young entrepreneurs came along on the evening itself to mann the stalls and ‘encourage’ people to purchase. And what a successful job they did. The Fayre raised £1012.66 which, when we take off our outlay, leaves a profit of £512.66. Fabulous work. All proceeds will be added to our Lenten Charity Fund. Thanks also to the number of support staff who volunteered to come along on the evening to assist our young entrepreneurs.

The Raffle will be drawn on Monday at assembly. Winners will be posted on Blog on Monday afternoon – so watch this space – it could be you!

One final highlight of our parent evening was the large number of parents who spoke so highly of the work in and around our school. We are very proud of our learning environment and staff continually strive to ensure children’s work is displayed throughout the school in a variety of formats. It is great to hear such positive feedback. Parents also commented on the high quality of work and the volume of work in jotters. Presentation has been one of our Improvement Plan priorities and I think we can safely say we have overtaken this most successfully.

As a Senior Management Team (SMT) we monitor every child’s jotters twice per year. This gives us opportunity to provide feedback to our children and our staff. We monitor language and maths ensuring pace of learning and presentation of work is appropriate. As a school we are committed to monitoring every single child’s work from nursery through to Primary 7, we do not sample jotters; we strongly believe every child has the right to hear from SMT about their work. It is a time consuming task but which I feel is very worthwhile.

Meanwhile we continue to rehearse for our forthcoming school show ‘My Son Pinocchio’. This week we have also engaged the talents of Mrs McCarthy to design and paint our backdrop. Mrs McCarthy is an incredibly talented artist; she is bringing Pinocchio to life with her skills and talents. At the same time Mrs McCoy is employing her incredible talents and skills as creative producer and choreographer of our show, I am amazed at the magnificent vision Mrs McCoy has and her ability to transfer it through her work with the children. A huge thanks to Mrs McCarthy and Mrs McCoy.

Thanks also to all of the teaching staff and support staff who are currently making props, rehearsing songs and doing whatever needs done! Our rehearsals are great fun; our children are thoroughly enjoying this learning experience and have fully committed to their roles.

An enormous thanks in advance to the 31!!!!! yes…31!!!!! staff who have ‘volunteered’ to participate in our staff scene…..The rehearsals, sorry our one rehearsal went surprisingly well……. I don’t believe there are many other schools where staff so willingly give of their own time to show their support and encouragement to our children. We have a fantastic staff, they are truly excellent. I believe this also demonstrates the great ethos within our school community. Like the rest of the show, the staff scene promises to be great fun.

Tickets for Pinocchio are on sale at school office priced at £4. Please come along and enjoy the marvellous talents of our upper school children. Pinocchio performances are:

Wednesday 2nd April & Thursday 3rd April 1.30pm and 7.00pm

It promises to be our best show yet!

Last Friday saw an incredible range of crazy hair creations. Our children really enjoy being ‘different’ for a day, well done to all who participated, staff as well as children.

Meanwhile……..the pirates in the nursery continue on their quest……..
Science week has been a great experience for the nursery children. They visited the planetarium where they had to crawl through a very dark tunnel to get into it. They learned about the names of different stars through stories told by Mr Davies. They also went along to different workshops throughout the week where they learned about electricity and the effects of helium gas especially on the voice. They saw some very simple experiments that they could do at home.

On Monday the children began to prepare for the party on Wednesday. They all shared their ideas of what they wanted to do during the party. They made pirate crispy cakes and top hats with pirate flags in them in the snack area.

On Tuesday we had a visit from Barbara our ABC music representative. She led a programme of music and movement on the Smartboard and introduced the children to different musical instruments.

The search for Blackbeard finally came to an end on Wednesday when the children discovered some arrows in the nursery which led them through the school. They followed them and found Blackbeard hiding in a treasure chest with the rest of Pirate Pete’s treasure. They brought him straight back to nursery where they decided to make him walk the plank. The perfect punishment for this scallywag. The children then celebrated by singing, dancing and playing pirate games. This has been a fantastic fun theme that everyone has learned from and enjoyed.

Over in the maths area the children played ten pin bowling using recycled materials. The children are learning all about the importance of recycling and have started to learn their very own eco song.

In the writing area they have been playing directional games on the smartboard and reading pirate stories.

In the art area the children finished off their anchors and started to make pictures of Spring flowers.

Some of the children went on a Spring walk with the Greenlink rangers they came back with lots of stories of exciting things they had seen. “Bambi’s footprints” “snuffle holes” “snails”  A big thanks to all parent helpers who accompanied the children on the walk. The final Spring walk will take place on Wednesday 26/3/14.

On Friday some of the children went on a Spring adventure in the grounds of the school they searched for Spring flowers, new leaves growing on trees and blossom. They brought back a few daffodils and ended science week with an experiment. They put the flowers in a vase and added water and food colouring. On Monday they will see if their experiment has worked!

The Growing Together Learning Forever Programme got under way on Wednesday with 6 parents taking part. More parents/carers are due to join the group next week.

As always, thanks for reading and please leave a comment……just to let me know you are there!

Mrs Shields