Throughout this week our children all enjoyed a variety of teaching and learning approaches: inside, outside, in co-operative groups, individually, teacher led and independently. Each week teachers strive to ensure a range of teaching styles to ensure each child has opportunity to learn in many different manners and in many different places. A most successful approach.

This week we held our Annual General Meetings for both Parent Council (Monday )and Fundraising (Wednesday) Committees. Our newsletter, coming out this week will detail all Office Bearers for this coming session. Please see Parent Board in front hall of school (just beside the main office) for details of the latest minutes and agendas. In due course these will also be available on our website.

Both parent Council and our fabulous Fundraisers offer incredible support to myself, as head teacher, our staff and to all of our pupils. In our school we are blessed with fantastic support and I am greatly indebted to each of the parents/carers who take the time to form these most important groups within our school.

Please support our Fabulous Fundraisers in their next event coming very soon.

Ladies Night – Friday 7th November in St. Bride’s Hall. Tickets, priced at £5, are available from Fundraisers or from school office. You’d best act quickly as they are selling fast.

Should you be unable to attend but would like to contribute – all raffle prizes will be gratefully received.

Tuesday evening our school and Parish hosted a meeting for the parents/carers of our P3 & P4 children. This was a new format of meeting where we invited a guest speaker. Mr Michael McGrath, Director of SCES – Scottish Catholic Education Service came to speak at the meeting on a very personal level. To share his own experience of faith and the importance of his faith in every aspect of his family life. This was a wonderful discussion, Michael spoke most eloquently and using the word of Pope Francis he called for us all to be Missionary Disciples and Evangelisers. Our grateful thanks to Michael for taking time out of his extremely busy schedule to share his thoughts and feeling with us. The meeting was uplifting and thought provoking giving parents/carers opportunity to reflect on themselves as parents of children preparing for these most important Sacramental Milestones.

The highlight of our week has to be Friday. Our Annual Hallowe’en Parade was fabulous fun. Every child and every member of staff took part in a fun filled day with lessons all being of a ‘spooky’ nature. My grateful thanks to all for participating so fully and ensuring our children had a wonderful time. In keeping with our Health Promoting School Policy, following the Parade each child was given an apple to ‘dook’ and subsequently munch.

Each year I use Hallowe’en as a platform to remind our children of being safe in the community. Each time we have come together as a school this week – Monday, Wednesday and Friday – I have discussed the importance of staying safe if out and about of an evening. As the clocks change and dark nights descend Hallowe’en trick or treating allows much discussion of personal safety, as a school we recognise and fully utilise this.

Once again our school hosted our local community football tournament with children from across Motherwell having opportunity to make the most of our fabulous 3G, all weather pitch.

Our nursery has enjoyed a very active week, here’s all the gossip from Mrs Margaret Mary Murphy:

It has been a very SPOOKY week in nursery with lots of scary Hallowe’en activities going on throughout the week.

Our group activities were all Hallowe’en based and each group got to experience the following.
Pumpkin carving – each group designed and carved their very own scary pumpkin.
Our favourite witch story Room on the Broom was read and the children listened out for the rhyming words.
They explored gooey slime using their senses.
They got a scary surprise in the feely tubs again using their senses and describing what they could feel.
They made scary kites and took them outside to test them. They also went on a Hallowe’en hunt following clues which took them to Mrs Duffy’s office where they discovered that she had been turned into a PUMPKIN!! She has never been seen since!!!

Our free flow activities also had a Hallowe’en theme.
In the literacy area they had the opportunity to draw some scary pictures, read scary stories and sing spooky songs. They used the ABC musical instruments and role played being a band.
In the numeracy area they played the Spooky board game, put Boney Tony our nursery skeleton together and played spooky games on the SmartBoard.
Outdoors they searched for slimy gooey things to make witches brew, they gathered what they found in cauldrons and made potions out of it. They played Hallowe’en hide and seek and they sang spooky songs outside.
In the snack area they decorated the cakes for the party using green and orange slimy icing.
In the expressive arts area they had great fun exploring slime, sludge, goo with spiders and eyeballs in it. They followed instructions and made witches using different sized coloured shapes and made ghosts that could fly.
On Friday we celebrated with a Spooky party the children came all dressed up ready to have fun. They got to dance, sing play games and have slimy juice and gooey snack.
They played pass the pumpkin, ghost, ghost, bat, spooky statues, pin the nose on the pumpkin, spooky matching games on the SmartBoard  and danced to lots of different music. They also wrote their very own group scary stories which can be seen displayed on the Hallowe’en wall. The staff also had fun dressing up as “People Who Help Us” in line with the current nursery theme. This theme continues next week with the children receiving a visit from the Fire Service, Police and the SSPCA.

As always, thanks for taking the time to read the Blog, please feel free to comment on what you have read or on any aspect of our school life.

Mrs Shields