At Friday’s Mass our Mini Vinnies participated in a Commissioning Ceremony where they were welcomed into the St. Vincent de Paul society. The Mini Vinnies are the youngest members of the SVP organisation who try to treat others as they would like to be treated.  During the ceremony, they made a pledge to embody the values of kindness and service.  Well done to them all.

Our amazing Mini Vinnies group has come up with a brilliant idea to help children in our school who might not have a warm jacket this winter. They are asking everyone to take part in a special Winter Jacket Appeal – ‘Warm Hearts, Warm Coats’.

Here’s how it works:

👀 See – Look at your jackets at home. Is there one you’ve outgrown?

💭 Think – Could someone else use it to stay warm this winter?

🤲 Do – Bring it into school and help make a difference!

If your child got a new jacket during the October holiday, maybe they could bring their old one to school on Friday 24 October. We’ll keep the jackets safe in school so they’re ready for anyone who needs one.

This is a lovely way to live out the Mini Vinnies motto: See, Think, Do — seeing people in need, thinking about how we can help, and doing something kind.

Thank you for being generous and thoughtful. Every jacket will help someone feel warmer and happier this winter.

With love and thanks,

The Mini Vinnies 💙

The boys and girls of Primary 1 were invited to have a special blessing at church today. God bless them as they grow and learn.

Today our primary 6 Missio Champions received a blessing from Bishop Toal as part of their commissioning ceremony. We are very proud of them all.

Primary 1 have been busy exploring numbers to 5 this week in a variety of fun ways

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Dear Parents and Carers,

As part of our exciting expansion of play-based learning in the Primary 1 classroom, we’re looking to enrich our resources and create even more engaging experiences for our young learners.

We would be grateful for any donations of the following items:

Kitchen utensils (child-safe and suitable for imaginative play)

Baby care equipment (such as dolls, bottles, baths, blankets, etc.)

Jigsaws (age-appropriate)

Role play toys (props, or themed play items)

If you have any items at home that your child has outgrown, we’d love to give them a new life in our classroom. Donations can be handed in to the school office or brought in with your child.

Thank you for your continued support.

Last week we welcomed our new primary 1 pupils. They have all settled so well and have already learned lots of new routines. They have been enjoying lots of time with their buddies.

Primary 1 have been so busy this month and have achieved lots of their learning targets.

In Literacy we have continued to learn lots of new initial alphabet sounds and common words. We have been learning the strategies that we can use to help us to learn tricky words such as using our phonetic knowledge or spotting words hiding inside our words (e.g. his has is hiding inside). We have now learned 14 new sounds and are beginning to use our knowledge of these sounds to build words independently on our magnetic boards. Please test us on some words that contain our sounds each week whilst we do our homework. This will help us to read and write!

We have also been trying very hard to begin to write simple sentences all by ourselves on our whiteboards. Mrs Cook came into our class to visit us and she saw how well we wrote a sentence all about the cheeky pancake from our reading book. Charlie Checker helps us to remember our core writing targets such as finger spaces, big Captain Capital letters, and full stops at the end of our sentences. We have also been learning about instructions within our writing in primary 1. We made our own jam sandwiches then put instructions into the correct order so we could help others to make them too.

In Maths we have been working on numbers to 10. We have been ordering the numbers, finding missing numbers and learning the names of the numbers to 10. We have also been learning about shape. We know lots of 2d shapes and can discuss their properties. Also, we have learned the names of lots of 3d objects such as cube, cuboid, cone, cylinder and sphere.

We have been developing our emotional literacy this month by investigating a range of emotions that we feel each day. We made our own Mood Monsters for our class. We like to have regular check-ins each day to say how we feel and why.

This has been a busy month within R.M.E. We have been learning that November is a very special month for remembering all the people who have died. We prayed for the people we know who have gone to Heaven. We also remembered the soldiers who died in war during Remembrance Day.

As our Nativity is quicky approaching we spent time learning about the story of the very first Christmas. We love the story so much and have enjoyed passing our Travelling Nativity Story around each of our houses. This represents the long journey that Mary and Joseph made as they travelled from Nazareth to Bethlehem.

This month we celebrated St.Andrew’s Day in school. Primary 1 learned the song ‘Three Craws’ and performed it in front of an audience at our school assembly. We did so well. We loved watching the older children perform too! This was great practice for our upcoming Nativity show.

This month we are looking forward to so many things. We have a class Elf called Snowball who we can’t wait to find each morning. We have our Nativity show next week and we are so excited to show off our amazing acting, singing and dancing. Please remember to buy your tickets while they are still available. In December we also have our Christmas party and our Christmas lunch. Remember to check X for lots of photos of our important events.

We have had a very busy September in primary 1. We are becoming more independent at the same time as learning lots of new skills. We are learning more about the our class routines and rules and are trying hard to follow these. We helped Mrs Simpson to create our class charter and we try so hard to follow these four important rules:

• Work hard
• Gentle hands
• Keep our classroom tidy
• Listen to adults when they are speaking

We love the praise and rewards that we receive if we follow these rules. We especially love Class Dojo, Star of the Week and when we receive head teacher certificates and stickers.

In literacy we have been continuing our active literacy programme and already know how to read and write s  a  t  p  i  and n. We have been listening to jolly phonics songs to help us to learn our sounds. You can access these on YouTube by searching for ‘jolly phonics songs in order’. We can now build lots of words using our new sounds, and we practise this on the magnetic board in school. Our grown ups could help us practise reading and writing lots of simple words at home too (e.g. sat, pan, tip, sit, pit).

We have now learned 10 new common words. Mrs Simpson sends these common words home every week in our homework pack. We should keep all our words in a little tub at home and practise them every single day. This will help us learn them well and enable us to read and write them easily.

We have already begun to develop our writing skills in primary 1. We know that Charlie Checker is always there to make sure that we are meeting our core writing targets;

• Capital letters
• Full stops
• Finger spaces
• Writing on the line

We have been working hard on overwriting and underwriting. Mrs Simpson is so proud and has picked Star Writers each week.

In maths we have been learning numbers to 6. We are beginning to show that we understand that numbers represent quantities. We are learning to put numbers into the correct order and to find missing numbers. We love subitising. This is when we can recognise the number of objects in a group without counting. We love watching Jack Hartmann on Youtube. Please ask us to show you how well we can subitise at home. We are working hard on number formation. We try to remember to make our numbers point in the correct direction and not visit Back to Front Land.

Our class topic is Julia Donaldson. Julia Donaldson is a famous children’s book author who has written lots of super stories including The Gruffalo, The Smartest Giant in Town, Monkey Puzzle and A Squash and a Squeeze. We focus on one book per week and lots of our learning is related each story. We recently made our own fairground horses based on the book Sugarlump and the Unicorn.  We also completed a range of Gruffalo themed challenges including creating a new home for the Gruffalo.  As Halloween approaches we will look at the story Room on the Broom and complete lots of spooky activities.

In R.M.E we have been learning about belonging. We know that we belong to our families, and we enjoyed learning about all the other ways we belong. We made a Tree of Belonging for our class display and we thought about all the people in our school who make us feel like we belong. We made our primary 7 buddies thank you cards for making us feel so safe and loved in our new school. We know that we belong to God and that we should all look after each other. We try to show our friends kindness and love so that they feel like they belong.

We are looking forward to another exciting month in Primary 1. We are so excited to be entering into October because we know this is an Autumn month and ends with Halloween. We can’t wait for our school disco and all the Halloween related learning that we will experience.

Please keep checking X for regular updates from primary 1.