Portpatrick Primary

Portpatrick Primary  School has been exceptionally busy celebrating Scottish history and culture over the past few weeks. To celebrate the birthday of Robert Burns, pupils have embraced learning about Scots language and explored both Scottish Saints as well as Robern Burns own life and legacy. Children have, as always, marked the occasion with the traditional competitions; Handwriting, Arts and Crafts and A Poem Recital. Despite restrictions, the children have fully embraced the Burns/Scots activities and have sent in photographs of the wonderful work they have been doing at home. Judging will commence on Friday with our special guest Alec Ross (former pupil at Portpatrick) and children will be invited to recite their poems live on Microsft Teams to celebrate the event. It is Alec’s own Birthday on Friday and so we hope to be able to give him something to smile about by providing him with an excellent exhibit of live entertainment.

Good luck to everyone who is taking part and I hope to see you all there.  If you have not already done so could you please respond to the e-mail invitation to help with planning and organisation.

Below are some examples of the excellent work that has been produced by the boys and girls at our fabulous little school.

To celebrate the last day of term and to give those Christmas jumpers another outing, the boys and girls came to school today in their festive knits.

As a final festive treat, we spent the morning down at the community hub, watching an online pantomime – “The National Elf Service.” There were lots of giggles and shouts of “it’s behind you!” throughout the performance from the pupils (and staff!) as we helped the main character, Sam, to ensure that Santa and his elves stay healthy for Christmas, so they’re able to make and deliver all of our presents!

Half way through the panto, we stopped for a snack, kindly provided by Connors restaurant. We tucked into an amazing spread of marshmallow snowmen, strawberry Santas, chocolate orange segments, Christmas pudding crispies, and Christmas tree biscuits. A huge thanks to Connors – it was absolutely delicious! 

As if we hadn’t had enough treats, we arrived back at school in plenty of time for our Christmas buffet lunch – the best type of lunch there is! Some people went up for seconds (and even thirds!) – I’m surprised we weren’t all in need of a nap come the afternoon! 

To finish the day off, we each received a goodie bag (thank-you to the RNLI for some of our treats!) to take home and enjoy over the holidays.

Our Christmas celebrations may have been slightly different this year, but they’ve certainly been memorable nonetheless. Happy holidays everyone!

As part of our Eco Schools work learning about food and being responsible citizens, this Christmas we decided to run a ‘Reverse advent calendar’ – rather than the boys and girls getting a chocolate each day (they weren’t too impressed with this idea initially, I think many wanted the chocolate!!), they were asked to bring in a donation for the local food bank.

We spoke all about why it’s good to help charities, particularly people in need our local area, and learned about the work of the food bank. By the end, we were overwhelmed with our families’ generosity – we had pupils bringing in bags of donations as they realised how important it is to support the charity (despite only 1 item being requested per family!).

We are delighted to be able to deliver such a huge donation from our little school to the Wigtownshire food bank this Christmas – and we hope that it manages to help lots of families in the area. 

After a busy morning engaged in active learning building Gingerbread houses and making Christingles, it was party time!

Our House Captains, Robin and Izzy, organised a fabulous party for the boys and girls in P4-7.

The running order of fun and games was as follows:

• Musical Statues: Winner – Maya
• Christmas Corners: Winner – Conor
• Pin The Nose On The Reindeer: Winning Team: Lillie, Ava Lily, Conor & Alba
• Pass The Present: Winner – Alba
• Reindeer Relay: Winning Team – Lillie, Ava Lily, Conor & Alba
• Musical Chairs: Winners – Conor and Ruby
• Best Disco Dancer: Winner – Tilly

Everyone got a treat, a snack and a drink to enjoy.  When we returned to our classroom, we were surprised to see that we had had a visitor.  Santa had popped in to leave presents for the boys and girls.

Have a look at the fun time the children enjoyed.

 

Today the boys and girls used their STEM skills in the context of constructing a Gingerbread house.  Teamwork, co-operation and communication were all required……as was a sense of humour!

Click here to see for yourselves! 

The boys and girls in P1-4 at Portpatrick primary had a wonderful afternoon at the Junior Christmas Party. After an eventful morning with a power cut, the pupils persevered and stayed optimistic. Luckily the power came back on at midday which was welcomed with applause and cheers. The children were dressed in fantastic festive attire with sparkles, Christmas jumpers and even a little hint of tartan. The boys and girls would like to say an enormous big thank you to our fabulous House Captains, Robin McLean and Izzy White, who organised and planned the event.

Just when the boys and girls thought their day couldn’t get any better, there was a special surprise to be found in the classroom. It seems that the magic of Christmas is well and truly in the air as Santa made a special delivery for all the boys and girls at Portpatrick Primary. The gifts were absolutely beautiful. The pictures below show the sheer joy on all of their little faces as they opened up the wonderful gifts that had been left. Thank you Santa and the elves – You’re the best !

Winners from today include;

Musical Statues : Louise
Christmas corner : Arran
Pin the nose on Rudolf: Max, Harry, Stephen
Pass the present: Scott
Reindeer relay: Sean Paul, Adam, Cameron, Stephen
Musical chairs: Scott
Best dancer: Freya

 

Portree received their reward for achieving the most termly merits for their house team today.  The children elected to have a Christmas themed movie session.  The boys and girls picked Nativity Rocks.  They cozied in and relaxed to view a modern twist on the classic story.

Dunskey joined in with their own Christmas themed activity for the afternoon.  The children worked collaboratively to design and build a sleigh for Santa to deliver his presents.  They had to select a range of materials that would fit the construction task, then plan and build their model.

There was great evidence of applying the skills for work and life (employability skills).  Everyone was able to use teamwork to problem solve, organise and adapt as a group.  The results were impressive.  The children even considered aerodynamics, capacity storage and accessibility for the jolly man himself. Well done to all for successfully achieving the desired outcome. Mrs Baillie judged the winning entry – Robin Alfie, Rebecca and Carter!

After they had completed their challenge, Dunskey was invited to join Portree to enjoy a bit of the movie too.

# Successful Learners

# Effective Contributors

 

The boys and girls had a VERY special visitor arrive this afternoon…

Santa appeared in our playground in his motorised sleigh, complete with antlers, no less!

Everyone was surprised and delighted to see him. He said a socially distanced, “Ho, Ho, Ho!” to all the children.   Santa chatted to the boys and girls and told us all that he was getting ready for the big day.  He said that we have to be tucked up in our beds, sleeping, on Christmas Eve so he and his elves can work their magic.

We sung some Christmas songs out in the fresh air to entertain Santa.  He very kindly gave the children a big sack of goodies as an early Christmas treat. It was then time for Santa to leave to carry on with his preparations in his workshop.

Thank you to Santa and his Elf for their kindness.  We all appreciate it very much.

 

Pupils came to school today dressed all festive in their Christmas jumpers as part of Christmas Jumper Day – and didn’t they look wonderful! We had all sorts – shiny, glitzy jumpers; fluffy jumpers; and jumpers that light up and flash!

At lunch time, we put the Christmas tunes on, pulled our crackers and tucked into a delicious meal of turkey with all the trimmings, kindly served by Tracy and Mrs Henry.

We’re all certainly in the Christmas spirit now and looking forward to more festive celebrations next week!

The mischief continues..

On Monday, Jingles decided to build the boys and girls a ‘ginger’ bread house.  We think he had a munch as he was working on it.

On Tuesday, Jingles teamed up with the Elvis the Elf who is visiting Class 1.  Together they decided to enjoy some winter sports.  They headed for the slopes for a spot of skiing.

On Wednesday, Jingles left a treat for the children courtesy of Rudolf. I don’t think they were too keen to sample his offering of Free Reindeer Poo 😉

On Thursday, Jingles Elf and Elvis Elf from Class One left some learning challenges for the children.

A clue was hidden under one of the golden cups placed ALL OVER the hall floor.  It was a fun, free-for-all with Alfie finding the winning cup to reveal our activity.

 

The message said that we were going to bake Christmas Butter Cookies.  The elves had left us all the ingredients we needed. The children had to follow a basic recipe to make cookies.  Each group was required to apply their knowledge of reading weighing scales to measure butter, flour and sugar in the right quantities.  They had to interpret and follow an instruction text in the right sequence to produce their cookies correctly.  Everyone practiced their employability skills of problem solving, numeracy skills, teamwork, communication and organisation.

The boys and girls used the baking experience to practice their instruction writing skills to recreate the recipe from memory.

The next challenge was to make a 3D kitchen scene for Jingles using 2D maths nets.  The children had to figure out how the net would be folded and shaped to create an oven and flour bags etc.  They created a diorama for Jingles to use as his kitchen.  We think he likes it!

On Friday, Jingles spun a spell and created a magical shrinking machine.  How he managed to shrink the Oreo biscuits remains a mystery.  We hope he behaves himself over the weekend whilst we are not in school!