Welcome to my final weekly update of session  2019/2020. I want to take this opportunity to thank all our families for the support they have given the school by working in partnership with us over these last few difficult months. Your feed back in our questionnaire in particular has been vital in planning effectively for the children in a way that also meets your needs as working adults. I know how challenging remote learning is and the strain of juggling home schooling with the demands of your own workload can only add to that so thank you for your commitment and support.

Moving forward in the new session as you know your child will have a minimum of 2 days face to face class teaching but hopefully this will only be a temporary measure if the covid 19 threat continues to reduce.

We have managed to accommodate sibling groups and linked in with the nursery too to create a similar pattern of days. The groupings were also planned to take into account working groups and allow for high quality, ability focused teaching while meeting the class size restrictions based on the 2 metre rule. As a result the days your child has been allocated are not open to change. While I appreciate this may be challenging the capacity of the classrooms does not allow us to accommodate more than 50% so I would physically not have space to change the allocated days.

READING CHALLENGE

I have been contacted by NLC with details of the summer reading challenge in a new format.

This year, the national Summer Reading Challenge is online!  Silly Squad was launched last Friday, with a host of authors and celebrities helping to promote this to families all over the UK.

Alongside this, Culture NL Libraries are hosting a ‘Silly Staycation’ with our local celebrity, panto favourite Sheepie fronting our summer campaign; check it out here!

https://www.facebook.com/477014162333709/posts/3237642849604146/?sfnsn=scwspmo&extid=RNdHpf6xdI5xkN6Y&d=n&vh=e

Follow the links to get the kids signed up for a Silly Staycation!

CASH PAYMENTS

From August, cash can no longer be accepted in schools and parents/carers will be asked to use cards via the online payment system to pay for things like school lunches etc.  Children will not be able to bring cash into school to top up their lunch cards.  North Lanarkshire Council will be in touch nearer the time to notify parents of this and will advise them to use the online payment system.

SUMMER HUB PROVISION

An enormous thank you to our Holy Family Primary and Nursery Volunteers who have worked so hard in our hubs to support our vulnerable children and the children of key workers, as always you are stars.

Please note

Current hub provision will end on Wednesday 24^th June 2020 at 8pm and will move to a new community based hub model.

The following 9 venues have been identified as summer community hubs:

• Garrell Vale Community Centre in Kilsyth
• Broadwood Leisure Cumbernauld
• Iain Nicolson Centre, Chryston
• Airdrie Leisure Centre
• Coatbridge Community Centre
• Sir Matt Busby Leisure Centre
• Ravenscraig Regional Sports Centre
• Wishaw Sports Centre
• Shotts Leisure Centre

Staff from Community Learning and Development, Culture Leisure NL and Active Schools will collaborate to lead and manage these hubs. Hubs will operate Monday to Friday from 9am until 5pm.

Any key workers looking to access a placement should do so using the following link: www.northlanarkshire.gov.uk/keyworkers

I will be in school over the holidays and will also be available by email so please get in touch with any concerns or questions you may have.

If there is any change to school plans due to updated government guidelines I will inform you straight away by text.

Boys and Girls – Have a lovely summer holiday and put those school books down for now.

Stay safe, be kind and take care of yourselves and those around you. I cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to seeing you all back in school in August, I have missed you so much.

God Bless

Mrs Wilson x

Please click on each of these links to view the most recent update from North Lanarkshire Council regarding return to school in August. You will be informed of your child’s pattern of days on Monday 22nd June by text.

Parent-Carers_Letter_19.6.20

Update Education FAQs

This is the ninth of our weekly posts that I am creating to keep you all as up to date as possible with all the proposed arrangements for returning to school in August. This will be a busy week again as our new Primary 1 are coming into the building in very small groups throughout the day  for a short transition visit on Monday. On Tuesday we have a visit to our nursery from the support officer for Early Years to review our plans for reopening in August. On Thursday and Friday you have all been given a slot to return your school books and collect your school reports from the front yard.This is really important as we will need these to create learning packs for next year’s children. I know they might look a bit tired by now but that’s great as it shows you have been using them so don’t worry. Any old reading books etc. from previous years will also be gratefully received and no questions will be asked as to where they have been hiding ! We are also having our fire risk assessment updated on Thursday as well as preparing the classrooms and moving furniture so lots to keep us busy.

I have created an information guide which should contain answers to the many questions I know you all have. I have tried to explain the logic behind our planning which is led by current government and local authority health advice. I have attached the draft plans of our school building and grounds as I feel it is easier to look at  and understand visually than for me to describe only in words.

These site plans are what I have submitted for approval to North Lanarkshire Council and what they will use as their guide for painting and signage of our building and grounds during the holidays. In my role as site manager I will be in school at this time with Mr Crielly to assist with this process.

Please click on the link below to view the information document and associated site plans.

Return to school parental information HF Covid 13.6.20

Return to school estate plan – written

Please note the diagram below will form the basis for the signage to be painted in the school yard  during the summer holidays.

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This is the eighth of our weekly posts I am going to put out on the Monday of each week of term time to keep us all connected and let you know what I have been up to. Again this time it is a really early as I need to be in the hub on Monday and on Tuesday with the other Holy Family Staff Volunteers to take care of the children of the key workers.

Boys and girls last week was really busy as Mrs Le Blond and I were back in school getting ready for you all and completing risk assessments, signage requests and ordering fresh resources that we will need to give you each an individual learning pack. This will come complete with all your own resources so that you wont need to share anything with other pupils and can reduce the risk of spreading the virus that way.

I had a big meeting using Microsoft Teams with all of our staff so that when some of them come back on Monday they will know all about the procedures for sanitising their hands  as soon as they approach the building and then AGAIN once they have touched the door handle. They know that all the classroom doors have to be wedged open to avoid handle touching and they even have been given a toilet list so that only certain people use that toilet and reduce the risk of spreading the virus that way too – isn’t that clever ?

The staffroom only has 6 chairs in it now and no kettle either so everyone is bringing in their own drinks and packed lunch so they can eat in the classroom or outside as we can’t have too many people close together because of the virus.

This Friday 15th June we will be sending you out your text as to who your new teacher is going to be, that’s always an exciting day especially as one class is getting a brand new teacher Mrs Preston,who is joining us as a permanent member of our Holy Family Team.

The week after that we will be giving  each class a set time to drop off the textbooks at the front gate they have used this year so that we can clean them and prepare the learning packs you will all need for August. The good thing is that the virus can’t live on paper for more than  48 hours so we know all the individual books you will be given will be safe for you to put in your individual learning pack . When you come up with your books we will have your school report ready for you to take away. Mrs Crawford and Mrs Dillon have been printing them all off and putting them in envelopes – that was a big job believe me !!

Although I am still waiting for North Lanarkshire Council to tell us which recovery model the schools will be using ( that means the pattern of days each group or bubble of children will be able to come in for ) I sent out a questionnaire to your families this week that asked for their views about the way we have been trying to support you and what would suit you all best for August. I have put the feedback in the photos below so that you can look at this together as a family.

The comments sections are really useful for us and I am planning to put out a school response to those comments and suggestions once I have shared them with the staff too for their feedback. Enjoy reading and discussing them together.

Have a great week and please keep practising that social distance. Remember if you are close enough to pop someone else’s bubble then that means you are TOO close !

I hope you’re all keeping well and looking after yourselves and one another. I’m still missing you all very much.

Stay safe, stay happy, and stay kind. I hope you all have a lovely week.

God Bless

Mrs Wilson and all the team at Holy Family Xx

This is the seventh of our weekly posts I am going to put out on the Monday of each week of term time to keep us all connected and let you know what I have been up to. This time it is a really early and only a short post as  I need to be in school early to get ready for all  of our boys and girls coming back to school in August !!!

The teachers will be coming in from next week to get the classrooms ready but Mr Crielly has already been busy with his 2 metre measuring stick to make sure the desks are a safe distance apart.

He has been doing a great job don’t you think ?

Mrs Le Blond , Miss Gallagher and I are going to be working on all the safety protocols and risk assessments for the building and how we use it safely this week. We need to get this important job done correctly before even the teachers are allowed back in the building and they are quite good at social distancing !

I will be in touch with you as soon as I know any more detail about how the school day will look in August – it will be different with not everyone in the building at one time and children doing some of their learning at home  but please don’t worry as we have already ordered in lots of individual resources and big A3 plastic wallets where all your school resources will be kept to ensure there is no sharing. Don’t worry about uniform either, the important thing is that we will be able to welcome you back to Holy Family and not what you are wearing when you do that.

I need to go and get ready now to drive into school so I will leave you with one family photo from my weekend. I know lots of you will have been able to see family and friends for the first time in your gardens or an open space this weekend and how wonderful that must have been after such a long wait.

My mum and dad came to our garden and even though they had to bring their own box of diet coke and couldn’t come inside our house to use the bathroom it was still one of the best visits they have ever had.

Take care of each other, be kind and gentle with one another and most importantly keep washing your hands and practising your social distancing so you are REALLY good at it by the time we get back to school in August.

Mrs Wilson and All The Team in Holy Family.

This is the sixth of our weekly posts I am going to put out on the Monday of each week of term time to keep us all connected and let you know what I have been up to. This time it is on Tuesday as we have just had our holiday weekend. I hope you had some fun with your families. As always I have added some photos so that I can share my week more easily with you.

Although this is a four day week, it is also a very exciting one as it is our Health Week and even better, this incorporates World Play Day on Thursday, where we are hoping that you will have a day of learning through play in an active and healthy manner. I suspect Mrs Anderson has been working with Mrs Le Blond to plan a virtual Sports Day, where you can create your own events and send us pictures of your ideas. This should have taken place on Friday the 29th in the sports park opposite the school, but as always in Holy Family, we will find creative ways to still be connected – even if we can’t physically be together for one of our favourite school days.

I am going to see if I can get the Wilson children to participate in some fun sporting events. I bet they’ll still argue over who’s the best – even though they’re probably too big for that now!

I have been very busy working with some of our teachers to plan virtual transition events for our new pre-entrants who will be joining us in August. Miss Gallagher has created a new tab on our website and we are going to post a series of activities on Transition Tuesdays.

The teachers have been working with Mrs McGowan from our nursery and have come up with some really imaginative ways to link with our new pupils. I have made a virtual tour of our school with the help of Mrs Le Blond (who was my lovely camera lady!)

We have also involved a very small member of the Holy Family team to help us create a “Day in the Life of a Primary One,” which will help us to make our newest pupils feel a bit more at home. Check out the website and see what you think – all ideas welcome, as you are the people who know Holy Family best!

We have been at home for quite some time now, and Mr Wilson’s hair has been growing like crazy! He won’t let me cut it (I wonder why…) but luckily our son owns a pair of clippers, so he has been given this tricky job instead. Here he is, hard at work!

Do you think he looks like he’s concentrating?

I also had a lovely surprise this week, when I received a gift from the post from my friend. I had been moaning about having a sore neck because I had been sitting for so long using my phone and laptop when working from home. She must have been listening, because she sent me this wonderful device to hold my phone for me so that I don’t have to keep craning my neck down. This is engineering at its very best, boys and girls! STEM in action.

Look at the simplicity yet effectiveness of the design! I wonder how many of you will be inventors of the future? Quite a few I’m sure.

Another friend – aren’t I lucky? – sent me a present to help me relax and be a bit creative, as she knows a good way to unwind is to do some colouring in.

I find this really helps me to switch off from working – which can be difficult seeing as my school office is now my dining room! This might be a good thing for you to try to pass the time when you have finished your tasks for the day.

I was thinking that we have had the McCoo art display up for quite a while now, and it might be a lovely idea for everyone to choose one piece of art they have created during lockdown. If everyone brought in something, that would allow us to come together in a creative way when we’re allowed back at school – whenever that may be. It would also create a beautiful record of what everyone has been doing during this time.

I hope lots of you  managed to participate in the Bishop’s Mass, which was streamed live for Ascension Thursday. It made me emotional, as I knew that usually we would all be sitting in Holy Family Parish Church to enjoy Mass together, so it was lovely to know that so many of us were watching this live and could at least be together in that way.

Please take a look at the new transition tab for our new pre entrants at the top of the menu bar on the website. It is laid out in a very similar way to each of your classes. Because these boys and girls haven’t been able to have their usual transition visits we have created a series of Transition Tuesdays with story telling sessions and activities as well as support ideas for their mums and dads. Let me know what you think of our ideas and remember to send me any other suggestions you may have. You all had a first day at school, can you remember what it felt like ? I can still remember mine and that was a few years ago now….

I hope you’re all keeping well and looking after yourselves and one another. I’m missing you all very much.

Stay safe, stay happy, and stay kind. I hope you all have a lovely week.

God Bless

Mrs Wilson and all the team at Holy Family Xx

This is the fourth of our weekly posts I am going to put out on the Monday of each week of term time to keep us all connected and let you know what I have been up to. I am actually a bit early doing this as it is only Sunday and you are off tomorrow for the in service day but I am working at the Bellshill locality hub at St John Paul 2  with some other teachers from Holy Family  this week so I am getting my homework done just now.

As always I have added some photos so that I can share my week more easily with you.

Saturday should have been the First Holy Communion Day for our P4 children and it was very emotional to think about the day we had planned to have and the reality of not being able to celebrate the sacrament in that way. I am very proud of all these children and their families who have been so patient and resigned to the inevitable postponement of their plans. I do not yet know the timescale for when this will take place but I do know it will be a day of great joy and beauty when it does come.

I have been busy thinking about the transition for our smallest new people who will be joining us in the nursery when they turn 3. Mrs MacGowan had the great idea of recording welcome video clips and making a virtual tour of the nursery so that the boys and girls will know our building and recognise some faces when we are able to open up again.

Here is my message do you like it ?

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It has been a busy week with some exciting news from Miss Verrecchia who has just got a beautiful new pet kitten called Gina. She says she is a tiny terror who loves to sit on the laptop when she is trying to type the Primary 3/4 reports.

She is very young so she likes to wake Miss Verrecchia up early to give her some breakfast and have some play time. Clearly it has been a busy day in this photo as she is completely flat out asleep enjoying a cuddle .

I am so excited to see Miss Verrecchia at the hub tomorrow and hear more about her adventures with Gina.

We are doing a different kind of learning down at the hub because the children come on different days or times depending on their parents’ work pattern. Sometimes it is hard because the teachers change so regularly so we always try to make sure our lessons are super interesting and creative. It is great if we can get outdoors also as this is the healthiest option where the risk of spreading infection is lowest. I have been getting some resources together so that we can make minature gardens grown in old tubs or yogurt cartons.

It is a good thing my son eats a lot of yogurt !

Here are the seeds I got. I chose them to encourage bees and other wildlife to visit the minature gardens. This might be something you would like to try at home too. We are going to decorate and personalise a sheet of paper to wrap around each pot before the boys and girls get to take them home.

We are also really lucky that Mr McLaughlin from CNHS music department is part of our working team and that he wants to share his musical talents with us.

I managed to get the 12 ukuleles we have in Holy Family into the back of my car and he has promised to tune them up and have some musical fun with the boys and girls tomorrow ! I am so excited as to what we are going to be learning !

I will let you know how we get on !

All the teachers and nursery staff have been really busy completing all your reports and sending them to me to read and sign. Everyone has been involved in online learning modules too so you are not the only ones learning remotely. It is quite hard to concentrate isn’t it ?

Miss Gallagher is leading our staff training tomorrow and everyone has a great choice of subjects to study. This is just a snapshot of some of the choices she has researched for all the staff. There are so many to choose from and they all look really interesting.

I will leave you with a picture of my holiday weekend that will make you smile. All the local dumps are shut so our family hired a skip to tidy out the garage. Do you think we worked hard ? I do !

Take care of yourselves and each other.

Stay safe, stay happy and spread some love and laughter to those around you.

We love and miss you all

Mrs Wilson and all the team at Holy Family x

Good Morning Everyone

I hope that you are all well and that you are managing to stay safe and happy with your families.

I am so impressed with everything you have been getting up to and I love checking twitter each day to see the staff message for the day. It was Mrs Cameron today and  it reminded me of how much I miss you all . That could have made me feel sad but I wouldn’t let it so I checked in on the website to see what the teachers have been posting for your tasks and it all looks amazing ! I always knew that learning was fun but this is all so creative and a really good mix with the workbooks and textbooks you took home before we closed.

As well as working hard and staying safe it is really important that you are keeping to a regular sleep pattern. If you stay up too late and then sleep in too long it can make you feel really grumpy and low so try not to do that and it will keep you in a healthier routine.

Another thing that makes you feel more content is spending time with your pet if you have one. This is our cat called Floyd. He is over 20 years old but he is still quite frisky.

Although you might not think so looking at this next photo.

Cooking is still a great way to learn something new while you are keeping safe at home . What you learn just now will be useful for you both now and in years to come. Soup is a great way to make a meal that is healthy and nutritious ( and it lasts for days in the fridge and weeks in the freezer ) Here is a vegetable one and no – you’ve guessed it – it wasn’t me that made it !!!

I learned something new this week when my laptop screen went from this

to this  !!!!

I was so worried that I had lost all my hard work and really worried that I didn’t know how to fix it ! Luckily one of the other head teachers from Bellshill had experienced the same problem a few weeks ago so we did a video link on our phones and she explained to me how to repair it. I was so happy and I have learned that when you are stuck you just need to ask for help because I certainly couldn’t have done this by myself. An enormous thank you to Mrs Hunter from Lawmuir Primary, she gave me the support I needed and now I can help others if they get stuck like I did.

The weather has been lovely so I hope that you have been managing to get out each day for some exercise and making the most of your garden if you are lucky enough to have one. When we were out for our walk look what we came across ! Geese ! I am going to keep my eyes peeled for some more when we go out for our walk this evening

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Mrs Le Blond has been setting me a great example so our family has decided to grow some potatoes, well actually my daughter has…. She used an old clothes basket to do this and cut a few holes in the bottom for drainage. She is having an online competition with her auntie to see who manages to grow most!

Remember all you need is some  soil and old potatoes that are beginning to sprout. Have a go and let me know how you get on ! I am sticking to my garden pots and my favourite plant, lavender, whose smell always makes me feel calm. It is looking healthy too don’t you think ?

I am missing you all so much but keeping you in my prayers every day. I am thinking particularly of our First Communicants and that this Saturday coming would have been their First Holy Communion Day. Please pray for them as they will be feeling disappointed but ask that God grants them the strength to wait patiently for the time when they will be able to celebrate this sacrament. I can see the teacher posts about May altars so perhaps that would be a special way to mark this time as well as the month of Our Lady.

Boys and girls I need to go now as I have a microsoft teams meeting with some of the teachers to attend .

Update – here we were  at 12.14pm !

I want to leave you with a book by Charlie Macksey called The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse I was looking at over the weekend that made me stop and think. What do those words remind you of ?

Also this last image,

Mrs Le Blond always tells me ” This too shall pass .” and the horse is saying that too. The world may seem a scary and strange place at the moment but this will not be forever. Can you see the rainbow ?

I love you and miss you all,

Stay safe, calm, kind and happy.

God Bless

Mrs Wilson and all the team at Holy Family Xx