Portpatrick Primary

The boys and girls were surprised to find a unexpected visitor on their football pitch at interval today. No, not a world class footballer come to join their playtime kick-about but a rather bewildered looking hedgehog with a sore leg!

The children quickly alerted staff and Miss Whorlow donned some plastic gloves and popped the frightened creature into a newspaper lined box while Mrs Ferguson contacted the SSPCA.

Patrick, the name the pupils christened the little hedgehog, spent the next hour and a half in the relative quiet of the jotter cupboard until a lovely lady from the SSPCA came to collect him.

She spent some time with the children telling them what would happen next to Patrick – though it turned out he was actually a ‘Patricia’! She reckoned she was about a year old and was probably struggling to find food. She would need a full examination to find out what was wrong with her sore leg. Patricia headed off to a Hedgehog Sanctuary in North Ayrshire and she will be released back into this area in a few weeks. A happy ending!

Well done to our Rotary Quiz team of Lara, Magnus, Finn and Callum who were runners up in the annual Stranraer and district Rotary Quiz!

Congratulations to Lachlan, Callum, Finn and Dillon who all played football throughout the Winter league, on a Monday night at the 3G pitch in Stranraer.  The boys played as part of the Leswalt/Portpatrick United football team.  At the final prize giving the team were delighted to be given a shield as 4th placed out of ten teams.  The boys played really well as a team and managed to finish top of all the country schools and above 3 teams from larger town schools.  Great work!

Congratulations to our Primary 7 team of Lara, Kelsey, Isla and Emily who went along to the Primary 7 Curling’s cool school tournament, at The North West Castle Ice rink.  Out of all the local Primary schools, the Portpatrick team finished up as runners up! 

Well done – and watch out Eve Muirhead and co!

Well done to Callum and Finn who won the Bronze medal for Boys’ Doubles at the Rhins-Machars Badminton competition yesterday!

P1-4 had  ‘fun’ in Science on Tuesday making poop! They have been learning all about their bodies and what is inside! On Tuesday afternoon, they learned about the human digestive system!

The demonstration started off with making some yummy peanut butter sandwiches for lunch. We cut it with scissors to represent our front teeth. Then we used a masher as our back teeth. Then we used water as saliva! Nice! We repeated this action for a healthy banana and then added a drink of hot chocolate! The food went down the oesophagus and entered the stomach (zip lock bag). Here we added some acid (cola) and churned the bag with our hands. It then went into the small intestine (a leg of tights) where all the liquid (nutrients) left into the tray. Then the solid waste went into the large intestine which took the remaining liquid. After that we used a black bag to represent the rectum. Then the big finale – the food came out the anus (cut hole in the black bag!)

I don’t think they will now forget about the steps in the digestive system!

Lot of laughter and great fun was had by all!

The annual Burns club competition was held recently in the Ryan Centre in Stranraer.  It was a very difficult job for the judges, as the standard of recitations and singing was very high – from every school in the area.

However,  Portpatrick Primary pupils returned to school , triumphant!

Lachlan was 2nd in his poetry class, Mia was 3rd for her singing and Abbigale won her singing class!

As well as that, Abbigale went on to win the trophy for the best singer and Portpatrick Primary school won the trophy for best performing school.

Well done to Lachlan, Mia, Lara, and Abbigale – we are very proud of you all.

You have shown everyone what stars you are!

Primary 5-7 recently had a fun filled 3 days away to Lockerbie, where they took part in a range of different physical activities.  The children were full of enthusiasm – and smiles!  Have a look at the photographs to see all the fun we got up to  -(this is only a small selection of the 1000 photographs we actually took!)

This afternoon the school nurse, Debbie Brown, came to chat to P1-4. We talked about ways in which to keep our bodies healthy and good ‘fuel’ to put into our bodies too.

The pupils had fun organising the ‘Eat Well’ plate and putting food into the correct food group category. We thought about some types of food which might fit into two categories. The children had lots of ideas for healthy snacks which are good for our bodies and our teeth – nice to see they had been listening well yesterday during our Teeth lesson!

We also looked at the body and what we can do to make ourselves be the best we can be. Exercise and keeping clean were two important points; remembering to cut those nails and keeping a close look-out for any signs of head lice too.

A truly healthy couple of days for the pupils of P1-4. Now they know lots about squeaky clean, fit bodies and how to keep their dazzling smiles!

This afternoon Dental Health Officer Janine Maxwell popped by to observe the pupils brushing their teeth and have a chat with P1-4. They had lots of questions to ask and Janine gave them lots of great pieces of advice. Pupils got to brush the cuddly dinosaur’s teeth and look inside a model of a tooth. What an afternoon bursting with information!

Every pupil got a tube of toothpaste and a toothbrush to take home too.