Portpatrick Primary

Mary McIntosh, of Mary’s Mini Bakes, stopped in this afternoon to talk to the pupils about starting up and running her own business.

She spoke about why she started the business, having a keen interest in baking, and how she went about building the business up from scratch – from getting her food hygiene certificate, to designing a logo and advertising. She shared the skills she needs to be able to run the company and what her hopes are for the future of the business.

Mary also very kindly brought in some yummy cupcakes for the boys and girls to take home at the end of the day to enjoy – they picked from Nutella, red velvet and Malteser.

A huge thank-you to Mary for taking time out of her busy schedule to come and speak to the children, and for the delicious treats! You are welcome back any time!!

Santa paid a flying visit to Portpatrick Primary this morning to say hello to the pupils and very kindly brought them all a chocolate advent calendar!

Pupils were thrilled and were telling Santa about the letters they have written to him. He reminded everyone that they have to be good to get their presents though! We then joined Santa in a chorus of Jingle Bells and When Santa got Stuck up the Chimney, before waving him off.

Everyone is now excited for the breakfast of chocolate they are planning for tomorrow morning – having 16 advent calendar windows to open at once!!!

Thank-you to Santa for taking the time to stop by – we know you are very busy at this time of year 🙂

The boys and girls got their Christmas spirit in gear to enjoy their annual Christmas lunch with all the trimmings.  There were festive songs and turkey galore.  Katie was super keen to go back up for seconds of Brussel sprouts!  Thank you Kym for our delicious lunch!

In the afternoon, we were treated to a very active Christmas Unwrapped workshop delivered by the Scripture Union.  The aim was to give the children a biblically accurate presentation of the Christmas story, debunking some of the well-established common misconceptions.  The children really enjoyed all the interactive elements of the session. There was voting with our feet in a Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? style quiz, Christmas songs and audience participation throughout.

# Successful Learners

Our boys and girls were lucky to receive an early Christmas treat today thanks to the kindness of our local RNLI crew. Ian Marshall and John Conor delivered a selection box for every child in the school. There was even a box of sweeties for the grown ups. 🙂   The children were delighted

Thank you very much for your gifts. Yum!

 

Just to add to the Christmas mood,  P5 – 7 joined a live Christmas code-along workshop where we programmed microbits to display a flashing snowflake decoration.  The more adventurous in our class, composed music to accompany the festive flashing snowflake sequence.  Our digital leaders were on-hand to offer support to their classmates.

The site is free to access from home.  Why not have a try for yourselves!

Microsoft MakeCode for micro:bit (microbit.org)

# Successful Learners

 

Our digital leaders from across our partnership held an online meeting via Teams today.  We came together to create a Christmas trivia quiz for pupils to enjoy.  This provided a theme for us to learn how to use Microsoft Forms.

Our Digital Leaders used our Higher Order Thinking Skills to work collaboratively on a shared ‘form’ online.  The children had to remember and understand how to access and design questions using the software. They also used their applying and creativity skills to select and insert appropriate images and themes to present the quiz in an appealing way for the user.  In addition, they had to analyse and evaluate the functionality of the quiz.  For example, they had to set up the software to automatically mark the quiz to give the user feedback and a game score for their results.

Why not click or scan here to play the quiz for yourself!

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next day, our leaders supported their classmates in designing and sharing their own quizzes.

Thank you to Alexander, Hamish, Danny, Havana, Cameron and Conor for working hard on this.

# Successful Learners

What a great day!

There was a fabulous turn out for our Enterprise Elves today at Portpatrick Christmas Market. We were supported by pupils (both current and past), friends, families, neighbours and visitors.

Our wonderful volunteers were Katie, Tilly, Lewis, Jack, Max & Lacey, supported by Ruby too.  Mrs Henry, Miss Lammie, Kim, Suzie and Tracy were also on hand. The adults stood back and let the kids take charge of the show; which they did with aplomb.  They managed customer service with good grace, manners and smiles.  There was even a wee bit of up-selling on show.  😉

Our lucky dip quickly sold out and our sweet treats went like ‘hot cakes’.  Our customers were very complimentary on the Christmas crafts on sale and were so kind and generous.  We thank you all.

Scott and his Dad added to the Christmas cheer as Winter Wonderland Snowmen.

We spent the next day in school calculating how much money we had taking, deducting our expenditure to work out our profit from both this event and from our recent sale of hand designed Christmas cards.  With additional kind donations from customers and Mr Jim McKie along with our sales, we have made a profit of £279.52!

This will bring our Christmas enterprise project to a successful close.  Thank you to everyone who supported us!

# Effective Contributors & Confident Individuals

After a last minute flurry of activity, we are pleased to announce that our Enterprise Elves have completed making their crafts ready for Portpatrick Christmas Fayre on Sunday, starting at 3pm

In true real-life work style, we had a production line set up with packaging, quality control and checking taking place to make sure our products are market ready.

It’s been a real community effort making all our wonderful products.  Our thanks to Mrs Copeland for sewing and printing with the children, to Brian McColm for his homemade tablet and to Barbara for helping put the finishing touches to our hand made gift bags.  Mrs Henry and Kim have been busy contributing too. Tracy Rankin and Catherine Buchanan have kindly organised a lucky dip with LOTS of prizes to help raise funds, ably helped by an army of ‘wrapper uppers’. There is even mint aero fudge to look forward to from Miss Lammie!

We have used social media to advertise our photo catalogue of products as part of marketing to hopefully encourage people to come along and buy our products.

Have a look at our  products  for sale.  They are guaranteed to bring Christmas cheer to your home AND your tum!

Please come along and support our fund raising if you can.  Thank you.

 

Ho, Ho, Ho!

It’s all things Christmas at Portpatrick Primary as the children prepare for our village craft fayre this weekend.  The boys and girls have been busy little elves making lots of decorations, crafts and sweet treats.

This enterprise project has linked lots of inter-disciplinary learning across our curriculum. Maths and Language have been appplied as we read and used instruction texts in recipes.  We calculated ratios to change recipe proportions, weigh ingredients and calculate cost & profit margins. Food technology and hygienic practices have been adhered to as well.  In addition, we have developed CDT (Craft, Design and Technology) and Digital Technology skills as we constructed and used spreadsheets to automatically work out cost and profit.

As if that’s not enough, our boys and girls have been developing the skills for life, learning and work through collaboration to plan products ideas, analyse the feasibility of those products, consider cost and profit margins as well as designing company logos and advertising posters.  Team work has been the order of the day! We certainly have a few entrepreneurs in the making.

We are still busy putting the finishing touches to everything.  We won’t reveal our final range of products just yet as we would love you to come along and see our merchandise for yourself.  All profits will go to supporting our children at our lovely wee school.

We hope to see you there!

# Successful Learners

 

 

 

This week saw us celebrate all things books as part of Book Week Scotland. The week was kicked off last Friday with our visit from author Renita Boyle. We then had P1-3 parents into school on Tuesday as part of the gifting of our Bookbug/Read, Write, Count bags.

Our Pupil Council then planned a book swap, after which everyone curled up in class with a hot chocolate and marshmallows to enjoy their new books.

We held a competition to design a book cover for our favourite books.  The standard of artwork was very high.  Portpatrick Community council kindly donated book tokens for prizes to keep our avid readers devouring those books.  Our winners are as follows:

P5 – 7: Conor                                        P1 – 4: Adam

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To round off the week, pupils were able to come into school dressed as their favourite book character on Children in Need day, in return for a small donation to the charity.

Pupils rolled out of bed and straight into school today wearing their PJs for Pudsey day. Some creative pupils also came dressed as their favourite book character, since this was also Book Week Scotland – we had Horrid Henry, Willy Wonka, Charlie Bucket and Hermione Granger to name a few.

To help raise further funds, Jenny Ribchester very kindly gave up her time to come in and do some face painting. By the end of break, we had unicorns, Pudsey and Blush bears, and Spiderman running around the school!! We sold Pudsey ears and pin badges in the hall, and pupils also got to decorate biscuits for a small donation to the very worthwhile charity.

We raised £75 in total – a fabulous amount for a small school! Thank you to everyone who contributed.