St Ninian’s R.C. Primary

School Newsletter Please note that this newsletter can be

found on the website www.st-ninians.btik.co.uk

Week beginning 23rd March 2015

Dear Parents and Guardians,

Firstly I would like to thank all of the parents who came along for the 3 way conferencing earlier this

month. It was great to see so many here to share in the children’s learning. I know that the teachers really

appreciate the effort made by all attending the appointments.

Summer Production—Shrek

Rehearsals are now underway for our Summer Production of Shrek. The dates of the show

are Tuesday 9th June and Wednesday 10th June. More information about tickets will come

your way closer to the time.

Parent Council

Thank you very much to the parents who have shown an interest in being involved with the Parent Council. I

have passed your details on to the Parent Council and I am sure that they will be in touch with the date of

the next meeting.

Sacramental Preparation

The children of Primary 3 will be making their first Reconciliation after Easter. The date for this is Tuesday

28th April and this will take place in St. Ninian’s Church at 6.30pm. Both Fr Hugh and Fr Piotr will be

celebrating this with the children.

The children in Primary 4 who are to receive the Sacraments of Confirmation and Communion

this year are also invited to attend 10.15am Mass on Sunday 19th April for the Presentation

of the Creed, on Sunday 3rd May for the Presentation of the Gospel and Sunday 10th May

for the Presentation of the Our Father. Please note that the first Sunday is at the end of

the school holidays before we are back at school.

Easter Bunny Raffle

We are having an Easter raffle and the prize is an Easter Bunny and Egg. The raffle

will be drawn on the last day of term. Tickets cost 20p each. If your child would like

to buy a raffle ticket they can bring their 20p into school and in return they will be

given a ticket to bring home.

School Lunch Menus

ALL pupils are issued with a menu on a Monday morning which is to be returned to school on a Wednesday.

Please remember to ask your child for this menu on a Monday, complete it and return it to school on a

Wednesday together with any lunch money (if required). Thank you to every parent who continues to return

their child’s school lunch menu to school on a Wednesday. If your child does not return the menu to school

by Wednesday your child will require to bring packed lunches for the following week—even if your child is

entitled to a free lunch. We can only order lunches for the children who have returned their slip to

school by a Wednesday. Thank you for your co-operation.

Holy Rood RC High School News

The Holy Rood Winter Newsletter PDF is now live on the news section of their website. Please use the link

to have a look at all the great work going on in Holy Rood. http://www.holyroodrchighschool.co.uk/news.php

The City Art Centre’s Toy and Book Swap

Saturday the 12th of September between 11am and 12.30pm

Ahead of this event please leave donations at the City Art Centre for the attention of Bragela Hornal or

Margaret Findlay. There is a maximum of ten donated items per person and you will be given x1 token for

every item donated which can be used to exchange for ‘new’ toys and books on the day.

Larger items such as bicycles, scooters and games consoles will not be accepted but books, puzzles, board

games, dolls, soft toys, computer games, unused craft kits etc will be welcome. All items must be in good

condition and have all of their components.

For any queries please contact 0131 529 3950.

The school closes for the Easter holidays on

Thursday, 2nd April—3.05p.m. for P1 and P2 and

3.20p.m. for P3-P7. Pupils and staff return to

school and nursery on Tuesday, 21st April.

Have a lovely safe holiday.

Mrs. Angie Brack

Head Teacher

NURSERY

Dear Parents

The children enjoyed the workshops very much—I hope you did too! I

know the staff worked very hard preparing and presenting them and they

enjoyed watching the fun the children had with their families. I hope to

meet with parents soon for a cuppa and a chat about the workshops.

Just now in nursery we are busy learning about Spring as we look at all

the changes happening in the garden. Some of the children have already

planted sunflowers thanks to Astare who brought some seeds and pots in

to nursery for us. Many thanks.

We would also like to thank Olaf's mother for clearing out the fish tank and supplying us with some new fish, the

children are really enjoying watching them.

It has long been a tradition in our nursery for parents/families to help out in our garden and Ms. Thomson will be

approaching families soon to ask for help tidying up the garden areas. I know the children will be able to rely on

you to help in any way you can. We are asking families to perhaps donate bedding plants for the borders and

planters.

Just to remind you to check the noticeboards in the cloakroom for dates and upcoming events. Spring Fun day is

on the last day of this term Thursday, 2nd April. Parents/carers return at 10a.m./2p.m. when the activities begin.

Could I also ask parents/carers to:

please remember to check out the children's file for any letters etc.

please check children's bags/pegs and take home any extra clothes etc. that are not needed.

If you haven't paid snack money for this term could you please do so now.

Snack money of £26 pound will be due on return to nursery on Tuesday, 21 April.

A huge thank you once again to all our families for all the help and support you give us all year round.

Primary 1 Intake

We are very pleased to inform you that all our nursery children who have applied for a space in P1 at St. Ninian’s

have been granted a place—great news! Further information will follow in the near future.

Clothes, pants and socks needed!

If you have any old clothes, pants and socks (for ages 3-5 years) which your child no longer needs, please hand

them into the nursery. Thank you.

Happy Easter—enjoy the holidays.

Mrs. Merry and the Nursery Team

PRIMARY 1B

Primary 1B presented their second assembly of the year to the school last Friday and did a great job telling all the

classes about Lent. I was very proud of how well they all read and spoke to the whole school with confidence. We

have been learning lots about Lent in class and the children enjoyed their first class trip to our local church last

Monday when we joined P7 to go to Mass as part of our Lenten journey.

We are nearing the end of our vowel digraph sounds in Literacy, the children have worked very hard on these, they

are not easy!! We will be finished these sounds by Easter. We are also working our way through unit 3 of the

‘tricky words’ and will complete this block by the Easter Holidays. Units 1, 2 and 3 should continue to be practised

at home, using your child’s orange tricky word booklet.

In Maths we have been using big numbers to 100 a lot more in class and have been improving our

addition by trying to learn addition facts up to ten. The children have enjoyed learning more about

money for our topic maths and it was fun to go to the local shop to spend real money on a treat!

In P.E we have been improving our ball skills in football this term as well as continuing our Active

Maths on a Wednesday, doing a number P.E session.

It was great to meet so many of you at our recent 3 way conference meetings. Please don’t hesitate to contact me

if you have any further questions.

Miss Hayes

PRIMARY 1A

Hello from Primary 1A,

First of all a big thank you on behalf of Lepra. The children in P1 were very moved by the talk the lady from Lepra

gave at assembly and were all very keen to help. Thank you so much to family and friends for your very kind

donations. We all had great fun at the Lepra work out.

We are coming to the end of our second term and so over the next two weeks the children will be thinking about

their targets and gathering evidence of their learning.

We have been making good progress with our reading this term and the children are

becoming more confident about reading words and sentences and talking together

about stories.

In maths we have been learning more about money and have had a toy shop in class to

practise using the correct coins to pay for things. We are now all very good at

counting up different coins.

We have had lots of variety in our latest topic, “Around our School”, as it was all

about mapping and weather. We have learned more about our school and what happens

in all of the different rooms and we have learned more about the local area by taking a walk around it. The

children were good at recognising symbols on a local map and have also shown great interest in the map of the

world. We have enjoyed finding out where different countries are in relation to Scotland, especially the countries

our families come from. We have enjoyed acting out stories about journeys and have made maps to go with them.

You can find our favourites on youtube – “We’re going on a Bear Hunt” and “Rosie’s Walk”. We have practised

following direction in the gym hall and have been going over, under, around and through. Some of us are getting

good at knowing left and right. We have been recording the weather each day and have been using information

books to find answers to questions we have about the weather. It was very exciting to have a solar eclipse just as

we were learning all about the sun!

During Lent we have been learning more about the life of Jesus. The children have loved listening to stories from

the Bible. Before the holiday we will learn about what happened on the very first Easter.

Hope you all have a very happy Easter holiday.

Mrs. Howie

PRIMARY 3

Hello from Primary 3

The children have worked very hard this term and I am sure you will agree that their achievements and the

progress they are all making reflects this. Thank you to all those that made the 3-way dialogue evenings, it was

lovely to share the children’s success and meet you all again. Primary 3 are making fantastic progress with their

work and the Home Learning programme continues to be a great success. I would

like to say a big thank you to you all for your support with this and hope to pick

back up with the same momentum after the Easter break. I am sure you are all

aware of our previous topic on dinosaurs, which proved to be very popular with the

children and adults! The children enjoyed this topic and produced excellent work

throughout, I look forward to this enthusiasm in our future studies. With the

arrival of spring we have lots of activities going on in class and we will be learning

about the seasons, growth, and sustainability through our new topic on farming.

I would like to ask that the children bring their reading folder with their Home

Learning books inside every day. Although the work will run over two weeks, we regularly share what work we have

already completed and this gives the others the opportunity to share their learning and can help those that may

need extra support. Can I also request PE kits are with them at the start of the week (if this has not already been

done) and if they wish they can take it home at the end of the week or term? This will ensure that the children

are always prepared for PE, which will continue to be on a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Thank you.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your support. I wish you all a fantastic Easter break and

look forward to seeing everyone back healthy and well rested.

Miss B. Murray

PRIMARY 2

Hi,

It was lovely to meet you all again at our 3 way conferencing and I hope you enjoyed hearing about your children’s

great progress!

The boys and girls have been very excited in learning about mapping. They have

learned the features of a map and what different maps can look like. They have

been given opportunities to draw maps of various areas like the outdoor classroom

and there were some excellent maps drawn for homework of the ‘journey to

school’. It is very important for children to recognise where they travel every day.

The Atlas’ are some of the most popular books in the class library where children

can begin to grasp an understanding of different parts of the world. We are

currently finishing this topic off by understanding the water cycle, this will include

some interesting science experiments! Our next topic is Cavemen.

In literacy we have finished instruction writing and have moved on to writing poems. The class got to finish or

change rhyming words in poems yesterday and we ended up with some very funny sentences!

In topic maths we are finishing shape and moving on to Information Handling, where children may be asked to

interview you!

Miss Denning

PRIMARY 5

We are making the most of the Spring weather by learning golf techniques for the Golf tournament we will be

competing in at the end of March. The children have been working very hard to master putting, chipping and driving

skills.

In Mathematics we are building on our measuring skills by learning about Area and

Perimeter. This will also take us outside calculating various parts of our outside space.

In Language we enjoyed World Book Day and are working on newspaper reports. In science

we have been designing and building objects that will float and explaining why this happens.

We enjoyed our recent trip to The Gallery of Modern Art and have used what we learned

there to create artworks back in class.

Thank you for your continued assistance with homework and I wish you all a very Happy Easter.

Mrs. Grant

PRIMARY 4

Hello from Primary 4,

We are all thoroughly enjoying our castle topic and learning a lot about castle parts,

weaponry and castle life. We had great fun exploring Edinburgh Castle and taking part

in a workshop where we got to look at weapons, defences and knights armour. We read

a funny story about how Robert Bruce was inspired by a spider before the Battle of

Bannockburn so we wrote a poem from the spider’s point of view using rhyming couplets.

We even made the poems look older by painting them with tea/coffee and crumpling them up.

We have been doing lots of different things in maths: 3D shapes, multiplication, information handling and addition/

subtraction methods. Everyone has been working hard on learning their times tables so please keep this up! In

problem solving we have been looking at realistic scenarios such as creating a theme park with a budget and code

cracking murder mysteries. P4 work really well in groups and it is great to see that everyone has been getting

involved in all learning.

I would like to wish P4 all the best with their future learning with Mrs Creaney and Mr McCann.

Miss Conway, Mrs Creaney and Mr McCann

PRIMARY 3/4

Dear Parents/Carers,

As we are drawing close to the Easter holidays it is fantastic to look back at all the work the class have done this

term. From creating wonderful pieces of art to learning about weather, the class have worked very hard and should

be very proud. We are now coming to the end of our weather topic and the class have really enjoyed learning about

tornados, hurricanes and different climate zones.

After the Easter holidays we will still be writing our stories and we look forward to inviting all parents in to see the

finished product at the beginning of May.

In topic we will be learning about land use in Edinburgh and also about our local community. In Maths we will be

learning about units of measurement, times tables and fractions.

A big thank you for all the hard work you have been doing with your child at home for reading and homework, it is

clear in class how much it is helping them to consolidate their learning.

P.E. is still on a Monday and Tuesday, so can I ask that your child always has a P.E kit

with them on those days. We are doing athletics at the moment and it is important

that they have the appropriate clothing for this.

Have a wonderful Easter holiday.

Miss Healy

MILK MONEY

Milk money of £4.10 to cover the period 23/02/15–02/04/15 is now overdue. If

you haven’t already paid please send the money to the class teacher as soon as

possible. Milk money of £4.10 will be due again on 20/04/15 to cover the period

21/04/15-22/05/15.

PRIMARY 7

Hello,

Primary 7 have experienced lots of exciting opportunities this term

including their recent thermal imaging workshop. This gave them the

chance to see how much energy their bodies are producing and using.

We are looking forward to seeing the pictures soon! We will be moving

on to a new topic after the holidays.

The children’s hard work is continuing to pay off as everyone is seeing

progress being made in the area of maths. Fractions, decimals and

percentages have all been explored this term and the class are

enjoying their work. Next term we will be moving on to algebra.

Primary 7 enjoyed their time with Miss Jackson in term 2. Normal

service has resumed as of this week! I am delighted to be back with

the P7’s as they begin to look towards high school. Preparations for

the transition to high school will begin after the Easter holidays…not

long now!!

I hope you all have a lovely holiday and enjoy the celebration of Easter

with your families.

Miss L. Murray

PRIMARY 5/6

Hello,

It was lovely to see some of you again last week at the 3-way

consultations. P5/6 have enjoyed their topic on plant reproductions and

relished the opportunity to take on the role of the scientist! We have

spent lots of time examining, testing, recording and observing our

experiments and look forward to doing this again soon.

Welcome back Mrs Cole-Hamilton who has just returned as P5/6 class

teacher. Mrs. Cole-Hamilton will share teaching responsibilities with Mr

McCann. I am sure the class will enjoy showing her how much they have

learned this term and continue to work hard, challenging themselves as

they go.

Enjoy the holidays.

Miss L. Murray

NATIONAL EPIDEMIC OF HEAD LICE

Head lice is a common problem, which can affect the whole community, adults and children alike.

However, head lice infection is most common amongst children.

The Scottish Executive have issued guidelines for all schools to follow. In this document they

quote:

‘Head lice are not primarily a problem of schools, but of the community. Stigma and tradition, however, combined with inadequate public and professional knowledge continue to hold schools responsible.’

Effective management depends on the ability of all relevant professionals/agencies to offer clear, accurate and

impartial advice and support to parents on detection and treatment.

“The control of head lice is not the responsibility of any one agency alone.”

What are Head Lice?

Head lice are small, six-legged wingless insects which are pin-head size when they hatch, less than match-head size

when fully grown and are grey/brown in colour. They are difficult to detect in dry hair even when the head is close-

ly inspected. Head lice can cause itching.

Head Lice live on or very close to the scalp at the base of the hair, where they find both food and warmth. They

feed through the scalp of their host. The female louse lays eggs in sacs, which are very small, dull in colour and

well camouflaged. These are securely glued to hairs where the warmth of the scalp will hatch them out in 7 to 10

days. Nits are the empty egg sacs, which are white and shiny and may be found further along the hair shaft as the

hair grows. Nits are often easier to see than the head lice themselves. Many people mistake the empty egg sacs—

or ‘nits’ - for head lice or believe that it is evidence of an active head lice infection. This is not true; it is evidence

of a previous infection. A head lice infection cannot be diagnosed unless a living louse has been found on the head.

During their life span of one month, head lice will shed their skin up to three times. This skin, combined with louse

droppings, looks like black dust and may be seen on the pillows of people with head lice. Head lice cannot fly, jump

or swim; they can only be contracted by direct head to head contact. Contrary to popular belief, the length, condi-

tion or cleanliness of hair does not predispose any particular group to head lice infection. Anyone with hair can

catch head lice, meaning that the problem, whilst often more prevalent in children, is not unique to them.

Whilst cleanliness is not related to contracting an head lice infection, regular hair washing and combing does offer

a good opportunity to detect any infection so that it can be treated. Head lice cannot be prevented, but daily

brushing and grooming can aid early detection.

Responsibility

The Scottish Executive states that,

‘The primary responsibility for the identification, treatment and prevention of head lice in a family has to lie with the parents, if only for reasons of practicality. Parents however, cannot be expected to diagnose cur-rent infection, or distinguish it from successfully treated previous infection or other conditions if they are not adequately instructed and supported by health professionals.’

‘Regular checking of children’s heads is important, but it is a parental responsibility.’

Detecting

The Scottish Executive advise that weekly checks, by ‘wet combing’, are the most effective method of detection.

What is ‘Wet Combing’?

Wash the hair and apply conditioner, then comb through with a wide-tooth comb to remove tangles.

Taking a section at a time, a fine tooth detection comb is then pulled downwards through the hair, keeping

the comb close to the scalp (where head lice are often located).

The comb is checked for lice after each section.

The comb must be fine enough to catch the lice and a pharmacist should be able to recommend a comb for

this purpose, if parents are in any doubt.

This process should be completed weekly.

Checks should be continued following treatment to ensure that it has been effective and to detect any re-

infection.

Treatment

Once infection is detected there are two treatment approaches:

1. Use of insecticide lotions.

2. Removal by wet combing—sometimes called “bug busting”.

Both methods require continued combing to remove any unhatched eggs. Re-infection can occur if a child has di-

rect head-to-head contact with someone else who has head lice. It is likely that a child will become re-infected

unless the whole family, and all those who have been in close contact with the child, have been checked and, if live

lice are found, treated.

Headlice treatments can be expensive but can be supplied through the minor ailments scheme free of charge.

Check with your pharmacist.

Please note:

It is the responsibility of all parents to regularly check their children’s head for infection and to treat them imme-

diately should they find head lice.

It is the school’s responsibility to advise individual parents when a head lice is seen on a child’s head. We do this

either by telephone or letter.

Should you receive a call or a letter from school advising you that your child has head lice—do not be embar-

rassed—staff get infected too, but treat your child immediately.

If you need further information about Head Lice contact your G.P./Health Visitor.