Two short weeks in school but still time for lots to share with you.

Last week, prior to our September weekend, we were delighted to welcome Ms. Moira Cumming to our new building. Ms. Cumming was the lead inspector at the time of our HMIe inspection in October 2009.

I am very pleased to report Ms. Cumming was, once again, most impressed by our children and staff, their engagement in their learning, the range of learning activities on offer and of course our beautiful new building. Ms Cumming commented most favourably on our use of our outdoor space not just for play space but as an outdoor learning facility. Ms Cumming also spoke most highly of our wonderful nursery playroom, our dedicated staff and of course our fabulous nursery children. A most positive start to the week.

Wednesday of last week we held an evening whereby the parents/carers of those children who had been selected for instrumental tuition had opportunity to come to the school to hire/purchase their instruments. Thanks to Band Supplies for taking the time to come along to school thus saving parents from having to go into Glasgow for this service.

Thursday morning saw a most successful Enterprise Initiative within our school. Miss Stack, Miss Mooty and our wonderful Enterprise Committee have been working tirelessly over the past few weeks to organise a MacMillan Coffee Morning. And what a coffee morning it turned out to be. We were delighted with the huge number of people who came along to support such a worthwhile cause. There were games, stalls, raffles and so much more not to mention the wonderful array of cakes on offer. Our whole school and nursery became involved in this venture with our children baking and cooking for the big event. Another excellent learning opportunity for our pupils, the tastiest maths lessons ever!

£1700 was raised that morning, a fantastic amount. I am so proud of our school and nursery community for rising to this challenge. A huge thanks to Miss Stack and Miss Mooty who spent endless hours harnessing the interest of all and writing so many letters asking for help from a variety of organisations.

Have a look at the back page of The Scottish Catholic Observer this week – great photo and story about the morning.

Worthwhile mentioning that during the coffee morning we had an unexpected, unplanned fire drill. So many of the people at the coffee morning commented on how speedily and efficiently our children left the building and went straight to their ‘fire zones’. One comment summed up the voice of all:

“Well, at least we know our children are very safe in the event of a fire. The organization of so many children evacuating a building so quickly was incredible. So much more efficient than where I work.”

Our fire drills are carried out at least once per term. It is the first thing we do on returning to school. Firstly with staff only on In-Set days and then on the first day the children come into school and nursery.

Two four day weeks in nursery but very busy ones as usual. Our group activities were postponed until next week due to the short week and the pre-school eye testing which took place on Tuesday and Thursday. The children used their time on Wednesday and Friday to design a group road safety poster. These posters can be seen dotted throughout the playroom please take time to look at the hard work they put into them at parent’s night on Tuesday.

The children continue to learn about road safety and outside this week they were role playing the job of the lollipop person using our own zebra crossing and the props that the children had made the previous week. They also played the traffic light game using red, yellow and green to reinforce the meaning of each colour.

Snack/home corner – On Wednesday the children were asked what other people help us in the community, a mindmap of their answers can be seen on the wall in the cloakroom. This sparked a great discussion and the children decided to turn the house corner into a hospital, they moved out some furniture and brought in beds, costumes and other props and immediately started to roleplay doctors, nurses and patients, pictures of this will follow next week. This theme will continue to grow over the next few weeks.

The children continue to choose what they are having for snack and write it on the menu board. Healthy fruit/veg are always available each day along with their own choice.

In the numeracy area they played Ziggy (road safety character) memory pairing games on the SmartBoard, some children managed to complete all three levels WOW! New puzzles were introduced with different types of emergency vehicles, these puzzles attracted a lot of children to the numeracy area.

In the literacy area the children visited the school library to look for books about people who help us and they returned with books about nurses, dentists, police and Fireman Sam. The story corner is now well stocked to help them throughout this theme. They also made their own identity badges such as nurse, doctor and firefighter.

Over in expressive arts they painted portraits of people who help us using the right colours for each uniform, yellow for the lollipop person and blue for the nurse. These can be seen displayed in the art area. They made blue playdough to correspond with the nurses uniform.

Our Autumn display is starting to grow and this week all group activities will have an Autumn theme.

A reminder that parent’s night is on Tuesday 7/10/14. The staff are looking forward to sharing all of the children’s hard work with parents/carers.