Author: Holly

On Thursday 28th March there was an egg competition for all members of the school including the nursery. Lot’s of people decorated their eggs with faces, patterns e.t.c and took them in. After first break the entire school went down to the hall where the eggs would get judged. All of the eggs were beautifully decorated and looked amazing and it showed how much time and effort was put into the designs of the eggs.

• In pre5 Robbie won.
• In p1 Alfie won.
• In p2 Hugh won.
• In p3 Chloe won.
• In p4 Maya won.
• In p5 Phoenix won.
• In p6 Caitidh won.
• In p7 Aidan won.

Every one of the winners was given a lovely big Easter egg that looked delicious. The winners were given 100 points each that were then given to their house. Everyone that participated in making an egg was given a little creme egg and 20 points for their house. Overall Orsay placed 3rd, Texa 2nd and Nave first with over 700 POINTS!

Well done to everyone who competed in the competition and took part!!

Port Ellen Juniors is a grassroots team that anyone from the age of 4-15 can join. Every Sunday there is a training session for everyone in the team, so that we can get good enough to travel away to the main land and challenge other team’s.

Near the end of November the entire club went away to Bowmore to go and play on the twin-track, in the swimming pool, at the swimming pool everyone was racing each other across the twin track and trying to push each other off or pull someone into the water. It as fun.

At the start of this term everyone was handed out books to read, and my book was Tom’s Midnight Garden. I thought that this book was quite good because the author used excellent language, I think the story is set out very well because: everything happens in chronological order, the author often leaves things on cliff hangers which just makes me want to read on more, what happens in the book is very clever because everything adds up at the end. Like when Tom finds out that everything that happens in the garden is because Mrs Bartholomew (later found out to be Hatty) dreams of the garden and what she dreams of happens to Tom.

Although what I do not like about this book is that it is very slow moving, I say that because it goes into every tiny detail about every single thing that happens, one of the times this happens is when Tom is reading about Victorian clothing and it goes into detail about the headings and all the sub headings and it even goes into detail about all the clothes that Tom is not searching for such as men’s clothes even though he is looking for the kind of clothes that Hatty wears.

Overall I think that this is a good and it is very satisfying when you have finished it. Despite that I would recommend this to older readers who will not get bored with it and will read on.

Bush Craft at Stramash

On Tuesday the 25th September p6/7 from the Islay and Jura schools went on an outward-bound trip: Stramash.

One of the activities that we done was bush craft, I really enjoyed that. Excitedly I walked up the path towards the woods with my group and at last we arrived. Our instructor, (Rich) told us to go and find somewhere comfy to sit and listen to everything around us. When we came back down we listed everything we heard; cars, wind, leaves etc.

Later on Rich showed us a feather stick he made because he wanted us too have a go and try making one. All of us were told about the triangle of death, the triangle of death is in between your legs where your arteries are, we were told TO NEVER! cut in-between your legs because if your knife slips out of your hand it could hit your arteries and that could kill you. So that is why you have too always cut at the side of you and away from your body. Soon enough Rich handed out knifes to each one of us, we were all pretty psyched to get too use a real knife by ourselves. When I had a go at making my own feather stick it took me quite a while to get the knack of it but when I did I was all right at it.

Now it was time to make a fire. My partner for making the fire was Ciaran, our fire was the first to get going and I think that surprised both of us. Too make the fire we had too collect sticks, (number ones) and (number twos) were the kind of sticks we had to collect, number ones are small thin twigs and number twos are thicker and a bit bigger. Too test if the twigs were dry on the inside we would snap them and if they made a good noise then we were able to use them.

Finally we were ready to create our fire. Ciaran lit the fire and carefully I laid the number ones on top of it and the number twos width ways, we both also used our feather sticks. Whenever our fire started going out we would use the mats we sat on and blow on the fire with it and me and Ciaran would start shouting “LIFE SUPPORT” whenever our fire died down a bit. As well as making a great fire everyone got marshmallows and got to toast them over the fire and me and Ciaran got one more each than everyone. I felt pretty sneaky about that…

By now it was the end of our bush craft session and I would be able to tell my friends all about my great time building fires and making a fire stick.

By Holly

 

On Thursday 3rd of May Fiona Hyslop came in. The PortEllen band and two people from Bowmore played their instruments in front of Fiona Hyslop, they played Mary had a Little Lamb and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Fiona Hyslop is an MSP and the minister of culture. ‘I enjoyed it because it was a one time thing only and it was really fun,’ says Donald  from primary six and he is in the band. The band consisted of Holly, Donald, Charlie, Dearbhla, Charlet, Millie, Liam and Emily. The band was in practising at breaks for Fiona Hyslop and were exited to play in front of her.

By Holly and Donald

Today February 1st 2017 David Wood from the RSPB came into the nursery to talk about birds to them and I was there. He talked to me about my Endevour project and he awnsered some of my questions like where certain birds go to migrate, what bird he thinks I should reasearch,how the RSPB finds out about where certain birds go and the birds behavior and he also told me about what the great British bird watch was all about and why they do it. We also went outside in the school grounds to watch all the birds there and record how many different kinds of birds were there. I saw lots of different kinds of birds like Rooks,Robins,Chaffinch,Chiffchaff,Blue tit,Herring gull,House sparrow,Black bird,Greenland white fronted geese.

 

On our first week we were in partners we had to research nice things to make for the Christmas fair. We made soaps in our partners  both people chose what the soaps were going to look like then one person chose the scent and the other person chose the colour.On the second week we got things to draw around one was a star, a Christmas tree and a stocking we drew around them in pen on felt.  then we sold our products at the fair and got to take some home for Christmas.