Pumpherston and Uphall Station CPS Blog
A place for news, information and sharing learning from PUSCPS
Blog for Monday 7th Oct 2013-10-04
We were really pleased to hear that Declan won second prize for the Bake Off Competition last week.
This week Ben Salvin was elected as our Pupil Council Representative.
We all enjoyed being out and about in Pumpherston this week doing our litter pick. We enjoy helping in our community.
Next week is parent’s night so we are all looking forward to hearing our good reports.
Lots of people say to us “What a wonderful school to work in”; “What a lovely building you have”; “What a difference to the old school” and “How much nicer it must be to learn in such a lovely school”. All of these things are true but they don’t mention the biggest reason why we are so lucky and that is – the support that we continue to receive from the communities of Pumpherston and Uphall Station. We couldn’t do it without you.
This was especially true last week during our first Coffee Morning for MacMillan Cancer Care and our Bake Off Competition. The entries to the competition were amazing and the judges had a very hard job, not least due to the sheer number of entries. The quality of entries and the time and care that the children, and their parents, had put into them was absolutely amazing. I am sure many of the adults that saw them could not have done such a fantastic job, so well done to everyone who entered. The winners will be announced during our whole school singing practice on Tuesday 1st October.
The coffee morning itself was made possible partly due to the number of donations we received of home baking, tea, coffee, sugar, napkins, juice, cups etc all of which meant more money was raised for our nominated school charity of MacMillan Cancer Care.
A fantastic time was had by the pupils, the staff and, most importantly, members of our local community who came and joined us throughout the morning. Some people came for the whole morning, others for a short time. Mrs Andison, the event organiser, kept every class to their time slot and made everything run smoothly.
At the end of the day we raised an enormous £707.17 for MacMillan Cancer Care and everyone who was part of the event had a great time.
Every year West Lothian Council host a Walking Week in which all residents are encouraged to get out and walk. There are a range of activities during that week for the community to get involved in and one of these is especially for schools. In the past we have had welly walks and odd sock walks among others. This year it was a ‘Onesie Walk’ which saw many of the children and staff coming to school in onesies and walking in the community. Due to the time of year we altered our walk slightly to be a onesie and welly walk and the children were encouraged to wear onesies and/or wellies to join in the fun. It was a great day and everyone had a good time and were given the opportunity to explore parts of the grounds around the school that they had perhaps not visited before. I wonder what next year’s theme for the walk will be?
Primary 4 are taking responsibility for a small piece of land within the school grounds and are going to develop it as a garden, ably assisted by Mrs. Hull. Other classes have responsibilities for other parts of the school grounds and every class has a designated planter that they have planted and are taking care of. All of this helped contribute towards our Green Flag Award which was truly a whole school effort.
The proposed garden was planned by the P4 class and has been weeded and rotovated previously by West Lothian Council’s Neighbourhood Environment Team but the soil quality wasn’t great. Luckily the Neighbourhood Environment Team noticed this and brought us a big consignment of top soil to help improve our garden.
The down side was – it arrived as a big pile and had to be added to the soil by our intrepid P4 gardeners. Thankfully they seemed to enjoy this task and were excellent at taking turns and organising the required jobs amongst themselves, with a few helpful words from Mrs. Hull when needed.
They made some interesting discoveries including a bright green caterpillar, how best to plant a planter and where the best places around the school are for planters. A great time was had by all and we look forward to the next installment of ‘how does our garden grow?’.
Due to prior commitments of the NETS team and their equipment, the new date for the Community Litter pick will be Wednesday 2nd October. Please contact the school office if you would be able to join us on a walk around our community to pick up any litter and make Pumpherston and Uphall Station clean and tidy. Join Us! 
Primary 3 have been travelling back in time in their time machine to research how Victorian children lived. We worked together to create a display of Victorian children for our classroom. We had great fun today on our wellie and onesie walk!
We had a very special visitor in school today. All of our classes got the chance to meet Lee, who is an animal rescue officer with the Scottish SPCA. We learned lots about how we can help protect animals here in our community, how dangerous litter can be 
and what to do if we see an animal in trouble. She taught us to stay safe, tell an adult and contact the SSPCA for help. Here is a link to their website http://www.scottishspca.org/
Sadly we had to postpone our Community Litter Pick today due to the extreme wet weather. A new date will be announced shortly. Thank you to everyone who offered support!
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