Last week saw us celebrating our Scottish heritage further when Rooms 11 and 12 attended a Burns event hosted by Hamilton Town House Library. The pupils had researched Rabbie Burns and created books about his life and works. 4 of our pupils also represented St. Mary’s at Hamilton Burns Club poetry recital competition on Wednesday night, which involved 6 schools in the local area – St. Mary’s, St. Elizabeth’s, Woodhead Primary, Woodside Primary, St. John’s and Hamilton College. Johnny opened the competition with a fantastic recital of ‘Address to the Toothache’, whilst Niamh, Uzair and Chloe all made us extremely proud with their recitals of well known Burns poems.
On Tuesday, we had a great start to our Masterclass sessions. Our junior and senior pupils were involved in many varied activities including karate, knitting, gardening, guitar, cooking, ukulele, arts and crafts, French, Technologies and many more. Led by members of school staff and volunteers, our pupils will develop their skills over the next 5 weeks – keep up to date with masterclass photographs on our Twitter feed.
Over 80 pupils joined us at the Lenten Eucharistic Service at 8.30am at St.Mary’s Church, Fr.O’Brien was amazed at the high number in attendance and looks forward to celebrating with us every Wednesday morning during Lent.
Rooms 11 and 12 visited Bannockburn Heritage Centre in Stirling on Wednesday to conclude their interdisciplinary topic on the Scottish Wars of Independence. The pupils had a wonderful time taking part in workshops, studying artefacts and joining in a re-enactment!
Nursing students from the University of West of Scotland delivered health talks to classes on Wednesday on ‘The Journey of Food Through The Human Body’. Partnerships such as this, enhance the knowledge of our children in exciting and motivating ways. We are very lucky to have formed these type of partnerships with various stakeholders and thank the university for giving us this opportunity.
On Thursday we had our latest COGS meeting, involving all of the children from Primary 1 to Primary 7. Pupils discussed the wellbeing indicators of feeling ‘Included’ and ‘Healthy’. We discussed what being included means to them and the various ways pupils feel they are included in decisions that are made in St. Mary’s Primary. The children also discussed the difference between mental and physical health and the ways St. Mary’s encourages and supports their mental and physical wellbeing. The results from our COGS meeting will be included in our monthly newsletter at the end of this month.
As always, thanks for reading,
Mrs. Elaine Fitzpatrick
