We would like to say a big “ Thank You “ to our amazing dinner ladies for a wonderful Christmas lunch yesterday. It was thoroughly enjoyed by everyone!
We are a very lucky school to have them👌🍗🍰🧁
P3 Christmas 🎄☃️❄️
Thank you to Fr. Martin for coming to our class and teaching us about Jesus and Christmas. Also to our lovely dinner ladies for making our delicious Christmas lunch! ☃️❄️🎄
Thank You Morrisons
We would like to thank Morrisons, Kilmarnock for their very kind donations of biscuits for the staff, and also breakfast bars, juice and fruit snacks for some of the children. They are very much appreciated by everyone.
All about shape in Primary 6
We have had another busy week in Primary 6! There has been so much excellent work I had to share it with parents and carers.
The pupils started exploring 3D and 2D shapes this week. Some of our pupils were identifying polygons and their properties whilst others explored regular and irregular 2D shapes.
All pupils revised the properties of 3D shapes and the pupils were able to take part in practical activities.
The pupils also created their own tessellations with some pupils opting to use 2D shapes and others challenging themselves by creating their own templates.
The pupils also learned how to draw 3D shapes and I was so impressed with the work they produced!
The pupils also used their problem solving (and patience) skills to try and solve tangrams. These proved challenging but they used their resilience to try and solve them.
What a busy week. I’m so proud of all the Primary 6’s. We’re looking forward to exploring 2D and 3D shape further next week 🙂
Miss Mudge
How to say “Thank You” this year
As we reach December we would like to say that our staff love nothing more than a BIG THANK YOU
We know that some parents/ pupils like to bring gifts, but a thank you is the best gift ever! Instead this year we would be delighted if you could add a donation to Father Martin’s :
“Advent Cycle Fundraiser”
You can sponsor him through his “Just Giving” page here:
Christmas Toy Appeal
This years annual Toy Appeal at the Masonic Hall, 45 London Road, Kilmarnock will be held over 2 days:
- Wednesday 16th December – 11am till 4pm
- Thursday 17th December – 11am till 4pm
This event is for families struggling at Christmas who need a little help.
Parents/carers can attend (no questions asked) and choose toys for their children this Christmas.
Attendance is for adults only this year and masks MUST be worn. Social distancing will be in place, hand sanitising on entry and a one way system will be in operation.
Christmas Cards Reminder
If your child wishes to send Christmas cards to school please put these in their homework folder on Thursday 3rd December or Thursday 10th December. These will then be handed out on the Monday.
Thank you for your co-operation with this.
Reverse Advent Calendar
As it is the beginning of December, it is time again for our
Reverse Advent Calendar appeal
Please bring items similar to those listed above into school by Friday 11th December. All items should be in a bag clearly marked for Reverse Advent calendar.
***no perishable food stuffs please***
Home Learning Tasks
You will now find Home Learning Tasks available online for children that are working from home for a short period of time.
These are available from the Main Menu of the website or by clicking on this link.
Infant Virtual Nativity 2020
We are planning a P1-P3 Virtual Infant Nativity this year called:
“Bells Ring Out”
More information will be given out to parents/carers of P1-3 in due course by letter.
Christmas Cards
This year, each class will have their own post box where they can post Christmas cards to their friends. Children should bring their Christmas cards into school for posting on a Thursday and they will be delivered by the class teacher on the following Monday.
PATHS – Kindness Advent Calendar 2020
As today is the 1st of December, we are planning a PATHS home challenge through use of the PATHS Kindness Advent Calendar!
Try the kindness activities in the calendar above throughout the month of December with your child/children at home . Even if they only manage 1 it is a step of kindness in the right direction!
We would love to see any pictures you take of the children carrying out the kindness activities. Please send them to me at:
gillian.templeton@eastayrshire.org.uk
and we will try and post as many as we can on our blog !
MCPS Class Christmas Calendars
Our 2020 school Christmas calendars will be on sale shortly! They will be reasonably priced at £2 per calendar (£4 for 2, £6 for 3 etc).
This year we have used some of the fantastic colourful photographs we took of each class in front of our “Rainbow Wall ” in the assembly hall. We are really pleased with how the photographs have turned out and hope they will brighten up the calendar in what has been an otherwise dreary year!
The calendars will be available to buy through ParentPay shortly.
What’s On In December
Primary 4 make Viking Brooches
Our Viking activities continued today, with Primary 4 getting busy designing and making their very own Viking brooches. The children took some time to think about what they wanted their brooch to look like, drawing their design and thinking about colour and pattern.
Later, we made our brooches using card and foil and applying their design to the brooch. I think Primary 4 made a fantastic job of their brooches, with lots of wonderful ideas coming to life on their hand made brooch. Well done, you are stars!!!
Some children have yet to finish their brooch and I will update with more photos once our display is complete.
We had a fabulous Rainbow Reward day with lots of bright clothing and fun activities in class and outside. Enjoy your weekend and see you all on Monday.
Mrs Travers
Primary 4 Long Houses
Primary 4 have been enjoying our new topic of the Vikings and learning lots about where Vikings came from, where they travelled to, why they raided British towns and what life was like in a Viking village.
Our focus recently has been looking at the living conditions inside a Viking long house and the children worked in groups to design, plan and build their own long house models.
I think the results are pretty fantastic as you can see from the photographs below. The team work displayed in class was fantastic too.
I am really looking forward to seeing the results of our homework challenge, to build a Viking Long Boat at home with the family! Have fun kids and I am sure some of your parents are more excited about this challenge than some of you!!
Take Care ( and remember your rainbow colours tomorrow!)
Mrs Travers
Our First Live Assembly
All of the children were able to take part today in our first full Live Assembly. Mrs McConville and Mrs Fergusson shared our certificate winners from last week and some photographs of things that were happening around the school. Each class then got to say hello to each of the other classes. Next time we look forward to showing off our Christmas Tree and have a special message from Primary 6/7.
#TEAM MC
Changes to Class Mass
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.
P6/7 – 25/11/20 @ 11am
P6 – 27/11/20 @ 11am
P5 – 30/11/20 @ 11am
P4 – 02/12/20 @ 11am
P3 – 07/12/20 @ 11am
P1/2 – 09/12/20 @ 11am
P1 – 14/12/20 @ 11am
Change to Lunch Menu -Friday 27th November
There will be a change to the original lunch menu this Friday(27th).
As part of our Rainbow Reward day on Friday we will be enjoying a Scottish themed lunch:
- Mince, tatties and turnip
- Haggis, neeps and tatties
- Macaroni cheese and garlic bread
followed by
- Scotty dog shortbread or
- Jelly
Rainbow Reward Day- Friday 27th November
This Friday (27th) is our Rainbow Reward Day !
We are asking all the children to wear bright/rainbow colours please. During the day each class will have their photograph taken in front of our wonderful rainbow in the assembly hall.
These class photographs will be used in this year’s school calendar!
PC Dempster visits Primary 1 👮🏻♀️🚓
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 
Tier 4 Restrictions
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.
Children In Need Donations – Total
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!
Poppy Donations- Total
We raised £67 in donations for the Poppy appeal this year.
Thank you to everyone who donated.
Class Mass is Resuming
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.
- P6/7 – 25/11/20 @ 11am
- P6 – 27/11/20 @ 11am
- P5 – 30/11/20 @ 11am
- P4 – 02/12/20 @ 11am
- P3 – 07/12/20 @ 11am
- P1/2 – 09/12/20 @ 11am
- P1 – 14/12/20 @ 11am
Book Week Scotland
This week is Book Week Scotland and children in Primary 1, 2 and 3 are gifted a bag from the Scottish Government.
Primary 2 and 3 will receive a Read, Write and Count bag today. There are instructions in this, please take some time to look at this with your child.
Primary 1 will receive a Book Bug bag, they will receive this on Friday.
P6/7 Term Overview
Term 2 already! Won’t be long before the first door of the advent calendar is opened! Here’s an overview of our learning that will take place in our second term (Oct – Dec).
Literacy
Our literacy focus this term will be on recount writing, using notes to create a plan and inform our writing. In conjunction with our Digital Literacy topic, we will be doing lots of vlogging and blogging. So watch this space for updates of what we have been up to. We will be continuing to work our way through Bug Club books and short novels paying particular attention to non-fiction features.
Spelling groups will continue to use Active Spelling strategies and follow on from previous work. The Suns and Moons spelling groups are developing their knowledge of metalinguistics by looking at prefixed words. The Stars will further enhance their knowledge of phoneme representations.
Numeracy
The class are enjoying problem solving game day where we have been playing a variety of games aimed at enhance lateral thinking and utilising cognitive thinking. The introduction of a Daily Riddle has also got many minds whirring. Mental games such as Countdown and Sink the Ship remain popular!
The Circles numeracy group have progressed onto adding and subtracting decimals and shortly will be tackling multiplication and division including decimalised numbers and fractions. Similarly, the Rectangles are reinforcing their skills in addition and subtraction to include working with decimals before moving onto fractions.
The Squares have been working on estimating on a given number line and will be investigating different addition and subtraction strategies.
The Triangles will be continuing to work on numbers to 1000.
The class are also working on skills beyond number with Mrs McIntyre and are currently developing their knowledge of coordinates and angles, then focussing on symmetry.
Health and Wellbeing
We will continue with the Pupil of the Day and the PATHS Programme where we look in closer detail at the problem solving steps to resolve conflict. In addition to our PATHS, as part of our Digital Literacy topic, we will be looking at online abuse, using Social Media safely and knowing how to report content.
We will also be investigating the main nutrient groups and how they benefit our bodies.
A quick reminder that we will be going outside often, therefore, children should bring in appropriate clothes such as wellies or old boots, waterproof jacket and warmer clothes (hat, scarf, gloves) as we move into the winter.
Mr Bertoncini
Children In Need
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.
Interim Report
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.
The Wizard of Oz Production
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)
