St Bartholomews

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.

Following the beautiful invitations I received from the boys and girls last week, I’m very much looking forward to visiting Primary 1/2 this morning to join in with some of their learning. P1/2 always have huge smiles to greet me and never fail to be brimming over with enthusiasm, so it’s sure to be an inspiring visit!

As mentioned last week, we have commissioned a special 2015/2016 St Bartholomew’s tea-towel which features a self-portrait of every single pupil in the school. The tea-towel will be printed in red and white and available to purchase in time for Christmas. Order forms will go out later this week, so please check your child’s school bag.

I bumped into Mark Millar on the way to Mass yesterday and he was asking after everyone here at St Bartholomew’s. I took the opportunity to pass on the thanks of our whole school community to Mark for his generosity, once again, in paying for this year’s trip to the pantomime. The trip takes place a week on Thursday, 3rd December, and it’s guaranteed to be a fantastic day for everyone, young and old alike!

Our Christmas Fayre is this coming Saturday. We have an absolutely AMAZING team of parent helpers beavering away behind the scenes getting ready for our main fund-raiser of the year. Thank you so much for all your hard work! We would still really appreciate any donations for the Christmas Fayre; these can be handed into the office anytime up until Friday morning.