Grateful thanks to those who commented on the ‘usefulness’ of our weekly blog, great to hear how much you enjoy it, thank you.

Something a wee bit different this week.

Can you find?

Primary one happy at their work

Primary seven launching their bids to represent their class in school committees

Primary four/five feasting and having fun at their well earned class picnic

Primary two practicing their yoga moves

Primary six cosying up to a good book

Primary two actively learning literacy

Primary seven twisters starting off on the right foot

Primary three showing off their wonderful work

A fabulous first full week at school enjoyed by all.

Meanwhile, it’s all happening in the nursery:
A big welcome back to nursery to our returning children and to all our new children. This week we have concentrated on settling in and getting to know our new recruits.

We also welcome back Mrs Higgins as one of our new staff members and Mrs Elliot, who has come to join our happy home.

Our Big Pre-school children have taken on the responsibility of buddying the new children within their groups and have all proven to be superstars.

The buddying system gives children the responsibility to help make new friends and show the new children around the playroom, helping them with the rules and routines. This gives our returning children an important job which helps to build confidence and self esteem, making the nursery environment a caring and happy place for all.

To continue the settling in process this term we have introduced a range of fun exercise activities to encourage our new children to join in. These SmartBoard activities are proving to be very popular with children and staff. The morning children are participating first thing in the morning and the afternoon children before they go home. Please take a look at the photographs that show how all the children are exploring their new environment both indoors and in the nursery garden. Here’s the photos…

It’s great to be back.

Mrs Shields

This short week we welcomed back all of our P2,3,4,5,6&7 pupils whilst extending our friendship to our 82 new Primary One pupils. A fabulous start, we couldn’t ask for more. All of our children returned happy, excited and filled with enthusiasm for an exciting year ahead. We were also delighted to welcome back our pre-school nursery children and a whole new set of anti-pre school children.

We also extend our welcome to our 7 new pupils throughout the school and to all of our families, both new and ‘old’.

Our school community (which encompasses our fabulous nursery) is an excellent place of learning and we pride ourselves on our Faith, our friendship and our positive attitude to education. This success is due to the team effort of all pupils, staff, clergy and parents working together to achieve our common goal; The very best for all of our children.

We began our week introducing our new Primary one pupils into our school, they arrived shiny and new with huge smiles (well nearly all). At 11am on our first day we came together as a community of faith and learning to begin our year in prayer. Primary 2 through to Primary 7 joined me in assembly. It was great to see everyone back in such great numbers. Our school community now totals 617, with 517 being in school and 100 in the nursery.

Within our staff we have said goodbye to Mrs Danielle Keenan, our nursery teacher. Mrs Keenan has secured a teaching post in Our Lady of St Francis School. I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to Danielle for all her work in our nursery and indeed in our school, on behalf of all in our school community we wish her continued success. Mrs Leigh-Ann Kinnear and Mrs Denise Higgins (both well kent faces in the nursery) will overtake the nursery post.

In school we have no new staff – this is a first! All of our staff are familiar faces, what a settled way to begin your school year – fantastic.

On Wednesday our nursery welcomed all of our pre-school returners with our brand new 3 year olds coming in on Thursday and Friday. A very happy start to the nursery year with our enthusiastic staff ensuring a safe and nurturing environment for our youngest pupils.

Monday and Tuesday of this week our confirmandi (P6 & P7) will attend Mass in Cathedral Church as part of 40 hours Adoration. Please come along and join our young people in supporting our Parish.

Thursday of this week P5b – Mrs Tominey’s class will begin their 12 week programme of swimming and dry sports, an energetic start to the year for P5b! Again, parent helpers/volunteers very welcome.

Please let me know if writing this weekly blog is of use to you. communication is always an area of improvement for our school community, please help us by telling us what methods of communication are the most effective. I look forward to hearing from you.

Mrs Shields

 

 

Well done to all of our P7 pupils who celebrated a truly uplifting Leaver’s Mass and Graduation Ceremony on Friday 24th June.

Photographs, courtesy of John Quinn, are available by clicking the link below. Photographs are magnificent.

 

 

http://johnquinn.zenfolio.com/p323416416

Thanks to everyone for all their work in ensuring our children have a wonderful nursery and primary school experience.

Good Luck Primary Seven, we’ll miss you.

A wee taster of the photographs is coming, having technology difficulties at present. Be Patient….

Have a great summer and a HUGE thanks to everyone in our school community, it has been a fabulous year. Here’s to 2016~2017.

Mrs Shields

 

 

A fabulous day on Friday as we joined our nursery children in their first ever graduation as we celebrated their move to ‘the big school’.

Huge thanks to all involved, most especially our fabulous nursery children and the amazing nursery staff:

Mrs MC Duffy ,  Mrs MM Murphy, Mrs M Little, Mrs S Imray, Miss A McMullen, Mrs D Duffy, Mrs L Kinnear, Miss M McConnachie, Miss A Adam and Mrs D Keenan. What a fantastic team.

Here’s all the photographs of our day:

 

 

And so, following another extremely successful year at our excellent nursery we conclude our nursery blog for 2015-2016

Mrs MM Murphy & Mrs Shields

What did we do this week?

We ran, we jumped, we bounced, we skipped, we danced to the Samba beat, we kicked footballs, we climbed walls, we threw javelins, we shot at archery, we balanced, we learned tai kwon do, we cycled to make smoothies (yup we really did), we cycled to blow up balloons, we orienteered, we learned rugby, we learned to sumo fight, we enjoyed home made energy bars and home made lemonade, we paraded, we laughed, we worked as a team and we had brilliant fun.

HUGE thanks to all who helped out in any way with our fabulous Three Day Event it was truly memorable and magnificent. By the end of school day on Wednesday every pupil, every parent helper, every member of staff left school fitter, flabbergasted and a wee bit bedraggled having enjoyed a wonderful range of unique learning opportunities. What a fabulous way to promote our children’s (and our adults) health and well being. Too many people to mention (cause I’ll definitely miss someone out) so a global, sincere THANK YOU to all.

Mr John Quinn kindly took the time to come along on Monday and Tuesday to capture the moments – and there were many, many moments. Thanks to John for once again giving of his time sharing his talents and skills. Check out the cheeky nursery getting in on the act! Brilliant dancing from the youngest members of our team.

Here they are in glorious technicolour….all 465 of them! Enjoy.

Click on the photograph for a complete image.

 

WOW!

Separate nursery graduation blog coming soon…..

Mrs Shields

 

This was an exciting week, most particularly for our Primary Seven pupils who all left us for their two day visit to High School. They all returned now desperate to be First Year pupils, which is great but also quite sentimental. I am delighted all pupils showed themselves at their best, all made most impressive first impressions. Well done Primary Seven, we are very proud of you.

On Monday evening, Mrs Carr accompanied our Fantastic Netballers to an area competition. They came back with trophy in hand! A wonderful first place, brilliant work from our netball team, both boys and girls. Well done, well played and a huge thanks to Mrs Carr for taking the time to accompany the children (and cheer them on too).

Wednesday was our Annual Nursery Bonanza Day, where our PM children join us for a whole day at nursery. This was a great day; fabulous weather, wonderful activities and great excitement abounded. Big thanks to all nursery staff who worked tirelessly throughout the whole day without a break and to our Primary Seven staff who generously gave of their time to assist whilst their pupils visited High School. A fabulous OLGA team effort. Having this day ensures our PM children have their full entitlement of 600 hours at nursery per year and allows our school community to finish altogether when we have an early finish prior to holidays.

Thursday Mgr. Millar and Canon O’Mahoney came in to school to offer the Sacrament of Reconciliation to our Primary Three boys and girls. Thanks to our ever supportive clergy who greatly enhance the spiritual development of all in our school.

Friday was an exciting day when our final end of year reports were issued and our pupils discovered their new classes and forthcoming teachers.

This is how our classes will look next session:

Class	Roll	Teacher	Base	Class Name
P1a	19	Julie McCarthy	Blue	Skye
P1b	20	Claire Gillespie	Blue	Bute
P1c	20	Colette Laird	Blue	Coll
P1d	21	Nicola McLaughlan	Blue	Iona
P2a	24	Dolores Blaney/Debbie Rimmer	Blue	Mull
P2b	23	Stephanie Love	Green	Staffa
P2c	23	Pauline Findlay	Green	Arran
P3a	25	Theresa Cawley	Green	Islay
P3b	25	Lynn Gillies	Green	Jura
P3c	24	Susan Murphy	Green	Tiree
P4a	30	Jacqueline McDerment	Purple	Eriskay
P4b	30	Caroline McAvoy	Purple	Scalpay
P4/5	25	Jacqueline Carr	Purple	Kerrera
P5a	31	Laura Irwin	Purple	Taransay
P5b	27	Leanne Tominey	Purple	St. Kilda
P6a	31	Jacqueline Murphy/Lisa Cassidy	Yellow	Benbecula
P6b	30	Monica Donnelly	Yellow	Barra
P6/7	24	Katie Loose	Yellow	South Uist
P7a	28	Jillian Green (Shevlin)	Yellow	Lewis
P7b	29	Jacqueline McCulloch	Yellow	Harris

Meanwhile, down in the nursery………. A picture tells a thousand words.

A blog all in photographs this week for a wee change.

A Very Busy Fun week at nursery this week.

Final Forest Kindergarten Graduation, Big Bonanza day and Sports Day.

Let the photographs tell the story.

Have fun looking at all the photographs from each event.

 

That’s all folks!

Please leave a comment or two….

Mrs Shields

 

What a busy couple of weeks we have enjoyed.

Going back to a week past on Friday when our Annual joint Football Awards ceremony took place. Here’s Mrs Duffy’s report of the event:

On Friday afternoon 90 pupils of our P5, P6 and P7 pupils from Cathedral and Firpark Primary attended a Football Award Ceremony. It really was a ceremony of two halves!

The children all scored and were presented with certificates by local footballer Grant Gillespie who currently plays with Hamilton Accies. He commented most favourably on the positive attitude of our players and excellent behaviour of all children involved.

‘Willie the football man’ our Coach awarded three trophies:

Player of the Year- John Cunningham

ACE Player of the Year- Jarek Konarski

Girl Player of the Year- Laura Findlay

We are delighted with the skill and sportsmanship of all our children who attend our Friday Football Sessions. Our wonderful pupils are consistently displaying positive attitudes, high levels of commitment and skill in weekly training sessions. They are totally ACE in their:

A – Attitude

C- Commitment

E – Effort

Whilst this was on-going in the hall Primary 5b were very busy upstairs in our new Teaching Kitchen enjoying a “Bake Off’. This was a super event inspired by the novel ‘Danny The Champion of The World’. It was a bake off between Mrs McCarthy and Mrs Miller (Maria’s Gran) – the aim of the day to discover ‘Who makes the best pancakes in the world?”. The judges, all of P5b ably led by Mary Berry (aka Maria Moss) and Paul Hollywood (aka Ryan Winton) tasted their way through a wonderful morning. A huge thanks to Mrs Miller and Mrs McCarthy for their wonderful work. Here’s the action in glorious technicolour:

Last Monday our assembly had a distinctive ‘Carnival’ atmopshere as our Health Committee, under the guidance of Mrs Loose, Miss Love aned Mrs Duffy, launched our Race To Rio. This will be the theme for our forthcoming three day event (Monday 13th, Tuesday 14th and Wednesday 15th). Three days devoted to health and fitness. All children will be in House Groups with representation from P1 through to P7 in every one of the 12 teams. Each Team is named after one of the participating countries. Here’s the Grand Launch:

Also on Monday our Primary 7 pupils were treated to a wonderful day Retreat in St Bride’s Hall and in The Cathedral Church. Our P7 pupils spoke so enthusiastically of this day, they enjoyed games on the grass, Morning Mass, Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament and the opportunity to attend Confession. A huge thanks to Mgr. Millar and Fr. Martin who organised the whole day. Big thanks also to Mrs Lindsay and Mrs Dailey who provided the ‘most delicious lunch ever’ – quote from P7s!

Here’s a wee look at the day:

We have all been enjoying the beautiful weather of late and it has been a great opportunity to make good use of our lovely awning to provide some much needed shade. This next couple of photogaphs show just how lovely our school surroundings are for our children, we are truly blessed to have such wonderful facilities. The gentlemen from Forgewood Charity who provided the awning were most impressed when they came for a photoshoot the other day. The photographs show the view from our upper school classroom windows with an early bird pupil enjoying some early morning sunshine.

On Thursday we held our annual Magical Musical Morning, and magical it most certainly was! A separate blog has been published detailing all the action.

Friday of this week we held one of the highlights of our school year – Primary One Assembly, and what a highlight it was. Primary One sang, danced, talked, rapped their way through their whole first year at school. It was truly amazing. Every child in P1 had a very important role to play in this assembly and they did so with style and panache! It was such fabulous entertainment which gave enveryone a chance to reflect on a most successful year. Once again our thanks to Mr John Quinn who came along and photographed the event for us. All 140 photographs can be found by following this link:
http://johnquinn.zenfolio.com/p22723676

Here’s a wee taster:

Also on Friday we enjoyed a wonderful Race Night in St. Bride’s Hall. Once again our Fabulous Fundraisers excelled. The total amount raised was £2780.67! MAGNIFICENT!

I know I say it often but I cannot thank our Fundraisers and all who support our school enough. We have a wonderful school and nursery where every day we aim to provide the best possible education for each and every one of our 605 pupils. This journey is greatly aided by the work and resources provided by all who help and support us in such a wide variety of ways. Thanks to you all.

 

Meanwhile, as if this is not enough! Our nursery boys and girls have been very busy. Here’s all the gossip from Mrs Margaret Mary Murphy:

HUGE congratulations to Mrs Murphy who today (Sunday) completed her 10th 10k run for charity – Go Mrs Murphy!
A beautiful sunny week in nursery with the children accessing all activities on offer outside.

Our plant pots have been filled with soil and the children have planted a range of flowers which have been carefully grown from seeds by Davy (a past Grandpa) who always supplies the nursery garden each year with a variety of blooms. A big thank you to Davy again this year for his support and advice. The children have been kept busy this week with watering and caring for the plants. The garden needed a big clean up at the end of the week due to all the activities going on.

In numeracy the children have been busy matching and sorting lots of different coloured and shape flowers and in Science they have been discussing the different parts of the flower and sequencing the growing cycle.

The story corner was popular outside on the big cushions.The children have been listening to sea creature stories in the sunshine and recalling the story of the ‘Rainbow Fish’ They have created a big fish which is surrounded by quotes and parts of the story they have recalled in their own words. This will displayed in the cloakroom next week, so look out for it.

The children have been very creative in the Expressive Arts area. They have made starfish using the playdough, used collage to make their own Rainbow Fish from the story which are now hanging from the seaweed and handprint crabs created on a beach scene which will continue next week. They used junk to make fish and sharks which they have proudly displayed near the ‘Under the Sea’ wall. The children have been in the junk modelling area making a range of models. Our junk is running low and the children are waiting patiently to make some boats that they can put into the water tray to see if they will float or sink. If anyone has any junk they want to offload please don’t hesitate to bring it in as it will be put to good use. (butter tubs make great boats).

A very large colourful puffer fish has been created using plastic cups and rainbow tissue paper. The children spent a long time making this and It now hangs pride of place in the playroom.

Snack has been flying off the plates this week. The sun has certainly wetted the children’s appetites. Salmon sandwiches were devoured. Fish and flower shaped toast disappeared in a flash and the fruit was as popular as ever. Ice poles all round to keep everyone cool in the heat.

Graduation practice continues. The words have been sent home for one of the songs that the children have chosen to sing at their graduation, please help your child learn all of the words for their BIG day. The nursery staff as always appreciate your continued support.

A wee reminder.

On Tuesday the final Forest Kindergarten graduation will take place in the forest for the full session. This gives the children the opportunity to showcase what they have learned and the new skills that they have developed during the 6 week experience. Please join the children to celebrate their successes.
Refreshments will be provided.

Wednesday is our Big Bonanza Day where the afternoon children will come to nursery for the full day and experience a variety of activities. Fingers crossed for good weather! Sunscreen should be applied before coming to nursery in the morning and will be reapplied at lunchtime if required. The children will have lunch in their groups with their keyworkers, please remember to bring a packed lunch for your child and register in the library in the school.

On Thursday the morning children will have their sports day, again hats and sunscreen are a must.

And now in glorious technicolour….

As always, thanks for reading. We look forward to hearing your views and comments.

Mrs Shields

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.

A very varied week featuring lots of different learning opportunities for our children.

As always, we began our week as a community of faith and learning with our weekly assembly. This is an opportunity for us all to come together to pray and to celebrate all that has been happening in our school community. It is also a great platform from which our many school committees launch exciting new challenges for our pupils. Monday 23rd May promises to be one to remember. Watch this space for more information coming soon.

Once again this week we welcomed our 82 (an additional enrolment from last week) future Primary One pupils and their families to our school. Once again, this was a super experience for all concerned. We have issued evaluation sheets to all of our new entrants, if this concerns you please take the time to complete and return the evaluation. Your views and opinions are vital to our programme of continuous improvement.

Huge thanks to all who were so actively involved in our Pre-Entrant Programme:

Primary One Class teachers for August 2016; Mrs McCarthy, Mrs Gillespie, Mrs Laird & Mrs McLaughlan.

Mrs Mellon and all classroom assistants who help to settle our new pupils.

Mrs Campbell for preparing all of the paperwork and our Welcome Booklet.

Mrs McCoy for sharing her Primary one expertise with all new parents.

Mrs Duffy, acting as liaison for our nursery pupils.

Mrs Munro, Chair of our Fabulous Fundraisers for coming along to speak about the wonderful work this group of people does for our school. I know we have a few more interested recruits now, well done Mrs Munro.

Big, big thanks to Leah McCalden, P1a and Idris Ali, P1b who both spoke so eloquently and engagingly of their Primary One experience. Both pupils showed themselves to be confident individuals, successful learners and responsible citizens who effectively contributed to our Pre- Entrant programme. Great work.

Throughout this week you may have noticed our Primary Seven pupils and their teachers out and about in Motherwell. Primary Seven are currently studying ‘chocolate’. This involves, designing, marketing research, purchasing materials, creating recipes and (the best bit) tasting! This last week they have been out shopping for their ingredients and making great use of our newest facility – our teaching kitchen.

A particular thanks to Mrs McGill (Michael’s mum) who drove two of our injured boys to and from Asda ensuring no-one missed out.

Pupils in Primary 4b have also been making great use of our teaching kitchen, they all enjoyed ‘bread week’.

I am reliably informed that coming soon to our teaching kitchen is a ‘bakeoff’ a Pancake Challenge in Primary Five……more info as it develops.

On Wednesday of this week our Bikeability students, under the careful eye of their trainers; Mrs Carr and Miss Green, all had a unique opportunity to take part in ‘The Pearl Azumi Road Race’.

Here’s Mrs Carr’s account:

“P6 children, currently completing the Bikeability training, had the wonderful opportunity to participate in the Pearl Izumi cycling tour which was held in Motherwell last Tuesday. The school event offered the children the chance to cycle the course along the street of Motherwell under professional race conditions, cheered on by many enthusiastic onlookers.

The attached photos show the children enjoying the warm up activities before the race began. They thoroughly enjoyed this too as it gave them the chance to enjoy cycling freely on the courses laid out in such a wide open area.”

More photographs taken at the race can be found on the following link:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/northlanarkshirecouncil/albums/72157667865033720

Huge thanks to all who came along to accompany the children and support them. Specific vote of thanks to Mr Nugent (Robbie’s dad) and Mr Maughan (Abbie & Emma’s dad) who donned their cycling gear and accompanied the children to, from and through the route. A great day was had by all.

Wednesday & Thursday of this week North Lanarkshire Council hosted it’s Annual Learning Festival. This is an opportunity for all involved in education to enhance our own learning. A number of our staff attended throughout and out-with the school day broadening their own skills and bringing back new methodologies to enhance our children’s learning experiences.

On Friday of this week our school hosted an area wide Football Tournament. Mrs McBirnie, more usually known as ‘Willie the football man’ working alongside Mrs Duffy and Jenny Thompson our Active Schools Co-Ordinator, organised this most successful and well attended event. Seven teams from around our locale took part. They were:

Our Lady of Good Aid Cathedral, Ladywell, Knowetop, St Brendan’s, St Bernadette’s, Noble Primary and St Teresa’s.

Here’s some photographs of the teams:

Also on Friday, staying with the football theme we were delighted to have our Annual Football Awards Ceremony. Mrs Duffy is preparing a separate ‘Blog’ to tell you all about our visiting ‘celebrity’ and announcing all the winners. Watch this space or all the info and lots of photographs.

Friday morning, what a busy day! Also heralded our Primary Seven coffee morning. Their last one ever…Awwwww.

I am delighted to say this was a great success, we had lots and lots of home baking all of which was delicious. Our Coffee Morning was very well attended and many people left carrying lovely raffle prizes. Huge thanks to all in P7 for their contributions and active participation on the day. Big thanks also to the large number of parent helpers who came along to organise the whole event and make teas and coffees for all. An amazing £528.55 was raised. Well done and thank you to Primary Seven and all concerned.

Coupled with all this amazing work on-going throughout the school day, after 3pm our school community continues to be a hive of learning activities. This term we have:

Netball, Handball, Bikeability, Spanish, Cookery, Choir, Solo-Singing, Art “n Craft & Olympics. Our children’s learning goes on and on and on and on……as it should!

A HUGE thanks to all teaching, non-teaching staff, external coaches and parents who so diligently give of their own time to allow our children to have such a broad range of excellent learning opportunities. I am indebted to each and every one of them.

As if this isn’t’ enough going on our nursery pupils have been incredibly busy….Here’s the gossip from Mrs Margaret Mary Murphy:

The children have been out and about this week again visiting the local Aquatic Centre looking at a range of sea creatures. They came back full of stories and told their friends about their experiences. Back in the garden the children have been planting flowers and vegetables in our big planters. They will look after them, water them and watch them grow. They have also been taking part in energetic games in the garden and in the infant yard with Mr. Munro our student athletics coach in preparation for our forthcoming Big Bonanza Day.

In Literacy they have been scribing a long list of words from the ‘Rainbow Fish’ story and reading other stories about a range of sea creatures.

In Numeracy they have been sorting, matching and naming a range of sea creatures using the coloured bowls and exploring the ‘Under the Sea’ jigsaws.

In Science they drew faces on their mini plant pots and planted cress to make cress heads. They have been watering them each day and they are starting to grow already.

They have been watching a whole host of water related clips on the SmartBoard.

Expressive Arts has been awash with creative activities this week. The children created fish using their handprints and collage and placed them in the fishbowl. They made their own individual Octopus using sponges, paint and tissue paper. They explored the frozen sea creatures in the water and made their own fish using the playdough.

Snack has been a bit fishy this week again with tuna sandwiches, tuna pasta and fishfingers Yum Yum! Lots of role-playing taking place throughout the nursery using the submarine and the big fish.

Our forest site is starting to flourish with plants and vegetation growing weekly. The children enjoyed another sunny day in the forest on Friday. En route to the forest they discovered a huge number of giant slugs and a large family of snails living on the burnt grass area. During the session the children worked together as a team to create a den for a monkey and the Keeper of the Forest, this activity went on for such a long time working together, using their imaginations and their brute strength to move heavy rocks. A Fab day in the forest!!!

Our Graduation preparation has started and the count down to this special day is on.

Here’s the photpgraphs of all that’s been happening:

Please leave a comment and let us know what you think of all that’s happening in our school community.

REMEMBER: No Blog next week as it is the holiday weekend.

Thanks for reading.

Mrs Shields

Two Blogs this week, we’ve already posted about our Brilliant Netball Team, well done to all involved. See previous Blog for all the details and the photographs.

Our current and future Primary One pupils have dominated this week. Deservedly so.

Tuesday and Wednesday of this week we warmly welcomed our brand new Primary One pupils to our school for the very first time. Both mornings were exciting, happy events. It was a delight to welcome our 81 new pupils and their families to our school. We said hello some ‘well kent’ faces and got to know some families who are new to our school.

Equally excited were our new Primary One teachers:

P1a     Mrs McCarthy

P1b     Mrs Gillespie

P1c      Mrs Laird

P1d     Mrs McLaughlan

All four teachers commented on how happy and settled our new pupils were and all the staff were overwhelmed by the maturity and enthusiasm of their new pupils. We look forward to this coming week when we, once again, welcome all of our future P1 pupils and their families.

Big thanks to Mrs Mellon, classroom assistant, for assisting with all of our P1 pupils in class and to Mrs McCoy who presented an excellent overview of ‘A day in the life of Primary One’.

We utilised this opportunity to welcome our new Primary One pupils and their families to our Primary One Mass on Friday of this week. I am so pleased a number of them came along, I’m sure they were extremely impressed by our current P1 pupils, their excellent behaviour and enthusiastic, active participation in The Mass.

Our Primary One Mass always holds a special sentimentality as this is clear evidence of the excellent progress and learning which has taken place over this most important first year at school.

Well done to our readers:

Grace, Declan, Ellis, Zophia, Orla, Agata, Stephen & Callum

Our offertory procession:

Ellie, Sophie, Ashyn & Niamh

Indeed a HUGE well done and congratulations to each and every one of our Primary One Pupils, they prayed and sang so beautifully. One very poignant moment for me was seeing the pride on the faces of our Primary One teachers; a special, memorable moment.

Meanwhile, our nursery has been making the most of the beautiful weather. Here’s all the gossip…

A beautiful sunny week which gave the children the opportunity to take all of the nursery outdoors. The majority of activities below took place outside this week. Sunhats and sunscreen were a must.

In Literacy the children read the story of the ‘Rainbow Fish’ and they created a huge 2d rainbow fish from papier mache and tissue paper. This will be displayed in the nursery this week and you won’t miss it.

In numeracy the children have been exploring symmetrical patterns. They drew flowers, painted symmetrical sea turtles to display and created their own symmetry patterns using the Lego bricks.

The art area was abuzz with smaller rainbow fish made from colourful collage which they cut and pasted onto their fish. By the end of the week the children had created a huge ‘Rainbow Fish’ for the display in the far corner of the playroom. They used a variety of resources to make this display such as tissue paper, shiny paper and cd’s. They made a sign for their display and filled bubbles with facts from the story. Please pop round and take a look.

The children had snack outside. They were introduced to our new portable water fountain which they can access on their own. Snack always tastes better outdoors and the fruit disappeared very fast. Some children had the opportunity to make rainbow cakes as a follow up from last weeks snack activity but as soon as they had made them they headed out to the garden.

Outdoors has been very busy this week with the children exploring a range of outdoor resources. On Thursday we welcomed parents and grandparents into the garden to help with our annual Groundforce day. This helps to tidy up and prepare the garden for planting and growing. A Huge thanks to all of our volunteers who gave up their time to help Miss MacMullen our very own Green Goddess with this process. The children have started planting already.

During the garden tidy the children were out on the pitch with Mr Munro an athletics student who put them through their paces. They played a warm up game, a throwing and catching game, he expanded this by bringing in hoola hoops and a mini basketball net where they had to use an underarm throw to get a point. These activities all help to develop the children’s eye to hand co-ordination skills. Mr Munro will be with the nursery for 3 weeks.

The challenge of the week is gaining momentum with more children taking part this week. Look out for these super gold stickers.

The Forest Adventure this week took place on Friday due to the P1 inductions. The children discovered a spider sitting on it’s eggs under a rock, they were very interested in this and watched the spider for some time before they put the rock gently back into place. They then discovered an egg on the ground, they discussed what they thought was in the egg and decided to make it a nest, they gathered twigs, grass and leaves to keep the egg warm. A fantastic show of imaginary play.

And here’s the photographs highlighting a great week.

Many thanks for taking the time to read out Blog, keep in touch.

Mrs Shields