Busy to the last!

There has been no slowing down for the approaching holiday at Abbeyhill this week! P1 have some new digital cameras and have been practising all week…there may be a few of Mrs Ketchin as I was in the class yesterday and was asked to join in with a few selfies!

Budding photographers in P1B!

P2 have celebrated Safer Internet Day (8th February) by discussing how they use online devices before working on ideas for their own games. Miss Smith is convinced there are some future star app developers in the class! P3 have had a really busy week making props and costumes for ‘Abbeyhill Space News’ and some incredibly detailed work has gone into their Valentine’s cards. Parents who follow @Abbeyhill2026 will also have loved the action shots from the crash mat challenge race that they undertook with P7!

Ready…

…set…

…FLY!

P4 have been in a bubble this week (I thought it was quiet) but have still kept busy with a quick dash out to the playground in between breaks for some outdoor Maths as well as some indoor place value challenges. With hats.

The stylish option – place value hats!

Sketching out initial ideas

Group problem solving

Dividing and multiplying by powers of 10 in P4

I really enjoyed being part of the audience for the Abbeyhill dry ski slope challenge with P5. Tensions and excitement were high as each skier took to the slope; congratulations to the winners who saw their ski models make it safely off the slope and beyond! P6 and P7 had their first rugby session with Leith Hawks this week and there is some fantastic footage for parents who follow @Abbeyhill2023 twitter feed. P7 have also been busy making models of fighter planes for their WW2 topic, as well as brushing up on their coordinates and grid reference skills using maps of Edinburgh.

Carefully adding those final details

Brushing up on map skills

Parental Involvement and Engagement

In my update to parents this week, I asked for support in completing the Parental Involvement and Engagement survey. The Scottish Government has asked all 32 local authorities to undertake this census with parents in their local authority area before March 2022 and your support with this would be very much appreciated. If you are an Abbeyhill parent or carer, please check your emails for the link and QR code to get started.

Welcome back!

I was also delighted to say that nearly two years after closing the school gates to almost all parents, we will welcome parents back into our playground from Monday 21^st February. This is in line with the general easing of restrictions around social distancing across the country. It will also be safer given the current concerns around road safety at the back of the school that the Parent Council and school are working on together with the City of Edinburgh Council.

Coming up

When we return, the Abbeyhill Ambassadors will be undertaking a street clean as part of our support for the Keep Abbey Street Tidy campaign. They will also be getting opinions from their class on potential playground upgrades which the Parent Council are in the process of applying for funding for – fingers crossed! The Junior Road Safety Officers will also be getting involved with the work the Parent Council is leading on safety at the back of the school and the ambassadors will support them in that.

We will also send out booking links for Parents’ Evening appointments which will take place over the weeks beginning 14th and 21st March. At this time, we are still planning for virtual events.

In the meantime, have a lovely holiday!

Sally Ketchin, Head Teacher

Back in the swing of things

The holidays already seem a distant memory as we complete our first week back at school. Thank you to all the families and staff who continue to comply with our Covid safety measures; there is no doubt that the ‘new normal’ has just become ‘normal’ although we all look to weekly updates from the Scottish Government with anticipation as changes to restrictions are made throughout the UK.

There have been a wide range of activities going on in school this week from mini palaces in P1B, inspired by their visit to The Palace of Holyrood House at the end of last term, to mime in drama for the P5s. Mr Hamilton made a challenging ‘cleaning up’ situation for himself in P3 but the space art that was created was worth it! P2 have started ‘The Enormous Crocodile’ as their new class novel and were inspired to start building crocodile traps in the playground with the loose parts play equipment (hopefully they don’t actually catch one). Meanwhile, P7 have been putting their woodwork skills to good use while making frames to create a gallery of Abbeyhill Calendar covers and artwork – well done P7! An ‘Artists in Residence’ project has begun in P4 and the Abbeyhill Ambassadors have been set a Kindness challenge…watch this space for more news in the coming weeks.

Crocodile traps by P2

Space art by P3

The family update that was sent today included information on universal free meals being extended to P5, national entitlement travel cards for 5-21 year olds, Active Schools, drama and two Warn and Inform letters which are also available on this website.

Next week we’ll be gearing up for Burns with lots of practise for our online Burns’ recital which we’re all looking forward to.

Have a lovely weekend everybody!

Sally Ketchin, Head Teacher

Festive fun at Abbeyhill!

Our final week of term is upon us! Despite tightening restrictions around the new variant of Covid which all parents were emailed about on Friday, we are still managing to have plenty of festive fun!

Reclaiming the pallet!

Practising woodwork skills

Sustainable Christmas tree

Everyone has been busy enjoying the festive season right across the school, from baking to planning a Christmas menu on a set budget, making Christmas decorations and using woodwork skills to create sustainable Christmas trees. Well done everyone!

Planning a menu

Personalised Christmas tree art

Enjoying the French cafe

Checking budgets

Christmas Jumper Day

Thank you to everyone who donated to our Reduce, Re-Use, Recycle Christmas Jumper Boutique, which ended up being more a Christmas Jumper Day giveaway as everyone took the ‘re-use’ message to heart which was fantastic. The Christmas Disco Daily Mile was a sight to behold!

Parties

Christmas parties are going ahead but in classes rather than larger groups; this measure was already in place before warnings about the Omicron variant. Next week we will be extra vigilant with our existing safety measures including the wearing of face masks and coverings, hand sanitising and not having any face to face meetings. Further measures to reduce the risk of Omicron cases will include no indoors mixing of classes for any significant length of time and no non-essential professionals in the school. Although the news of lengthy periods of self-isolation for any households with a positive case is worrying as we approach a holiday that is traditionally spent with friends and family, we would urge families to remain calm and stay safe as they have been doing. We will get through this as a school community as always.

Please remember that our term ends for Nursery – P7 on Friday 17^th December between 1155 and 1205, depending on which class your child is in.

Have a lovely weekend,

Sally

Fire(pit) in the playground!

Don’t worry, I was assured it was completely safe and all the risk assessments were in place. P7 are having a fantastic time this morning cooking apples with cinnamon as well as bananas with chocolate (delicious, thank you for mine P7!) in the fire pit, which they been taught how to safely light. This experience is part of their weekly Friday Outdoor Learning sessions which are proving to be so beneficial in terms of learning as well as physical and emotional health and wellbeing.

We had an exciting online assembly yesterday where this year’s Abbeyhill Ambassadors were announced. Each class from P1-5 has 2 Ambassadors each and P6 & 7 have 4 as they take on the dual role of Ambassador and Vice/house Captains. Our first meeting is next week so watch this space to hear more about the projects they will work on this session. They will include creating a child-friendly version of our School Renewal Plan as well as a special interest project which the Ambassadors themselves will choose. They will also be tasked with gathering and sharing the views of their class on lots of different aspects of school life so they will be kept extremely busy!

We had interviews for a member of staff in the Nursery; congratulations to Miss Barclay who was successful and will now remain with us on a permanent basis. We also interviewed for a Breakfast Club Assistant and will be delighted to welcome Miss Page as soon as her paperwork is complete.

Well done to everyone who took part in the Colony of Artists festival last weekend, whether it was visiting exhibits in gardens or viewing virtual galleries. Thank you so much to Dave Pratt and Iliyana Nedkova who decorated our windows with our artwork as part of the festival – they look beautiful!

Our Nursery and class newsletters were sent home today by email so please check your inboxes for those. Another NHS Warn and Inform letter was also sent home and is on this website under the Covid-19 tab.

Best wishes,

Sally Ketchin, Head Teacher

Wilderness Explorers

The Nursery took a trip to the Highlands on Wednesday…oh no wait a minute, it was Holyrood Park! You could be forgiven for making the mistake from the photos though. They managed to find a spot where the sights and sounds of the surrounding city melted away and they could have been far away from Edinburgh. Mr Martin explains more about their day below…

“With the sun shining as we left the Nursery and headed over to Holyrood Park, we were already deciding what we would be doing on our adventures; felled tress were to become horses, boats and trains and (inspired by P1) we were going to use sticks to make spiders webs.

Whilst exploring the park, we used ropes to help each other climb, jumped on the ‘bouncy grass’, relaxed on our hammock and swung on the rope swing. Forest Adventures is such a fantastic experience for our children whose enthusiasm shone throughout the day – so much so we didn’t notice the clouds which had appeared as we headed back to Nursery ”

What an impressive backdrop for some outdoor imaginative play!

We all love a snooze in the sun

Leslie talks trees with one of our explorers!

They were lucky to be joined by a special visitor, Leslie Evans, who is the Permanent Secretary to the Scottish Government. She came to see the excellent outdoor learning practice our nursery engages in and they were delighted to have her along for part of their Forest Adventures. Leslie was impressed with how well the children worked together,  using their imagination and creativity as they engaged with the local environment.

 

We’re pleased to announce that we’ll be running Homework/Literacy Sessions in partnership with Lifelong Learning. It’s no secret that, as with all professions, teaching and teaching techniques are constantly evolving so if you’re ever left thinking “This isn’t how they did it when I was at school” and out of your depth when it comes to helping with school work or any other literacy activity, please feel welcome to come along! 

It’s impossible to get a time to suit everyone so if you are interested but unable to come due to the time, please let us know for future events.

Spotlight on….P7

The P7s have started an extended art project based at the Palace of Holyrood House and being run by the Education team there. This project will give the children free access to the Queen’s Gallery where they will be using their extraordinary collection of Leonardo da Vinci sketches as a stimulus for developing their own skills and creating sketch books.

The course started with a marbling workshop where the children made their own  unique book covers which will form the cover of their sketch books. Check our twitter feed @AbbeyhillPS next week for photos as the detailed work begins!

And finally, please keep an eye out on this blog as well as the Parent Council Facebook page and Twitter feed @AbbeyhillPC for some very exciting outdoor learning news at Abbeyhill. The Parent Council have worked tirelessly to secure funding to bring something special to our playground and got some very good news this week. Mr Woodhouse and Mr Hamilton have also been involved and we expect to see some exciting additions to our learning spaces before the end of the school year is out. Watch this space!

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Next week I am looking forward to taking part in a South East Improvement Collaborative ‘think piece’ on Evolving Systems Thinking whilst back at school, P7 will be travelling to The Crags Centre to represent Abbeyhill at the Edinburgh Primary Schools Sports Association Basketball tournament, P6 will be going to Dynamic Earth for the Space Showcase and the rest of Abbeyhill will be thinking about the holidays – whilst continuing to work hard of course. Please don’t forget that we break up for half term on Friday 7th February and resume as usual on Monday 17th February.

Sally Ketchin, Head Teacher