Save The Children Christmas Jumper Day and Christmas Dinner

What a super turnout of festive jumpers we had on Friday! I was really impressed with the effort that so many of the children had went to and there were many wonderful creations. I will let you know what our donations amounted to and post some photos in due course.
We also had our school Christmas dinner this week. Well done to Jackie and Sally for creating such a good dinner for everyone, although I was most vexed at having to miss it myself this year.
Well into the last week now -  The Christmas party is on Thursday with a special visitor coming on Friday hopefully!

The Christmas Fair

Just to let you all know that the Christmas Fair raised £874.30. I would like to thank everybody for coming along and making it such a success.

Reading

We are continually looking at ways to promote reading in school. Mr Flett's class are about to cast their vote for a favourite text in the Scottish Book Trust Awards. I hope the P1 children have all enjoyed their book packs at home. My personal favourite is the 'Paper Dolls' book by Julia Donaldson.
A good place to find free ebooks is Oxford Owl. There you will find a variety of books to suit many children. They also have comprehension activities too and a maths area.
The web address is www.oxfordowl.co.uk

Endangered Species

The whole school has been voting on which endangered species to sponsor. We have now got all the votes counted and the snow leopard was the most popular choice followed by panda and then the adelie penguin.
So we will look forward to our adoption pack and to se if there are other ways we can help our environment and the wider world.
For further information on endangered species visit https://support.wwf.org.uk

How we're helping the snow leopards

• Helping to train and equip anti-poaching patrols
• Promoting sustainable use of natural resources
• Working with local communities to monitor snow leopard movement and reduce human/snow leopard conflict
• Supporting compensation schemes for local farmers who have lost livestock to snow leopards
• Establishing programmes to increase wild prey numbers
• Funding other essential conservation work around the world

Here is a peedie video with more information.

Christmas Jumper Day

On Friday 13th December we are hoping to have a bit of fun by wearing a festive gansey! We would love for the children to decorate any jumper with tinsel, decorations, paper snowflakes - just anything with a Christmassy vibe. If you happen to have a Christmas gansey feel free to wear it but don't especially go out and buy one for the day.
We hope to raise some money for Save The Children so any donations are welcome but entirely optional. The money we raise will help save lives. Just £1 could pay for antibiotics to treat three babies with potentially deadly infections. So create a gansey and let's brighten up someones day!

To find out more visit http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/christmas-jumper-day/schools

The Christmas Fair and Tree Lighting

Well here we are in December and I can hardly believe it! We started the festivities on Friday evening with our Christmas Fair and tree lighting sing song. It was lovely to see so many folk turn out on such a horrible night. Thank you all for your on-going support. A special thanks to Linda and Maggie for all their extra help.
Here are some photos of the preparations and the event itself.

 Getting all set up.

 

 

The very special place - Santa's Grotto!

 A super peedie elf - Mrs Kennedy!

 

 Getting the food all ready.

 

All the stalls almost ready to go.
More photos to follow once I can get them to upload.

 



Going Wild Again!

We had a small fire in the Wild Garden two weeks ago to celebrate Guy Fawkes. It took a bit of effort to get any flames, especially as it was raining but Andy and Mr Flett did get it going. We hope to be able to do this again in the future and even toast some marshmallows!

Children in Need

We had a fantastic time on Friday raising money for Children in Need and having a lot of fun at the same time. The Pupil Council set up lots of stalls in the hall in the afternoon from colouring, nail varnishing to 'Guess which Mr Man visited Pudsey?' Everyone really got into the spirit of the event and we raised a super total of £150.81!
A special thank you to all those who donated yummy homebakes, pennies and books for our stalls. Also to all the children who assisted with the stalls and got themselves really organised.

Nearly the end of term, harvest, marine litter and endangered species!

Where does the time go? Here we are at the end of term again!
We had a most enjoyable Harvest Assembly on Tuesday. It was really lovely to see a number of parents there too. All the classes did a super job and really did well. I am awaiting the next adventure for Willick and Jessie......

We are going to sponsor an endangered animal, so all pupils and staff are getting the opportunity to vote for the species they feel is most deserving of sponsorship. Results will be revealed very soon.

Last week we had a special visitor, Miss Mackay. She came to tell us all about marine litter and the Pick Up Three Pieces campaign. We are really hoping to help support this. Miss Mackay had even been down at Aikerness and brought up a whole basket of items she found washed up on the shore there including a lobster trap label from Newfoundland, Canada and a broken buoy from Norway!
We were amazed at the variety of things that have been washed up around the shoreline of Orkney and did a treasure hunt to look for items.

We are hoping to see Ms Mackay again in the future and to support the campaign.

Scrapstore Playpod

We have been thinking about what we like to play outside and ways to make it even better. One of these things is a Scrapstore Playpod. When P3/4/5 went to Kirkwall last week they got to try out the Glaitness Scrapstore and really enjoyed it. Take a look on their blog page for photos of the whole day. Stromness Primary and Burray Primary also have Scrapstores. Evie and Firth Primaries are the next two schools to think about this with several other Orkney schools all planning to intoduce them this year.
Here is a short clip to give you a flavour of what this is all about from a school in England.

Going Wild on Wednesday

This term we are visiting the Wild Garden every Wednesday at breaktime. The whole school joins in with Mrs Kennedy, Mrs Fairnie, Mrs Rendall, Mrs Wishart, Andy and Mrs Vincent. We had a willing parent participant today too. Some of us have been tidying up the garden, weeding, harvesting tatties or playing hide and seek.
We are also hoping to finally finish the bottle greenhouse and have a good general tidy up.

Right in the centre

 Weeding

 

 

Look what I found!

 Helping each other

 Great gardeners!

 

Exploration



Taking  a close look!

Hawaiian Day

P7 chose a Hawaiian theme to mark the end of their time in Evie Primary before moving on to Stromness Academy. They arranged food, drinks and games. There was also some super dancing in the competition. We will all be practicing hard for next time.

Sports Day

We had a great time on Sports Day! Here are some photos from the event.

Glasgow - The Junior Saltire Prize Awards

We set off for Glasgow on Thursday morning to attend the Junior Saltire Prize Awards - four P6 pupils, Mr Flett and Mrs Rendall.
We were so excited to have been chosen from lots of entries across Scotland having made it to the top four teams with our wave energy device.
The whole P5/6/7 class worked very hard during term three with Mrs Omand Mrs McCairn and Miss Grieve on developing hte wave energy device. A special mention must go to Miss Grieve for her efforts in supporting all of this and investing a lot of her own time and energy.
On arriving in Glasgow we had a peede bit of lunch in George Square and then went to the University of Strathclyde to test the device in their wave tank.

 Testing the Geonator.

 Hapy with results after some adaptations and more ideas for improvements.

 Outside the SECC.

 Getting our stand ready.

 All organised and awaiting visitors.

 With the judges.

 Completing a challenge.

Meeting Heather "The Weather" Reid. The boys are not sure about this! It was near the end of a very busy day.

P3/4 go bird spotting

I had the pleasure of accompanying P3/4 on their birdwatching trip on the 31st May. Poor Mrs Scott was unwell so I went instead with the class and Lorraine. We had a splendid time visiting Colin and Jane's house and garden.
We spotted many varieties of birds, though I am sure the Great Auk team must have been imaging the number of some of the birds they saw - Team Puffin had great fun too recording what we saw with Kim for help.
We had some lovely food for snack, including birdie biscuits with seeds on the top.
What fun we had exploring in hte garden and then spending time in the yurt. Here we told stories, created new imaginary birds and poetry too.
We returned to school for lunch and then set off again up Burgher Hill to the bird hide with Ms Taylor from the RSPB. It wasn't quite so bonny by that time but we did manage to spot lots of different birds from the hide. We had a very busy day and learnt lots.

Athletics

I accompanied some of the children to the Primary School Athletics at the Pickaquoy Centre at the end of May. All the children represented the school well and tried their best. We even came home with a couple of medals. Extra well done to Alex and Ryan.
Sorry, I am having great difficulty uploading photos tonight and I have so many to share...

What a busy week! Parlez vous Francais?

We are having a very busy time in Evie at the moment! P7 and Mr Flett returned this week from the Nethybridge trip having had a fantastic time. To look at their adventures click on the link here -
www.firthevienethy2013.blogspot.com

We have been very industrious in assembly the last two weeks working in groups to promote the Send My Friend Campaign. Here are a few photos.

 

We have also had our French Cafe experience this week a la Crusty Crab. P5/6/7 did a super job of serving their customers, including myself. They worked really hard getting it all organised and had the opportunity to practice French in a meaningful context.

Busy times!

What a busy start there has been to the term! We have bagged the bruck, had several visitors into classes and got on with some really good learning.
This term the Pupil Council supported by the rest of the children will be taking a lead on the Send My Friend to School campaign. This is a global effort to get all children into school. At present there are still 60 million children who do not attend school for a variety of reasons and we are going to look at ways to give the campaign our support.

Next week some of the Firth pupils will be joining us in Evie too so we will have an increased school roll even though our P7's will be away at Nethybridge.
If you want to follow their progress log on to -
www.firthevienethy2013.blogspot.com . If the technology works you should see what they are getting up to.
There will be an Evie Parent Council AGM on Thursday night at 7pm. All parents are welcome to attend.

Red Nose Day Photos

Here are some photos from Red Nose Day. Can you work out who the superheroes are?