Hello and welcome back to our very exciting school term.

For those of you who don’t know about my limited ICT skills, I can tell you that this is the year I have set myself the goal of becoming an ICT and Computing wizard! It all started a couple of months ago when Mr Gilmour and I had to attend a course in Preston. After the course had finished, we decided to pick up a coffee and (would you believe it) Mr Gilmour payed-by pointing his PHONE at the screen! Well, I have never seen anything like this in my life but I have since learned that this is a typical method of payment. Not only did that throw me but it made me think about my place in the world of ICT…quite low down on the modern day list. Not to be defeated, I have now made it my mission to not only know and use such APPs but to become a guru of ICT and Computing and to heavily invest in state of the art equipment for our children. We have purchased enough Lego Coding sets for a whole class and we will be using the IPADs to control creations-without wires! Yes-Bluetooth technology will be shaping the path of ICT and exciting new APPs will add an extra dimension to teaching and learning. UFA groups will enjoy using such equipment and we will continue to build upon our resources.

Speaking of which, the greenhouse is now well on the way to becoming a DT greenhouse and the poly tunnel and POD have been cleared. We are in the process of creating (and by that I mean literally writing the content ourselves) a huge outdoor timeline that links famous composers, artists, historical events and people throughout history and children can use it as an information tool at play times.  After having a meeting in the Summer holidays, the company making this bespoke time line (who also made the signage for our minibus) are working to create an indoor timeline too. It is all very exciting.

Unfortunately, I walked into the showroom and now there are other ideas I would like to worth with for our playground…we’ll keep you posted!

We have so many wonderful things planned. Soon, Harris Museum artists will come to work with our whole school and a sculpture visit will inspire our Art work. All children will use different media to respond to the sculpture. Luckily, Mrs Davies managed to find a sculpture for us to study that was partially clothed. I’m sure you can only imagine what some of the options were! We are hoping to send a teddy into space for Science Week and we are taking our school band and choir to St.Josephs Primary School to inspire a new school band starting there after Christmas. Mr Warren is preparing entries for music festivals for us to compete in and we have 39 children in our choir. Fantastic!

Last Sunday, Mrs Luke sent me a message to say the new chicks were in school. Now, I thought we agreed  on having 3 or 4 little Bantams when we last spoke about Cluckingdom Palace but this is not the case. My mouth dropped when she said we were having 7 because I had flashbacks about my chicken welfare UFA and daily animal chores around school. I am absolutely thrilled with the little ones though and the children will absolutely love them. We have cleared the area today and I have just tucked them in for the evening. With plenty room in the new Cluckingdom Palace, seven will not be a problem at all. We will be starting a voluntary children’s garden group for one lunchtime a week and chicken maintenance will be one of the weekly jobs.

Our new starters are just gorgeous and they have certainly settled in well. We also welcomed children into other years groups and our nursery-it is like they have always been here. It was lovely to see some of you at Family Mass this morning. We will be having a Macmillan Coffee Morning Concert on Friday 27th September at 9.30am -you are all welcome to come along and we are having a Mass to celebrate the Feast of St.Francis on Friday 4th October at 10.00am. We will link Harvest into this Mass as we think about Creation and caring for our common home.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend!