Currie Primary School has been working hard for the past 2 years to gain the highest award given to schools by the Fairtrade Foundation – The FairAchiever Award. After the events of the past fortnight (3 weeks thanks to the snow days!) we are well on the way to making that happen.

The pupils are Currie Primary are all aware of the Fairtrade logo and what it stands for. This year we spent the Fairtrade Fortnight trying to raise awareness in the wider community as well as holding an event that the whole school could become involved in.

The Fairtrade Pupil Council met in January and came up with many ideas. As well as an assembly and various lessons in individual classes, the Fairtrade Council held a Coffee Morning on 9^th March which was enjoyed by many members of the community.

However, the idea which was the firm favourite was to hold a Currie Primary Fairtrade Bake-Off to find the best Fairtrade recipe and baker in the school. We were inundated with over 50 entries and the Fairtrade Council chose the 17 yummiest sounding recipes to taste. What a difficult job that was – 17 delicious recipes ranging from brownies to banana bread, cookies to coconut loaf!

We managed to choose our 4 favourite recipes and the 5 finalists, Poppy from P3, Alex from P3, Anna and Toby from P5 and P6 and Morgan from P7 had a week to prepare their winning recipes. They spent the morning of Friday 16^th March baking under the watchful eyes of Mrs Reid and Mrs Geddes. In time for a whole school assembly, the judging panel arrived – Gordon Macdonald MSP, Councillor Susan Webber, Allister McKillop and Allan from the Currie Community Council, Lisa Syme and Caroline Brown from the Parent Council and of course, Ms Hourston.  During the assembly, the judges tasted the 4 final bakes and after a lot of deliberation (and eating) they were happy to announce the winners – Anna and Toby Ryce with their delicious chocolate dipped oat cookies. They were truly delicious!  Huge well done to the runners up – the judges found it very difficult to choose between such talented Fairtrade bakers!

We are committed at Currie Primary to further embed Fairtrade values into the curriculum and we really appreciate all of the help and support we have been given from parents, the community, from Scotmid, who funded the coffee morning, and from our panel of judges.

We enjoyed a belated World Book Day in school on Friday. The costumes looked amazing and everyone enjoyed a variety of activities centred around books – reading, writing book reviews, guessing which characters everyone was dressed up as and which books they were from  and talking about and finding out about all of our favourite books

For a limited time only!

P5 are excited to announce that they will be selling their school newspaper in the foyer at parent’s night on Tuesday and Thursday this week. Each newspaper will cost 50p with profits going to a charity of their choice.

Get your hands on the ‘Currie Express’ to find out what each class in Currie Primary has been getting up in recent weeks.

Snow fun continued in school today after the great clearing of yesterday with lots of fun on the embankment and field at break and lunchtime!

We were stunned by the numbers of people who gave up their time and came along to school this morning to help us clear the playground, Nursery playground and car park ready to open again tomorrow! There was a great atmosphere and we are very, very grateful for your help! The snow seemed to disappear in no time! A big thank you to everyone at the Riccarton Garden Centre for coming along to help us out with their snow-blowing machine!

If possible please consider walking to school in the morning. There is really no parking around school at the moment due to the snow which has been cleared from pavements, roads and cars – if you are late it will not matter. We will be going out at break and lunchtime to play on the field and playground so please dress appropriately (let us know if you do not want your child to go outside to play in the snow). Remember to pack a change of socks, trousers etc. in case clothes get wet!

We are hoping to open school again on Monday and to do this we are writing out to ask if anyone with a snow shovel could spare an hour or so on Sunday morning from 10.00 am to help us clear paths into school and nursery and to clear the snow away from fire exits. We would be really grateful for any help you could give us as it is a mammoth job. We will supply coffee / tea /hot chocolate, all you need to do is bring a snow shovel!

On Tuesday we took part in the  club round of the Rotary District Primary Schools Quiz  at Dean Park Primary. Six local Primary schools were represented. Currie Primary split into three teams of four and answered general knowledge questions over eight rounds. All of our children tried their best, working well as a team. We are very proud of our P7 pupils who were an absolute credit to our school and looked very smart in our school uniform. Well done to everyone who took part.

An extra special well done to our Currie Blue team who were Ross, Hannah, Euan and Max. The Blue Team did extremely well, coming in first place, taking the lead in the last set of questions and are therefore through to the next round! The Blue team proudly toured school yesterday showing off their beautiful cup to all our classes and it is on display in the entracne for everyone to see next time you are in school. We are excited about participating in the next round and will let everyone know how we do!

On a lovely but freezing cold Monday morning 32 pupils from Currie Primary School jumped on a coach and headed to the Meadows to take part in the EPPSA cross-country event.  There were 17 schools present. All schools could have entered up to 10 pupils at each age group. The P6 races definitely nearly hit the 170 pupils participating with the P7s 120 + in each race.  Each race was a mile long.  The races were very fast and busy with a few unlucky pupils falling over in the mud but thankfully all of our Currie pupils managed to stay on their. Everyone from Currie showed his or her resilience in both participating and enduring one of the coldest days this year. Their joggers and school hoodies were certainly appreciated after their races with Morgan, Bethany and James’s Mums cheering them on at the finish then passing over their hoodies, which were gratefully received.  Thank you to these Mums for doing this for everyone!
We then proudly cheered Mathew on as he was third in the P7 race! An amazing achievement as the only practice he has had was a few sessions at the school cross country club and on the football pitch.  Fraser came a wonderful 8th place in the same race with Lucy coming in 15th and Maddie 21st out of 100+ girls in the Primary 7 race.  In the P6s, Sandy came in 14th in the P6 boys race with Jess sprinting into 19th place in the P6 girls race.  Mrs Elliot and all school staff are very proud of all our runners who were fantastic participants in this event, showing great determination, stamina and most importantly of all team spirit supporting and encouraging each other on. Well done everyone.

Primary 7 and S1 young people and their families are invited to attend a FREE, action-packed family languages event hosted in Currie Community High School on Tuesday 27 March between 6.45pm and 8pm.

Come and discover some of the benefits of language learning through a programme of fun activities such as story-telling, song, craft and film.  Senior pupils will provide FREE refreshments during the evening.