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Friday 23rd June saw the celebration of our Leavers Mass and Graduation.  Our whole school community, joined by parents, carers, grandparents and friends celebrated an uplifting Mass with Fr Chromy and Fr Bernard (representing MISSIO Scotland).  Our Charity Representatives also attended to receive donations amounting to £4, 800, raised over the year through our various fundraising events.  Then followed our Graduation ceremony and Award presentations. We are proud of the achievements of all our P7 Leavers and wish them every success as they move onto Secondary School.  Hopefully the photos do justice to a memorable, happy day! 

Here are our proud award winners:

Pope Francis Award:  Primary 6/7: Luca Cocozza, Charlie Foy, Luke Gillespie, Mollie Jeffrey, Anton Kelly, Abbie Maughan, Emma Maughan, Lewis McLuskey, Christopher Murphy, Samanta Sobczak

Primary 7a: Adam Beattie, Sophie Benham, Stas Brola, Lewis Campbell, Jayden Cuthbert, Abbie Gallacher, Emma Gaudenzi, Kayla Hunter, Ellie Hutchison, Marcin Kaminski, Donatha Kizube, Klaudia Koziol, Stephen Lochrie, Connor Marshall, Carlina McCarthy, Daniel McClenaghan, James McDonald, Megan McPhee, Samantha McVey, Robbie Nugent, Darci O’Neill, Karoline Ofori, Mark Simpson

Primary 7b: Imaan Afzal, Dylan Beggs, Kealin Breen, Anthony Devine, Martyna Fereniec, Samuel Greer, Reece Kerrigan, Christopher Lyon, Dylan McBride, Ashlyn McCreaddie, Alexander McKay, Katie McLaughlan, Nathan Miller, Joseph Moore, Matthew Munro, Niamh O’Neil, Natalia Pradzynska, Reece Quinn, Abi Rodgers, Kian Scullion, Martin Speirs, Connor Swan, Roksana Sykula, Piotr Szymanski, Dominik Tasior, Sophie White, Wiktor Wojciak, Martyna Zarnowska

Pat Connelly Award for Academic Excellence:  Matthew Munro & Katie McLaughlan
George Smith Award for Endeavour:  Joseph Moore & Abi Rodgers
Morgan Sindall Award for Sportsmanship:  Kian Scullion & Carlina McCarthy
Yeomanry Memorial:  Luca Cocozza & Samanta Sobczak
Winning House: Gilmour:  Captain ~ Kian Scullion & Vice Captain ~ Carlina McCarthy
David Colville (as voted for by Primary 7):  Winner: Ellie Hutchison
Runners Up: Luke Gillespie, Matthew Munro, Mollie Jeffrey

On Tuesday evening, we had our penultimate celebration with our Primary Seven pupils, prior to Graduation on Friday.  Having voted for a ‘Pizza Night’, P7 danced the night away and munched their way through a mountain of Pizza.  A FABULOUS night was had by all, as you can see from the photos…there was even a Magnum for everybody on the way home!

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Our Magical Musical Morning proved to be a magnificent display of our children’s talents, as the audience would agree! We were treated to a wonderful array of music and song from all the music groups in our school.  We would like to thank our music instructors for their input over the course of the year:  Mrs Wilkinson (Kodaly), Mr Woods (Brass), Miss Boag (Strings), Mrs Paton (Saxophone), Mr Fairley (Saxophone), Miss Green (Solo Singers), Mrs J Murphy (Clarinet) and Mrs Campbell (Flute).  Here are the photos to show our skills and talents.

Congratulations to our marvellous Netball team, who hosted a tournament today.  St Ignatius’ Primary and Wishaw Academy came along and participated.  Well done to all involved. We’re reliably informed our team won all its games!  Well done to Grace, Robyn, Liam, Beverley, Diana, Keir, Rhianna, Fern, Amy, Darren, Megan, Amanda and Shantel!  Thanks to Marcus, our Netball coach, who has worked with the pupils over the last few weeks.

Well done to all those children (and adults) who have kicked off our ‘Beat the Street’ competition!  We’ve already moved up the leaderboard and are now in 54th position (after only one journey home).  Let’s see how well we do tomorrow. 

If you want to check our progress, here’s the website address:

https://northlan.beatthestreet.me/UserPortal/Northlan

Our school show for Primary 5, 6 and 7 will be ‘The Lion King’!  We will be ‘casting’ early in the new term, so boys and girls, get your thinking caps on!  Which part do YOU want?

Welcome to our blog.  Another week has come and gone in OLGA and yet again it proved to be a busy and eventful week.

Monday saw the first meeting of Parent Council this session.  The PC meets and discusses issues which affect our school and provides invaluable support to our community.  Minutes of each meeting are available on display in the foyer and also are posted on the website.  Shortly we will be looking for new members to join our PC as there a a few vacancies.  If you are interested in joining the PC, please watch out for the information coming home.

It was all smiles on Tuesday, as our school photographer visited.  Smiley faces abounded and you will receive information shortly about purchasing prints.  Class photos for Primary 1 will be arranged later in the term (with all the smiles in or school, the photographer ran out of time!)

Thursday was a very active day, with our Primary 7 pupils continuing their ‘Young Leader’s’ training with Jenny, our fab active school coordinator and also our youngest children in the nrusery were getting active with their ‘Mini Movers’ activities.

The highlight of our week was definitely the Primary 7 Assembly, which finished our week with a bang!  Our Primary 7 pupils presented an amazing assembly, themed alongside their topic of World War II.  They presented a huge amount of learning through drama, dance and song and we most certainly were entertained by their performances.  Well done to all of our Primary 7 pupils who participated fully in the assembly.  Hopefully on a separate post, photos will follow.  Thanks must go to our Primary 7 teachers, Mrs Carr, Mrs McLaughlan and Miss Green, our support staff and of course our parents and carers, who clearly supported the work of the Primary 7s in helping learn lines, practice dances and providing costumes. Great team work in action!

Next week in school, a short week due to the September weekend holiday, we will still be busy, busy busy!  We welcome another student teacher to our school, Miss Kelly McAleavey, who will be working with Mrs McCulloch and Primary 5c.

On Tuesday evening, our Management team has been invited to attend the Our Lady’s Prizegiving, always a proud moment as we see our former pupils achieve great success.

Wednesday of this week sees our first Fundraisers Meeting.  The Fundraising group is always looking for new members!  You don’t need any previous experience, just a desire to help raise funds for our fabulous school.  The meeting takes place in the school staffroom at 7.00pm and last for about an hour.  We’d be pleased to see a few new faces, so come along.

A reminder that on Thursday we are hosting a fundraising event for MacMillan Cancer Care.  We will have a non-uniform day for pupils (and staff).  The cost of ‘coming casual’ is £1.00.  Please remember though that football colours are not allowed……BUT TRAINERS ARE!

And now to the Nursery…

Another extremely busy week down in the nursery.

After discussing last week how the children got to nursery this week, the children have been talking about what they see on their way to nursery. From this discussion the children decided to go on a walk to explore the whole school campus looking for signs and environmental print that they see en route. They discovered a variety of different signs and you can see from the photographs how popular this walk was. By the end of the week they had ventured further afield spotting lots of different signs on their trip up to the town centre. During their expeditions the new children have been learning the safety rules they need to follow when they are out and about.

This led to the children making their own nursery Golden Rules and this will continue next week when they make their own nursery Golden People to help them remember their rules.

In literacy they had the opportunity to tell their own stories of how they get to nursery and what they see in more detail. These have been collated in shaped booklets relating to the way they get to nursery. E.g If the come in a car their story will be in the booklet shaped like a car and if they walk their story will be in the booklet shaped like a foot. Please feel free to look at the great stories these booklets hold.

In numeracy the children drew a detailed map of the nursery playroom and garden showing that they already know the areas within their own environment. Measuring activities continued with the children measuring different objects within the playroom. They used rulers and measuring tapes to discover which was the tallest and which was the smallest. They continue to explore measuring games on the SmartBoard. Over in construction the children were following the picture cards to help them make their own models using the magnetic lego. Some of their creations can be seen displayed in the construction area.

In the snack area the children followed the instructions and made their own pizza faces. They chose the toppings to create their own individual face. This was a very popular activity and the children took their hard work home well some of them did. Most of the children couldn’t resist eating thier pizza as they were leaving and in case you saw a UFO on Thursday one of our pizzas took to the sky as it was placed on the roof of the car and forgotten about.

In expressive arts the children continue to follow the picture cards to make models from junk. This week they went one step further and painted them as well. They also have been busy making their own handprints from saltdough and will have the opportunity to finish painting them before they take them home next week.

On Thursday we had the 2nd session with the Mini Movers coaches. The children listened to the instructions and followed them to improve their ball skills. This week saw the return of the big healthy plate which gave the children the chance to place the correct food groups in the right part of the plate. You can see from the photographs how well they got on.

The children also got the chance to be part of the audience for the first assembly of the year. It is always a fantastic opportunity for the whole school to get together and the children love to see their older siblings perform on the big stage.

On Friday it was SMILES all round when the photographer visited to take all of the nursery children’s photographs. Can’t wait to see how they all turn out.

Welcome to our blog for this week.   We’ve not had many comments so far with our blogs this session, so a wee comment would be appreciated! (Mrs Shields, you’re ahead in the comment count!)

We have had another busy week in school.  On Monday, we welcomed Mr Robin Cairns, who is working with Primary 7c and Miss Green on a very exciting song writing project.  Mr Cairns will be working with the class to write the lyrics of their original song and over the coming weeks the class will also work with a graphic designer and a music teacher to create their very own song!  Here they are working on their song…

On Tuesday, we welcomed our parents and carers to our ‘Meet the Teacher’ evening.  This informal evening gives parents and teachers the opportunity to meet and discuss resources used in class.  Thank you to all those who came along to support this evening.

Wednesday saw our new Junior Road Safety Officers (Dylan McBride and Michael McGill) attending their induction morning, along with Mrs Carr.  This week the boys were set to work immediately, carrying out a survey in classes on how all our children make their way to school!  Well done JRSOs!  We have also been busy electing our other committee members; hopefully by next week we will be able to reveal our newly elected pupils!

Thursday proved to be an exciting day for our Primary 1 -3 pupils, as a Road Safety Magic show came to school.  The children ALL learned a great deal from the show, as well as being mesmerised by the magic on show.  Even Miss Kane said she couldn’t work out how the magic tricks were done!  Fabulous!

Our week rolled to a close on Friday with our first Coffee Morning of the year.  Our Primary 6 pupils were in charge and hosted a lovely morning.  Thank you to all those who donated prizes and edible goodies for the morning.  We managed to raise a grand total of £657.34 – a marvellous amount which will support school funds.  Thanks also to our fab coffee morning ladies, who despite being short in numbers, did a great job as always.  They are, however, looking for some more volunteers to help set up the coffee mornings.  We have 3 more coffee mornings throughout the year.  If you would be able to assist for any of these mornings (all Friday mornings), please let us know at the school office, or come along to our next Fundraisers meeting. 

We have also welcomed some new faces to our staffroom this week.  To Primary 6a we welcome Miss Lynn Andrew, who is on a student placement for 2 weeks with Mrs Laird.  We also welcome Mrs Devlin and Mrs Cassidy, who will be teaching in place of Mrs Irwin.  They will be working with all classes teaching music and we hope they enjoy  being part of our teaching staff.

Next week we have our first Parent Council meeting of the session on Monday.  Our school photographer will be in school on Tuesday (please ensure all children wear ‘shirt and tie’ uniform for their photos) and we look forward to our Primary 7 Assembly on Friday morning at 9.30am. 

And now to our nursery!

This week in nursery we welcomed Mrs Leeanne Kinnear an Early Years Practitioner who will join our nursery team every Wednesday. Mr Luke Crawford an Early Years student will be in nursery every Wednesday and Thursday on his placement from college and 2 OLHS pupils will be joining us every Thursday afternoon as part of their Duke of Edinburgh award.

A very sunny week had the whole nursery out enjoying the good weather and the fresh air. Who would have thought sunhats and sun block would be required in September!

The children and staff continue to discover more information about each other as we continue our theme of “All About Me” The family tree in the centre of the playroom continues to grow with family photographs that the children have brought in.
We learned this week the names of their new friends and how well they are getting to know the staff. They also described their emotions through a discussion of how they feel coming to nursery and then had the opportunity to describe how they actually get to nursery.

Outdoors this week the children were concentrating on measurement. They took part in a bean bag throw activity that involved measuring their own achievements using the chalked number metre chart. This activity also gives the children the opportunity to share and take turns. As the week progressed they harvested the broadbeans that they had planted in the Spring. They compared the sizes of the beans and put them in order of size, biggest to smallest. Our eco tasks are now underway and the children fed the birds, picked up the rubbish, watered the plants and tidied up the garden. These tasks are carried out on a weekly basis to enable all children to have an opportunity to keep our nursery as eco friendly as possible.

In expressive arts the children were busy making paper plate faces using a variety of collage materials, these can be seen displayed on the art wall. The junk modelling table is always a popular activity where children can use their imaginations and creativity to produce their models. In addition to this a booklet of photographs has been introduced to the children to help spark their imaginations. They can follow the step by step guide to make more detailed models from recycled materials. As an eco friendly nursery we recycle as much as possible.

As the weather was so good the children bathed the babies outside continuing to care and look after the babies in the home corner. In snack this week they had an opportunity to bake their own individual cakes. They measured out the correct amount of flour and sugar and mixed and poured into their own cake cases. Baking is another popular activity and this one concentrated on measuring the ingredients, following the instructions and turn taking.

Over in numeracy the dinosaur height chart is starting to take shape. The children painted on the height chart numbers using the measuring tape. They measured each other and their pictures will be placed on next week. On the Smartboard the children played a Curious George measuring game that compared size. The Ipads are used every day and the sand timer is used to promote sharing and turn taking.

In literacy the children were reading and discussing stories about mum and dad they then went on to create a display with quotes about what they liked about their own mum or dad. They also drew a huge detailed picture of a mum and dad and these can be seen on the writing wall. The music area is beginning to take shape and the children sang and acted out some favourite songs using the nursery instruments and some homemade instruments that they made themselves at the junk table.

On Thursday our 6 week Mini Movers programme started with a beautiful sunny day. This programme concentrates on the importance of healthy eating and exercise. The children were all given a piece of food and they had to give it the healthy thumbs up or thumbs down if not. Outside they concentrated on their ball skills following the instructions from Craig the coach. You can see from the photographs how well they got on. This is a fabulous programme and a great opportunity for our early learners to discover the importance of exercise and a good well balanced diet.

The months are marching on and we are already into the month of September. On Friday, we waved goodbye to Mrs Irwin, who begins her maternity leave.  We wish her a restful few weeks before the arrival of ‘Bump Irwin’ and we wish her the very best of luck.  Her timetable of music will be overtaken by Mrs Devlin and Mrs Cassidy who will join us this week.

On Monday, we announced our House Captains and Vice Captains.  Following a vote from the Primary 7 year group, we elected our House Captains and Vice Captains, to represent each house as the year progresses.  The children, chosen by Primary 7 are delighted to have been elected by their peers:

Douglas:  David McLaughlin (Captain) and Jaroslaw Konarski (Vice Captain)

Scanlan: Keir Harrison (Captain) and Amy Elkin (Vice Captain)

Thompson:  Liam Duffy (Captain) and Gabrielle Hindman (Vice Captain)

Devine: Charley Collins (Captain) and Brenna Kane (Vice Captain)

Gilmour:  Amanda Quinn (Captain) and Laura Findlay (Vice Captain)

Carey: Rachel Logan (Captain) and Stewart McBride (Vice Captain)

Shortly, all children in our school will receive their house badges, which should be worn every day.

On Monday, we welcomed Miss Corr on work experience.  She has spent time in P1, 3, 5 and 7, as well as our nursery and was very impressed by the warm welcome she received.  Thank you to the class teachers who welcomed her in their classrooms.

On Wednesday, we welcomed Fr Millar, along with many parents and grandparents of our Primary One pupils, for the Primary One Blessing.  The blessing, which marks the welcoming of our new pupils into the Faith community of our school is a wonderful celebration and we thank Fr Millar for celebrating this event with us.  We also welcomed Mrs Shields for the Blessing, which we’re sure was appreciated by the children.

On Thursday,  Jenny, our active schools co-ordinator has been in working with our Primary 7 pupils to begin their Young Leader training and she was very complimentary about the enthusiam and effort put in by the children. 

In class, our teachers and pupils have all been working hard together, using all areas of the school to enhance  learning and teaching.  On Thursday, Primary Five were all ‘out and about’ working on team building activities, as can be seen here in the photos of Primary 5c and Mrs McCulloch.

 Next week, we have our Meet the Teacher evening, on Tuesday from 6.00pm – 7.15pm.  This is an opportunity to meet your child’s teacher and browse the resources used in class.  A reminder though, that teachers will not be able to discuss your child’s progress at this event, this will be done soon at our first Parent Consultation evening in October.  We hope to see you all there.  We also have our first Coffee Morning on Friday – Primary Six pupils will be looking for donations of baking and raffle prizes for this event.

And now from the roving reporter, Mrs Murphy:
This week we continue getting to know our new children. We have been discovering all about their favourites toys, foods, feelings, the names of their friends at home and the new friendships they have already made in the first few weeks at nursery.

In the literacy area the children continued to make their own friendship book all about the nursery monkeys. They discussed words that make good friends and these can be seen hanging from the jungle leaves in the literacy corner. Discussing friendships led to another story of a great friendship called “If Only”.  The children used the puppets from this storysack and discussed their feelings and re-enacted the story about a butterfly and a bumble bee. They then went on to draw the characters from the story. Take a look at the pictures in the literacy area to see how well they did.

The children continue to learn the nursery routines and rules and in espressive arts they were following the picture cards to make their own playdough.  They used a mirror to paint self portraits and by the end of the week they were creating self portraits in finer detail.  In line with our family theme the children bathed the babies in the water tray and cared for them in the home corner, feeding and changing them.

In snack the children are starting to get to grips with the snack routine. Healthy options are available everday and the children choose the additional snack and help to prepare it.  The family tree in the heart of the nursery continues to grow with family photographs being added daily. It is not too late to bring in a family photograph to put on the tree.  In the home corner the children have been discussing who lives in their house and through their drawings we are getting to know the families. These can be seen displayed in and around the home corner.

In numeracy the children started off the week discussing who was the tallest and who was the smallest they then discussed what they could use to find this out. All of their ideas were recorded on a mindmap which can be seen on the wall. They then went on to measure a variety of everyday objects in the playroom using measuring tapes and rulers. By the end of the week they decided to make their own dinosaur height chart using collage materials. This is a work in progress and will continue well into next week. Look out for the big green dinosaur taking shape in the corner of the numeracy area. Just around the corner from this is our dinosaur display. The children have been discussiing the names of their favourite dinosaurs. Please take a minute to have a look at this fantastic display of dinosaur knowledge hidden away at the far end of the playroom.

Outdoors the children continue to learn the routine. Getting suited and booted all by themselves or with a little support and encouragement.  The children created their own obstacle course from the big wooden blocks and planks. They then took part in a listening activity where they had to follow the instructions such as “stop, start, stand on one leg, turn round and change direction”.  The children listened well to the instructions and then took turns at being the leader and giving out their own instructions. This led to the “Sticky Kids” cd always a favourite with the children. They sang, danced, pretended to be dinosaurs went jogging and driving in a car. This programme helps children to learn when to talk and when to listen.
Some of the children who had been measuring indoors got involved in a measuring activity outdoors where they used a wooden plank to make a ramp for the cars. They used a big measuring tape to see how far the cars went using the ramp. This was a very popular activity with the children.

Each groups weekly lending library is now up and running. This is a fabulous resource linking the nursery and the home. Please complete the evaluation sheet in the bag each week as the children get a chance to discuss the book they chose each week with their group friends and keyworker.

This week we look forward to meeting the next group of children who will be joining us shortly.

Thanks for reading our blog this week.  We would love to hear what you think of our blog, feel free to leave us a comment.

Mrs Campbell