Nazareth House Primary School

Was there ever a day that didn’t turn out quite as you expected? Well Grandparents’ Day was one of those days. But not in a bad way.

Firstly we had planned a mass for Key Stage 2 and an assembly for Key Stage 1. We honestly expected @ 20 to 30 Grandparents. Boy were we wrong as over 200 swarmed the school. Some came very long distances just to be here. The atmosphere in the school was so cosy and relaxed. It was just wonderful.

Poor Miss Harkin was run off her feet making tea but she managed brilliantly.

Some of the grandparents visited the classes and shared their experiences with the children. And, of course, the children were bursting to show off their classrooms and “their wee world” to all the grannies and grandfathers.

Let’s have more days like this! Next time we’ll be ready!

On Monday, February 22 our P7 children and their families took part in their Service of Light in preparation for their Confirmation. The Service was lead by Fr. Mongan and everyone remarked upon how reverent and lovely the service was. More power to the Holy Spirit!

Confirmation will take place in the Longtower on Saturday, 20th March at 11.00 a.m. Bishop Lagan will conduct the service and this year our choir will join Longtower’s choir to celebrate the occasion.

First Confessions take place in Nazareth House Chapel on Wednesday 3rd March. All the P4s have been practising their sins in preparation for the big day! Joking aside, our First Confession is a very special occasion and one of our favourite days of the year.

First Communion takes place on Saturday, 5th June, again in Nazareth House Chapel.

Our P7  pupils have been working with our P3 pupils in a paired reading programme. Of all the paired reading programmes we have held this has been the most successful. P3 children have had lots of encouragement to get stuck into books and the P7s have shown great maturity and caring in their approach with the younger children. We are very proud of all of them.

This was an interesting programme as this group of P3s have been immersed in the Revised Curriculum and have had lots of experience of Linguistic Phonics. The P7s hadn’t so it was very interesting to see how it would work. What we found was that this group of P3 children come armed with lots of reading skills taht most definately help them learn to read better. The P7s very quickly latched on to what they were doing and their own experience of linguistic phonics suddenly became very relevant.

Well done all round.

Our Annual School Book Fair will be arriving in school on Wednesday 3rd March and will run for one week. World Book Day vouchers may be used at the fair and are available from school. If there are any parents out there who could spare a half hour from 3.00 p.m. any day of the fair, your help would be most appreciated.

Our school continues to promote healthy choices for lunches and snacks. Generally our lunchboxes are exceptionally good and a great improvement on years gone by. Our children now seem to prefer healthy options as a matter of taste as well as because they know that it is good for them.

Any parent needing advice on providing a healthy lunchbox can obtain help by contacting any member of staff who will pass on the relevant information to you.

Well done parents!

Congratulations to all the boys and girls from P6 & 7 who took part in the Credit Union Quiz this year. Well done everyone who took part in the internal competitions to select a team. We eventually had three teams competing; one at under 11 and two at under 13. The under 13 teams more than held their own finishing as top primary school behind Lumen Christi and, the winners, St. Columbs. However our under 11 team triumphed over all the other schools narrowly pipping St. Annes in a nail biting finish. The teams that competed were…

Under 11: Conor Hegarty, Shea Edwards, Colm McGee and Cathal Roarty

Under 13: Kate McCready, Lauren Loughrey, Joseph Gillen, Liam Clarke

                   Rebecca O’Connor, Emily McIntyre, Ben Gallagher,Ellen Kindlon

Our winning team now progresses to the Chapter Finals in Letterkenny in March. Many thanks to the hoards of rowdy supporters who were there to witness the success.