After preparing our marrow yesterday with salt to draw out the moisture, we were ready for the next step in our ‘team chutney’ challenge.

Sian and her neighbour donated a variety of tomatoes.  Izzy and Alba brought in apples from their trees at home too.  The rest of the ingredients were bought in store.

The boys and girls chopped and prepared the following ingredients and added it to the washed and drained home grown marrow.

• Apples
• Tomatoes
• Plums
• Sultanas
• Ginger
• Malt Vinegar
• Demerara Sugar

We applied our maths skills to the task too.  We used division to reduce recipe quantities.  We also practised weight and capacity to measure dry and wet ingredients by reading scales for quantity. Everything was then mixed together and simmered slowly for several hours to thicken and blend.

We then enjoyed the chutney with a mix of crackers .  The children really liked the flavour.  There were seconds and even thirds devoured!

Here is our recipe:

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/marrow-chutney

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In preparation for our Harry Potter day on Monday the 14th September, we took  walk down to the woods to try and find the perfect wizard wands. Apparently, Ollivanders Wizard Wand Shop was closed because of Covid.

The children had great fun exploring outdoors! After we had found our wands the children burst into some spontaneous imaginative play. Pupils started creating broomsticks, fires , dens and fairy huts. The boys and girls were delighted to explore the outdoor space and we are looking forward to some more visits in the near future.

Below are some photos of our Wizard Wood Walk !

Yesterday the boys and girls in Primary 1- 4 took a quick trip outside to explore our garden area. Below are some photos of us having fun in our outdoor space. We thought these photos were just too good not to share !

After yesterday’s bounty of a massive marrow from our very own vegetable patch, the children thought about ways to make best use of our whopper vegetable. We decided that we’d like to have a go at making marrow chutney.  This will teach us about preserving food to avoid food waste.

We all helped at each stage of the preparation process.  Some washed and chopped our marrow.  Others added salt to draw out moisture from the marrow. They then mixed it all together.  We left it for many hours for the salt to do its job.

At every stage, hygiene was maintained, with hand-washing before and after and all equipment carefully washed after use.

Tomorrow, we plan to proceed with stage two of our chutney making challenge, which will be another team effort.

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This morning, Robin noticed that in the vegetable patch at the back of the school, there was a huge marrow growing.  He suggested we should lift it before it went rotten.  Mrs Baillie and Robin harvested the bumper crop, before it was proudly shown to all the pupils by Robin.  The older class then had to try and guess the weight of the marrow – with Lewis coming the closest.  It was 2.2kg!

I wonder what the boys and girls will do with it…….watch this space….

During this uncertain time we find it difficult to gain insight into some topics without having visitors to the school. However, we are very fortunate to have a valued member of staff, already in the building,  that was able to step in and give the children a special lesson.

Our very own Loraine was in class to discuss what school was like Long Ago at Portpatrick Primary. Loraine used digital images to discuss with the children what the old Portpatrick School looked like and where it was built. She spoke about the types of food they ate, what lessons they had, some of the rules that were in place and the difference in technology and transport. The children had prepared some interesting questions and unsurprisingly had many many more after the talk. We really must thank Loraine for her time. She gave an excellent talk and the children were thrilled to have a Covid friendly Visitor in school.  Below are some photos from the visit.

Congratulations to Erin Harbottle who managed to achieve her Gold Star Award last year. Erin Worked her little socks off during Lockdown to tick off the required criteria as best as she could. Erin was given a short ceremony in her classroom with her peers and was awarded with a voucher to spend in WHSmith. Well Done again Erin- fantastic achievement !

This years Star Award jotters will be sent home after the Bronze Award (which can mostly be obtained in school) has been achieved.  I Wonder who will be first to get Gold this year ?

Our P6/7 pupils have been working hard over the past week to prepare a persuasive election speech in the hope they will be voted in as House Captain for the forthcoming year. Since we aren’t allowed assemblies at the moment, we ventured outside into the fresh air (luckily there were blue skies at this point!) to listen to the speeches. For Portree, we had Izzy and Lillie competing against each other; and for Dunskey, we had Robin, Maya and Ava Lily – so the competition was on!!

After the speeches, every pupil in the school got the opportunity to vote for 1 person to be House Captain for their house. After a tense 10 minutes (which apparently “felt like a lifetime” to our eagerly awaiting P6/7 pupils) the votes were counted and House Captains announced.

Our new Dunskey House Captain is Robin, and our new Portree House Captain is Izzy. Well done to everyone who worked their wee socks off to prepare and deliver some amazing speeches – it really was a very close vote (1 vote between the Dunskey candidates, and 2 votes between the Portree candidates!). Good luck to our new House Captain!

As part of our P4-P7 Health & Wellbeing topic, the children have been engaging in mindfulness and self-awareness activities.

We took care and attention to create a mindfulness rainbow mosaic through collaborative working. The overall effect is beautifully bright and colourful.

We also created self-portraits based on the emotions based cartoon Inside-Out.  One half of our faces reflects our outside physical appearance and the other half shows all the things that make us ‘me’ on the inside.

Here is a display of the the children’s lovely work.

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Before school closure, the boys and girls had planted vegetables with Sian in our raised garden beds.  It was time to harvest some of the crop today.  We picked the courgettes and decided to make a hidden veggie smoothie for us all to enjoy.

We added banana, orange juice and ice to make a delicious blended drink full of vitamins and minerals.  Everyone was a Curious Kevin and took up the taste test challenge willingly.  There were some thumbs down, but also lots of thumbs up.  In fact many came back for more!

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