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.

Primary Three ended our week by taking us all on a magical journey to Africa. We all loved joining them on ‘Safari’ as they presented us with knowledge, song, dance and fabulous entertainment. A HUGE well done and congratulations to everyone in Primary Three, this was a truly uplifting, child friendly assembly. The joy and pride on the children’s faces mirrored that of their families in the audience.

 

A big thanks to Mrs Murphy, Mrs Gillies, Mrs Munro & Miss Cawley for their incredibly imaginative work, truly inspirational. As always, our class teachers were aided and guided by Mrs McCoy whose incredible choreography was stamped all over this performance. Thanks also to Mrs Campbell for her musical input. An engaging assembly from start to finish- absolutely brilliant.

 

Mrs Quinn (Amanda & Grace’s mum) attended the assembly to support her extended family. Mrs Quinn kindly photographed the event for all to enjoy, here’s the link:

Thanks to Mr & Mrs Quinn for their ongoing support for all we do in school and nursery.

http://johnquinn.zenfolio.com/p697791990

 

Here’s a wee sneak preview.

 

 

Our two First Holy Communion Masses ended one week and began a new week in a beautiful, spiritual manner. Congratulations to each of our 63 Communicants who looked truly splendid and participated so reverently and respectfully in each of The Masses. Thanks to all staff in our school community who came out over the weekend to offer support to our Primary Four pupils. Occasions such as these are a wonderful way to celebrate our Catholic School within our Motherwell Community of Faith and Learning. Working closely with Mgr. Millar, Fr. Martin and Deacon Tom we are indeed blessed within our school.

 

Particular thanks to class teachers; Mrs Murphy, Mrs Cassidy, Miss McAvoy and Miss Cawley, for their on going preparation in class and their commitment to our children’s spiritual development. Thanks also to Mrs Campbell, Mrs Murphy and Miss Love for providing the music ministry, this greatly enhances each of our school Masses.

 

Over this short week life in school has been busy, as always. We continue to focus on improving our children’s health and well being with many classes participating in our daily mile programme, now we even have staff participating after school also completing their daily mile, a great example to all.

 

North Lanarkshire Council’s ‘Beat The Street’ Initiative is proving very popular with the majority of our school community involving our nursery pupils, school pupils, staff and all of our families. A great way to get fit and active within the local community. At the moment we are sitting at number 7 on the leader board, let’s get out there and bring us up the table even further.

 

Within our nursery car park you may notice a new addition.

 

Yes! We have a newly painted zebra crossing. Thanks to our Parent Council for their help in securing this additional safety feature within this very busy car park. Our nursery children now have a safer route to and from nursery each day.

 

Speaking of the nursery, here’s all the gossip from their four days of learning.

The ‘Under the Sea’ topic is well under way and the children have been super busy creating displays and learning about a range of sea creatures.

Outdoors they have painted a shark and added it to the ocean display. They have turned the Jungle Jeep into a yellow submarine with a periscope for them to explore the deep blue sea. Our outdoor pool has sparked the children’s imagination and they have been role-playing Nemo and other characters from this story. They continued to request ‘Shark Attack’ an active outdoor game taking turns being the shark.

In the literacy area they have been using the story props to recreate the story of ‘Shaun the Shy Shark’ The children have painted and used collage to create the characters and the scenes from the story and these are displayed on the literacy wall. They continue to explore all the other sea creatures stories in the story corner.

In numeracy they have been sequencing the sizes of fish and have created a display showing their findings. In science the children have been learning all about the Life Cycle of a Sea Turtle. They have been watching this fascinating unique part of nature on the SmartBoard and have made their own turtles and produced a display showing a step by step guide to what happens. They have been cutting and pasting these steps and sequencing them in the correct order.

In the art area they have made salt dough sea creatures, sea horses, lobsters, fish and crabs. The children painted a wavy sea and have hung their finished creatures on the display. Please take a closer look at the details in their salt dough creatures. They have been exploring pasta shells, spheres and other sensory materials in the water tray.

Over in the snack area they have had the chance to taste fish fingers and tuna pasta. They have made their own clam biscuits and some rainbow fish cakes. This will continue next week so that all children will have the opportunity to bake.

In the house corner the children came up with the idea to change it into a beach scene. They brought out the flip flops, sunglasses, sun hats and the deckchairs and are role-playing lazy days at the beach. They obviously had inside information about the change in the weather this coming week.

The challenge of the week has returned. Please look out for these special stickers and ask your children what they had to do to get one. Each week the challenge will differ and there will be different levels to encourage all children to have a go.

The final block of Forest Kindergarten commenced on Wednesday. The children enjoyed their first day in the forest getting up close to nature.

There are still spaces available on the Growing Together Learning Forever parental programme which will be delivered by Mrs Little this term. If you have some spare time and are interested in some free fabulous resources that you get to keep, please let any member of staff know. It is a great opportunity to get together informally for a chat and a cuppa.

And, here’s the photos:

As always, thanks for reading. Please leave us a wee comment, we’d love to hear from you.

Mrs Shields

This coming weekend is a holiday weekend where, traditionally we do not have our weekly blog. However, our news is too exciting to wait.

Firstly on Tuesday of this week our Reading Quiz Team represented our school at the finals of the Quiz. Our team won 2nd place – how fabulous is that?

This is the first time we have entered the Reading Quiz. I am so very proud of our team members and our reserves:

Well done to all concerned and a HUGE thanks to Mrs McCarthy who has tutored the children all the way through, what a tremendous achievement.

The photographs show the children in situ at the finals and their excited faces as they learn they are in the top 3 and finally one with the children receiving their prize from author Ross Mckenzie winner of the Blue Peter Book of the Year 2015 Award and winner of the Scottish Book Trust Children’s Book of the Year 2016.

They were delighted to meet him as they thought his book was fantastic..really enjoyed reading it.

Brilliant work Matthew, Imogen, Laura, Rhianna, Joseph, Christopher, Jude and Grace, not forgetting Mrs McCarthy.

On Wednesday of this week, despite the forecast of wind, rain and snow we all managed to stay warm and dry as our whole school community improved their fitness by ‘Moving a Mile in Motherwell’. I am absolutely delighted with the number of supporting adults who came along to walk/run/skip with our children are they participated in this sponsored event.

At the end of today (Thursday) our amount raised was in excess of £2700 – ABSOLUTELY MAGNIFICENT.

Many, many thanks to everyone who came along, who gave so generously and supported our school community in this fabulous way. Biggest thanks of all to our wonderful children from nursery through to P7 who enthusiastically took to the pitch and thoroughly enjoyed moving a mile in Motherwell. Let’s keep up this fitness and try to move a mile every day. Mrs Campbell was correct, we did indeed walk 500 miles, and we had The Proclaimers telling us so through our tannoy system. Mrs Campbell is now banned from using this!!!!!

Finally ‘Beat The Street’ the North Lanarkshire Council Initiative which has taken our school by storm. We are moving up and up in the league table. Please encourage children to ‘fob’ as they walk, and boys and girls please encourage mums and dads to register their card and ‘fob’ with you. Let’s all Beat The Street together.

Have a great holiday weekend and we look forward to welcoming the children back to nursery and school on Tuesday 3rd May.

Mrs Shields

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

Welcome to a new term and a brand new website!

Over the holiday period Mrs Campbell has been working very hard, behind the scenes, creating a brand new website ensuring we are up to date with all avaliable new technology.

A HUGE thanks to Mrs Campbell for all of this ‘unseen’ work which makes such a difference to our school communication. She’s a star. It would be really great to hear your thoughts on our ‘new look’, go on, make Mrs Campbell happy and leave a comment or two. Thanks in advance.

We have all enjoyed a lovely, sunny first week back to school and nursery. This week we have really made full use of our wonderful outdoor and indoor facilities, it is great to see our children having such a wonderful space in which to play and learn.

You may have heard from your children (or maybe not) this term our focus is on active health and well being and mathematics. We are endeavouring to marry the two together and create a fabulous, outdoor, active, contextualised approach to mental maths. Mrs Duffy and Mrs McCoy are both providing non-class contact time to all classes on the topic of active, mental maths, ask your children all about it.

Within our focus of active health and well being we are encouraging our children to ‘get fit and stay fit’. This coming Wednesday we are launching our ‘MOVE A MILE IN MOTHERWELL’. On Wednesday every child in our school community will have opportunity to walk, run, skip for a mile (or a mini mile if you’re in the nursery) around our fabulous pitch. Come and join the fun, as always, we welcome everyone in our school community, young and previously young! to come along a be part of all we do. To join your children/grandchildren/ nieces/ nephews…anyone….Come along to school in your trainers and walk, run or skip with the children. Timetable is below.

9.10 – 9.40am                   Primary 7

9.40 – 10.10am                 Primary 1

10.10 – 10.40am              Primary 6

10.45 – 11.00am              Nursery AM

11.10 – 11.40am              Primary 5

11.40 – 12.10pm             Primary 2

1.30 – 2.00pm                   Primary 3 & Primary 3/4

2.00 – 2.30pm                   Primary 4

2.30 – 2.45pm                   Nursery PM

Also on this day we are delighed and honoured to be joined by Counsellor McNally, our new Convenor for Education. Cllr McNally will be in school from 11am until around lunchtime to come and see our fabulous children, staff and our brilliant facilities. Hope he brings his trainers.

MOVE A MILE IN MOTHERWELL is  a sponsored event. We are endeavouring to raise £10,000 to purchase a Trim Trail to allow our children furrther opportunity to enjoy being active and fit. Let’s hope it doesn’t rain on Wednesday, however if it does we shall carry on regardless. Hoods up and off we go!

Throughout last week our Primary 7 pupils have continued to set an excellent expample participating in our Young Leaders initiative whereby the P7 pupils are trained to lead lunchtime fitness and fun sessions for our younger pupils, a fabulous initiative which has seen our P7 pupils demonstrate magnificent leadership skills and our younger pupils have all benefitted from additional fitness sessions. Well done Primary 7. Well done also to Mrs Duffy amd Jenny ‘Duracell’ Thompson for all their hard work training and organising these lunchtime events. Great work all round.

Last Wednesday all in our school community had opportunity to learn about the work of SSPCA. Three officers from SSPCA came to school to deliver thought provoking and insighful presentations to our children and staff. A most successful learning curve for all involved. Thanks to SSPCA personnel for giving so generously of their time to promote safety and dignity for all animals in our world.

Also on Wednesday P6 pupils enjoyed a special treat with a visit to Firpark Stadium where they enjoyed a workshop from Glasgow Science Centre focussed on health and well being – all very topical at the moment in Motherwell.

Staying with the theme of active health and well being, this coming Monday each child will come home with a ‘fob’ and a map issued by North Lanarkshire Council. This is a new 6 week initiative called ‘Beat The Street” where children and adults are encouraged to walk all round Lanarkshire and track their progress by ‘fobbing’ at various stations throughout the area. You may have noticed some children from other schools already doing this – our resources only arrived on Friday so we’ve a couple of days catching up to do! I’m sure we can manage this. Each time a child or adult uses their fob our school amasses points and as the old saying goes……what do points make?…..Prizes! There is a cash award for the school which has the most points throughout the 6 weeks of the programme so……come on…get ‘fobbing’. I will keep you up to date on our place in the league table each week on our Blog.

Friday of this week I was delighted to be invited to the Patronal Feast Day Mass in Our Lady’s High School. This annual event is always a great pleasure and Friday was no exception. The Mass was truly uplifting. It was wonderful to see so many of our former pupils involved in reading, offertory procession, altar serving, choir and band members. Themusic was simply outstanding. Special congratulations to Beth Cunningham (John in P7 big sister) who performed a solo clarinet piece during the Offertory Procession – it was superb. Well done Beth.

Meanwhile….the nursery has been incredibly busy. Here’s all the news from Mrs MM Murphy our Lead Early Years Practitioner.

Before Mrs Murphy begins can I take this time to say congratulations to Miss Amanda Adam, Early Years Practitioner who gave birth to baby Stanley during the holiday period. Stanley arrived (5 weeks early) weighing in at 5lbs 15oz. Both mum and baby are doing great, Amanda came in on Friday and we all got a wee cuddle from Stanley, it was lovely, he is perfect. We wish Amanda and Stanley many years of good health and happiness ahead.

Take it away Mrs Murphy:
We welcomed the children back on Monday and after listening to all their holiday stories we got busy discussing our new topic. The children have decided to go ‘Under the Sea’ Mindmaps were made with all their ideas about sea creatures and what they want to learn about. These mindmaps are displayed in the nursery. They gathered the sea creatures and put them in the water, they found the big sea shells and put them in the sand.

The children decided they wanted to make a variety of sea creatures so they got busy both indoors and out painting and creating jellyfish, puffer fish, rainbow fish and an octopus. They painted Ariel and some of the characters from ‘The Little Mermaid’ These are all displayed in the art area. They will continue this week with the larger sea creatures.
“We are going to need a bigger boat” Jaws 1975.

The weather has been fantastic this week with the children creating their own sea using the large tuff box. They filled it with blue water, gathered grass for seaweed and stones for rocks and floated sticks as boats.
They took out the large fishing roads and the numbered fish always a popular activity. By the end of the week they had started to create their own ‘Under the Sea ‘ scene outside, they threaded the fish they made and hung them up. Please stop and have a look.

In the Literacy area they read ‘Shark in the Dark’ and read and used the puppets from the story of ‘Shaun the Shy Shark’ They drew pictures using visuals and scribed the names of the sea creatures for the display and turned the tree from the previous display into an octopus. Please take a minute to have a look at their hard work. They have also been singing some Sea Shanties. This will continue throughout the topic.

In Numeracy they used the small fishing game to catch the fish and place them in the correct number spot working on number recognition. They explored the ocean and sealife jigsaws and watched and copied some action songs from ‘Under the Sea’ on the big SmartBoard. They used the cake board to identify numbers to shapes. In construction they used the lego to make their own castles and boats.

Over in the house corner the children made a mindmap of how they could turn the area into an underwater display. They gathered a treasure chest and filled it with hidden treasures. By the end of the week they had started to create a boat and Ariel’s castle. This is a work in progress and will continue next week. In snack they made a mindmap of all things fishy that they would like to eat. This is displayed in the snack area.

Mrs Duffy accompanied the children to the forest on Wednesday and what a beautiful day it was. The children took on their responsibilities as usual and showed off their knowledge and some of the skills they have learned. They had the opportunity to plant some seeds that we will be able to take care of and watch grow. This activity will continue next week too. They also practised their balancing skills on the big tree branch. They drew pictures to take back to the nursery. All their adventures are in the floorbook in the cloakroom.

And now in glorious technicolour:

 

As always, thanks for reading. Please leave a comment or two.

Mrs Shields

 

 

 

Words fail me! I cannot descibe how proud I am of all of our Primary 5, 6 & 7 pupils and every single member of staff. Our show was magnificent, worthy of a West End Production.

An enormous thanks to all involved, too many to name individually – and with my reputation I’d be bound to miss someone out!

John Quinn has taken magnificent photographs, here’s the link and here’s the photographs.

http://johnquinn.zenfolio.com/p851012688

Mr Quinn has given permission for all to select individual images to copy for your own memory boxes.

Wow! What a week, filled with success after success.

 

Monday dawned with our choir performing in The Glasgow Music Festival in The Royal Concert Hall. We were delighted with our Choir’s fabulous singing earning them a very well deserved 1^st place. Absolutely brilliant. Thanks also to the great number of parents and other family members who came along to support our super singers.

Here are the choir and our super solo singers:

 

The success continued on Tuesday morning with our courageous cross country runners heading off to the Finals in Coatbridge. All of our runners tried their very best and won great accolade amongst all spectators for their endurance and determination. Liam McQuaid earned a Silver Medal in his individual class and our Primary 7 girls came 3^rd in their Team Event. The Team consisted of:

Diana Feenan, Beverley Mackin, Megan Kelvin, Amanda Quinn, Abbie Freel & Ellie Paton.

Huge thanks to our Cross Country Crew: Mrs MM Murphy, Mrs Harrison & Mrs McCarthy.

 

Wonderful photographs courtesy of Mr John Quinn can be found at:

 

http://johnquinn.zenfolio.com/p173127587

 

Here’s a wee taster:

Tuesday also marked our second Parent Evening of the year. We had a fabulous 86% turn out on the evening. Thanks to all who took the time to come along and celebrate their children’s success and hear of their progress. Thanks also to our fabulous fundraisers who took the time to launder all of our left over clothing and sell it on at a much reduced price. This ‘New 2 U’ is a great way to re-cycle out grown clothing.

 

Throughout the week our pupils have continued to enjoy educational visits to Tesco to learn of the journey of our food from Farm to Fork.

 

Friday morning we celebrated the feast of St. Joseph with a beautiful Mass in school, expertly lead by our Primary 4 pupils. Our grateful thanks to Mgr. Millar and Deacon Tom who came along to celebrate the Mass. As always our children’s participation and behaviour was exceptional. They are a credit to you as parents and to us here in the school. This Mass was slightly different. Throughout the last couple of weeks we have been focusing on Mass responses during our daily Religious Lessons. At our Mass on Friday we opted to say the responses instead of singing them. This provides opportunity for a deeper understanding of the Mass and an appreciation of the relevance of the responses. Once again, our children were excellent.

 

Also on Friday 25 of our P7 pupils entered the final heat of Handball Competition, ably led by Mrs Nicola McLaughlan our pupils proved themselves to be multi talented sports personnel. The team were great ambassadors for our school and those who went along to support did their job beautifully. Well done to all concerned. Here’s the team.

 

Rehearsals for our forthcoming school show The Lion King are now in their final (frantic) stage. All children performing should ensure they are available on the evenings of Wednesday 30^th and Thursday 31^st March for our evening performances. Ticket letters have been issued to all of P5. P6 & P7 with the remaining tickets being placed on general sale on Tuesday 22^nd March. Show times are:

 

Wednesday 30^th at 1.30pm and 7.00pm

Thursday 31^st at 1.30pm and 7.00pm

 

This is show NOT to be missed; our 5^th school show since my appointment and definitely our best yet! Get your tickets whilst you can.

Meanwhile, our little nursery friends have been very busy…

 

Outdoors this week the children were busy weeding and tidying up the garden in preparation for the completion of the Jungle den/forest/outdoor classroom, it’s potential for imaginary play is endless. With the help of Mr Little the large roots were removed to enable the Jungle groundsheet to be put down. A big thanks from all staff to Mr Little for his hard work. You can see from the photograph that the children are exploring the den. Also outside the children used the big wooden numbers to match the number to the dots on the wooden stepping stones. The stumps from recently fallen trees continue to be popular with children helping their friends to complete the Jungle obstacle course.

A Jungle den has also been created indoors with a variety of wild animal costumes for role-play. The children painted a Jungle jeep and made binoculars from junk and role-played going on Safari with the props. In snack they made their own Jungle juice using Jungle leaves (spinach) and a range of tropical fruit. Each group chose their own fruit and after tasting they were asked thumbs up if they liked it and thumbs down if they didn’t. A chart showing the outcome of this is displayed in the snack area. The Jungle theme continued throughout the week in snack with the children having Lion pasta and Jungleroni.

In numeracy the children have painted a family of elephants which are displayed on the wall they are using these to compare sizes. They have recorded their findings which you can see displayed. “The baby elephant is the smallest and the daddy elephant is the tallest” The children are measuring themselves up against them to compare sizes. On the SmartBoard they have been watching clips of real life animals in the wild getting up to some funny situations. The children have really enjoyed these clips which are full of facts and information.

The children continue to bring in facts about their group animals and soon these will be displayed for everyone to see.

In literacy the children have been writing all the character names from the Lion King for the big display. They have been singing Jungle songs and reading ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ a popular story with puppets and a Jungle scene for interaction.
They have also been making a variety of Easter crafts for the forthcoming Easter Fayre.

Over in Expressive Arts the children have been busy painting the Hienas from the story. By the end of the week they had started to recreate the Elephant graveyard scene from the story. This is a work in progress and will continue next week. The children have also explored Junle playdough and Jungle gloop where they disovered some surprises hiding in it.

Our enrichment activities for our pre-school children are well underway. The children had fun identifying and making their names from the alphabet cards. They used an Easter egg cutting activity to improve their cutting skills and had fun trying to spot the missing number in the memory game. A busy week for all.

Our Annual Easter Fayre will take place on Wednesday and Thursday of this week. There will be a raffle, guess how many eggs in the jar, name the bunny and a range of Easter crafts that the children have been making.

 

As always, thanks for reading. Feel free to leave a comment…or two…or three…

Mrs Shields

This was a unique week in school, it was eerily quiet without our Primary 7 pupils who were all busy, coasteering, skiing, canoeing, mountain biking, hillwalking, rock climbing, gorge walking, going on safari……the list is endless and as you can see from the photographs on previous post a fantastic time as had by all.

Meanwhile in school we have continued to rehearse for The Lion King which is coming very soon!!!!!

Primary 4b were the last of our sacramental classes to enjoy a beautiful class Mass, grateful thanks to Mgr. Millar who provides such excellent spiritual support for all of our children and their families.

Although our daytimes have been relatively quiet our evenings have been very different. This week our Solo Singers performed in The Glasgow Music Festival. They all enjoyed great success:

On Wednesday our girls from P6 & P5 all earned themselves exceptionally high marks and well deserved winning places.

1st place – Ellie Hutchison

Joint 2nd place – Katie McLaughlan & Mollie Jeffrey

3rd place – Maria Moss – Maria is only P5 but as they Festival works with specific age groups she sang with the P6 girls. Go Maria!

On Friday evening our P5 pupils excelled themselves with their beautiful singing and their incredible confidence, again all being placed.

1st place – Esme Colenso

2nd place – Katie Hendry

3rd place – Matthew McGurk – out only boy!

The children are all trained by Mrs Jacqueline Murphy and Miss Jillian Green, our grateful thanks to our talented staff who work through their own time to prepare our pupils and to encourage our children to be confident in this media. Singing all by yourself on that stage in Renfield St. Stephen’s Church takes great courage. I think sometimes mums and dads are more nervous than the children! Well done to all of our solo singers who did us proud.

A wee mention for our P7 solo singers (all 7 of them) who should have been performing on Tuesday evening but unfortunately the date clashed with Kilbowie. However, our girls will have opportunity to perform at our Magical Musical Morning later in the year.

A good luck mention to our fabulous choir who will take to the stage in Royal Concert Hall on Monday morning. I know they will be brilliant, they always are!

Friday of this week our Lenten Charity had a different focus. No money was donated this week, instead we requested non-perishable foodstuffs – we are delighted with the incredible generosity from all in our school community. A HUGE thanks to all in nursery and school for such active participation. The foodstuff will now be boxed, wrapped and distributed around the local area to those in need. Great to know we are helping those who live in our own locale – Charity does indeed begin at home. Many thanks to Miss Stack, the Enterprise Committee and our Classroom Assistants who were all involved in organising all the foodstuff and transferring it into hampers.

Finally on Friday Primary 6 had opportunity to ‘monitor’ in the absence of Primary 7. Poor P6 had been wishing for wet weather all week to give them this opportunity. All good things come to those who wait! Hope you enjoyed the experience Primary 6.

Our nursery children have been incredibly busy this week, here’s all the gossip from Margaret Mary Murphy our Senior Early Years Practitioner…

The Lion King/Jungle theme continues in the nursery and the children are bringing in lots of facts, photographs and soft toys for our forthcoming group presentation. Antoni’s mum provided a book of many facts about Lions in Polish and she translated all of the facts into English for the children. On Friday she read all these facts in Polish to all of the children and the children asked how to say Lion in Polish and a range of other Jungle animals. E.g Lion – Lew, Lion King – Krol Lew, Giraffe – Giraffa, Snake – Waz. A big thank you to Antoni’s mum more providing the children with this experience.

This week the children were out and about in the community visiting Brannock vets practice in Newarthill. The children took Rosie and Jake along and the vet weighed them, scanned and x rayed them before treating their injuries. The children were taken through to see some recovering patients, an elephant with a sore trunk, a pig with a sore ear, a sick cat and a real dog recovering from an operation. Please take a minute to look at all the fantastic photographs of the visit displayed in the cloakroom. The practice pulled out all the stops for our children to have a fantastic experience. A lot of thought and planning had went into the visit creating a very educational trip. A big thank you to all at Brannock Vets for the time they spent with the children.

Back in the playroom the transformation continues. Outdoors and indoors the children painted a huge giraffe which has taken up residency right in the middle of the Jungle, they laid down next to it to compare size, its body alone was x 2 children. HUGE!!!

Outdoors they started to create a Jungle in the garden, this is a work in progress and will continue next week. The children used the new tree stumps to play Jungle games and songs.

In the art area the children continued creating the characters from the Lion King. They painted Timon and Mufasa and used collage to create his big mane. They used feathers for Zazu, stripy collage for the zebras. They stuffed tights to make branches and made handprint leafs for the tree on the big display.

In science they made a volcano for the display and then made two volcanoes, one from papier mache and the other from playdough. They took their time creating both and they had great fun erupting one of them on Friday. They will get another chance to erupt both volcanoes next week.

In numeracy they have been busy with the new Jungle jigsaws and watching the ‘Lion Guard’ on the big SmartBoard.

In literacy the children have been sequencing the story of the ‘Lion King’ on the interactive wall and in music they have been listening to the songs from the film. On Tuesday we had another visit from ABC music who provided the children with some African drum music and used the instruments to keep to the beat. This popular activity continued each day thereafter at the children’s request.

Over in the snack area they baked animal biscuits using their fingers to make paw prints in the dough. They made trees and grass for the entrance for the Jungle vets in the home corner.

Wednesday dawned and it was a beautiful day for the children taking part in Block 3 of the forest Kindergarten programme. As always the feedback from children on their first visit has been great. The Forest Kindergarten display has been updated and the new floorbook has been created with their thoughts and ideas, please feel free to have a look.

On Friday we were overwhelmed with the generosity of all parents who donated non perishable goods for our Easter appeal hampers. A big Thank You to all.

And here’s the photos

As always, thanks for reading. Please leave a comment.

Mrs Shields

A wee taste of the ‘best week ever’ from Primary 7. It looks amazing

HUGE thanks to Mrs McCoy, Principal Teacher, Mrs Carr, P7 Miss Green, P7, Mrs McDerment P2, Mrs Stevenson, classroom assistant and Mrs Feenan, P7 parent who gave up a whole week of their time to accompany the children – looks like they had fun too! Well done to all of our 75 Kilbowiers who proved themselves to be excellent ambassadors for our school and who were willing to try every activity. A great week was had by all.

Following a relatively quiet day on Monday of this week we exploded into Tuesday!

Tuesday began with our senior pupils who ‘qualified’ for the Reading Quiz Team heading off for their competition. Our Reading Team, tutored by Mrs McCarthy, has been very busy reading, reading and reading……

The team performed exceptionally well earning a superb 2^nd place. They could still qualify for the finals. Watch this space.

Well done to all in our team:

Rhianna Comerford, Laura Findlay, Matthew Munro, Imogen McFadden, Christopher Lyon, Joseph Moore, Jude McCarthy, Grace McLaughlin and of course, not forgetting Bob, the team mascot.

Huge thanks to Mrs McCarthy for taking time to school our team, they did us all proud.

Meanwhile Primary 3 pupils and staff were busily preparing to celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation. We were delighted to welcome our P3 boys and girls with their families to Cathedral Church on Tuesday evening. It was a beautiful celebration of this important sacrament. Well done to all concerned. At Mass on Thursday morning Canon O’Mahoney took time to comment most favourably on our children, their excellent preparation and commitment to the sacrament.

Also, still on Tuesday (busy, busy day) our senior pupils excelled themselves in taking part in North Lanarkshire Council’s Song Writing Concert in Motherwell Civic Centre. Primary 7c, ably assisted by Miss Green and Mrs Wilkinson, wrote their own song, devising lyrics and composing the tune. The song was themed around our school motto ‘Living to Learn, Learning to Live’. There were 9 choirs in the concert with our own pupils performing last and closing the show.

There is a saying: You keep the best to the end – this is exactly what happened at the concert, our children were magnificent. A huge well done to all of the P7 and P6 children who volunteered to be ‘a choir’ for that evening. Thanks also to the great support from our parents and extended family members, this is greatly appreciated.

Suffice to say we slept well on Tuesday night!

Thursday of this week was the day we participated in our Lenten Charity Event. This week we themed it around World Book Day. Mrs McCarthy and our junior librarians organised the whole day with a variety of events. All children were encouraged to come to school and nursery dressed as a favourite character from a book, it was great to see so many children enjoying such a wide range of books.

We raised an incredible £362 from the school and a further £87 from the nursery giving a grand total of £449, thanks to all for their generosity.

Late on Thursday afternoon we welcomed an old friend back to our school, Mr Gerry Carr came along to play for our choir as they enter their final week of rehearsals for Glasgow Music Festival. Mr Carr was most impressed by our choir, their diction, their timing and their fabulous sense of fun. We look forward to The Music Festival on Monday 14^th March.

Friday morning brought great excitement for Primary 5, it was their coffee morning. Once again I am overwhelmed by the generosity of parents and families with their donations of home baking, raffle prizes and their support in attending this event. It was a very successful and enjoyable coffee morning. We raised £615.56 – a magnificent amount. Well done to all concerned, particularly Primary 5. An ENORMOUS thanks to our coffee morning volunteers who so kindly give of their own time to assist with the organization and running of the morning, we couldn’t do without you. It was great to see an increased number of parents & friends of the school there to help out.

 

A wee special word to Primary 7 before they set off on their adventures next week to Kilbowie Outdoor Centre in Oban. We wish you all a fabulous week and thanks in advance to the great number of staff and parents who have volunteered their own time to accompany our children.

 

Meanwhile, down in the nursery……here’s what’s been happening.

 

 

On Monday the children had the opportunity to watch ‘The Lion King’ in preparation for the big school show. After the viewing they discussed the names of the characters and the type of animals the characters are. Each group chose an animal to research and a letter went home to inform parents/carers of this superb homelink opportunity. The groups are researching the following animals. As always we thank you in advance for your support in this venture.

 

• Brilliant Bluebells – Lions
• Fantastic Foxgloves – Meerkats
• Happy Heathers – Hyenas
• Super Snowdrops – Baboons
• Terrific Thistles – Warthogs

 

Each group will collate their findings and present them as a group to the other children. As the children are exploring a range of technology throughout this topic these presentations will be recorded.

The transformation of the playroom got underway and this will continue next week.

 

In the Literacy area the children recalled the story of ‘The Lion King’ and had the opportunity to write some of the names of the characters from the story. Some of their hard work has been displayed on the writing wall. Children have also brought in their own Lion King toys for the display and other animals that can be found in the Jungle.

In numeracy they have exploring the Jungle jigsaws and used the internet to gather information and look for photographs of the animals in the wild from the story. They used the technology to record their findings which they placed on leaves for the display. They also listened to some Jungle songs and animal themed action rhymes on the SmartBoard. In construction the children are using the logs from outside to create Pride Rock and are role-playing with the animals.

 

In the art area the children made Lion faces using pasta to create a mane and a range of collage materials. These have been displayed to create Mufasa in the construction area and he is surrounded by the facts that the children discovered about lions. They have used the playdough to make different wild animals and role-played with the wild animal water toys. On Friday the children painted some of the main characters in the story for their display. Watch out for these next week.

 

In the snack area the children made a mindmap of Jungle food and prepared a Jungle feast creating Lion faces and snakes from fruit and vegetables. They discussed how they can change the vets into a Jungle and all their ideas can be found on a mindmap in the playroom. They started creating trees for the transformation which will also continue next week.

Outdoors they discussed how they could create a Jungle in the garden and what equipment they would need. By the end of the week they had created a Jungle den using some of the equipment they take to the forest. The new logs in the garden are sparking their imaginations as they use them to role-play the Jungle animals.

On Wednesday the 2nd Forest Kindergarten block came to an end with the children having a little graduation ceremony in the forest with their families. This was very well attended and a big thank you goes to all who gave up their time to attend. The children took great pleasure in showing their parents/carers the rules of the forest and showed off the new skills they had gained. They encouraged their parents to have a go at the night line where they were blindfolded and had to follow their child’s instructions round the rope course. There were a few good sports and you can see how they got on in the photographs. The children have all thoroughly enjoyed their forest experience and some were even a bit sad that it had come to an end. Please remember you can visit the site and the Greenlink at any time. The staff would like to thank the 3 adults who have accompanied the children to the site each week rain, hail or snow and have been a great asset to the children’s experience. I think they will miss it too!

 

On Thursday along with the school we celebrated World Book Day. The children dressed up as their favourite character from a book and throughout the day they listened to a variety of stories that they had brought in. They also got the chance to create part of the Big Book story that was making its way around the whole school. What great imaginations our early learners have. As always the children loved dressing up and danced to Jungle music and action games throughout the session. The staff got in on the act too and the final story of the day was 101 Dalmatians which brought our domestic animal topic to an end.

 

As always, thanks for taking the time to read our Blog, we hope you enjoyed it. If you did, why not leave a wee comment.

Mrs Shields