St Andrew's Primary School Blog

Can we please reassure some of our families about the places they have applied for in regard to their children and their catchment school. If the primary or secondary you have applied for is your catchment school, you will not receive a letter confirming that place, but you do have a place. It is your catchment school so a letter is not necessary. Letters are only issued to those families who have applied for a school that is not their catchment school. We hope this clears things up a little.

The bag packers have been keeping track of donations. They are making sure there isn’t too many of one item coming in.

This week they have noticed we need more donations of shampoo, conditioner, shower gel, shower caps, rulers, small balls, toothpaste and spoons please.

The publicity group are making a PowerPoint explaining in more detail about the backpack project following on from their visits round the classes.

The craft group have started to make pencil cases from felt that has been donated. They have cut out the patterns and are getting ready to sew the pieces together.

The fundraising group are busy organising an event to run during school time – more details to follow next week.

Thank you to everyone who has helped and donated so far. Please keep sending in donations, particularly the items listed above.

Toby and Matthew

 

On Thursday we were lucky enough to have a visit from Ian Alexander from Dumfries Science Fair. The topics covered in the show were ‘how things go’. We learned about forces and how things move. We learned about Gravity, push, pull and air pressure through some fun experiments and demonstrations.

 

We are currently sorting out fundraising days for the school. We are half way through packing the bags for the less able children in Africa.

In the Primary 6 class they are working with Mary’s Meals to help the children of Africa to learn and live a life not having to worry about their education. Primary 6 are helping Mary’s Meals to work towards their Pope Francis Faith Award school project (Mary’s Meals backpack project).

We would be grateful if you could donate any of the items listed on posters around school and in office window. The donation boxes will be at the back of St Andrew’s church and at the door of Primary 6 classroom (all donations have to be in by 20th May)

Thank you in advance for your help and support.

Toby Little and Matthew Reid

on behalf of Primary 6

 

Our P7 bookworm Callum is celebrating the outstanding achievement of reading over 2 million words in his accelerated reading books this year.  WOW!! Callum is already busy working on his next million!

 

As part of our attempt to communicate with as many of our families as possible, you will soon receive a very brief on-line questionnaire from the school. This will be sent to the e-mail address you have supplied to the school. This questionnaire helps us to gauge progress in some aspects of our school and learning. We would appreciate you taking the few minutes required to fill it in. All replies come directly to Mr. Valentine. If you have not supplied us with an e-mail address you can pick up a copy of the questionnaire from the school office towards the end of next week.

One of our pupils, Shannon , enjoyed international table tennis success over the Easter break. Shannon was part of the Scottish national schools team that took part in the Primary Schools International Championships in Cardiff. At the end of the championship Shannon left with two medals, a silver and bronze. We want to add our congratulations to Shannon’s success and thank her for representing us all so well.

P2 are learning about collecting and displaying information. We used 2simple to make a graph yesterday and today we took our learning outside. We ‘collected’ our information from the forest and displayed it in a graph.

We then used the information to answer questions and even made some of our own up!

“Sticks are the best”

“I didn’t see any feathers, that must have been the only one”

“There are more sticks than anything else… I wonder how many altogether?”

We had to do some tricky maths to work that out …24 + 16 +15

“55, there are 55 sticks altogether”

 

On Thursday 30th March P7 went across to St Josephs to complete a design project.  The used a computer graphics programme to create a 3D image of their pencil holder to exact dimensions and experimented with the software to change the colour, material and shape of their design.  They then created the pencil holder in the technical department.  They got to use lots of tools and equipment that they would normally not experience until 1st year so it was a fantastic opportunity.  Everyone came up with their own unique design from wolves, to sharks or unicorns.  We even had an aptly named Designosaurus! Well done to the St Joseph’s staff who made this possible for us. The children have been so enthusiastic about the day as I’m sure you will have heard!  There was even the chance to meet and have lunch, chats and football with some of the children from St Columba’s and St Teresa’s who will also be starting S1 in August.