St Bartholomews

There will be great excitement as the boys and girls arrive at school this morning because our annual trip to the Pavilion Theatre pantomime has finally arrived! We’ll be boarding the buses around 9.45am and heading off to Glasgow in time for the 11 o’clock performance of ‘Santa Claus is coming to Town’. As always, the trip has been entirely funded by Mark Millar OBE, including the 200+ ice creams! St Bartholomew’s is eternally grateful to Mark for his friendship and generosity; we are one very, very blessed school! Please keep an eye on Twitter to see photographs of our special day.

Do you have a Christmas card you’d like delivered? Help is at hand! Primary 1/2 have set up a Christmas postal service and cards can be posted in the special postbox located in the main foyer. There is a daily collection at 1.15pm.

Have you ordered your St Bart’s tea-towel yet? Demand for these is high, so don’t miss out on the must-have item for Christmas 2015! There’s a possibility we may be ordering another batch, so if you are interested in purchasing more than one tea-towel, please let the office know.

Many thanks, once again, to the parish ‘Pray for our School’ group. This faithful group of parishioners met in the oratory yesterday morning (as they do every month) to pray for the needs of St Bartholomew’s. A group of Primary 7 pupils joined them for tea, a biscuit and a blether afterwards – always a treat for parishioners and children alike!
Our annual trip to the Pavilion Theatre pantomime in Glasgow, kindly funded by Mark Millar OBE, takes place tomorrow. This year’s panto is ‘Santa Claus is coming to Town’, and it’s guaranteed to be a fun-packed day for the children (and staff!). Photographs of our special trip will be posted on Twitter throughout the day. We will be leaving and returning within the normal school day, so there’s no need to make any special arrangements. However, please remember to provide your child with a packed lunch if they are not taking a pack-a-snack from the dinner hall. SCHOOL UNIFORM MUST BE WORN.

Finally, if you didn’t notice the announcement on yesterday’s blog, the Christmas Fayre raised almost £2300… and there’s still more money to come in. Wow!

The current total from the Christmas Fayre stands at a fantastic £2268.10 !!! There are still items to be sold, including the tea-towels, so this amount should rise to around £2500. Many thanks for your support; this money will go directly towards resources and activities for St Bartholomew’s pupils.

We are now into the season of Advent, the four weeks of preparation in the liturgical calendar for the coming of Christ at Christmas. Our Advent wreath has been set up in the main foyer and, as an additional reminder of this holy season, a wreath will also appear on the daily blog, with a candle burning for each week of Advent.

Och aye, we had a pure dead brilliant time at our St Andrew’s Day assembly yesterday afternoon! Check out Twitter for photographs of each class’s Scottish-themed performance.

Tickets go on sale today for the P4-7 Christmas concert (Wednesday 9th December, 1.30pm) and the P1-3 Nativity (Wednesday 16th December, 1.30pm). I am very aware that, with last term’s concert, the Christmas Fayre, the school tea-towel and the various Mary’s Meals fund-raisers, families have been asked to pay out quite a bit of money in recent months. To ease things at this expensive time of year, tickets for our Christmas events will be priced at £1.00.

Primary 1 – Kerry

Primary 1/2 – Corey

Primary 2 – Alex

Primary 2/3 – Stuart

Primary 4 – Michael

Primary 5 – Carly

Primary 5/6 – Jack

Primary 7 – Rhys

Winning House – Drumpellier

Today is the solemnity of St Andrew, patron saint of Scotland. To mark our national day, St Bartholomew’s school community will gather for Mass in the church at 10.00 o’clock this morning and then classes will have fun entertaining each together in the afternoon with Scottish songs, poems and dances. All parents and carers are very welcome to join us for Mass in St Bartholomew’s church.

Despite the inclement weather, the Christmas Fayre was a huge success on Saturday. The money raised will be counted today and the total posted on tomorrow’s blog. Please can I take this opportunity to express my very sincere thanks to Mrs Smile and the fantastic team of parent helpers who prepared and ran this year’s fayre. It is an annual event which involves a massive amount of planning and preparation behind the scenes and it simply would not happen without Mrs Smillie’s expertise and drive and the commitment and hard work of volunteers, including staff. Thank you to everyone who was involved!

It will be a busy day here at St. Bartholomew’s as we set up for tomorrow’s Christmas Fayre. There will be the usual array of stalls and games tomorrow, with something for all ages. Even Santa is making a special visit! Doors open at 10.00am. See you in the morning!

Special announcement: Primary 1 are selling reindeer dust at 50p per bag today in aid of Mary’s meals.

The five visiting Head Teachers thoroughly enjoyed their time in St Bartholomew’s yesterday morning and were very impressed indeed by our enthusiastic, hard-working and mannerly pupils. The visitors also commented on the high quality of our wall displays, so I thought I’d take the opportunity in today’s blog to showcase displays from up and down the corridors of St Bart’s. Enjoy!

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A very, very warm welcome this morning to the Head Teachers of St Stephen’s, St Edward’s, St Bernadette’s, Keir Hardie Memorial and Golfhill primary schools. These five schools have been joined with St Bartholomew’s to form a new ‘family group’. The purpose of this group is to provide an opportunity for Head Teachers and other staff to connect with schools similar to themselves in order to share expertise and ideas and to offer support and challenge. We are delighted to be hosting the very first school visit and hope that our new ‘family’ will have a thoroughly enjoyable and inspiring morning here in St Bart’s!

Order forms for our special 2015/2016 tea-towel were sent home yesterday. The tea-towel is priced £3.00, with all profits going directly to school funds. Please return the order form with your payment as soon as possible. Your order will be with you in time for Christmas.