Letter to parents 30th March 2020

Dear Parents

We are now into our second week of school closure and home schooling and are delighted to see so many of you working away, achieving great things on Mathletics and Accelerated Reading. Well done to all who received recognition for this on our Facebook page today.

A lot of learning can also be done by helping out around the house developing language, numeracy and essential life skills. This is also the perfect time to take out board games, jigsaws taking up baking and working in the garden. There are super suggestions for getting creative with arts and crafts online.

We are hoping that a facility to upload pictures of your completed school work, pictures you have drawn, things you have made and how you are keeping yourself busy, fit and healthy will soon be available on our school website.

It is a difficult time for all of us and it is most important that we try to keep some routines.

The school day starts and ends with prayer. The children know their Morning and Night prayers and it would be nice for this to continue. Healthy breaks Monday-Thursday & treat day Friday as boredom can very easily lead us to the fridge and cookie cupboard and remember to exercise for 60 minutes a day. Newsdesk will be a great source for children P5-7 as they are all familiar with it in school and it has lots of interesting follow up tasks.

We all need to look after our Mental Health, as well as 60 minutes exercise recommendation we have uploaded sites to our website and Facebook that you may find useful.

This is a challenging time for us teachers too. We are used to classrooms full of activity and happy children which is so different to working remotely from home. There was no time to prepare for this and so please bear with us, we are doing our best.

When school does start again we will have a big “Welcome Back” party, and Primary 7, should that not be before the end of June, we will arrange something special for you.

We miss you all, you are in our thoughts and prayers every day, this will pass and better days will come.

We look forward to seeing you all soon. In the meantime, keep up the good work.

All the staff

St. Joseph’s PS