The judge is coming on Friday this week so we were all very busy tidying and planting to get ready for him.  We were so pleased to have so many parents (and a grandparent) to help us with our "emergency" work party day last Saturday.  They did a HUGE amount of work as you are sure to see.  Mrs Rutledge has also been working very hard and you can't fail to notice her refurbishment of our newly relocated play house!!  THANK YOU all.

A few children went with Mrs Rutledge and Miss Corkin to the new Down District Council offices.  Our school had been invited to celebrate our Eco Schools Green flags.  They had a fun morning and saw a magic show.  We were sorry we couldn't all go but there were lots of other schools invited also.

Lucinda (the Education Officer from Down District Council) came to help us with our Spring Clean today.  We walked to the Grove and picked up quite a bit of litter.  We were pleased to see that there was not TOO much there.  We had to rush back to school as it suddenly got very cold and looked like it would start to rain.  We sang "rain, rain, go away" so we did not get wet!  We used our new hi-vis vests for the grown ups and we took photos for the "Big Spring Clean" campaign.

Geraldine was in today and was showing some of the hospital staff how to put on bandages.....

We were hard at work today preparing our surprises for the weekend!  We still have more to do tomorrow but they are already looking LOVELY!  We have all been very calm and settled this week, enjoying the busy play in the hospital and all the number games since we learnt about Sir Seven last week.  We are enjoying playing with the bottle babies outside and they have already taken on some interesting roles.  They have also been found to be quite heavy when carried around the playground so the wagons have been useful this week.

We had a different sort of day today as some workmen brought their truck into the play ground just before outside play time!!!  We then did our Music (With Mrs R) and rhyme time (Mrs B) in 2 groups.  We will swop the groups again so everyone gets a turn.  We are doing really well on our "8 rhyme challenge" so do keep working on your Nursery rhymes at home - remember "RHYMES MAKE GOOD READERS".  We had an early lunch and got to play outside at last!  Some children helped Mrs Rutledge weed some more of the vegetable beds and we all went to see what the workmen had done in the wildflower garden to keep out the weeds!!!

THANK YOU for all your kind donations. We raised £30 today for Sport Relief.  We had the ponies in the buildres tray to gallop over their JUMPS.  We had lots of fun activities outside - 10 JUMPS on the trampoline - Scary JUMPS over the crocodile infested "river" - action JUMPS on the big blue mat - and racing JUMPS on the space hoppers.  After lunch we had some dancing JUMPS with our toys following instructions on the CD and we had a JUMP challenge around a course of 5 coloured hula hoops - we ALL succeeded - well done.  What a fun woolly jumper day!!!

A big thank you to Matthew's Mum, Andrea, for bringing her ambulance to school.  We all got in the back to see where the patients go and we even had a turn to "drive" it!  Andrea set off the lights and sirens which was VERY exciting.  We all had great fun playing in our school hospital today too.  The paramedics had to bring patients from the school ambulance to the hospital on a stretcher.  The waiting room was very busy with sick children and babies.  The ward got very untidy with all the bandages, stethoscopes and instruments that were used.  We all had to help to get it tidied up again for the new patients to be admitted.  After lunch we heard about Sir Seven - we are all getting very good at counting and recognising our numbers.

We were getting a bit energetic outside today and played a game of tag with Mrs Rutledge.  We had red or yellow tags on our arms and had to run and catch them off each other - what fun.  Geraldine told us a story today and we all sat and listened really well.  We could answer ALL her questions afterwards too - she was so proud of us.

We heard lots of excited stories about what everyone saw at the St. Patrick's day parade yesterday.  We had another visitor today.  Mieria brought her violin and played along to many of our favourite Disney movie tunes.  She showed us where in the world the story happened and we could use some instruments too.  We played the spoons for one song!!!  We shared the fun with our 2 year old friends upstairs in SureStart in their hall.  We were all very good and EVERYONE enjoyed it today.