Congratulations to 15 of our Primary 4 pupils who celebrated their First Holy Communion on Saturday morning. I was immensely proud of the way in which our pupils prepared and then participated so respectfully and prayerfully in the celebration of faith. My thanks go to Mrs Boyd, their class teacher, who supported them whole heartedly and ensured they were very well prepared for their big day. Grateful thanks also go to Father Dornan for his spiritual guidance and support and to the parishioners of St. Cuthbert’s for preparing the church so beautifully and praying for our boys and girls. My thanks to many members of staff, both teaching and support, who assisted our pupils in the preparation of their sacrament and who also freely gave of their time to celebrate with them on Saturday morning.
On Thursday, many of our pupils put their faith into action as they visited the Memories Tearoom in Burnbank to celebrate their First Birthday! The children sang, danced and entertained the members with great enthusiasm. Some of our pupils returned with unexpected skills – they can do the slosh! We are very proud to support the Memories Tearoom and look forward to further visits in the coming weeks.
In the classes this week ..
Subtraction continues to be a focus in P1 this week learning to take away all or zero. They wrote super descriptive stories about their Pet Birds. In Spanish they have also been learning how to talk about the weather.
P1/2 have been focusing on Social Studies this week with their topic Katie Morag. They completed maps of the Isle of Struay and wrote descriptions of Katie Morag. In Health and Wellbeing they have been discussing sadness and feeling lonely. They were able to identify people and activities that cheer them up.
P2/3 have been introduced to their final study all about The Vikings. They know where they came from and why they travelled to England. In numeracy the focus has been multiplication. P3 have been learning about sentence structure in Literacy and P2 have been using conjunctions.
P4 worked hard all week preparing for their big day. They also used the Alice in wonderland story to help with settings in story writing. They have created seasonality charts for sorting food and I know that they are planning a visit this week to the supermarket to purchase some seasonal produce.
P5 have tackled fractions and decimals this week. They have also extended their knowledge of the Scottish Parliament and the concept of devolved power. Within the class they had a debate about whether classrooms should have desks or not.
P6 have begun Literature Circles using War Horse. They created posters for their Science topic and have been learning about keys on maps. They participated in the SJOLC Rugby Festival on Thursday morning and enjoyed getting to know future classmates in this way.
P7 have been very busy in numeracy looking at percentages and bearings. In Science they learned how to use a compass to find magnets hidden in the class to test if magnetic forces can work from a distance. In literacy the focus has been discursive writing – pupils enjoyed putting their arguments on paper.
In the nursery …
The Spring topic of planting and growing has begun! The children have been learning about the planting process and what plants need to grow. They have started to make a flower collage with pretty butterflies. They had great fun in the gym hall this week playing team games. Our youngest pupils are the most competitive! The staff in the nursery have issued a big WARNING – the mud kitchen is open! Please ensure your child is appropriately dressed for nursery as our children love being able to explore and get dirty in our mud kitchen and digging pit.
Sadly, our trim trail remains unfinished. However, what we see is very exciting and when it is complete I know it will be a very welcome addition to our school playground.
This coming week we will begin our Master Class programme for P5-7 during Right Time. On offer this year we have Creative Dance, Photography, drawing techniques, Jewellery Making, iMovie / Green Screen and Highland Dance. My thanks to Mrs Cran for organising this programme and thanks to the staff of our school for willingly sharing their skills and talents. For P1-4 pupils they will have the opportunity to develop softer skills i.e. sharing, turn taking, working with others in a variety of activities throughout the school.
Academy Uniforms will be in school this Tuesday from 2.45pm for anyone wishing to order uniform for the new term.
Please return Bags2School by Thursday of this week.
Many thanks for reading my blog,
Mrs Hendry
Head Teacher
