Advice for parents on how to talk to your children about traumatic events in the family
The new blended family parenting rules
Advice on how to be an effective parent or step parent within a blended family.
Bird Endeavour
Today wednesday 1st March I got an email from David Wood about my bird Endeavour, he sent me tracks of greenland white fronted geese. That the RSPB track using tags, he sent me the tracks to show me where the greenland white fronted geese migrate to and I found it very interesting, they fly thousands of miles and they all fly in their families.
Toys From The Past Endeavour
Endeavour is a long term project that you work on through out the year to improve your learning, which has to be ambitious. For my Endeavour I have chosen Toys from the past. I hope to achieve some hand-made toys for the finish. I wrote to the Museum Of Childhood. I asked them questions that they can answer for my Endeavour, and I got a reply. With my reply I got a picture of a dolls house. This year I plan to make a toy from each decade, interview, planning, sway and many different things. So far I have achieved my sway, letter, information and a poster of popular toys. I will have learnt many different skills, For example building, designing and I will learn how much toys have changed. I really hope I will be successful.
Careers your child could enter if they study tech
Expert advice from Stemettes on the huge choice of jobs your child could go into if they study STEM subjects at school
WORLD BOOK DAY SWAY
Sport Stars
On the 28th March P4/5/6/7 will be doing an shinty interhouse challenge. Between Orsay Texa and Nave. It will be held by the citizenship group the Sports Stars. It will be a fun and an exiting day because it will be a day that all the houses can be active and be competitive and have a blast. Every term we are going to have an inter house challenge between Orsay, Texa and Nave. Next term the sport stars are going to arrange a rugby interhouse challenge for teams it is 6 aside and it is p4/5 that can enter it.
WORLD BOOK DAY
Find out what’s happening, see our Sway:
Fair Trade Tuck
The Earth Watchers group will be holding a fair trade tuck shop in Port Ellen Primary for the pupils. We are going to be selling GEO bars, raisins, rice crispy bars we are also hoping that the Co-op will be very kind and give us some fair trade bananas and all sorts of fair trade foods.
What is fair trade? Fair trade is when you have food that has been produced in a way that is fair to farmers. Fair trade is good to buy because you know you are supporting producers to get a sensible amount of money.
School Waste Week
Two weeks ago when we were doing citizenship the green gang did a waste bin survey for all the classes. In each class there is a paper bin and a general waste bin. The green gang collected the waste in a bin bag but we separated the paper and the general waste in different bags. We then put one bag at a time in to a scale and measured. We then wrote the measurements down and we then put it onto Exel in a chart. There was a measurement for each class and each bin in each class.
The results show what class is the best at putting the right waste in the right bin. The red bar is the general waste and the blue bar is the paper bin. P1/2/3 class paper bin weighed: 60g. The general waste bin weighed: 150g. P4/5 paper bin weighed: 20g. The general waste bin weighed: 750g. P5/6/7 paper bin weighed: 120g. The general waste bin weighed: 140g. The class that had the lowest paper bin weight was P4/5 and the class that had the lowest general waste bin weight was P5/6/7. The things P1/2/3 had in their paper bin were wrapping paper and paper so they had good things. In P1/2/3 general waste bin they had sand, stickers, an apple and a bottle so they had good things again. In P4/5 paper bin they had newspaper, glue stick, sticks and crisp packets. P4/5 had one bad thing which was the newspaper because it should have been in the paper bin. P4/5 paper bin they had string, wool and paper. In P5/6/7 general waste bin there was crisps, paper towels, tissues and kinder wrappers. The bad things were the tissues and paper towels. Then in the P5/6/7 paper bin there was a bottle lid, pencil and mechanical pencil. The bad things there were the bottle lid, pencil and the mechanical pencil. The class with the least bad things in each bin was P1/2/3. Well done P1/2/3 keep up the good work.
By The Green Gang.
Breakfast Club
Every Wednesday morning, from 8:30-9:00 we have been running a Breakfast Club for people in the school, So they can come to have Breakfast. Breakfast is very important because it gives you a good start to the day. The Mindfulness Minions have organised the Breakfast Club, they have wrote a letter to the co-op to say thank you because they donated all the food that we have at Breakfast Club. At Breakfast Club there is Croissants, Cereal, Hot chocolate, tea, juices and toast. Everyone loves going to Breakfast Club, and everyone who goes gets a great start to the day. We all have to thank the co-op for donating food to the school. We all have been enjoying Breakfast Club.
Thank You
Mindfulness Minions
A Visit For Endeavour!
On Tuesday 21st February P5/6/7 of Port Ellen went to Bowmore Primary School to talk about Endeavour. We were all partnered with someone from Bowmore And they had to take us around their school and to talk to us about Endeavour. We had to fill in a sheet about what we had achieved and get our partener to fill the other side in. Most people found it better when we were working with Bowmore Primary but some of us didn’t.
This is what people are doing for Endeavour –
Charlie- Cal Mac Boats Around Islay
Darren- Golf
Taylor- Sports On Islay
Jack- Golf Design
Kaitlyn- Cake Decorating
Sarah- Giant Pandas
Ciaran- Electricity and Engineering
Natalie- Horse Riding
Sophie- Animation
Aaron- Art
Rowan- Magic
Abi- Photography
Aidan- Deforestation
Lauren- Bath and Beauty
Matthew- Comic And Animation
Eva- Skin Care And Beauty Industry
Holly- Birds
Ellie- Toys In The Past
Rhys- Kodu Game Lab
Struan- Fitness And Bones In The Body
Kaya- Famous Poetry
Rebecca- Islay Heritage
Ruaraidh- Writing A Book
Andre- Graphic Novels
And we fell that everyone is getting on very well with there Endeavour. Good luck to everyone with there Endeavour prodject!!
by Natalie and Sophie.
Endeavour Afternoon
On Tuesday 21st February P5/6/7 of Port Ellen went to Bowmore Primary School to talk about Endeavour. We were all partnered with someone from Bowmore And they had to take us around their school and to talk to us about Endeavour. We had to fill in a sheet about what we had achieved and get our partener to fill the other side in. Most people found it better when we were working with Bowmore Primary.
This is what people are doing for Endeavour –
Charlie- Cal Mac Boats Around Islay
Darren- Golf
Taylor- Sports On Islay
Jack- Golf Design
Kaitlyn- Cake Decorating
Sarah- Giant Pandas
Ciaran- Electricity and Engineering
Natalie- Horse Riding
Sophie- Animation
Aaron- Art
Rowan- Magic
Abi- Photography
Aidan- Deforestation
Lauren- Bath and Beauty
Matthew- Comic And Animation
Eva- Skin Care And Beauty Industry
Holly- Birds
Ellie- Toys In The Past
Rhys- Kodu Game Lab
Struan- Fitness And Bones In The Body
Kaya- Famous Poetry
Rebecca- Islay Heritage
Ruaraidh- Writing A Book
Andre- Graphic Novels
And we fell that everyone is getting on very well with there Endeavour. Good luck to everyone with there Endeavour prodject!!
by Natalie and Sophie.
Dolphins Championship
In the holidays there was the dolphins championship and lots of people went there to take part. Struan and Matthew and Sophie and Lauren took part from the primary school but there was lots of people that took part in the high school in Port Ellen. Struan took two Trophies and four golds. Lauren two silvers and one bronze. Sophie brought three bronzes. Matthew got Swimmer of the month. He also got first session boys champion and got three golds and one silver and a runner up medal. The ultimate swimmer went Struan fourth, Ross came third, Cameron came second and DJ came first. It was a very fun day and then we got tasty food after.
Internet Safety
In school with Mr Shakespeare we have been learning about internet safety. He has showed us different websites with fun games to help us. Those games helped us because they had questions about what to do if someone asks you to meet up and other important questions. Mr Shakespeare gave us this site called Thinkuknow and it is really good because it gives you games.The games on that site helps us because they give us three options is you want to delete it, keep it or reply to the message. Mr Shakespeare gave us a book that said all the facts that we need to know about internet safety. There is another site called Scratch and it is really good because you can make up your own quiz. And P567 made a quiz for the P123 in pairs.
Some of the things we have learnt are SMART which is S: Safe, If you are online you should make sure you are playing games you are allowed to play also is you are researching a question you should make sure it is the right thing. M:Meeting, If you are online and you get a message from someone you don’t know saying do you want to meet up tomorrow at lunch time? You say no because they could say they are 12 years old but they are actually 45 years old. Also is you get a really nice message you should know the person before you meet up but first you should check with an adult. A:Accepting, if you are on E-mail and you get a message from someone you don’t know and the send you a message which has a link but the do not mention the link in the message you should not open it because it could give your device a virus. R:Reliable, Reliable is when you are on the internet researching and you go a website that doesn’t sound very true so it wouldn’t be a very reliable website. A reliable website would be Wikipedia. T:Tell, Tell is if you get a nasty message don’t delete it because you could get more mean messages. Instead you should tell an adult you trust.
Game design
P5/6/7 have been doing a topic on game design using Kodu which is an app you can get on a computer. We have been learning how to program so that we can make games and learn everything that you can do on Kodu. You can make your character shoot and many other things. I think it is amazing because you can program your character to do just about everything. You can add hills and even make your land be flooded with huge waves and there is a lot more things you can add to your world. There is a lot of different patterns you can do with Kodu to program him. We have made lots of progress through our learning in Kodu but we have also had lots of fun through playing Kodu. By Holly and Ciaran
Citizenship
Every Friday Port Ellen Primary School has a Citizenship afternoon. There are 7 different Citizenship groups and they all have there own aims. The Culture Vultures have been planning world book day which will hopefully be super fun and exiting for all the children. The Sport Stars are planning to do a sponsored run to raise money for the schools sport equipment. Digital Dynamos are planning to raise money for Comic Relief. The Green Gang are trying to keep doing regular litter picks around the school. The Earth Watchers have been selling Fair Trade products and are planning to keep on going because it has been popular. The Mindfulness Minions have been helping run Breakfast Club every Wednesday Morning.
My Kodu Endeavor
At Port Ellen primary school my endeavor is Kodu Gamelab. Kodu is a game to learn the physics of coding however ignoring writing things down like regular coding. You can do all sorts of things like build a world, create objects and robots, create hills and more. You can “program” anything as long as it is a object and make it do almost whatever you want.
For my Kodu endeavor I am doing different levels. For my first level I made a time challenge. You have three minutes to either do a hard jumping challenge or to do a race. when you complete a challenge you will be transported to the next level. In the 2nd level there will be 11 trees. 10 trees will give you a game over but 1 tree will transport you to the next level. In the next level there is a maze where there are 5 red apples and 5 black apples. The black apples give you minus 10 points but red will give you plus 10 points. Getting minus points will result in game over however getting 50 points will give you a win.
For my 4th level (which is still in development) I am making a space invaders game. There will be a light spawning in stars which will shoot at you and if you run out of health you lose. If you destroy a certain amount of stars you will win. For the 5th level I am thinking of doing a plat former level where you have to jump on blocks and try to reach the top while trying to beat a computer controlled robot which is also going to the top.
football coach
On Monday 20th febuary the primary school had Martin Ray. we played matches for fifteen minutes. At the end of the football coaching he told us about sports leaders and warm ups you could use.We done diffrent types of rela races one of them you had to run backwars round a cone run back down.We got to do dribbling with the using the skills that we were thought.We also done warm up activities like farmers and foxes and stuck in the mud.
Burns Day
On 25th January 2017 everyone celebrated Robert Burns’ birthday. We celebrated by having lovely haggis for lunch and also mince and tatties and we also had a Burns ceilidh. These are the people who won the Burns poem competition.
In P1 it was Dylan Macdonald who won.
In P2 it was Mya Munro who won.
In P3 it was Pheonix Davey who won.
In P4 it was Dearbhla Newman who won.
In P5 it was Ciaran Middleton who won.
In P6 it was a draw between Rowan and Rebecca.
In P7 it was Eva Munro who won the competition.
At the ceilidh the pipers piped in the haggis which the P7 pupils addressed. Also there was highland dancing by the pupils and also Scottish country dancing and everyone could do that if they wanted to. We did the Gay Gordons, Strip The Willow, Canadian Barn Dance, Dashing White Sergeant and the Virginia Real. Everyone really enjoyed joining in with the dances some of the parents were even dancing.
Here are the P7 pupils addressing the haggis.
Afterschool Sports Club
Yesterday Gregor Mitchel came in to do an after school club.Its on from 3:30 – 4:30. He does a football club for P4 to P7 this club is on every wednessday. We done two warm ups one was a run around the pitch then we said go and people from the came to the front.The second one was two vs two and the first one to score won the game. At this moment everyone wanted to do matches so we Gregor changed on to matchesThen everybody felt happy. At the end of the day the score finished at 4-4 then everyone went in to get changed. Then we went home
My Place Photography Competition
On Monday 20th February primary 5/6/7 had to guess who won the My Place Photography Competition
and Mrs Clark said that there was a winner and a runner up in the class. So we went through all the photos and Mrs Clark told us if we were right or wrong. We were told that the runner up was Ruaraidh MacDonald and the winner was Matthew Campbell. They were absolutely shocked and they were very happy and exited. On the 22nd March they will go to Glasgow and get presented to and interviewed by the press. Our photos will be blown up and put with all of the other winners and runner ups. They will get to see a private viewing of all the winners and runner ups from the past years. Then they will go back to Islay that night and they will tell their school the next day when they go back in.
Joint Choir
Every Monday after school Port Ellen and Bowmore choir join together to learn and sing the two part. Every week Bowmore and Port Ellen take turns to go over to each others schools. We get over on the bus, but Port Ellen leave school fifteen minutes earlier to get to Bowmore in time since Bowmore finish earlier. It isn’t only good for singing in the choir it gives Port Ellen and Bowmore a chance to know each other before going to high school. We all enjoy going and every week we sing two different two parts. Each two part has sopranos and altos, which are two different kinds of singing. Even though the choirs are joined together, there are still two separate choirs and they are still competing against each other in the Mod. I think that this is a great opportunity to meet other children from Bowmore and is great to improve our singing.
By Ellie and Kaya Middleton
Lunchtime Clubs
We have started lunchtime clubs that are run by the children in P5/6/7.
On Monday there is Rounders club that is for P4-7 and that is run by Rebecca, Sarah and Abi.
On Tuesday there is a Table Tennis club that is for P4-7 and that is run by Matthew, Jack and Holly.
On Thursday there is orienteering which is club for P4-7 and it is run by Ruaraidh, Charlie and Aidan.
On Friday there is two clubs n they are Rugby club and that is for P5-7 and it is run by Taylor, Darren and Struan. There is also Dance club for the wee ones P1-4 and that is run Kaitlyn, Rowan and Eva.
Everyone is really excited to be going to these clubs. There was a dance club last term and the wee ones loved it so we decided to keep doing dance club. Also for Rounders we wanted to do that last term but the weather was not suitable to use the grass so we decided to do Rounders club this term.
By Kaitlyn and Rowan.
Feis Music
P1-3 had a very enjoyable afternoon learning aboit Traditional Scottish Music with some of the Feis musicians. We had a turn playing the fiddle, accordiand and tin whistle. Everyone played a wee note or two and some of us were determined to attend the Fies Workshops during the February Holidays.
Rachel and Bella’s visit to Port Ellen Primary School
On Tuesday 7th February at 3PM my Mum brought my Guinea Pigs Rachel and Bella up to school for my presentation on my “Guinea Pig instruction Booklet “ I have been working on with Miss MacIntyre.
The cage was covered by a towel over it is because they like the dark and because they like it on their own. Also, Guinea Pigs can get scared easily and in new places. My class all sat around the cage quietly and waited for me to take off the towel. They were so excited and couldn’t wait to see Rachel and Bella. Ellen was jumping around on her knees she was that excited!
I carefully removed the towel and took Bella and Rachel out of the cage. My class were so happy to see my Guinea Pigs and that made me feel so happy for them. It was the first time most of them had met them and they thought they were both so cute! Most of the class preferred Bella because she is the baby Guinea Pig. I feel sorry for Rachel so I gave Rachel lots of love and cuddles as she is my favourite.
My mum also brought in the bowls, small water bottle, toys, food and the corn sticks they like to eat to show the class. I really enjoyed doing this project a lot and hope my class enjoyed learning about Guinea Pigs from me too.
by Braeden P4
21.2.2017
The Real Me: why feeling good about yourself does you good
The Real me: why feeling good about yourself helps children thrive. Advice from the Dove Self-Esteem Project
Building self-esteem
Parent Info has partnered with the Dove Self-Esteem Project to you build your child’s body confidence and self-esteem.
Skin Care And The Beauty Industry Endeavour
Endeavour is a long term personal topic that has to be ambitious. For my Endeavour I have chosen to do skin care and the beauty industry because I want to learn how to look after my skin and learn about beauty. I have learnt about animal testing and different ingredients in beauty products. I have also looked at bad/harmful ingredients. I have done a leaflet on different allergic reactions you can get when you use the ingredients in natural lip balm. I have also written a letter to Ailsa Hayes and written a recipe for a breakfast themed face mask. I have also started a sway that I will hopefully keep adding to as I progress with my learning.
Bird Endevour
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.
