Our summer term began with sunshine and smiles. We were delighted to welcome back all of our children and their families following a lovely Easter break. As always we began our week with our full school assembly, offering prayers of thanksgiving for the great feast of Easter and recognising the importance of our place in our parish communities over the Easter Triduum – 3 day period of Holy Week and Easter.
We welcomed Miss Gemma Fulton, early years student to our nursery whilst welcoming back Miss Vicky Johnstone to P2a and Miss Leigh Brannigan to P5/6 – both trainee teachers. Miss Brannigan was previously in P3c.
Congratulations go to three P7 girls who represented the school at the Scottish Schools Cross Country in Kirkcaldy on 19/4/14. They gave up a day of their Easter holidays to compete with over 200 other girls from all over Scotland. Niah Welsh, Rachel Donnelly and Ciara Scullion all completed the course and received certificates for their achievements. The certificates will be presented at assembly this coming Monday.
Wednesday brought our weekly hymn practice. This term we are concentrating on hymns which will form part of our First Holy Communion celebrations, our forthcoming Primary 1 Mass and our end of year Graduation Mass for Primary 7 pupils and their families.
Wednesday also brought great news to all of those families who had applied for a placing request for their children to come to our school. I am delighted all places have been granted, this gives us a forthcoming P1 of 72 children – a big year group. 47 of those children will be coming from our nursery. We have now issued invitations to all of our pre-school children to come along for our Pre- Entrant Programme mid May.
Our Fabulous Fundraisers met on Wednesday evening in our staff room, this was a most productive meeting with decisions being made to purchase waterproof jackets for our cross country stars and waterproof suits for our nursery children. Our nursery children enjoy a period of time outdoors every day – we always say. There is no such thing as inappropriate weather just inappropriate clothing. A HUGE thanks to our fundraisers for their continuous work for our children. With the purchase of these waterproofs our cross-country children will be easily identifiable and dry and our nursery children will be able to access our outdoor area every single day. Great news all round.
Over the period of this 4 day week our P3 children have all enjoyed outings to Tesco where they had opportunity to make their own pizza, they also brought back some lovely goodies for Mrs Campbell!!!!!! – What did I do wrong ????
This was the finale of their topic work from last session – Italy. Thanks to Mrs Duffy for organizing this. Thanks also to our parent helpers who came along to assist with supervision (and tasting) and most especially to the staff of Tesco for providing such a great opportunity for our children.
Throughout the week our musical tuition continued. I am delighted our P7 instrumentalists have been asked to participate in OLHS Mass of Welcome for P7 – what a great opportunity to show off our children’s talents and skills to their new school. Mass of Welcome is scheduled for Monday 9th June at 7pm in OLHS.
Amy Vickers, P6 represents our school in North Lanarkshire Choir, Amy and the choir has been asked to perform at the secondary school HT conference. The choir sang at our primary HT conference – they were magnificent. Well done to Amy for her contribution to this musical extravaganza.
Speaking of musical extravaganzas – coming soon – our Magical Musical Morning featuring our P5 Kodaly musicians, our instrumentalists, our choir, our Kiddie choir and for the first time ever…..Our School Band/Orchestra……Watch out for specific date and time. Please come along whether or not you have a child involved, come and see the talents and skills of our children – you will be very impressed- and….like all of our assemblies and seasonal performances, there is no charge!
Friday we welcomed many parents, families and friends of our school to our Primary 5 coffee morning. This was a great success. Thanks to all of P5 who participated so well, to everyone who contributed to the delicious baking and to our raffle. A special thanks to all who supported Erin Bonner. Erin is one of our P5 girls and on Friday she was having 12 inches of her hair cut off in aid of The Little Princess Trust. You may remember Natalie Jackson, now P7, did this last year. The hair is vacuum packed and is then made into wigs for the children who have lost their own hair through cancer. This is a great charity to support – children helping children. Erin collected £152.87 sponsorship at our coffee morning. Many thanks for your generosity.
All that in four days…..wow! We are looking forward to an exciting term ahead with different learning opportunities happening every single day all ensuring an excellent nursery and primary school experience for our children.
Speaking of the nursery…….
A big welcome back to all our nursery children after a restful holiday and a big thank you to all our parents/carers who through our Easter Fayre managed to raise £341. This money will be spent wisely. On Tuesday Mrs Gemma Hendry joined the team she is on placement from Glasgow University for five weeks.
The theme of Spring and new beginnings continued with the children looking at different seeds and plants. The children are becoming more familiar with the names of the different parts of plants through factual books, computer games and nursery rhymes.
Please have a look at the display in the writing area to see what they have been learning. The children have been listening to the story of The very Hungry Caterpillar and looking at factual books about the metamorphoses that takes place in preparation for the delivery of our very own Butterfly Kingdom. Watch this space!
Over in the maths area they have been playing the Flowerpot game again learning how to build their very own flower from the different plant parts.
In Science they potted cress seeds and are caring for them and watching their cress heads grow.
Outdoors the search for mini beasts living in the garden continued. The children used magnifying glasses in their search. Thy also picked some flowers and brought them into the playroom and used a digital microscope to see right inside the flowers and the veins on the leaves. In one of the daffodils they discovered a slug and were able to see it up close and personal. They all also made a collage with different plants and flowers they found in the garden. This is on display on the window.
In the art area they have been constructing their own caterpillars from playdough and card and have started to make a cocoon from paper mache.
In snack they made flower shaped pizza and butterfly pasta.
On Thursday Mr Brind Nathan’s grandad brought along his puppet friends and told a story with a hidden safety message. The children were fascinated by all the animal characters and their unusual names and they all got a chance to hold one of the puppets. Mr Brind has donated a book that he has written with all the animal characters in it with the emphasis on caring for and making new friends. This will be a great tool to use at the start of the new term when our new children arrive. The staff and the children would like to thank Mr Brind for giving up his time to spend it in the nursery.
Our Eco tasks and learning all about recycling continued.
As always, thanks for reading, please feel free to comment.
Mrs Shields
