Pencaitland Primary Blog

All the classes in the school, including the Nursery, have started to get in the mood for Christmas by creating these winter houses:

Each one is 1m square and can be viewed in the School hall.

It’s almost the end of another year and the children in Nursery have had a busy time. There have been lots of celebrations which generated some very interesting chats and art work with the children. Some of our younger children chose to dress up on the 31st October. We had two witches,one with a less [...]

P1 have learned a lot since our last post. We used torches, globes and lots of books to find out why it really goes dark at night, and now we know!
“The earth turns and the sun stays still” Josie SF
“At night, Scotland is looking away from the sun” Rory
We have also been practising for our [...]

Last week Primary 2/3 decided to raise money for Children in Need. We completed an obstacle course and were sponsored by family and friends. We also asked P1 and P1/2 to donate coins to cover a picture of Pudsey bear. After counting the money that was collected we led an Assembly for pupils and parents [...]

P3/4 were very lucky today to have a dance session with the East Lothian dance specialist Beth Noble. As you can see from the photos we had lots of fun. Read the comments to find out what we did.

The Pencaitland Primary School met on the 3rd of November.
The Council were shown a video on Curriculum for Excellence. The minutes contain a link to the Parent Zone website for more information.
The meeting also discussed the Parent Council Action Plan as well as the issues regarding safe transit for those using the narrow footpath adjacent [...]

Well done for all your entries for challenge 1.
We really enjoyed hearing all your fantastic ideas and are looking forward to announcing the winner next week.
Challenge 2: We are going to make an online eco-friendly, interactive Scottish recipe book and would like you to be the authors. We would really like you to [...]

Look out for our reflective lettering!
P5 sorted out materials according to how good they are at reflecting light.
We then cut our initials out of reflective tape and now plan to stick or stitch them onto our school bags or jackets. It will help to keep us safe on the dark, winter evenings.

Last night was quite magical at the school. The hall was decked with fairy lights and moon and star balloons, seven soft areas were covered with cosy cushions, and beakers of milk and yummy biscuits were prepared. Then our Nursery and Primary 1 children arrived in their jammies with a teddy and a grown-up! We [...]

The first day of our Book Festival was very successful. Five parents came in to read to pupils or to listen to them read, and they left some lovely comments about the event and how well our pupils can discuss the books they are reading. Thank you to all involved.
Today we start the Swapshop Bookshop [...]

November is enterprise month and we would like to encourage you to use your enterprise skills to participate in some Scottish themed challenges.
Challenge 1
Flower of Scotland is the current alternative anthem and your challenge is to choose a new one that you think would be good.
Write a comment in this blog detailing your choice and [...]

Congratulations go to Rachel in P5 who was the overall winner of the Eco competition to design a mascot for this year’s campaign to save water.
We received lots of entries and it was very difficult for the ECO reps to choose a winner.
Rachel’s mascot is proudly displayed in school at the noticeboard at the front [...]

P7 spent time on Remembrance day, remembering all the lost soldiers and writing Remembrance Day poetry. Once we had shared our ideas and listened to some famous poems we got to work writing our own.
We then worked together to make a huge class display of our poems.

This is an example of our work, with a [...]

On Monday we had our second rugby session, and we’re absolutely loving it! We get the chance to do lots of different activities that help us develop our rugby skills and also raise our fitness.
As we played tag rugby last year, this year we get to learn touch rugby. We’re enjoying how physical the lessons [...]

Again, a big thank you to all parents and teachers who gave up their time or donated equipment for the Fireworks display on Saturday night.  The event was a great success and has raised approximately £2,000 for the PTA.  So thanks again to all involved and to everyone who braved the weather to support the event.
Pencaitland PTA

P7 have been selling poppies from Thursday to Tuesday for the Scottish Poppy Appeal
We decorated T-shirts and put up posters around the school about the poppy.
The stemmed poppies have all sold out but there are plenty of the sticky ones left.
If you want to buy a poppy you can bring in any amount of money [...]

Thanks once again to Pencaitland Primary PTA, who organised another very successful firework display on Saturday night.
If you couldn’t make it, you can get some idea of what you missed from this slideshow - just add your own firework noises! (To view the slideshow full-screen use the button in the bottom right corner.)

Yesterday we had a day off school to visit New Lanark as part of our Victorian topic. It was a long drive but we had our DS’s, PSPs and ipods to keep us occupied. When we got their we went into a victorian classroom with a victorian teacher. She was very strict. We had to [...]

In P1 we have started our new project about Night and Day. Mrs Kerr asked “Why does it go dark at night?” We said -
“So you know when to go to bed.”
“It goes dark because everyone is tired.”
This week we are going to be learning a bit more about it. Our reading tent is covered [...]

This morning Laura (who helped with the mural) came into our class to help us create some mirrors.

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float: left;
margin-top: 10px;
text-align: center;
width: 33%; }
.gallery img {
border: 2px solid #cfcfcf;
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We started with pictures of things that keep us healthy such as fruit, exercise and friends.  We then decorated the rest of the frame [...]