St Andrew's Primary School Blog

This is a update on our work with the Singing Children Of Africa.

By Sam

We’ve been doing a lot of work getting donations of clothes and have been going round some charity shops.

We are trying to get some things into the newspapers, Mrs McIntyre was on West Sound speaking about our project and we have spoken to Border TV who are getting back to us. We had  a bake sale which raised £94.51. Some Parents have offered their sewing skills to turn the trousers into shorts for the children in Africa.

There’s a board outside with info on about what  we are doing and a countdown to the  concerts and a performance you’ll never forget.

Pictures by Jason

This week the children in P7 experienced a Chinese cookery lesson (as part of their learning about China)with Mrs Chalk and Mrs Farrell from St Josephs Home Economic Department.  They followed instructions carefully and had a super time learning how to use cooking equipment, stir fry vegetable, roll filo pastry and importantly clean up after themselves! I was really impressed at how well they worked with their partners and how effectively they used their time.  The finished results looked and tasted so good.  Maya took hers home for tea whilst Tyra couldn’t wait and was quick to tell us it was the best thing she had ever tasted! We as always are very appreciative to the Secondary for sharing their facilities and expertise with us as well as providing really good learning experiences and transition work for our pupils. Here are a few photos of a very successful afternoon.

I can’t thank say thank you enough to Fiona from RHET and Mrs Kirkwood, for bringing their three beautiful piglets to visit my P4 class.
The children have been enjoying reading the class novel, Charlotte’s Web, and were beyond excited when they heard they would have the chance to meet some ‘real life’ Wilburs!”

I think it’s opportunities like these that really bring literacy to life for the children.  They have been enjoying reading about Wilbur’s life on the farm, and writing character descriptions about him, however, after meeting with the piglets today, they produced some terrific writing describing how “his snout felt as smooth as pebble” , and that piglets make ‘perfect playground pals’.

Many thanks again!

This week in Primary 1 we have been learning all about keeping safe near the roads.  As part of this we were looking at  the different traffic that passed by our busy school.  We carried out a survey to count all the different types; we saw cars, buses, motor cycles and vans.

Today it was time for more gymnastics fun with Mr Sharp.  We had a great time experimenting with all the equipment and trying out our balances, turns, climbing and rolls.  Next week will be our last gymnastics lesson in this block and Mr Sharp has promised us we can get the equipment out again – we can’t wait!

Hi this is a report from Sam and Jason all about our class project for Pope Francis!

Educate the KIds are a charity  based on supporting poorer children in the world in gaining an education. The Singing Children of Africa is just one of their many projects.  Their work is FANTASTIC they’ve  already built a private school, an orphanage, a kinder garden and are working on building high school but to go to high school at the moment you need to sponsor a child to go to high school .

      We  had a visit from Mrs Crawford. She works very closely with the charity and has met some of the children in Africa .

We are working on  publicity and trying to get some donations of school clothes and some loose change with collection boxes at the front of the school.    PS look out for further info.

P4 and P5 enjoyed a fun filled afternoon at Park Farm last Friday, as they applied some of rugby skills they have been learning during a mini rugby festival. After a week where the weather put a stop to many outdoor activities, it was great to see the children outside having fun! Big thanks to Ryan for being photographer  for the afternoon!

P3 had a fantastic morning on Friday visiting Mr Purdie’s Dairy Farm at New Abbey. This followed on from an informative talk that he had given in class on Thursday. We toured the farm first and Mr Purdie and his daughter Elspeth discussed land use on the farm and the beautiful surrounding area. We even saw some fishermen hoping to catch some trout for their tea on Lock Kinder! We then had a look at some of the dairy herd and were lucky enough to see some new baby calves just born that morning. The milking parlour was our next stop and Mr Purdie explained how the milking equipment worked and how often the herd are milked. Our visit ended with all our delighted P3’s feeding some calves with big bottles of milk. The children learned a lot from this visit and will be able make comparisons soon when we visit a Beef farm next. 

We are delighted to announce that our school has been awarded the Gold School Sport Scotland Award.  As noted by Sport Scotland:

We had a rather wet start to our first Running Club outing for this session but this did not put the 19 children off who braved the conditions and the early start!  After our warm up we headed down to the Dock Park where we did some circuits and relays before heading back just in time for the morning bell.