Portpatrick Primary

The children tucked in with gusto for the annual Christmas lunch.  Senga carefully decorated the tables, served the food and even brought in her own Christmas tree to set the festive scene.

To Christmas tunes, the children tucked in to roast turkey, chipolatas and all the trimmings, followed by a delicious Christmas desert.  Lewis, Josh and Max celebrated all things sprout by digging in to a plate full.

Everyone enjoyed pulling their crackers and donning their paper hats to Christmas tunes.  The festivities don’t stop there as it’s Christmas party time on the 21st.

The excitement is building – Just 11 days to go until Santa visits.

Ho, Ho, Ho!

UNCRC Rights of the Child – Article 24: Health, Water, Food & Environment, Article 31: Rest, Play, Culture & Arts

As part of our work learning about the UNCRC and Rights of the Child, we  participated in a campaign to allow pupils to see that they can put their rights into action and make a difference in our local community. At our most recent Pupil Council meeting, we decided on 4 different campaigns that we’d like to run and then each school took a vote on their favourite. The campaign that had the most votes was the Police Scotland Youth Volunteer’s (PSYV) Christmas Shoebox Appeal. This campaign collects food and warm clothing for elderly residents in and around the Stranraer area.

We are asked our families if they could send in some donations to go towards the appeal. Items sent in included: tinned food , jars or jam,  sweets, biscuits , tea, coffee ,  gloves and hats .  Our families were very generous!

The photograph shows Erin Topping from the Police Young Scotland Volunteers uplifting boxes which had been collected by Kirkcolm, Leswalt and Portpatrick Primary schools.

Our local Community Safety Officer, Andrew Hay, visited the boys and girls this morning.  As part of our ongoing Eco Schools work, we are working on our target of managing litter and waste.  Andrew gave an informative and interactive talk to the children on the rights we can expect to have met and also the responsibilities we have for our community and how best we can look after it.  We discussed the impact litter and dog fouling has on wildlife and the environment .

The children gave lots of suggestions on what we can do to improve the situation. We believe that everyone can do their part by not dropping litter and putting any litter in the bin when we find it.  We have agreed to create litter awareness posters.  These will be shared with our community council group and we hope to display these prominently in our area.

We are taking action!

UNCRC Rights of the Child – Article 24 Health Water, Food & Environment

Our little elves have been very busy making all sorts of Christmas crafts ready for tonight’s Portpatrick Christmas fayre.

Max went above and beyond by wrapping a whopping 85 lucky dip presents, kindly donated by Tracy & Andrew and the Hub Club.Way to go Max!

There was a great community turn out to support our sale. And, the children were very excited for the big Christmas light switch on and lantern parade with Santa himself.  Our pupils took on roles of designing marketing and publicity material for our sale, and assisted with customer interaction and handling money.

Despite the cold, everyone was in great spirits. We are very grateful to the Portpatrick Harbour Community Benefit Trust for kindly including us in this generous fund raising event.

Well done to everyone involved!

UNCRC Rights of the Child – Article 29 Aims of Education

It was off to the world of work for Primary 5 – 7 today as we visited our local Lactalis Cheese Production Factory.  Kirkcolm joined us as we were greeted by the Lactalis team.  Hayley gave us an overview of the history of the company, with its roots in France.  Lactalis is the biggest cheese producing company in the world.  We looked at global maps to see how far and wide Lactalis distribute their products around the planet.

Kirkcolm and Portpatrick split into two groups to take a tour of the packing and production plants. At the production plant we learned how the raw milk from our local farms is processed to kill off harmful bacteria.  Helpful bacteria is then added.  This comes from the Netherlands in frozen form.  Without this, the cheese would be tasteless.  The children got to feel the curds and whey, which had an unusual texture.

The vats and processing machinery were on a massive scale.  We learned how there are many different roles in the production plant, with quality control and Health and Safety being key.   The boys and girls enjoyed visiting the small museum that showed the old fashioned, labour intensive methods of butter and cheese production of the past. 

In the packaging plant, we saw robotic arns and laser sensors in action as part of the automated lines.  We observed packing operatives, technicians, line leaders and quality control checkers all in action.

After that, the Groups came back to the meeting room and tasted different types of cheese. This ranged from mild, medium, mature and extra mature cheddar. The maturing time ranged from 3 weeks to 3 years!  The medium seemed to be the biggest hit, although all the samples were quickly wolfed down. 

We learned about all the impressive environmental work that Lactalis are currently working on.  All cardboard packaging is recycled.  Waste liquid is processed to be ph neutral before it is put back into the sea and any spoiled food is repurposed for animal feed.  The company is trialling  recyclable plastic packaging and are investing in solar panel installation to produce their own power to run machinery. 

We had a fabulous time at both factories and the children came away with a treat of their favourite cheese to enjoy at home.   We are very grateful to Lactalis and their wonderful staff for making us so welcome and teaching us so much about our local industry.

UNCRC Rights of the Child – Article 29 Aims of Education

The boys and girls from P4-7 were delighted to have welcome two representatives from Glasgow Science Centre today on their roadshow Future Fuels.  We have been participating in a block of lessons to learn about this topic.

We started the session by sharing our thinking on what a fuel is.  We then expanded to share what we know about non-renewable energy sources.  Aileen gave a very interesting demonstration on the combustability of fuel (methanol).  We talked about the states of matter: solids, liquids and gases.  We learned about the ‘suck-squeeze-bang-blow’ process of car engines.

Aileen then led a discussion on our current use of non-renewable energy sources and how this contributes to greenhouse gases which cause global warming.  The group recognised why it’s so important that we find renewable energy sources   The group had a great knowledge of renewable energy sources that we can use as greener alternatives.

Ross and Aileen supported our volunteers, Max and Lacey, to take on a solar powered car race.  Max just pipped Lacey at the finish line.  The children learned how solar power can produce clean electricity.  Aileen showed us a giant solar mirror array that is in the American desert that is a clever way to produce energy.  The designers of the array had to consider wildlife and put alarms around the area to scare creatures away as the air in the array heats to an incredible 400 degrees C.

We also saw solar panel batteries for the home.  Lewis said he has one in his newly built house, which is great. We are all making a contribution to our planet.

Conor charged up a hydrogen laucher by charging up a battery using his kinetic energy via a crank handle.  We could see the water bubbles forming.  Once charged, it had enough energy to launch a ball high in the air without any harmful waste produced.  The world’s first hydrogen power plant is to be built in Britain in the Humber region.

Next up, we explored nuclear fission using a simulating model of ping pong balls loaded on mousetraps.  Atticus dropped a ball into the container to start a chain reaction. However, fission produces radioactive waste which is very bad for the environment.  The planet’s scientists are working on developing nuclear fusion as an alternative.  This energy source is exciting because in the last six month scientists managed to perform an experiment that gave out more energy than it took to make it.  Unlike nuclear fission, fusion doesn’t produce radioactive waste, only water.This could be the answer to the planet’s energy crisis.

There was plenty of opportunities for hands-on, practical activities and had fun exploring and investigating different renewable energy sources of solar, wave and wind on the interactive exhibits:

• The windmill Kit
  Directional Drilling
  Solar Array
  Crank Power
  50 Hz
  3 Phase Generator
  Hand Crank Generator
  Hydrogen Launcher

We are very grateful to Ross and Aileen for travelling all the way down from Glasgow to support our learning. This was possible as part of their rural school STEM support initiative. What a fab morning we had!

UNCRC Rights of the Child: Article 29-Aims of Education & Article 17 – Health, Water, Food & Environment

Global Goal 13 – Climate Action

Mrs Copeland’s mum kindly joined us today to share her experiences of living in Zambia.  We are partnered with Mulola Primary School in Zambia as part of our British Council for a climate change project.

Mulola is near the Kafue National Park in Zambia.  The school has a total of 594 learners of which 294 are girls and 290 boys. Their learner’s ages range from between 7 and 16y ears old.

Mulola primary school became the 100th school to be supported by the British council’s climate connection program aimed enabling school going children to take action against climate change issues.

Our children have shared images of storms in Portpatrick with our partner school.  They are going to do the same to allow for discussion on the What, Where, Why and How of the issue.

We have also written pen pal letters to share insights into our lives here. Class teacher Bernadette Mupela plans to have her class write back to us very soon.

We can see how arid and dry it is in the Mulola school grounds photographs that Ms Mupela has shared with us.

Mrs Siwo brought traditional Zambian clothing and artefacts with her for the children to explore.  The garments were beautifully decorated with bright African print. She talked about her life there, the climate, the languages, culture and people.

The boys and girls thoroughly enjoyed Mrs Siwo’s visit and learned so much about this part of the world.

UNCRC Rights of the Child – Article 29 Aims of Education

We were delighted to receive a visit from Stuart McCreadie and George Gardener of DG Council today with the gift of a lovely bird-proof bin!

Our Eco Committee identified a problem caused by birds pulling rubbish out of our existing bin.  To tackle this issue, Primary 5 – 7 wrote persuasive letters to the refuse department to request a bin with a flap which would stop this from happening.  We hoped to minimise usightly litter  and look after our environment too.

We were thrilled that Stuart and George were able to help.  Thank you!

UNCRC Rights of the Child – Article 24 Health, Water, Food & Environment