Primary 1

The children have settled in to school and are having lots of fun while learning! Mrs Shields has provided some PALS (Playground Activity Leaders in School) training for our P6 children. The children enjoyed this and I am delighted to say that the programme is going very well. It is helping our Primary 1s to make new friends and become familiar with their surroundings. Our Primary 6 children are also benefitting from this extra responsibility. This has become a popular job at Law!

Law’s ‘People Make Law 2’

Every year at Law we have a different theme to help us gather your views and opinions. Last year our theme was ‘People Make Law’. It worked so well that we have decided to continue it this year and have ‘People Make Law 2’ as our theme. We aim to talk to you in different ways and at various times throughout the session. Here are just a few of the ideas we have in mind:

Our House Captains, Vice Captains and Ambassadors of Learning will be out and about interviewing and talking to parents/carers at school events for example, Bistro Cafes, Open Days etc.

Our House Captains, Vice Captains and Ambassadors of Learning will be out and about interviewing and talking to members of the local community at school events for example, our MacMillan Coffee day.

We will have ‘People Make Law 2’ Discussion Zones at parents’ evening to ask your opinions on certain aspects of our school.

Our Ambassadors of Learning will be asking your opinion about a variety of issues throughout the school year. They will collate the responses they get from parents/carers and pupils to see how we can make Law Primary School and Nursery Class the best it can be.

‘People Make Law’ Targets

Following the success of our previous years' Parent/Carer Charter, we will issue this session’s version in November. Last session our Charter was formed from the information we received from our ‘It’s Good to Talk’ groups. This session the Charter will use the information we get from our ‘People Make Law 2’ questionnaires and groups. Your opinions really do matter to us at Law and taking part in ‘People Make Law 2’ events will help us to find out what you think.

Pupil Council

I am delighted to inform you of our newly elected Pupil Council. The children will meet regularly with Mrs Jessimer to discuss how to further improve their school. All the children worked very hard to prepare for the Council elections and I would like to thank all the parents/carers for their support during the campaign week! The children have already met and started working together.

Ambassadors of Learning

I am pleased to announce that the following pupils have been successful in their application to become an

Ambassador of Learning.

Mrs McAuley is looking forward to working with the group throughout this year to help enhance our already

excellent standards at Law.

Parents’ Evening

As part of our commitment to keep you informed about your child’s learning we are again holding two formal parents’ evenings again this session. We wrote to you in September to let you know that we are holding the first of these slightly earlier than we have in previous years. It will take place on Thursday 8th October. You will have received a letter asking you to request an appointment time.

Room 11 – Sean Morton Room 10 – Kyle Lawson Room 8/9 – Harris Lloyd Room 7 - Tyler Rae Room 6 – Logan MacRobert Room 5 – Eva Gilhaney Room 4 – Erin Gough

Pupil Council 2015-16

Thomas Gardner

Alisha Smith

Grace Henderson

Abigail Graham

Kyle Lawson

Jordan Murdoch

Connor Emslie

Ashleigh Wylie

MacMillan Coffee Morning/Afternoon

A Macmillan Coffee event will be held in the school on Wednesday 21st October 2015 at 10.30am -11.45am (AM Session) and 2.00pm - 2.45pm (PM Session). The organisation of the event will involve our newly appointed Pupils Council members and the children in the nursery. The Pupil Council will be designing posters to go up around the village inviting members of the community to come along, and serving at the event on the day. The nursery children will be involved in baking lots of yummy treats and designing posters and invitations for the event. We would also appreciate donations of cakes and biscuits from parents/carers which should be handed in to the school on the day before the event. Thanks in advance for your support for this very worthwhile charity.

Website

Please remember to stay in touch with school news via our website:

http://www.southlanarkshire.gov.uk/LawPS On our website you will find a variety of information including links to some useful websites for learning, information about pupil groups and committees, and upcoming school events.

Allergies

We have some children in school who suffer from nut allergies. As you may be aware, for these children, an allergic reaction can be very serious. I am sure you would want to support these children and their families by providing ‘nut free’ snacks and lunches for your own children. Thank you for your support with this important matter.

Holiday Week

Please note that the school will close for the October week on Friday 9th October at 3.00pm and will re-open on Monday 19th October at 9.00am. I hope the children have an enjoyable break

Annual Data Checks & Medical Form - Reminder

Every session we have to check that we have all the correct and up to date information for parent/carer and emergency contacts. The data checks and medical form were circulated last month. A big thank you to everyone who has completed and returned the forms. The office staff have issued reminders to those who have not yet returned them. Please complete and send this back to school as soon as possible.

Lunch Time and After-School Activities for Session 2015-16

I am delighted to say that we have lots of activities for our children this session. Some examples include, homework club, chess, badminton, choir, netball, boys’ football, girls’ football, infant football skills, ukelele & Scripture Union. I would like to thank all the staff (teaching staff and support staff) for volunteering to provide these experiences out with their contractual working time.

PTA

We are very fortunate at Law to have so many committed parents/carers willing to be part of our PTA. The group works exceptionally hard to raise funds for our children and to contribute to school life in general. Last session the PTA contributed funds to the school to help purchase valuable resources. The next meeting is on Monday 26th October at 7.30pm. Please come along and join us. Your help will be greatly appreciated by the children, staff and families of Law.

Halloween Disco Please note the date of this year’s Halloween Disco will be Tuesday 27th October. P1-3 is 6.00pm – 7.00pm & P4 – 7 is 7.15pm – 8.15pm. More information will be sent out closer to the event. Please note that costumes should not include masks or pretend weapons.

Yellow Bin/Law Recycling Centre The PTA has asked me to remind you about the Yellow Bin/Law Recycling Centre in the car park at the cross, Station Road. Clothes, shoes and textiles can be put in the bin. This is an important way of raising funds for the school so we would encourage you to consider putting any unwanted items, which fall into the correct category, into the Yellow Bin.

Positions Vacant

We have some excellent parent/carer helpers at Law. Some people give freely of their time to provide valuable support for our children and school. This session we hope to welcome our regulars back and also recruit more help. There are lots of different ways to help. Please see below for a list of suggestions:

A class helper – someone who volunteers to come into our school and work with children in class

An outing helper – someone who can be called upon to accompany children on school outings

A club helper – someone with a particular talent or interest (don’t be modest!) who is willing to help run a lunchtime or after school club

These are just a few of the ways in which you could help. If you are interested in volunteering for the first time please don’t hesitate to contact me by telephone: 01698 350816 or, by e-mail: gw14lawpsoffice@glow.sch.uk we’d love to hear from you!

Text Messaging

You can help us tremendously by letting us know as soon as possible if your child is absent from school. Please note that if we have not heard from you we will send a text message asking you to let us know the reason for your child’s absence. Please do not respond to this by texting us back but contact us by telephone to provide us with an update. Text messages are very useful and we can use them for a range of purposes to communicate information at very short notice e.g. school closure due to severe weather conditions. Please note however that we are limited to the number of characters we can use in each text, therefore we will use abbreviations where appropriate. The most commonly used one will be LPS & NC to mean Law Primary School and Nursery Class.

Car Parking Issues at Law Primary

Please note that, due to an incident which happened in our school car park recently, our local police officer has requested that we urge parents/carers to use the car park appropriately. Please park only in designated bays when dropping off and collecting your child. Please also consider parking outwith the school car park and walking part of the journey to help ease congestion. In addition we ask all car park users to demonstrate patience and courtesy towards others. Following the above noted guidance should help ensure our children’s safety and make the car park less congested at key times.

Gentle Reminders We are hoping that there may be some reading books, misplaced or forgotten, hiding in homes! We are missing quite a number of reading books and would really appreciate if they could be returned to complete the sets. For each reading book that a pupil finds and returns, they will get a gold token for their class. Please, please help us to recover the missing books- replacing them is a costly business. We want to encourage children to drink water throughout the day as we are aware of the potential benefits of doing so. To this end can we remind you to ensure that children have water and not juice in their containers/water bottles for class? Please note that, due to health and safety regulations, we cannot give out birthday cakes handed in to school. We are also working hard to promote Law as a healthy school and Nursery Class and as such would ask you not to send sweets to school to be distributed to the whole class, for example, on your child’s birthday. Can I ask you to avoid taking your child out of school for holidays during term time please? This can be very disruptive to your child’s education as they miss valuable teaching input when they are absent. These absences are recorded as ‘Unauthorised’ (except in very exceptional circumstances) and do not help us present a positive picture in relation to our annual absence data. Can I remind you to check your child’s hair for head lice on a fairly regular basis? The guidance suggests that parents/carers should aim to check their children’s hair once a week during normal hair washing. Information leaflets with useful advice and guidance are available in our school foyer. You can also access useful advice from www.onceaweektakeapeek.com. Please don’t hesitate to contact us if we can provide any further help. For Health & Safety reasons could you please ensure if your child wears earrings that on their PE days you either remove them or cover them with tape/plasters please? As always we thank you in advance for your co-operation and support in these matters. Thank You

Theme for learning

This month the children have been learning all about ‘Tigers’ in the morning and ‘Elephants’ in the afternoon. The children have been learning to name and identify Tigers and discuss and describe Elephants’ natural habitats.

Safety

We are trying to discourage the children from pressing the button which releases the lock on the door at the nursery entrance/exit. This is to promote the children’s safety. Can we ask you to help reinforce this key message that only grownups should push the release button when leaving the nursery class? Your support with this will really help the children make links with this month’s Health and Wellbeing target

which is ‘Safe’.

Nursery Toilets

For the safety of our children and parent/carers we ask parents/carers not to enter the nursery toilets or if necessary to inform a member of staff prior to entering the toilets.

Thank you.

Nursery Stay, Play and Learn We would like to invite you to ‘Stay, Play and Learn’ in your child’s nursery session. This is a fantastic opportunity to find out a bit more about the learning through play in nursery, and gives children a chance to show how and what they are learning. We have set aside some time in November for our ‘Stay, Play and Learn’ sessions and do hope you can come along - details to follow.

Pupil Illness If your child has been sick please remember that they should not return to nursery for 48 hours from the last time they are sick.

Macmillan Coffee Event A Macmillan Coffee event will be held in the school on Wednesday 21st October 2015 at 10.30am -11.45am (AM Session) and 2.00pm - 2.45pm (PM Session). Last year the nursery children played a very important part in the organisation of this event and we are delighted to be involved in it again this year! The children will be involved in baking lots of yummy treats and designing posters and invitations for the event. You will shortly receive your invitation to the coffee event – we hope to see you there! Last year parents/carers collected their children from nursery and took them up to the coffee event. The same procedure will apply to this year also.

Pre-School Orthoptic Vision Screening

The pre-school visual screening tests will be carried out in nursery soon. You should have received an information leaflet about the vision tests. If you choose NOT to allow your child’s vision to be tested, complete the tear off slip from the leaflet and give it to a member of the nursery staff. Thank you.

Cold Weather

Now that the cold weather is setting in can we remind parents/carers to provide appropriate outdoor clothing for children to wear during daily outdoor play.

Thank you.

Lending Library

Lending Library will take place on a Wednesday. The staff will help the children to select a book to take home. The book is to be returned on a Monday. Reading with your child is fun and helps to develop your child’s listening skills and language. Please encourage your child to complete the feedback sheet (colour the appropriate face).

Gym Day

Please note that gym day is on a Friday for both morning and afternoon children. Please ensure all jewellery is removed.

You and Your Child- parent/carer workshops

Some of our parent/carers have been taking part in a new initiative programme which helps to develop a more in-depth understanding of the stage of children’s development. We are discovering together through experience, discussion, knowledge and play.

Parent/Carer Helpers

Parents/ Carers are encouraged to come in to the Nursery and work with us for the benefit of all the children. If you are interested in volunteering please speak to Mrs Britton who will answer any questions and provide you with the appropriate paperwork as it is required by South Lanarkshire that all parent/carer helpers to be checked by Disclosure Scotland PVG scheme.

Dates for the Diary

Monday 5

th October Photographer in School

Tuesday 6th October Librarian to visit P1’s

Wednesday 7th October P1-P7 Flu vaccinations

Thursday 8th October Parents’ Evening

Friday 9th October School closes for October Week holiday

Monday 19th October School re-opens

Monday 19th October Room 6 Bistro Cafe

Tuesday 20th October Room 4 Bistro Cafe

Wednesday 21st October Room 7 Bistro Cafe

Wednesday 21st October MacMillan Coffee Day

Wednesday 21st October Netball Tournament

Thursday 22nd

October Football Tournament

Friday 23rd

October CHS Science teacher to Primary 7

Tuesday 27th October Room 1 Bistro Cafe

Tuesday 27th October Halloween Disco

Wednesday 28th October Room 2 Bistro Cafe

Wednesday 28th October Sportshall Athletics Festival

Thursday 29th October Room 3 Bistro Cafe

Friday 30th October CHS Science teacher to Primary 7

Wider Achievement

We like to capture children’s achievements for our Wider Achievement Wall. If your child has done something out with school or nursery which you feel deserves recognition please see the office for an achievement form. If we receive a completed achievement form your child’s achievement will be mentioned in the newsletter and put up on our Wider Achievement Wall. Please note we have both a school and nursery wall and invite our nursery parents to let us know about their child’s successes too.

Bethann Maxwell Bethann reached Aqua Skills Level 1 during the holidays.

Well done Bethann!

Mackenzie Middleton Mackenzie won a silver medal for patterns at

Taekwondo, a bronze medal for sparking and a bronze medal for special technique.

Fantastic Mackenzie!

Sarah Tait Sarah cycled the Strathhaven 15 this year with her mum and dad. She cycled all 15 miles herself and

earned her certificate and cake! Super job Sarah!

Thomas Gardner, Louie Stevenson, Logan MacRobert & Jamie Morton The boys cycled round Millport with the Milton Rovers Football Team.

Thomas has raised £314.50 so far and has still got more sponsors to collect. Brilliant boys!

Greg Heaney Greg achieved his 10m Distance Award for swimming.

Well done Greg!

Millie MacKenzie Millie completed the ACE Gymnastic Display Block.

Super job Millie!

Ashleigh Wylie Ashleigh won ‘Dancer of the Year 2015’ with her dance school, James Dance Troup.

Fantastic Ashleigh!

Yours sincerely

Vicky Quinn Head Teacher