As you may have already heard, Bishop Joseph Toal has been appointed as the new Bishop of Motherwell. Of course, many of us are already familiar with Bishop Toal as he has been administer of the diocese since Bishop Divine retired last year. St Bartholomew’s school community extends a warm welcome to Bishop Toal and assures him of our friendship and prayers in the years ahead.

What a fantastic day we had with the Fischy Music team yesterday! The boys and girls had great fun learning loads of new songs which encouraged them to feel good about themselves and to treat others with kindness and respect. We came together as a whole school community in the afternoon and literally lifted the roof with a concert of the songs we had learned. Our visitors were extremely impressed with the children’s behaviour, manners, enthusiasm and singing – the boys and girls did St Bart’s proud! Have a look at the photographs below to get a taste of the great day we had.

Our various Lenten fundraising events raised the fantastic sum of £443.95 for SCIAF. This money will be used by the charity to bring aid and relief to some of the poorest people in the world. Thank you to everyone for helping raise such a great amount.

Of course, today is the opening performance of our P4-7 show, ‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat’. Due to all our ‘Fischy Music’ photographs, we don’t have a Joseph wall display today. However, the final two displays will be posted tomorrow. This morning’s dress rehearsal will be performed to an audience made up of the Nursery children, our P1-3 pupils and 60 young people from Buchanan High School. Our opening performance takes place this evening at 7.00pm. Tickets are still available, priced £3.

Arrangements for this evening:
Members of the cast should arrive for 6.30pm and go straight to the Music Room.
Choir members should arrive for 6.45pm and make their way to the Primary 4/3 classroom.
The show will last just over an hour. Pupils who are not walking home by themselves can be collected at 8.15pm.

There was an extremely positive and productive meeting of the Parent Council last night. Ann Binks from Asda popped along to offer some advice on fundraising and everyone left feeling really motivated about embarking on our campaign to raise money for new SMART Boards. Of course, our first fundraising event will be this week’s school show, with all money from ticket sales going directly to the fund. Tickets, priced £3, are still available from the office.

As mentioned in yesterday’s blog, ‘Fischy Music’ will be in St Bartholomew’s today to lead a special bullying-awareness day. The boys and girls are in for an exciting day of learning. Parents and carers can join in the fun by coming along to the afternoon concert. This will take place in the school hall at 1.30pm.

Primary 3 produced today’s beautiful ‘Joseph’ wall display. Look closely and you’ll see the faces of this creative bunch of pupils in the stripes of the rainbow!

A team from ‘Fischy Music’ will be descending on St Bartholomew’s tomorrow to lead the children in a bullying-awareness day. The morning will involve the children receiving input in their stage-groups of P1-3, P4 & 5 and P6 & 7 then the whole school will come together in the afternoon for a special concert. As intimated in the slip that went home yesterday, all parents and carers are invited to attend the afternoon concert. This will begin at 1.30pm and last for around an hour.

Due to a clash of events, we have had to reschedule Sports Day. Sports Day will now take place (weather permitting) on the afternoon of Wednesday 11th June. Apologies for the change of date.

Mrs McBride and Mrs Dolan spent yesterday afternoon putting some finishing touches to the hall in preparation for our school show. Our multi-coloured stage is all set for the opening night! Make sure you pick up a ticket from the office!

Today’s ‘Joseph’ display was produced by our very creative Primary 4/3 pupils.

We’ve arrived at the week of our Primary 4-7 show. Performances of ‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat’ will take place at 7.00pm on Thursday evening and 1.30pm on Friday afternoon. Tickets are priced at £3.00 with all proceeds going to our new SMART Boards appeal. Even if your child does not happen to be in Primary 1-3, please support the show. The boys and girls have been working their socks off over the past couple of months and are sounding and looking absolutely fantastic. It would be great to have a full audience at both performances to recognise and celebrate the children’s talents and hard work.

As mentioned in last week’s blog, St Bartholomew’s is being used as a polling station on Thursday 22nd May. This affects one of our transition events for our new Primary 1 pupils. This will now take place on Thursday 15th May at the same time of 1.30pm. Apologies for the change in date.

Once again, many thanks to the group of Primary 6 pupils (as well as our team of adult helpers) who raised the fantastic sum of £407 bag-packing in Asda on Friday morning.

Our ‘Joseph’ wall display of the day is the creative work of our Primary 5 pupils. Every boy and girl in the class played a part in bringing the picture to life. Well done everyone!

This morning’s bag packing at Asda raised the fantastic sum of £407!
Well done to our Primary 6 bag-packers and to our adult helpers, Ms Woods, Mrs Woods, Mrs Rankin, Mrs Wishart, Mrs Di Caccia and Mrs Smilie.

It’s hard to believe we’ve reached Friday already. What a quick week! We have our first whole school assembly of the term today, with Pupil of the Week certificates and trophies being awarded to some of our particularly hard-working and well-behaved pupils. Log onto ‘Success’ later today to find out who our proud winners are.

As you know, a slip was distributed earlier this week to let parents and carers know that St Bartholomew’s will be closed to pupils on Thursday 22nd May due to the European elections. Please make a note of this date. Thank you.

A group of Primary 6 pupils are heading off to Asda this morning to do a bit of bag packing for school funds. Many thanks to the Parent Council for organising this. Best manners and big smiles, boys and girls!

Today’s ‘Joseph’ wall display shows Pharaoh’s dreams being interpreted. It was produced by our super-duper Primary 2 pupils!

A MASSIVE thank you to Mr Kris Thomas, Depute Head Teacher of St Stephen’s Primary, for lending St Bart’s a top-quality sound system for our production of ‘Joseph’ and for very kindly setting this up for us. This fantastic set of equipment will make a huge difference to our show, ensuring that the singing voices of our talented cast are heard in every corner of the school hall. If you haven’t purchased a ticket yet (a bargain at only £3!), make sure you pick one up from the school office before they all disappear.

Today’s colourful ‘Joseph’ wall-display was produced by our equally colourful and enthusiastic Primary 1 pupils! What a talented bunch!

Primary 4/3 are off on a trip to Summerlee today. Have a super day, boys and girls. Best St Bart’s manners and behaviour, please!

This year’s whole-school photograph was delivered yesterday and now has pride of place in the foyer. The boys and girls look very smart indeed in their white shirts and school ties… and their fantastic smiles add the finishing touch! Please take the opportunity to look at the photograph next time you visit the school.

Our school show, ‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat’ is now just over a week away. Each class has produced a fantastic wall display for the main entrance area which, together, tell the story of Joseph from the book of Genesis. You will, of course, have the opportunity to see our ‘Joseph Gallery’ when you come to see the show. However, as a little taster, one class’s display will be posted on the blog each day between now and the day of our closing performance. Today’s beautiful display was produced by the pupils of Primary 6.

WELCOME BACK EVERYONE! I hope you had a fantastic Easter break and enjoyed the beautiful spring sunshine we were blessed with.

Well, here we are at the the beginning of the final term! We have a busy couple of months ahead, including our P4-7 show which is now less than two weeks away. Make sure you grab a ticket (£3) for Thursday 1st or Friday 2nd May before they disappear! All proceeds go directly towards school funds.

Have a great first day back, everyone!

The boys and girls had a great time decorating their hard-boiled eggs this morning and I was ultra-impressed with all their creative ideas. Best of all, they brought their ideas to life all by themselves… even though they only had an hour from start to finish. Anyway, here are our seven FANTASTIC winning eggs. Well done, everyone!