As part of our “People who Help Us” topic, we have interviewed some of the grown ups from our school community. Today it was our campus police offer, PC Dempster who came to see us. Not only did she answer all our questions, she brought along some Police hats and jackets for us to try on! We loved finding out about PC Dempster’s job and we think there may be some budding PC’s among us!
J 
Afterwards we took part in some topic activities, including role play and craft!
J 
Due to yesterday’s Scottish Government announcements regarding Tier 4 restrictions our planned class Masses can no longer go ahead. We hope to be able to reschedule these as soon as guidelines allow.
Also, we now have to revert back to PE taking place outdoors only. Please ensure that pupils are still coming to school appropriately dressed on their PE days.
Thank you.
We raised £98 in donations for Children In Need this year. Thanks to everyone who donated.
The children had lots of fun and looked great in their spotty outfits!
We raised £67 in donations for the Poppy appeal this year.
Thank you to everyone who donated.
Now that we have moved to Level 4 restrictions, we are no longer able to hold our class masses at the church unfortunately. However, Father Martin has kindly offered to visit each class in the school on the dates below to hold mass with each class individually.
Thank you for all your amazing donations today. The children looked great and had lots of fun. Thank you to our amazing kitchen staff for special spotty cupcakes today too.
Fantastic photos and our donation total will be included on the blog next week.
Due to current regulations we are unable to have parent/carer meetings this term. Primary 2-7 class teachers will provide a written interim report for each child. These will be sent home on Friday 4th December.
Primary 1 parent/carers will receive a phonecall from the class teacher the week beginning Monday 30th November. Further details regarding this and a choice of days and times will be sent to Primary 1 parents/carers in due course.
As we are unable to attend our annual pantomime visit to the Palace Theatre this year, we have arranged for M&M Theatre Company to come to the school for a production of The Wizard of Oz! This will take place on Wednesday 16th December 2020 with performances at 9.15am,10.45am and 1.30pm to allow us to follow safety procedures.
Friends of Mount Carmel are very generously subsidising the shows, enabling us to keep the cost down to £2 per pupil which will be available for payment through your child’s Parentpay account.
Please ensure the total cost is paid in full by Friday 11th December 2020.
(If you require a barcoded letter for payment please contact the school office)
We are in desperate need of the following items for our “Spare Clothing” collection-
Tights, socks (boys and girls) and leggings in any child sizes please!
If you have any of these items which no longer fit your child/children please hand them in to a member of staff at the main door or give to your child to bring in with them, thanks.
Please note: We do not need any other form of children’s underwear, clothing or school uniform as we have a plentiful supply just now thank you.
Please click the link below to see the full information about
and the different ways on how and where you can donate.
Tomorrow is Children In Need day!
Just a reminder that children are encouraged to come to school wearing something spotty. There is still time to make a donation of £1 via ParentPay. Please keep your donations coming in. Thank You.
Our whole school target for this month is :
During our October target of “Marvellous Manners”, children received certificates and House Points for displaying good manners throughout the month, and in general there was a definite improvement in manners across the whole school.
From Monday 16th November, indoor PE will resume and each class will be allocated a 1 hour slot. Children will not be required to change for PE but we ask that they bring gym/indoor shoes.
Strict hygiene measures will be in place to clean equipment and the hall will be suitably ventilated. Outdoor PE will continue weather permitting.
Primary 6 have been busy these last couple of weeks….
Primary 6 enjoyed the Halloween theme day and looked super all dressed up in their costumes. They took part in some fun Halloween activities including making skeletons using cotton buds. 
Primary 6 have been working hard since they returned from the October holiday. In Literacy, they have been writing their own short story over three weeks looking at suspense openers, characterisation, and effective conclusions. This week the pupils will be redrafting and publishing their stories and designing a front and back cover too. Their stories will then be shared with other pupils in the school to enjoy and give feedback on.
The pupils are enjoying the new Rainbow Reward time on a Friday afternoon. This week they chose to go outside and use the ghillie kettle to make hot chocolates. Miss Mudge was a confident individual using the ghillie kettle for the first time herself! There were some ‘bumps’ along the way (not using the ghillie kettle properly and the fire not starting) but everyone eventually enjoyed a lovely hot chocolate.
During our PATHS lessons, Primary 6 has been discussing problems and solutions relevant to their age and stage. This week they took on the role of ‘problem solvers’ and wrote ‘fictional’ problem-solving letters. I was impressed with the strategies they suggested in their letters and the mature responses to the problems presented to them.
The pupils are working on their first Pope Francis Faith Award presentation on their hobby or interest. The pupils are enjoying using PowerPoint and the Internet to make their presentations interesting for their audience. We also watched Father Martin’s ‘Christ the King’ assembly that he kindly recorded for the pupils at Mount Carmel.
We still have lots of work to do before we move into festive activities in the lead up to Christmas. I am very proud of all pupils so far and I am looking forward to celebrating their achievements throughout Primary 6.
Miss Mudge
You still have time to donate to the Poppy appeal via ParentPay. Donations will be accepted up until 3pm tomorrow (11th).
Hello and welcome to our blog post for term 2. Primary 4 have had a busy first term, looking at our mini topics on animal classifications and deforestation. Children have been working hard in literacy and numeracy within their group and are ready to move on to our new topics within each curricular area.
Literacy
Our reading and spelling activities from term 1 will continue as children focus on their Bug Club reading texts, recognising spelling sounds and phonics within these texts and using their awareness and strategies to tackle unfamiliar words. Reading with expression and fluency will also be a focus whilst using our skills to make appropriate predictions about the text whilst giving reasons for reaching this understanding.
Whilst children have a good grasp of the difference between fiction and non-fiction texts, children will take these skills forward, being able to use key words to locate relevant information from a range of books useful for our topic. They will be able to find, sort and organise information related to specific tasks within fiction and non-fiction texts and make notes in own words that will be used as the basis for their writing. In writing our focus will be on extending sentences and paragraph length, whilst using interesting openers and connectives to join sentences and a wide range of descriptive words.
Maths
Our focus in maths is number and number processes, focussing on place value and partitioning numbers to understand the column value. Those working within the circle and rectangle maths groups will be focussing on numbers up to 9,999 and addition and subtraction strategies when dealing with 4 digit numbers. Those in the square group will continue to develop an understanding of 3 digit numbers, whilst making the link between multiplication and division. Division will be the focus for this group and developing strategies to help with division problems.
Children will regularly use their ‘Thinking It Through’ jotters to develop problem solving skills, applying knowledge of number to new contexts and developing strategies for any number problems. We will also encourage these skills through our daily number challenges and number target board!
Health & Wellbeing
All children have had the opportunity to be pupil of the day and enjoy wearing the special sticker and privileges that come with this. We will continue with this so as each child have the opportunity again in term 2. We have been exploring emotions, comfortable and uncomfortable and how we recognise these emotions within ourselves and in others. We now have a bank of strategies to support us when we feel uncomfortable, and these emotions will continue to be explored as we reach a deeper understanding of how these feelings can impact on us and how to seek help or support.
In P.E, our sessions will continue to take place outside where possible, on a Monday and Wednesday afternoon, however we can now access the hall once per week and indoor sessions will commence soon. Our focus will be on developing racquet skills further through badminton/tennis and on fitness, building stamina and strength through a variety of exercises.
R.E
Our focus during R.E sessions will be the sacraments as children prepare for their Confirmation and First Holy Communion. We will look at the Sacrament of Baptism and how this is the starting point in our journey with God. The booklets which support First Holy Communion will be issued, later in term 2, to those pupils who are taking part, and there will be activities for parents to complete at home with their child. This will also be our in-class focus, so children fully understand each of the Sacraments and their importance in their relationship with God.
Topic
Our topics for term 2 will be ‘The Vikings in Scotland’ and ‘Food Chains and Webs’ in science. The focus in our Viking topic will be to look at Viking life, society, and class systems. We will explore Viking Gods as well as look at the impact of the Vikings in Scotland. In science, understanding food chains and food webs of animals from different environments and ecosystems across the globe, will be the focus. We will also examine the impacts human beings are having on food chains too.
We hope this is the start of another successful term as we navigate the continued impact of the pandemic on our lives. Please be assured we will continue to keep things as normal as possible for our children, despite the different restrictions in place.
Take care,
Mrs Travers
The Scottish Child Payment is a new payment for families on certain benefits or tax credits to help towards the costs of looking after a child. It is £40 paid every four weeks for each child UNDER the age of 6yrs.
It opens on Monday 15th February 2021, however applications are being taken now.
Full information can be found here:
Just a reminder that Children In Need day is this coming Friday (13th)!
Children can come to school wearing something spotty….thank you to everyone who has donated so far and please, please keep your donations coming in via ParentPay .
A reminder for parents/carers that children’s Homework Folders should be returned to school on a Thursday please. This is to give enough time for it to be quarantined and for the teachers to correct it.
Thank you for your co-operation.
Click on Pudsey below to donate quicker !!
Reminder that Children In Need day is Friday 13th November. We are encouraging the children to wear something spotty on the day in return for a £1 donation via Parentpay.
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The theme for Dyslexia Awareness Week is:
“Unlocking Potential”
Children will be taking part in activities in class throughout this week
We are required to have adequate ventilation across the school.
As we move into the winter months, children should dress warmly for being in class.
As we are now in Tier 3, face coverings must now be worn when dropping off and collecting children.
Thank you for your co-operation.
Thank you to everyone that helped to organise the Hallowe’en woods walk, we had fantastic fun! 🎃👻
Primary 5 took part in a pumpkin competition last week. There were lots of amazing designs. It was very difficult to choose a winner! Well done everyone who took part. Our house captains chose our winning pumpkin.
Damon was our winner! He won a voucher for The Works.
*** Flu Immunisations for pupils are tomorrow in school***
Today we received our certificate from the Ayrshire Hospice! We raised a grand total of £75- which is tremendous. Thanks to everyone who donated.
Primary 1 are back from the October break and ready to learn!! We have a busy and fun filled term ahead including some “spooky” activities for Hallowe’en before getting ready to celebrate our first Christmas as part of the Mount Carmel school community.
Literacy
This term we will be continuing to practise our letter formation and pencil control skills to ensure we can write the letters we have been learning.
Now that we know some of the sounds the letters of the alphabet make, we will be “blending” these together to make words. These words will help us with our reading and writing tasks.
We are very excited that we are becoming “readers” in Primary 1 and will soon be bringing home our first texts with words in them. We will be making predictions about the stories we read in class, using the title and illustrations to help us.
During writing activities, we are continuing to talk about our ideas for our stories, using pictures to help us.
Numeracy
Now that we have explored the numbers to 10 fully and have looked at “more” and “less”, we will be focusing on the concept of addition. We will begin by combining two quantities and understanding that when you do this, the quantity gets bigger. This will lead us on to learning our number stories, where we learn the different ways to “make” our numbers to 10. These number stories (or facts) are the building blocks to which all the other number processes are built upon, so we will spend a lot of time on these, ensuring they are well embedded before moving on.
Alongside addition, the children will be introduced to the numbers to 20, looking at how these numbers are constructed and sequenced.
Numbers are tricky to write, so number formation will continue to be reinforced in class and through homework tasks.
Health & Well being
We will continue to welcome our PATHS puppets to help us talk about our emotions and friendships. We have been talking about the kinds of things friends do together and have discussed what makes a good friend.
We have been exploring our emotions and sharing our experiences and we will be looking at ways to help us manage our feelings.
Through our topic, we will be exploring the people who can help us when we need someone to talk to or feel unsafe.
We will also be talking about ways to keep ourselves safe when indoors and outdoors.
Topic
Our topic this term is “People who Help Us” and will be very relevant in terms of our health and hygiene awareness in school just now. We will begin by considering the people who help us within our school community and will move on to look at the roles of those who help us in our wider community, eg, police officers, nurses, fire fighters.
RE
During RE we will continue to give thanks for God’s love. We will explore how this love is shown through the “People who help us and care for us”. We will give thanks for these people and for the care they have shown us.
As the term progresses, we will celebrate advent together, preparing for the birth of Jesus by showing love and kindness to those around us as much as we possibly can. We will be exploring the story of the nativity through songs, role play and craft activities.
PE
Our PE will continue to be outdoors (weather permitting) . Please continue to dress your child in joggers and trainers on our gym days which are now Monday and Thursday!
Thanks for your support
Mrs Duff
Please remember that tomorrow is our –
Halloween Theme Day !
Children can come to school dressed up for the day and they will take part in fun activities in their classes. All classes will also visit the Onthank Pumpkin Trail tomorrow, so please send your child to school with a waterproof jacket and suitable footwear as , even if the weather is dry , the Trail will still be very muddy!!
On Saturday 31st October, the following Mount Carmel Pupils will make their first Holy Communion:
Zak, Harry ,Damon and Megan K
Please keep them in your prayers
