Those people lucky enough to attend our Nursery Christmas Show will recognise my title – this has become the latest favourite phrase amongst all in school.

This was a truly magical week. Beginning on Monday with our upper school dress rehearsals followed by our performances on Tuesday. A what fabulous performances they were. A HUGE congratulations to all P4, P5,P6 & P7 pupils and staff who brought the true meaning of Christmas in an upbeat, light-hearted, musical delight. Thanks to all who participated and all who came along to see, hear and dance along at the shows. Fr Millar gave us a great compliment – he said in 35 years of attending Christmas concerts this was the best he had ever attended : )

Thanks also to all parents who took the time to ensure the children were safely escorted to and from the concert on Tuesday evening, almost 95% of our upper school attended in the evening demonstrating the great commitment they have to our school. Thanks also to all of the staff who managed to come along, upper school, lower school, nursery and support staff. What a fabulous team we have.

On that note, Wednesday saw the class teacher interviews take place. I am delighted to tell you Mrs Leanne Tominey and Mrs Nicola McLaughlan were our successful candidates. Congratulations to them both, they interviewed extremely well and are both excellent practitioners.

Mrs McLaughlan will overtake P6b from January 2014 whilst Mrs Tominey will overtake P2c as from this Monday. On Monday we welcome Mrs Keenan back from maternity leave as nursery teacher. From January Mrs Keenan will job share in the nursery with Miss Stephanie Love (currently P6b), Miss Love will work in nursery Thursday and Friday each week. The first part of the week Miss Love will overtake the vacancy left by Mrs McLaughlan in P5b, job sharing with Mrs Murphy. Mrs Carr will overtake Mrs Laird’s maternity leave but will remain in P2a, this minimises any disruption to teaching and learning for our children.

Thursday brought our nursery dress rehearsals with Friday being the shows. Both shows were truly memorable, our nursery children performed with gusto and enthusiasm and were ably assisted by our Kiddie Choir, well dome to everyone in our nursery young and not so young for a fantastic show. Congratulations and thanks also to P6 buddies who were a tremendous help both behind scene and on stage. Thanks also to P5 pupils for assisting with decor.

Throughout all of our 3 shows our support staff have worked tirelessly to ensure every child had an appropriate costume, our stage had a fabulous backdrop and all were in the right place at the right time. We are truly blessed with our support staff, I am indebted to them.

Whilst all of this is on-going we have not forgotten the importance of our children having opportunity to spiritually prepare for Christmas. Throughout last week and this coming week our upper school children have all celebrated the sacrament of Reconciliation. My thanks to Fr. Millar and Canon O’Mahoney for taking the time to come to school to ensure all have this opportunity.

This coming week will be a busy lead up to Christmas:

Monday – Comfy Monday – our Advent Appeal in aid of Philippians & Upper school confessions

Tuesday – Aladdin Pantomime in the morning followed by party afternoon – Children should come to school dressed in party clothes on Tuesday morning

Wednesday – Advent Mass at 8.15am – in drama room – all welcome. In the evening our Choir will perform alongside Diocesan Choir at the annual carol Concert in Cathedral Church – please come along. Tickets (priced at £4 with money going to charity) are available from school office or at the door on the evening.

Thursday – A wee quiet day….aaaaaaah HOPEFULLY

Friday – Jack and The Beanstalk Pantomime. School closes at 2.30pm

Reports from the nursery this week from Mrs Margaret Mary Murphy…

What a fantastic week the children have had at nursery culminating in an excellent performance of Ralph the Reindeer.

Through the preparations for the show there has been a great deal of learning going on.

In the literacy area the children have had the chance to explore real and imaginary situations and characters through the story of Ralph and have explored different ways of recording their ideas and information.

In the numeracy area they have investigated different objects and shapes and used their creative imaginations to make the presents and some props for the show.

Over in the performance area in the far corner of the nursery there is a display of the children’s work and some evidence showing how Ralph was brought to life. Please feel free to wander round and see all the great work the children have produced.

Through expressive arts the children have experienced the energy and excitement in presenting and participating in a performance. They have enjoyed singing and playing along to music of different styles using an assortment of musical instruments.

Health and Wellbeing has also been a huge part of the learning. The children have discussed how to keep their bodies healthy and how not to spread germs. They all agreed that they don’t want to catch a cold like Rudolph especially at Christmas!

Finally a huge thanks to all of the talented children in our nursery who took part in the show. On the day of the show a little Elf called JJ visited them and sprinkled magic dust to help them perform. Shh! it was just glitter and it worked a treat. They all had a fantastic experience and the smiles on their faces said it all! The reaction of the audience inspired them and made their performance a huge success. Feedback from parents/carers has all been extremely positive.

Here are a few of the comments received.

“How did they remember their lines at that age” “Excellent thought last years was brilliant but that topped it” “How did you get them to do the actions, I can’t believe my son would have the confidence to say his lines”

“Absolutely blown away thought she would not do anything and she loved it and smiled all the way through” “He wants to do it all over again” “Loved it best one I have ever seen” “The costumes were that good it took me ages to spot my son”

“She was the cutest snowman I have ever seen”

A reminder that Monday is Comfy Monday and everyone can come to nursery wearing their pyjamas and they can bring a teddy bear with them if they want to.

Magic Daze will entertain the children on Tuesday.

Thursday is the nursery Christmas party. Please note this is a normal session for everyone.

Friday is our ‘deep clean’ day, although Nursery is open for those who require children to come along, where possible it would be a great help if children could remain at home.

The nursery staff would all like to take this opportunity to thank all parents and carers for their support this year and hope everyone has a Happy Christmas and a Peaceful New Year. See you all in 2014!

May I take this opportunity to wish everyone in our school community a Happy and Holy Christmas and a prosperous New Year ahead.

Blog will return in the New Year.

Mrs Shields

Thank you to all who attended our Christmas Concert on Tuesday evening.  We were thoroughly entertained by our fabulous fours and fives and our super sixes and sevens as they retold the story of Christmas from the point of view of the ‘Witnesses’ at the event!  Thanks to all members of staff for their efforts in preparing our children and costumes so well, however, the biggest thank you goes to our talented children.  Well done everyone!  Please leave us a comment. I’m sure you’ll agree the photos are wonderful although we’re not too sure about the dancing of some of the guests!

Our week has been dominated by our wonderful Infant Nativity ‘It’s a Nativity’.  A spectacular production involving every one of our 204 infant children. A huge thanks, once again to all staff, parents and children involved. It was a incredible amount of work but so worthwhile. We look forward this week to our Upper School Production and our Nursery Show.

Monday and Tuesday of this week our P3 & P4 parents were treated to an evening of Spiritual Reflection. Our grateful thanks to Fr. Millar for taking the time to prepare and present these two insightful evenings. Thanks also to the parents who took the time to come along, both meetings were very well attended.

On Monday all parents received their children’s work folders home giving everyone an opportunity to look over all the children’s work to date. I trust this was a suitable time to peruse the work. Friday saw all Interim Reports issued with parental feedback sheets, please endeavour to provide feedback as your views are essential to our process of self-evaluation.

Wednesday morning marked our first Advent Mass of this year, the Mass was well attended, although there is still room for more. Please try to come along on Wednesday mornings to prepare with your children for the Great Feast of Christmas. Mass begins at 8.15am and is usually finished by 8.35am ( a record for Fr. Millar!)

Thursday blew in, literally! Our children braved the elements to come along to school to learn….or perhaps it was the lure of Christmas dinner!

Our Christmas dinner was lovely, lively, noisy and delicious. Thanks to our catering staff for providing such a  delicious lunch. Thanks also to our Firpark friends for accommodating our early start.

Friday dawned calmer and quieter. This was a very special day for our school, our Patronal Feast Day. We enjoyed a beautiful Mass in our school hall and I was delighted to see so many of our parents, carers and friends of our school come along to celebrate with us. This Feast is one of the few occasions we actually get to sing all 4 verses of our school anthem. Congratulations to Primary 2 who led the liturgy so eloquently.

Friday after school we welcomed our 7 candidates for class teacher posts. We currently have 2 class teacher vacancies advertised and will know the outcome of this by next Wednesday. Good luck to all concerned.

Last week I was delighted to appoint Mrs Susan Imray in our nursery to the post of Acting Senior Early Years Worker. We look forward to Susan leading our nursery in continued excellence. This appointment means Lorna McFadden, temporary Early Years Worker will remain with us for the rest of the year. – this is more good news for our nursery.

Speaking of which, what have they been up to this week????

With Christmas racing towards us the children have been involved in lots of Christmas activities throughout the playroom.

•    In the writing area the children have started to write their letters to Santa, a variety of these are displayed in the cloakroom.

•    In the maths area they have been looking at different Winter and Christmas shapes.

•    In the art area they have been busy making a collage of Santa for the cloakroom display. They used different shapes to bring Santa to life. He will be proudly displayed by the children for all to see next week. They have also wrapped and decorated the presents for Santa’s sleigh for the Christmas show and they have started to make their own reindeers. Watch out for these coming home soon!

•    On Tuesday great fun was had by all when we dusted off the Christmas decorations and the children decorated the tree all by themselves please take a moment to look at how well they did. {Tree next to the smartboard)

•    Over the course of Tuesday and Wednesday the children were part of the audience for the infant nativity. It was a great opportunity to see other children perform as they have been busy preparing for their own Christmas show. It also gave them the chance to see some of their friends who are now in Primary 1.

•    On Thursday the Mini Movers graduation took place and it gave the children the opportunity to show off all the skills and knowledge that they had been learning over the past 6 weeks. Although the weather was horrendous lots of parents/carers turned up to see what it was all about. The children showed off their listening skills, ball skills and co-ordination skills with Nicky the coach. They then got to show off all the healthy body and healthy eating they had been learning about with Megan. Parents/carers commented about how impressed they were with the skills and information the children had learned. All staff and coaches agreed that the progress they had made stood out a mile. To bring the programme to a close the children were all given a backpack, some information leaflets, a water bottle and a certificate. Christmas came early! A whole display of the last 6 weeks can be seen as you enter the playroom. The coaches loved the display of their hard work so much that they took a picture of the display to show their colleagues.

•    Preparation continues for the Christmas show. If you have been asked to bring anything in please make sure it is in for Tuesday at the latest.

Penultimate Blog of the year, if you haven’t yet left a comment, I encourage you to do so.

Thanks for taking the time to read my Blog.

Mrs Shields

On Wednesday, we were treated to 2 wonderful performances from our Infant pupils.  All the children from Primaries 1, 2 and 3 shared their Nativity play with us.  We’re sure you’ll agree, the children were fantastic performers.  Please feel free to leave a comment for our children.  Thanks go to all the Infant Department teachers, our Support Staff and Mrs Mary (Spielberg) Mullen for their hard work in preparing the children for this spectacular event!

I’ll begin our week at the end. Saturday November 30th we are delighted to share Mrs Laird’s joy.

Mrs Laird (P2c) gave birth to a beautiful baby boy last night. He is here before his expected time of arrival (11 weeks early) but has weighed in at 2lb 7oz and is doing well. Mrs Laird is also doing well. Please keep Mr & Mrs Laird, their family and in particular their lovely new arrival, in your thoughts and prayers. We extend our congratulations to them all and wish Mrs & baby Laird continued good health.

This being National Book Week our children and staff have been very involved with library and additional reading activities. Our week began with Miss Phee and representatives from each stage making a visit to Motherwell Library to review a variety of books. This involved our children being interviewed by representatives from The Big Issue, the children gave their views on a variety of literature. The presenation was to form a double page spread in The Big Issue, however, those involved were so impressed by our children they have asked for it to be extended to a 4 page spread. I will let you know when the relevant Issue goes to press. Well done to our children and Miss Phee. This week Miss Phee also announced the winners of our Get Caught Reading Initiative. Unfortunately I missed this assembly so cannot provide the names of the winners: (

Tuesday of this week we all danced and sang our way through the evening at our Touch of Tartan Discos. Great fun was had by all. Once again I have to commend our children and their exemplary behaviour. A huge thanks also  to our fabulous fundraisers who provided this disco free of charge for every child in our school. Thanks also to Mr Liam Benham for his magical DJ skills.

Coupled with our disco was our Bag 2 School Initiative. Our ECO committee happily assisted bringing bags from the foyer to the AV room and then onto the van. We had a super response to this and we await our total raised. Watch this space for further info.

If you (like me) have found even more clothing with which to dispense save it up for May 2014 our next Bag 2 School.

Wednesday our weekly Hymn Practice had a very different focus. We were delighted, and honoured to welcome Ms Ann Boyle to our school. Ms Boyle spoke to the children about the miracle of Fatima, a truly inspirational story. Our children were mesmorised by Ms Boyle’s delivery of this wonderful happening and were equally most impressed by the statue of Mary being carried through our hall. Mass was held at 10am in O.L.G.A Cathedral Church yesterday at 10am as part of A Day for Mary celebrations. Thanks to all who managed to go along and support this great event in our church.

On Friday we celebrated a beautiful Mass, led by Primary Three, in honour of our Patron Saint – Andrew. Our thanks to Fr. Millar and Deacon Tom for concelebrating this Mass in our school. At this Mass our P3 & P4 sacramental children all received a beautiful gift of a Children’s Gospel Stories book (a super way to end National Book Week). Our thanks to Fr. Millar for distributing these books and to the generosity of some ‘friends’ of our school who financed this most kind gesture. We strive to encourage our children to listen to and read about the Word of God on a daily basis; these beautiful gifts will further promote our school aim of spreading Gospel values.

Thursday and Friday passed in a haze of singing, dancing and dramatic performances as the nursery, the infants, the upper school and Firpark Primary all prepare for our forthcoming Christmas Nativities and Shows. I’m sure by mid- December we will know the words of every song being sung in our campus. This is a lovely time of year in school where we take time to reflect and prepare for the great feast of Christmas.

Mass will be held in our school library each Wednesday throughout Advent at 8.15am Please come along with your children to join them in this important time of preparation.

Monday and Tuesday of this week Fr. Millar has arranged Parental meetings for P3 parents – Monday and P4 parents – Tuesday. Both meetings will begin at 7pm and end at 8pm. Please endeavour to come along to these evenings and, where possible, let’s keep this to adults only.

Whislt all of this is ongoing in the school our nursery friends are very busy with their own learning and preparing, here’s what’s been happening……
Preparations for the Christmas show are ongoing.

•    In the maths area the children looked at winter pictures and discussed how many different shapes they could see in the pictures. They then made pictures from different sized shapes. This sparked their Christmas imaginations and in response to this the activity will continue next week. Watch out for some Fab Christmas shaped pictures.

•    In the writing area the children were busy telling their own stories about  Ralph the Reindeer. These can be seen on display in the writing area. They are busy learning about characters from different events and stories.

•    Over in the art area the children were involved in making flags for our St Andrew’s day shindig. They discussed the shape and the colours in the flag. They also designed their own tartan pictures using 3 different colours of paint.

•    In the snack area the children chose what they would like to have for snack and helped to order their requests from Asda.

•    On Thursday the Mini Movers programme continued both inside and outside with the children revisiting all the skills and information they have learned in the past few weeks. The graduation for this programme will take place on Thursday 5th December. All welcome.

•    We ended the week with a St Andrew’s day Shindig. The children all turned out with various items of tartan and see you Jimmy bunnets! They  listened to Scottish stories, Scottish music, played Scottish musical bumps  and tasted some lovely haggis, good auld plain bread and some lovely shortbread! Mrs Loose showed off her Scottish dancing skills and taught the children how to do the Highland Fling. They then congoed round the room to the Wee Kirkcudbright Centipede. A great time was had by all!

Thanks for reading, remarkably I got a comment last week. Woo Hoo. It’s good to know someone is taking the time to log in and read.

Mrs Shields

What an incredibly, successful week. On Tuesday we hosted our inaugural Bingo evening, it was extremely well attended and such a fun evening. A HUGE thanks to all who came along to support us. The success of this evening is due to the incredible hard work and commitment of our Wonderful Fundraisers, they worked tirelessly to ensure there were fantastic prizes and everyone on the evening had everything they needed. Absolutely brilliant. They raised £1540.00 – amazing. Thank you seems inadequate, I cannot tell you how fortunate we are to have such parental/family support, it is a big part of what makes our school an excellent school and a pleasure and a privilege to be a part of. I am honoured to be head teacher, I love it. Thanks so much to you all.

Tuesday morning our P5b class along accompanied by both Mrs McLaughlan and Mrs Murphy (and Mrs Findlay) headed off to Wellington Church in Glasgow to participate in a Cantata dedicated to Saint Columba. This was a super learning experience for our children, a unique way to learn about the history of our church and Scottish saints. As always, our children behaved impeccably and were a credit to themselves, their class and our school. Thanks to all who took part and to the staff and pupils for taking time to learn all of the parts of the cantata. Yet another reason to be so very proud of our school.

On Thursday we took delivery of a brand new crib to house our beautiful new nativity figures. Thanks to Mr Thomas Mellon for taking time to construct our crib – and to his dad for taking the time to share his wonderful carpentry skills with our school and building us such a lovely crib.

We owe huge thanks also to our school’s special friend who so kindly donated the exquisite nativity figures, they are stunning. This person is an immense support to our school in so many different ways but wishes to remain anonymous. I am truly humbles that someone shows such a keen interest in our children’s educational, spiritual and emotional development. Thank You.

Fr. Millar will bless our figures at our forthcoming Feast Day Mass on Friday 6th December at 11.15am in our school. It would be lovely for as many parents/carers to join us for this special occasion.

Prior to this I invite you to join us for our St. Andrew’s Day Mass, celebrating our Patron Saint. I offer my apologies in advance, as I cannot be there at our St. Andrew’s Day Mass due to a Head Teacher’s meeting.

On a sad note, as a school we were very sorry to learn of the death of the father Mr Ian Bulloch, our janitor. Mr Bulloch (senior) was cremated on Saturday, it was a beautiful service and on behalf of everyone from both schools I extended our heartfelt sympathy and our condolences. Please remember Ian, his mum, sisters and the extended family in your thoughts and prayers.

At long last on Friday we managed to find the time to re-establish our ‘baby choir’…Oops sorry.

It came to our attention our younger singers were not too keen on the name ‘baby choir’ so, as always listening to our pupils we asked them for an alternative. Thanks to Katie Hendry, one of our P3 singers who provided us with a wonderful new title…The Kiddie Choir. Brilliant.

The Kiddie Choir will sing alongside the nursery children supporting them at their Christmas Show. Our first rehearsal on Friday was great fun; it’s so good to find such talent in our younger children. Apologies to those children in P2 & P3 who did not manage to join the choir this session, we had to limit the numbers so selected 8 names, at random, from each class. This was the fairest way to select.

On Friday morning I was delighted to welcome Ms Beth Blue to our school. Beth is going to be our Community Learning Development Parent Support Worker. Beth and I had a great chat about how best to utilise her many skills in our school. More information coming soon. I have invited Beth along to our first curricular evening in the New Year to meet with the staff and to our P4 coffee Morning in January to say hello to the parents. I look forward to working with Beth in our school and in the local communities.

Friday was indeed a ‘blue’ day. Thanks to Mrs Loose for organising all of our anti-bullying workshops and our non-uniform day on Friday. Sadly, Bullying is a part of every school, we do our very best to ensure we highlight issues within school. We endeavour to deal with all incidents sooner rather than later and will continue to be pro-active in our approach.

Meanwhile……….What’s been happening down in the nursery…..
A 4 day week but still a busy week in nursery with lots of singing and preparation going on for the Christmas show.

•    In the writing area the children have been exploring the lightbox. They have been carefully tracing the outline of Ralph the reindeer and the results have been fantastic. The concentration on their faces has been priceless. Over the last few weeks the emphasis in the writing area has been to explore interesting materials for writing and different ways of recording the children’s ideas and experiences. They have used different types of technology to do this such as the smartboard, cameras, recording boards and the lightbox.

•    Over in the maths area the emphasis continued on 2D shapes and the patterns that could be made with them.

•    In the art area the children painted their very own 2D shapes and made pictures using different shapes. They also explored shapes in the sand and in the water.

•    On Wednesday Douglas from Hi 5 for fruit provided the children with a vegetable buffet. He challenged them to make a vegetable person from a variety of vegetables. They discussed the names of all the vegetables and then they all got the chance to eat their very own creations. Some children tasted vegetables that they hadn’t tasted before so Douglas was very pleased with the outcome.

•    On Thursday the Mini Movers programme continued with the children discovering what food gives them energy and what food makes them big and strong. Outside their ball skills and listening skills are improving each week. This week the game was all based on the film Toy Story which the children could relate to.
•    This has been a great learning experience and the coaches will be missed by all when it comes to an end. The graduation for the Mini Movers takes place on 5th of December. Each parent/carer should have received notification of this by now.

Thanks to Mrs Margaret Mary Murphy for taking the time to keep us so well informed about nursery life.

Thanks to you all for reading my blog.

Mrs Shields

Here we are enjoying the new enhancements to our yard.  Huge thanks to Miss Phee for organising these additions and thanks to the Fundraisers for donating over £3000 to fund Miss Phee’s project.

Here are some photos of the fabulous Primary 4 Assembly about the Vikings.  We certainly learned a lot from Primary 4.  Please leave them a comment or review on their excellent Assembly.

Coming this week for the first time ever…..Our Fundraisers BINGO Evening Tuesday 19^th November at 7pm. Tickets £1 from school office or pay at the door.

Refreshments provided and a whole array of fantastic prizes. Please come along, and bring a friend or two or three…

This week in school Monday was an incredibly exciting day as we watched our new permanent basketball stands and playground markings be completed in our yard. These new additions are a wonderful enhancement to our playground and allow all of our children to broaden their play experience and enjoy new challenges. Sincere thanks to Miss Lesley Phee, Principal Teacher who has successfully taken this project from start to finish. The basketball stands and playground marking selected were at the request of our children. A huge thanks also to our Fundraisers without whom we could not have financed this project. The total cost for our yard equipment is £3340. This seems an awful lot of money, however when you consider the number of children who day and daily enjoy playing with it, it is money well spent. Soon the seagulls will be complaining as there are no scraps to eat after playtime, our children now spend most of their time playing instead of eating – another health benefit!

Tuesday and Wednesday our children continued to enjoy learning in a whole variety of ways. As parents you will no doubt have begun to recognise the sounds of Christmas coming from our school. Our nursery, our infants and our upper school have all begun rehearsals for forthcoming Christmas Shows. Each of them is  very different and each promises to be fabulous fun, whilst keeping the true meaning of Christmas throughout.

All of our school children participated in Knights of Saint Columba Competition ‘Keep Christ in Christmas’. All children were asked to design an A4 drawing/painting illustrating the true meaning of Christmas. Many of these designs were excellent. Prior to the designs being collected I selected three to become our school Christmas Cards this year. This was a very difficult decision as I was spoiled for choice. Well done to everyone for the super effort. I won’t say who the Christmas Card design winners are as the children have not yet been informed. (I like them to be first to know)

Thursday evening our school hosted an In-Service for staff from across Lanarkshire. Fr. Stephen Reilly, in his capacity as RE Advisor asked if we could host this prestigious event. It was a very popular event with over 120 staff in attendance. I am, once again, incredibly grateful to our own staff who led by example and gave so willingly of their own time to continue to build on their knowledge and skills of how best to support our children in their spiritual development. Fr. Stephen remarked on the great number of our own staff who were in attendance.

Sadly, for Lanarkshire, Fr. Stephen has resigned his post of RE Advisor. Fr. Stephen has been the driving force behind all of our developmental work on This is Our Faith, he has led us through this transient time of RE Programme Work. Throughout all of this Fr. Stephen has endeavoured to encourage all staff to actively participate in all developments ensuring we feel ownership of our new programme. He has been an inspirational RE Advisor and a fantastic help to all. His wisdom and guidance will be sadly missed. However, I am sure the parishioners of St. Bernadette’s will be delighted he will have more time to devote to his beloved parish.

Thursday evening also marked a very important event in Lanarkshire where we celebrated a beautiful Mass of Thanksgiving to Bishop Emeritus Joseph Devine. Bishop Devine has been a stalwart supporter of our school throughout his 30 years here in North Lanarkshire. We were delighted and honoured to be asked to bring some of our P7 pupils along to lead the Procession of The Gifts. Well done to our P7 girls who volunteered for this special event:

Niah Welsh

Ciara Scullion

Caitlin O’Neil

Collette O’Neil

Alicia Brown

Weronika Kahl

Morgan Brown

Thanks also to our children who served so reverently on the altar:

Robbie Whitfield

Joey Leach

Robyn Leach (now S1 on OLHS)

Daniel inyang

Liam Knox

Keara Watson

We are very proud of the contributions our children make to parish life.

Our week ended on a magnificent note with P4 entertaining us all and educating us in the life of the Vikings. P4 assembly was absolutely outstanding. The children so obviously enjoyed learning all about the Vikings and their knowledge was immense. It was a truly comical learning experience. It makes me smile just thinking about it. I loved it.

A huge thanks to the talented P4 children who sang so well, who acted so professionally and who so proudly shared their knowledge with the audience. A fantastic example of a deep learning experience. A big thanks to Mrs. McCoy and Mrs. Gillies who scripted the show, sourced the music and taught the children with such gusto and delight, absolutely brilliant. We are so blessed to have such creative staff and such positive thinking children who are open to all aspects of learning. Thanks also to our support staff who work so hard behind the scenes with costumes and props. Thanks also to you, as parents, who are so very supportive of all we do in our school. We could not be as successful without you.

Meanwhile………Our littlest people have been very busy down in the nursery, here’s what’s been happening:

• In nursery this week the children have been SHAPING their lives in more ways than one.
• • In the maths area they have been concentrating on 2d shapes this culminated in a shape treasure hunt/survey within the nursery. The children had pictures of 2d shapes on their clipboards and they got busy finding the shapes and when they found them they had then to place them in the correct shape basket in the maths corner. They had great fun finding squares, triangles, circles and rectangles. The results showed that there are more rectangular shapes than any other in the playroom. This survey will continue next week outside.
  • In the art area they made shapes from playdough following the pictures on their new playdough mats and they got the chance to create shape pictures using potato printing.
  • In the snack area they made delicious homemade soup and this was accompanied by square, rectangular and triangular toast. The triangular toast was a request made by one of the children!
  • In the writing area the children told stories using the puppets and they also got the chance to write their stories in their own books which can be seen on the wall of the cosy library corner in the playroom.
  • Mini movers continued with the emphasis this week on how to protect our bodies when it is sunny and when we are on holiday. There is a lot of learning going on throughout this programme all about our bodies and the importance of keeping them healthy through fun exercise and healthy eating. One child recalled this week that “your heart pumps your blood round your body”
  • The children have started preparing for the Christmas show. Letters have been issued requesting help with some of the costumes.

As always, thanks for reading this Blog, any comments always welcome.

Mrs Shields

This has been a great week in school, we have benefitted from 19 S4 students from Our Lady’s High School for work experience. 14 of the pupils were placed in classes with 5 being gamefully employed in the nursery. All 19 of the students were excellent role models for our pupils, they behaved impeccably and worked really hard throughout the week engaging fully with their classes and groups. It was lovely to welcome back 17 of our former pupils who have continued on their educational journey with a positive attitude to learning and a super work ethos. Having an excellent start to their education has obviously been a tremendous influence!!!

Tuesday of this week our P7 pupils all enjoyed their first taste of Our Lady’s High School, this was a most successful venture with all of our pupils returning to school looking forward to the challenge ahead in high school. Meanwhile our 4 Taylor High future students continue to enjoy their weekly visits to high school.

Wednesday evening our fabulous Fundraisers held their second meeting of the year, we continue to say a huge thanks to all who assist in our school. Our parental partnership is sector leading and has a huge impact on our children’s learning.

SAVE THE DATE: Next Fundraisers venture: Tuesday 19th November BINGO evening, come along and join in the fun. Tickets cost £1 and refreshments are included. We are looking for donations of raffle prizes – If you can help please hand in donations to the school office. You can do this as you come to buy your bingo tickets!!

BAG 2 SCHOOL….Coming Soon. Wednesday 27th November is our bi-annual Bag 2 School collection. Time to clear out all the old clothing, bags, shoes, textiles, bedding etc etc. Bags can be delivered throughout the week beginning 25th November and/or throughout school disco scheduled for Tuesday 26th November. Another FREE event organised by our Fabulous Fundraisers.

Bag 2 School bags will be issued on Monday 11th November (apologies to Fundraisers I promised to do this Last Wednesday and forgot : (     The problem with having an aging HT.

The last two days of the week saw P7 pupils all enjoy a workshop on WWII at Motherwell Heritage Centre. This was an excellent culmination of a most popular and successful learning experience. Thanks to parent helpers who volunteered to accompany our children and staff on the journey.

This Monday we look forward to welcoming back Mrs Campbell, Mrs Murphy and Mrs Blaney.

Now….What’s happening down in the nursery…….here’s Mrs Murphy’s story this week:
We were joined this week by 5 girls from Our lady’s High school for their work experience programme. They were a valuable asset to the busy week we had and the children will no doubt miss them as will the staff for their ICT skills.

This week in nursery we celebrated Guy Fawkes night with a BANG!

•    The children made a GUY from old clothes which they stuffed with newspaper and made his face out of a balloon. They put him in a wheelbarrow, made a “penny for the guy” sign and went out and about in the local community. They had a fantastic experience and loved every minute of it. Outside this week the children have been exploring our new fort and our new boat.
•    In the Maths area the children are learning all about 2D shapes. They made firework pictures using squares, circles, rectangles and triangles. Some of these pictures can be seen on the maths wall.
•    In the science area an experiment was carried out using small blue crystals, the children slowly added water to the crystals and immediately they started to expand. The children left them overnight and when they checked them the next day they had grown even more. They explored them by smelling, touching squeezing and bouncing them. The children spent a long time at this activity and some of the language they used to describe their findings will be placed on the science wall this week. Hours of endless fun a must for every child’s stocking this Christmas!
•    The sensory area has had a makeover and the children are having fun exploring all things new.
•    The Farmer’s Shop has also had a complete makeover as it has been turned into a cafe and is now using all the produce from the farmers shop in its meals. The children made cakes along with some of the girls from the high school to sell in the shop. Look out for the menu coming soon.
•    Over in the art area the children made sparklers and firework pictures using the sponge stampers.
•    In the writing area the children were busy using all things related to ICT. They drew pictures on the smart board of fireworks and printed them off. They used the camera to take pictures of what their friends were drawing.
•    The Mini Movers programme continued with the children learning all about healthy heart and lungs.

As always any comments, thoughts, ideas on any aspect of our school please let me know, feel free to leave a comment on my weekly blog. Thanks for reading.

Mrs Shields