Mikado Mania has officially hit St. Mary’s! Our Primary 5-7 pupils have been busy rehearsing to ensure that the show will be a great success.  Not long to go now!

Over the past fortnight, we have welcomed our new Primary 1 pupils for their primary 1 induction afternoons.  The pupils visited our infant classrooms and met their fellow classmates, whilst their parents listened to various presentations on life at St. Mary’s and what to expect when your child starts school.  The most valuable presentations were from our Primary 7 and Primary 1 pupils who described what they liked about being at St. Mary’s!    The parents also had the opportunity to meet our Parent Council Chairperson, Justine Docherty and chat to other P1 parents over a cup of tea and coffee.

Our footballers took part in the Summer Cup on Friday.  History repeated itself with our Girl’s team being victorious and our Boy’s team narrowly missing out on winning the tournament!  All of our footballers have worked extremely hard this year and have shown real sportsmanship and teamwork at every single game they have played.  We are very proud of them!

On Friday we waved goodbye to Room 8’s teacher, Mrs Cotter, who begins her maternity leave on 6th June.  We wish her all the very best and cannot wait to meet and have a wee cuddle from her bundle of joy!

On Saturday we had an extremely successful Summer Fayre.  With the sun shining, our families enjoyed taking part in the various fun games, perusing the stalls, chancing their luck at the raffle, listening to our fab DJ and eating our delicious burgers, hotdogs, Krispy Kreme doughnuts and Equi’s ice cream!  Not to forget our famous St. Mary’s Bake Off!  I cannot thank our fantastic Parent Council enough who worked very hard at organising the event and the many parent helpers who came to help set up the fayre, worked on the stalls and stayed to tidy up afterwards!  Thanks also to the dedicated staff of St. Mary’s who came to support their school and to Mr Cluckie, our resident DJ!   It was a fantastic day and raised an astonishing £3000 for school funds!  Thank you so much for all of your support.

The countdown to Summer may be on but life at St. Mary’s does not slow down and we look forward to a busy 3 weeks ahead!

Mrs. Elaine Fitzpatrick

On Monday our primary 4 – 7 pupils listened to a very interesting and educational  presentation by representatives from Stroke Association Scotland.  This charity was one we supported during our Christmas fundraising and we are very proud to have helped their cause and raise awareness to ‘Make May Purple’.

On Tuesday, 44 primary 6 pupils walked to and from Chatelherault Country Park for an exciting day of outdoor learning.  Our pupils took part in activities such as numeracy, literacy, R.E. and Health and Well Being.  Led by Mr McManus and Miss Graham, they had a fantastic time building dens, climbing trees and gathering round the campfire!  In order to protect the local environment, a condition of any outdoor learning experience is to ensure that the surroundings are restored to their original condition when they are finished, this alone was a valuable lesson for our children to learn.

We continued our winning streak this week, when our school netball team came first place in their group at the Hamilton Schools Netball Tournament!  Well done everyone!

Our pupils had an exciting taster session from McGowans Blackbelt Academy, Hamilton this week.  Primary 1 – 6 all took part in an introductory session and were commended for their behaviour and listening skills throughout.  We are very grateful to Mr McGowan for giving our pupils this opportunity.

Room 6 and Room 9 planted space seeds this week, sent from astronaut Tim Peake!  This is part of an innovative national experiment to compare the growth of seeds that have been in orbit with him, in comparison to those that have remained on earth.  10,000 schools across Britain are participating in the experiment, which will provide valuable results to help scientists grow plants in space!

Primary 6 were our latest stage to visit Hamilton Library at Hamilton Townhouse.  All of the pupils in the school have been involved in library visits to enhance their ability to research information and interrogate the data they find.

On Friday our pupils took part in an outdoor learning experience arranged by South Lanarkshire Council’s Development Officer for Outdoor Learning, Caroline Pitcathley.  Our children had lots of fun and used various resources to enhance skills such as team building, resilience, co-operation and creative thinking.

I was extremely proud to be the Head Teacher of St. Mary’s on Saturday to watch our Primary 4 children receive the sacrament of their First Holy Communion.  Our children were fabulous as they took part in this special service in front of family and friends.  Special thanks to our First Communion teachers, Mrs Cotter, Mrs Campbell, Mrs Feeney and also to Mrs Cluckie who helped prepare them for this special sacrament.

Thanks for reading,

Mrs. Fitzpatrick

What an amazing and busy week for the pupils and staff of St. Mary’s Primary School!

20 of our Primary 4 pupils began their multi sports Tuesday lunch time club arranged by Laura Somerville, our Active Schools Co-ordinator.   The club is also ran by Active Schools volunteers.  Over the course of this year, Laura has been an invaluable help to our school, supporting us with various lunch time clubs and arranging our participation in several sporting tournaments.  We are very grateful for her assistance in developing our the sporting skills of our pupils!

On Thursday night, 68 Primary 5, 6 and 7 pupils were accompanied by 7 teaching staff to the Theatre Royal in Glasgow to view a Scottish Opera production of ‘The Mikado’.  Throughout the night our staff received multiple compliments from members of the public about the impeccable behaviour and manners of our children.    Not only was this an extraordinary ‘night at the opera’ for our pupils, it was also a perfect opportunity for them to compare the traditional opera to the more up to date version we will be performing in June.

On Friday night 33 of our pupils participated in Hamilton Swimming Gala at Larkhall Leisure Centre.  I was very proud to watch them compete and win many medals in various events such as 10m freestyle, 25m freestyle, 25m breaststroke, 100m freestyle, 25m relay, 50m breaststroke and 50m freestyle, although I must admit I had a slight sore throat the next morning from cheering them on! Well done everyone!

On Saturday, Sophie Ireland played piano and Christina Tappenden sang ‘Ae Fond Kiss’, as they represented Lanarkshire at the Scottish Schools Robert Burns World Federation Final in Murrayfield, Edinburgh.  We are very proud of the various talents of all of the pupils at St. Mary’s. With the encouragement of family and school they recognise that there is more to succeeding than natural ability, and work very hard to foster and develop the talents that they have been blessed with.

On Sunday morning 2 of St. Mary’s football teams played in the Davie Cooper Cup.  Our boys and girls played 4 games each until their results saw both teams competing in nail biting finals!  Our boys fought admirably to win silver in a 2-0 defeat, however after a penalty shoot out our girls were successful in coming first place and winning the trophy!  Well done to both teams for their incredible hard work in each game played and thanks to Mr McManus for his coaching and guidance to our teams on the day and throughout the year!

As always, thanks for reading our school blog,

Best wishes,

Elaine Fitzpatrick