St Ninian's Primary School

Welcome to P1M

The fantastic children of P1M have had a super first week of school filled with fun and laughter.

Here are some of our highlights:

This week we have been getting to grips with our classroom routines. We have now mastered changing between our indoor and outdoor shoes really quickly and getting our coats off first thing in the morning. When we come into school there are always different activities for us to take part in straight away. The favourite ‘soft start’ task of this week was the construction, we have some fantastic builders and engineers in the making in P1M!

In numeracy this week we have working on numbers within 10. We have been learning how to form these numbers correctly using little rhymes to help us.

2 “half a heart says ‘I love you’, add a line, now I’ve made the number 2”

3 “around the tree, around the tree, now I’ve made the number 3”

4 “down and across and down once more, now I’ve made the number 4”

If you are practising writing your numbers at home, these rhymes will help you. What number do you think we will be learning about on Monday?

We have been forming our numbers using lots of fun ways, writing in our number formation booklet, using the glitter trays and using play-doh too. These are some other ideas for you to try out at home too.

We listened to the story ‘Harry and the Bucketful of Dinosaurs’ this week and decided that this would be a very fun topic for our first ever topic at school. After listening to the story we thought about what different activities we would like to take part in based on this topic. Miss Meechan was very pleased with some of our ideas and we have displayed this on our ‘Harry and the Dinosaurs’ wall just outside our classroom. We took part in a dinosaur themed ‘structured play’ session after listening to this story. This was lots of fun!

We visited the morning nursery class to let our old friends know how we were getting on. We can’t wait to visit the afternoon class next week and speak to our old friends there too!

And of course, the favourite activity of the week had to be golden time! We can’t wait for golden time again next week. During golden time we get to play with our friends in P1B!

All the children are looking forward to full days next week and having their lunch in the lunch hall.

See you on Monday, have a lovely weekend.

Miss Meechan and P1M

Primary 7 Weekly News

It’s been a great first week back in Primary 7.

We completed a very tough teamwork challenge to crack open the box! All teams worked well together solving problems. We had to remember some maths and numeracy knowledge, as well as some Spanish. Problem solving skills were used to try and decipher new codes and find hidden clues.

We have enjoyed taking part in the ‘Door Challenge’ and have created a kindness door. Our door is full of kind messages for anyone to take if they need a boost 🙂

Our class novel is Wonder. We have been introduced to the main character August, who is just about to start school for the first time. We have been building character profiles to show what each character is like. The book has been enjoyable so far and we cannot wait to hear the rest of the story.

We have been getting to know each other a bit better this week with lots of class work and games. We all tried to make connections with each other and passes some wool around as we found a connection. This resulted in a massive web and made it easy to see just how well we are connected as a class!

All the buddies haven been fantastic this week and are doing a great job – well done guys!

It’s been a very successful week and a great way to start our Primary 7 journey!

We’re back……

Well what a great start to the year it has been, everyone has been really enthusiastic and raring to get started!

The week began with some creativity and we worked in small teams to create a class song/rap and wordle. We used the mindmaps we had made on our moving up day in June to help us. It was lovely to see the confidence in many as they stood up in front of a new class to perform. Follow us on Twitter @mrsroy16 to see some of the videos we took.

Our Wordle is now at the heart of our new class charter which has taken the theme of ‘Animals’ as voted by the class. Everyone came up with suggestions as to the content of our charter and this is now on display for all to see.

We have enjoyed taking part in the ‘Door Challenge’ this week and made an emoji themed door display. We discussed what emoji represented each of our personalities and then made mini emojis for display. They look great!

We started our class novel ‘Kensuke’s Kingdom’ by Michael Murpurgo. We have listened to an audio of chapter 1 whilst following the text in our shared books. There has been lots of scope for discussion and one of the first debates we had was about sailing around the world, are you for or against? We came up with our arguments and then presented these to another group using persuasive and emotive language. Everyone thought it was great that they got to argue with one another!! We have also started creating a class collage which is coming along nicely.

Pupil Voice:

Shiv: We did face portraits with Mrs Howley.

Nicola: We did our own animals for our class charter.

Mia Sok.: This was a fun week.

Rachel W: It was a good week.

Isla: At PE with Mrs Roy we went out and played rounders.

Chi-Chi: We made emojis that represent us and put it on our door display.

Amera: I liked PE because we played rounders.

James: I enjoyed the self-portrait task because I usually don’t do that.

Nicholas: I liked drawing the animals.

Leon: This week was fun.

Isabel: An amazing start to the school year.

Rachel Mc: This week was amazing. We were making a boat and sea for display on our class novel.

Louise: We did today’s number of the day and we did it on whiteboards.

Mia St: We got to stick tissue paper to a wave outline for our display.

Have a great weekend everyone, see you next week!!

P4/5 Weekly Update!

We have had a phenomenal first week back at school after our enjoyable summer holidays. We have all settled in well to Primary 4/5 ad are already working as a team. We certainly are ‘Superheroes in training!’

We decided that we would like our class charter to have an ‘emoji’ theme. We all created our own emoji to represent us on our class charter. Then we spoke about our rights and used our school values to help us brainstorm and personalise our own class charter. We will use this to make sure everyone has a successful year in P4/5, feels safe and enjoys coming to school.

Our class novel is ‘Gangsta Granny’ by David Walliams which we have started doing some work on. We have had to complete a word search, write instructions, draw illustrations and make our very own self portrait of us being Gangsta Granny’s apprentice.

We have thought about our learning and have set new goals for this session. We have decided to set one goal at a time allowing us to really focus on achieving it and will regularly evaluate our learning and set our next challenge.

We look forward to what P4/5 has in store for us this session.

Have a great weekend, P4/5 and Miss Diamond.

Nursery news

We can’t believe this is the last blog post of the session. What a quick year it has been full of exciting learning adventures.

Both sessions enjoyed our Gruffalo party on Tuesday. It was a pity about the weather but we didn’t let it dampen our spirits. We enjoyed party games including pin the tail on the mouse. Mrs Mushet did some fantastic face painting we had our own Gruffalos! Our party food included Gruffalo crumble, Gruffalo cake and purple grapes as his spikes. Both Primary 1 classes joined us to share our learning with each other and we were amazed when we looked in our talking books that we had actually thought up lots of the same ideas.

It was a very emotional end to the week on Thursday when we said goodbye to our fantastic pre school children who are moving on to their next exciting step in their learning. We were super proud of them all and we wish them lots of luck in Primary 1. As we were so busy we didn’t get a chance to take photographs so if you have some and are happy to share please post on our nursery Facebook page where you will see the photographs taken of the children and what they wanted to be when they grow up.

The whole nursery team would like to say a huge thank you to all our families who shared kind words, lovely cards and very generous presents. We have been so touched by this. We are so thankful for the wonderful support we receive from our families.

Just a little reminder of staffing in the nursery next session. Both Mrs Mushet and Mrs Martinek will take on new leadership rolls as Early Years Officers and Mrs Conway will continue as the nursery teacher. Mrs Mushet will now work all day Monday and Tuesday with Mrs Martinek continuing to work all mornings. Mrs Beattie, Mrs Hogg and Mrs McDonald our Early Years Practioners will continue to work their usual mornings or afternoons with Mrs Conway in on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Mrs Caskie ( teacher) will continue to work in the nursery on a Tuesday providing direct literacy and numeracy teaching as part of our Pupil Equity Fund arrangements. Full details of all these changes are detailed in Mrs Purdie’s Headteacher headlines given out at the beginning of this week. Any questions regarding these changes please ask any member of the nursery team.

We would like to wish all our families a lovely summer holiday and look forward to welcoming back our returning children on Tuesday 22nd August and we are excited about all our new children who will be joining our nursery family. We would also like to say good luck to some of our children who are moving onto other nurseries after the holidays.

Happy Holidays 😊😊

The Nursery Team.

P1R Memories

What a fantastic last week we have had.

We went to a Gruffalo party with the PM Nursery Group, went to mass in the Lanthorn, had a class party, joined in with Crazy Hair Day and lots more!

We spent time discussing memories, here are the children’s thoughts:

James: Goldentime – I got to play with all my friends

Brooke: Christmas Party – Santa came and I enjoyed the food.

Amber: Playtime – I got to play with all my friends.

Lucy: Structured Play – I got to play with lots of things.

Bernice: Health Week – We had a fun run and got to do lots of sports.

Mark: Gruffalo Party – I liked singing the Gruffalo song with the nursery.

Dexter: Numberwork – Each day we got harder and harder sums to do.

Paul M : Pirates topic – I loved making the big pirate ship for our display.

Dawid: Art and Craft – I liked making things, especially the flower pictures with Mrs Thomson.

Ephraim: Movie night – I enjoyed coming back to school at night with a snack and cushion to watch a movie.

Lloyd: Crazy hair Day – It was funny when people came to school with crazy hair.

Sahara: Dress Down Days – I liked wearing my own clothes.

Isla: Numberwork – I liked learning all about numbers.

Abigail: Everything – I liked doing different things every day!

Klaudia: Maths – I liked learning about numbers.

Rafay: Goldentime – I liked playing with all the toys in the classroom.

It has been a fantastic year for everyone and I am really sad to say goodbye to them all. I wish them all the luck for P2 and P2/3 and hope they come to visit me in P6/7.

Have a lovely summer everyone and thank you for all your support/gifts over the last year – it’s been emotional!

P2 highlights of the Week!

Here are our highlights of the week.

This week we had a visit from the vet. She kindly came into our class to tell us all about her job role.

The vet showed us lots of different instruments which she uses when checking the animals or during surgeries.

Wojciech- “She brought a toy dog with her and showed us how to put on a bandage and a muzzle.”

Alice- “You put the muzzle around the dogs mouth to stop it from biting you.”

Angelina- “The vet showed us lots of different x-rays and we had to guess which animal it was.”

Leo –“She showed us little insects that can make animals sick, they were called ticks and worms.”

Maja- “This week we had sports day on Tuesday, we completed different stations on the field in our house groups and races.”

Ahmad- “At sports day we had a sack race, egg and spoon race and dribbled footballs.”

Filip- “Our class split into their houses and had a tug of war. The teachers also had a tug of war against the parents.”

Lilly- This week we went to meet our new teachers and completed some activities so that they could get to know us more.

Vanessa- “It was a great because it was nice to spend time with our new teachers.”

Madison- “We had a house treat at the beginning of the week.”

Ana- “The treat was an inflatable which we got to play team games on.”

Kayden- “The inflatable was great fun.”

We can’t believe that next week is our last week in Primary 2, it has went in super fast and we have had such a great year. Miss Boyes has loved watching us grow and learn, she will miss teaching us so much!”

Nursery News

Another week flies by at St Ninian’s nursery! This week has been super exciting as we prepare for our final week of the 2016/17 session next week 🙂

Planning for the Gruffalo Tea Party is well under way! The boys and girls have given us so many fantastic ideas and we have done our best to put them into action for them 🙂 we are hopeful for nice weather so we can celebrate in our nursery garden with games, dancing and a lovely tea party. Our P1 friends will join us at the beginning of our celebration to share all the learning that has been shared across the transition period. We have invited our P6 buddies to join us for the final part of our tea party to share a small snack and look forward to our adventures next session!

We have also been chatting to our pre-school children this year who have given us some great ideas for their ‘Graduation’ ceremony! The staff have been having some lovely discussions about how much the children have changed during their time at St Ninian’s nursery – and this fed in to our enrolment induction meetings this week as we welcomed our new children and families into the St Ninian’s nursery community.

Although the rain has been threatening to ruin our outdoor fun, we have managed to have a great time in the nursery garden! The boys and girls have been helping the staff ‘clear out’ our ‘bunker’ in the garden by testing out the ride on toys and sorting through our old resources – the cars and tractors have been a BIG hit! We have also had our balance bikes and helmets out – we will look at managing these resources effectively in the new session 🙂

Mrs Beattie said farewell to her PEEP groups today – with a lovely spread and some lovely words. She is very proud of all the children and families who have joined in with the PEEP classes this term and has enjoyed seeing children grow in their confidence and interactions with their parents/carers, and with each other. We are delighted to confirm that PEEP will continue into next session – keep your eye out for our sign up sheets in the cloakroom area!

Next week brings our Gruffalo Tea Party on Tuesday – just throughout the nursery session as normal. We also welcome the parents/carers of our preschool children to our graduation ceremonies at 10am for the AM group and 3.15pm for the PM group – siblings also encouraged to attend 🙂

A reminder that the last day of term is Friday 30th June. Pupils will return on Tuesday 22nd August.

P4 Weekly News!

This has been a long week and we are all exhausted. We have been finishing off assessments in preparation for our move to P5!

We had a positive start to the week when we had the opportunity to have a go on the inflatable ‘Battle Zone’ where we had to try and knock one another off of the podium with a wrecking ball! This was a huge hit! We then had a nice celebration in the afternoon where we had a party to celebrate our First Holy Communions. The cake was delicious thanks to the Parish Community. The day was rounded off with another special treat where we got to meet and handle different animals. We even got to meet Nula the Fox. She’s the only one in Scotland!

On Tuesday we had sports day! We were grouped into our houses and had lots of different activities to take part in.

We were very proud of our classmate Batshewa as she was the youngest member running in the relay races! Well done Batshewa, you done us proud.

In writing this week, we were reflecting on our time in P4 and wrote a prayer about our hopes and dreams for P5 and what we were thankful for in P4.

Now that everyone managed to complete their power point presentations about Food Chains, we shared them with the class. We put a lot of thought and effort into these so it took a little while but it was good.

We had our moving up morning on Thursday:-

“I am staying in the same classroom this year and I have the same teacher but this makes me happy.” – Aleksander

“I thought the moving up day was great because I got to meet lots of new friends!” – Hannah

“I thought the moving up day was good because our new teacher is really nice and she does fun activities like Miss Diamond.” – Jay

“I am super excited about going into P5 and the upper area because it makes me feel as old as my sister!” – Ambra

“I have enjoyed having Miss Diamond again and staying in this classroom for another year!” – Evie

“I am happy that I am moving into a new classroom because it is new scenery and I see lots of new faces.” – Ailie

“I really like my classroom so I am very happy that I am staying in it for another year with the same teacher.” – Jan

With only 1 week left in P4, the countdown is on! We are super excited for the holidays!

Have a great weekend, P4 and Miss Diamond.

Primary 6 weekly news

Another busy week in primary 6 and not long to go now until the summer holidays!

It was great to see so many parents at sports day – thank you for coming and well done to those who took part in the parent races!

Here are our comments for the week:

Declan- This week we had moving up day and I’m in P7.

Mia So- This week we went to our new classes, I’m in P6/7 …… yayyy!

Mia St- This week we done Micro Fitness outside and we had to knock each other of the platforms, it was fun!!

Kalvin- My highlight was the tug of war on sports day.

Ben- This week the Fire Service came in and we got to fire a hose.

Reece- This week we had transitions into P7 or P6/7.

Neave- This week we had our transition days and we were doing fun activities from 09:00- 12:00.

Jennifer- I like transitions.

Emily – This week we went in our new classes. I am in P7 and we get Miss McCormack again.

Deacon- We did raves at sports day.

Kieran- We had sports day, it was great.

Aiden- This week I won the Sumdog competition.

Emma- This week has been amazing!! Because on Wednesday we had sports day which was amazing and on Monday we had the inflatable wrecking ball and the Fire Service.

Ali- In sports day Whithorn came first in the races.

James- I really enjoyed moving up day and we even got sweets!

Shiv- on Tuesday we got to use an inflatable.

Amera- On Friday at assembly Mrs Purdie gave out sweets, but she had a backup behind them. It was so fun!!

Rayn- we had sports day, I enjoyed it.

Aliza- we had P7 transitions this week and sports day.

Erin R- on Monday we had the Fire Service come in to talk to us about Fire safety.

Rugare- I enjoyed transition day.

Isabel- this week was transitions and in P6/7 we did the marshmallow challenge and we all got to eat marshmallows.

Krzysztof- This week I really can’t choose, was the wrecking ball more fun or was the transition day funner, but both were.