Here we are ending week 14 of the school term and nearly at the end of 2024. We have one more week to go and what an exciting one it is going to be.  Children are still busy doing their planned learning and in between fitting in a Christmas concert practice or performance! Don't forget we break up for the Christmas break on Friday 20th December and return to school on Monday 6th January 2025.

Christmas Concerts

Our Christmas concerts started this week and we couldn't be more proud of our children standing up on the big stage in front of parents, carers and grandparents.  Nursery kicked off the performances on Monday with their nativity on The First Christmas.  There were beautiful singing voices and nursery children set the bar high for all the older year groups!  To date, Nursery, Reception, Year 1, and Year 2 have all performed 2 concerts and next week, we look forward to seeing Years 3, 4, 5 and 6 perform.  Children and staff have put so much work into the Christmas performance we hope that you enjoy the concerts.

Tickets are £1 per person. The PTA are also selling raffle tickets on the door.

We are so grateful to members of the PTA and their volunteers for providing tea, coffee and festive treats for every concert.  The raffle ticket sales are going well, and we are grateful to everyone who has donated an item to allow us to create lovely hampers.

Christmas Dinner Day

Thank you to our amazing catering team and lunchtime supervisors who served over 320 Christmas dinners to our children today! Everyone thoroughly enjoyed. 

Rewards Day

Our house captains have been busy counting the house tokens for this term. We can't wait to share the total number of tokens with children and parents. We will announce the results next Friday, and children will participate in the rewards chosen by the junior leaders on Friday, December 20th.

School Choir Event

Our school choir will perform in the Cor Bro Ogwr Christmas concert at All Saints Church in Porthcawl on Saturday night. We know they will sound amazing and do the school proud. Good luck, everyone.

PTA Event next week

The PTA have arranged a very special event on Tuesday - it's a secret and we can't wait to share the details next Tuesday!

Christmas Tree Funding

We are very grateful to the following for sponsoring our Christmas Trees, and we are also thankful for all the parents who have donated to our fund pot at main reception. We hope you enjoy the trees when you visit for the Christmas concerts in the following weeks.

Carpenter Property Services Limited

Attendance

We are committed to promoting good attendance at school and have a target of whole school attendance of 95%.  This week's attendance was 95.2%.

Food Pantry

Our food pantry is well-stocked this week.  We have lots of different types of food, including fresh produce and Christmas items.  Please pop in and take a look.  We encourage everyone to visit the pantry. It's well worth a visit! 

We will also have a delivery on Monday of more fresh food suitable for the Christmas break! This is being delivered to school around 11am on Monday.

Toddler Group

Our toddler group had a lovely Christmas party this week and had a lovely time. We were so lucky to have Father Christmas drop in and give each child a selection box! Thank you Father Christmas.

Toddler Group will start back after the Christmas holidays.

Change to School Dinner Menu

20th December - The menu will be changed to sausage, quorn sausage, sweetcorn, peas and chips

School Savings Club

Reminder school savings has finished for 2024 and will start back in 2025.  

• September - Respect and Responsibility 

• October - Compassion and Hope 

• November - Friendship and Forgiveness 

• December - Understanding and Patience

• January - Determination and Perseverance

• February - Honesty and Trust 

• March -Learning and Effort 

• April - Community and Service 

• May - Co-operation and being a good citizen within society

• June- Showing Gratitude and Care and Generosity

• July - Taking and managing risks 

At Oldcastle, we are proud of each other and ourselves. We nurture all of our community so that we grow as confident, responsible and happy people. Oldcastle school is more than just learning. 

• We try hard for each other

• We act responsibly

• We treat people how we’d like to be treated

• We work as a team

• We trust and respect each other

• We listen and learn together

• We share knowledge and experience

Together we make the difference

Together we shape innovative experiences 

More information on our values and visions can be found on our website.  Visions and Values

Nut Free School

Please can we remind parents that we strive to be a nut free school as we have a number of pupils who have a severe allergy to nuts.  

This includes nut products such as peanut butter and nutella. 

Contact details

Please ensure we have up to date contact details for you to ensure you keep up to date with school news and we are able to contact you during the school day if required.  You can either email us with change of details (ask@oldcastleprimary.co.uk) or complete the change of details form.  

Please let us know of any pupil success.

Sadie and Franks

We have been supplied with the following information which may be of interest to you.  Please contact Sadie and Franks if you would like further information. 

Football Session

Football Sessions

• 20th December - Last day of term

• 20th December to 5th January - Christmas Holiday

• 6th January - Back to School

The next Parents Evenings meetings are planned for week beginning 24th March 2025.

Inset Days 2024/25

• Monday 2nd September 2024

• Friday 6th December 2024

• Friday 21st February 2025

• Friday 11th April 2025

• Monday 2nd June 2025

• Monday 21st July 2025

Health and Wellbeing / PE Days

• Nursery - Thursday

• Reception -  Wednesday

• Year 1 - Monday

• Year 2 - Tuesday

• Year 3 - Friday

• Year 4 - Friday

• Year 5 - Friday

• Year 6 - Friday

This week in nursery

This week in the Nursery we were extremely proud of the children and their Nativity concert.  They all looked fabulous in their costumes and sang beautifully, definitely an Oscar winning performance!  We have been using the numicon shapes to see how many ways we can make 5 and have been counting out multi links to make numberblocks. 

Reception have been busy doing Christmassy play based learning this week

In the event that you have a concern regarding a child please follow this procedure:

• During school hours please contact Mrs Ceri Littlewood, safeguarding lead at Oldcastle Primary School.

• Out of school hours please  contact  the  out of hours Emergency Duty Team Tel No 01443743665

More information on Safeguarding at Oldcastle can be found on our website.