Once again the boys and girls of the village were treated to a special Christmas dinner party at the Mount Stewart. Diane, Graeme and all the staff were very kind and spoiled the children with a lovely dinner.
More treats were to follow. There was freshly made popcorn straight from an authentic popcorn machine for everyone to enjoy. Next, there was great entertainment when everyone jumped in to enjoy the snow machine bubbles.
The children had a surprise visit from Santa Claus too. We all song Christmas songs and had good cheer before receiving a gift for each child.
Afterwards, there were even more sweet treats – ice cream and chocolate.
Thank you to all at the Mount Stewart for a fabulous festive evening!
As part of learning about the Victorian era, P4-7 have produced fantastic results in a S.T.E.A.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Maths) challenge. The pupils were given an open ended brief to design, construct and evaluate a resource that depicts an aspect of Victorian life.
As always, the children impressed with their imagination, creativity, and attention to detail. The standard of entry and the enthusiasm of the boys and girls was lovely to observe. Barbara judged the entries and awarded the following:
1st Place – Ava Lily with her Victorian home with fine detail
2nd Place – Liam with his Victorian camera, complete with bellow style covering
3rd Place – Maya with her historically accurate coloured and shaped Victorian post box
All agreed that every entry was of a very high quality. Thank you for all of the family engagement and support that made this possible. Why not pop in to see our terrific table top display?
The whole school has been enterprising ‘Christmas Crazy’ this last little while preparing lots of lovely crafty gifts to sell at Sunday’s Portpatrick Christmas Fair.
The pupils (and Barbara) have made peppermint sweet gift boxes, shortbread gift boxes, salt dough tree ornaments, wrapping paper, photo snow globes AND Christmas tree & Snowmen decorations. They all look fabulous and will help decorate your home, ready to get you in the festive spirit.
The children have used this as an Enterprise project to help raise funds.Please do come along and support our wee school. Thank you.
After 12 weeks of learning and practice, P4-7 gave a musical performance to the whole school and family members this afternoon. The children performed a range of traditional Scottish songs sung both in Gaelic and English whilst playing the tin whistle. The boys and girls were accompanied by Wendy and Kate of Feis Rois, who have delivered excellent instruction to the pupils.
The audience thoroughly enjoyed the talents of the pupils and a great morning’s entertainment was had by all.
Have a listen to a couple of the musical performances below to see the skills our boys and girls have mastered.
P4-7 got creative to find ways to support the community Christmas fair. They decided to make sweets to sell. The class made peppermint creams by following a simple recipe. We initially weighed quantities, but after experience we were able to use ‘ready reckoning’.
We applied strict hygiene standards throughout the task, wearing hair nets and aprons and making sure we had squeaky clean hands.
The group were able to calculate the amount we had to sell each pack of sweet for to make a profit. We added up the total cost of the ingredients and divided that number by the quantity of sweets we were able to make. This was then multiplied by how many sweets would be in a pack. We now know how much we must sell each gift pack of sweets for to generate a profit sale.
The boys and girls used paper craft to create decorated presentation gift boxes. They will make a lovely present for someone at the Christmas Fair. We hope you would like to buy them.
Lauren Steel, Principal Technician: Structures & Engineering Design for Communities with Dumfries and Galloway Council joined us today to deliver a P4-7 engineering workshop, in collaboration with the Institute of Civil Engineers (ICE). Lauren volunteers her time to help develop children’s learning in S.T.E.M across the region.
Lauren talked to the children about different designs of bridges that can be found in the world. The most common in Dumfries and Galloway is the masonry arch bridge.
Working in small groups, the children were given the challenge of initially designing and sketching a bridge that would be capable of being load bearing. They then had to select materials and combine them to meet the brief.
The boys and girls used a wide range of Higher Order thinking skills to problem solve. They had to plan, select, estimate, combine, construct, modify, improve and adapt and test their bridge construction. Further, they had to apply their soft skills of cooperating, negotiating, discussing, sharing and agreeing to complete the task – phew!
All children were completely absorbed by the task at every step of the process. They collaborated effectively in their teams and rose to the challenge. Every bridge constructed was successful in supporting a heavy load of a filled water bottle.
P4-7 have been having a great time exploring new software to support their learning in literacy.
The children have been researching Christmas traditions in France as part of our Modern Languages topic for this term. We have used Book Creator to publish an information book on their findings.
We selected a template design, imported appropriate images, recorded pronunciations and used the ‘read to me’ function to dictate auto text entry.
We have created a library of our books. Your child will be sending you an email with an invitation link in it to allow you to view their personal creation. Why not scan the QR below to have a read of some examples for yourself! There may even be a song to entertain you from Ruby and Maya.
#Successful Learners
Ruby and MayaJackRose and AlfieLillieAlbaFinlayIsabellaAva LilyFindlay
Today marks the day WWI ended, at 11 a.m. on the 11th day of the 11th month, in 1918.
The whole school came together to remember the members of our armed forces who have served, and still do serve us around the world today.
We talked about what the poppies we wear represent. We also discussed why we raise money by selling poppies to help and support those who have made sacrifices.
We shared how we observed the two minute silences held around the country yesterday for Remembrance Sunday. Some children were at church, some were in the supermarkets and some marked the occasion in their own homes.
We all stood together today and held a one minute silence to show our respect and thanks.
As part of Outdoor Learning Day, P4-7 visited our local Post Office shop today. Margaret, the manager of the shop, kindly gave permission for our pupils to carry out a budget challenge working with money on the premises, working with real stock. We made use of what is is our local environment to engage with real-life learning.
The children were given a choice of budget with which to select and plan party food and drink for our imagined class party. They had to choose and cost items on the shelves, decide how many of each item was needed for our group and, thus, give a total unit cost. They then had to find a final cost for all their selected the party items to determine whether they had kept to their budget. If they were over budget, they were required to make decisions as to what items to keep or swap for alternatives.
The session was very productive; providing a real life context for using money. Margaret was keen to lend a hand and help the children make decisions on their ‘purchases’.
Our thanks go to the staff at our local Post Office – community participation! Morning shoppers were happy to see a productive team in action.
