Prestonfield School Newsletter www.prestonfieldprimary.wordpress.com
Edition December 2015
Our School Motto:
‘To go further than we thought,
To run faster than we hoped,
To reach higher than we dreamed,
To become the people we wish to be.’
Right of the Month:
Every child has the right to a standard of living that is good enough to meet their physical, social and mental needs.
Governments must help families who cannot afford this.
Article 27
United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child
Contents:
Welcome
New School Website
Wider Achievement
The Lion Award
Learners of the Month
Moneywise Prestonfield
Thank You
Community Partners
House News
Stars of the Week
Friends of Prestonfield News
Diary Dates
Priestfield Christmas
Card Competition to thank everyone for their contributions in making our school such a special one. Please note that school will then close at 12.00 for the Christmas holidays.
Welcome
A very warm welcome to our December 2015 Newsletter, the last
New School Website
As promised, we have a new school website. We are working hard newsletter of the year. A special thank you to the P1 to update this as quickly as possible, so please bear with us in the meantime. You can access the new site at www.prestonfieldprimary.wordpress.com
.
and P2 children, the Choir and the staff for the
School Credit Union wonderful production of
Congratulations to Sarah Al-
‘The Sleepy Shepherd’
Dubai who came up with the and to the Nursery
winning name for our school
children and staff for their
credit union ‘Moneywise super performance of
Prestonfield’ which will
‘Baby Jesus’ Story’ which be launched during the children wrote
Money Week in themselves! ‘The Sleepy
February.
Shepherd’ also went on a successful tour to the East
Neighbourhood Project and the Choir has been extremely busy
Congratulations also to Lewis Dailly, Abbie Kelly, Fajr Sarwar and carol singing at Park View Care Home for the Elderly and Cameron
Vada Wilkinson , who spontaneously came up with ‘the snappy
Park Nursing Home (together with the Woodwind Group), at the savers’ crocodile emblem together!
Community Lights Switch On and at Cameron Toll in support of
Bethany Christian Trust’s Caring Christmas Trees-thank you to
Thank You
Sainsbury’s for providing the children in the choir hot chocolate
A very special thank you to all the
afterwards! It was lovely to see so many of you join us at some of children and families who supported these events. It was also great to see so many of you join us for the
Evan’s Legs, the sponsored walk/scoot
Learning Together Afternoon in November and for the organised by the Friends of Prestonfield
Remembrance Sunday Service at around Arthur’s Seat, which raised over
Prestonfield War Memorial where
£500 for playground improvements.
Amber and Marison laid a wreath on
Evan and friends chose to spend this behalf of the School. It was lovely to money on some fantastic new see parents and carers in school playground equipment which included a recently for their children’s Class giant 4 in a row game, giant feet and mini
Assemblies in P3, P6 and P7. We had stilts, giant footballs, ribbons and poma lovely Christmas Assembly last week poms, hula hoops, foam Frisbees and jumbo chalks. The children where we were joined by Jared Hay, thought that Santa had already come to Prestonfield when the items
Minister for Priestfield Church. were on display at the Christmas Assembly last week! Thank you
We now look forward to a very busy last few days of term which will include the Christmas Talent Show, the pantomime Cinderella at the Brunton Theatre, Christmas
parties and Christmas Carols in the Centre Garden.
We do hope that you can join us on Tuesday, 22 nd December at
10.45 for our Christmas Carols in the Centre Garden. This is such a lovely event where we join together as a whole school community
1 very much for your generosity in support of The Scottish Poppy
Appeal 2015 which raised a super £117.96. Thank you also so much for your continuing support of Rag Bag Textile Recycling which has brought in £134.80.
A big thank you to all our volunteers who give so much to the school in so many different ways whether through listening to children read

individually or accompanying class trips. If you are interested in volunteering in school, please get in touch with the School Office, as we’d love to hear from you.
Community
Partners
Thank you so much to Mr Kenny
Ferguson and Mrs
Lorraine Dann,
Priestfield Church who run our school Library for us twice a week, ensuring that children have regular access to a wide range of books, to foster that love of reading as early as possible. Thank you so much to Scottish Widows and CMS Cameron McKenna who have been supporting a group of P6 and P7 children with paired reading every week. Scottish Business in the Community has run a great
enterprise workshop for P6 and P7 and P7s will be visiting CMS
Cameron McKenna’s in January to learn about the different job roles at CMS and how each of these jobs uses literacy and/or numeracy skills. Thank you also to Rachel Bliss from the Dog’s Trust who has been supporting a group of children in P5 with numeracy.
P5-P7 children are enjoying learning French led by Edinburgh
University’s Modern Foreign Language Students. We are also very grateful to Howden’s Joinery Co. who have donated £500 to school funds and to TSB at Cameron Toll who have given us £150. These wonderful donations will go towards our Expressive Arts Week in
April. Nairn’s are very kindly sponsoring our Scots Poetry
Competition again in January. All our community partners enrich our curriculum so much, giving the children greater opportunities to develop those skills for learning, life and work.
House News
A very big thank you to Mrs Pirrie (mother of Ava in P4 ) who has designed these stunning house emblems above using the children’s ideas and incorporating their house mottos. The originals will be framed and put on display in the school foyer for all to admire!
House Captains and Vice Captains have been working hard to encourage children to collect as many house points each week as possible with great success. Every house has won the weekly extra playtime at least once since we started back and Hume were overall winners for Term 1 and Paolozzi for Term 2.
Thank you to all the parents and carers who joined us for our
Rubbish Morning Out in November where the children were organised into houses and went on a litter pick together in the local community. Children have enjoyed working in their houses to make the beautiful banners on display in the Hall depicting different carols. Houses will go head to head in the first House Christmas
Quiz to be held next week!
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Priestfield Church’s Christmas Card Competition
Congratulations to all the children for taking part in Priestfield
Church’s Christmas Card Competition. As in previous years, the entries were of a very high standard and were extremely difficult to choose between. However, special congratulations go to Katrina
Mitchell P5 for the winning design and to the runners up Emily Lister
Nursery, Selin Ergin P2, Riley Valette P3, Julia Morawska P4 and Aqsa
Hayat P6. All these designs are displayed in the foyer at
Waterstones Bookshop in Cameron Toll.
Personal and Wider
Achievement
Many congratulations to the following children who have been developing their skills and talents in so many different ways: Poppy
Welsh P1 for winning a trophy for second place in the Disco Dancing
Competition at the Tower in Birmingham; Riley Lyall P2 for achieving his Learn to Swim Level 1; Nancy Corrie P2 for joining 127 th
Edinburgh Rainbows Unit and achieving her White Belt with Red
Stripe in Judo; Mia McLelland P2 for joining 127 th Edinburgh
Rainbows Unit and for achieving her Red 2 in Junior Tennis; Rosie
Stein P2 for achieving her White Belt with Yellow Stripe in Judo;
Tineyi Matenga P2 for joining Braid Beaver Scouts; Louise Joyce P3 for representing Meadowbank Gymnastics Club and winning two
Gold, one Silver and one Bronze Medal; Mahib Shahzad P3 for achieving his Learn to Swim Level 1; Prionta Anisa Ashek P4/3 for an intricate piece of art work depicting a tiger and Sam Robertson P4/3 for winning a Medal from Power League Soccer for being a great helper; Bethan Baillie and Samara Oliver P4 for achieving their Red with White Stripe Belts in Judo; Maisie Stein P4 for achieving her full Red Belt in Judo P4; Kris Fleming P4 for winning a Gold and
Bronze Medal in Swimming; Brianna Ross P4 for achieving her
Yellow and White Belt in Karate: Hannah Reid P5 for representing the Brownies in the Junior Gang Show; Sarah Al-Dubai P7 for participating in the Mega Final of the Chess Tournament at the
WHEC and for getting her poem ‘Cupcakes’ published in the Young
Writers’ Pet Poetry Bundles of Fun; Lewis Robertson P7 for being awarded two Boxing trophies; Elle Mitchell and Aimee King P7 for joining the Girl Guides Association and Mae Hamilton P7 for winning first place in Kata.
Please look at our Reach for the Stars folder in the School Foyer and the display showing all the children’s achievements.
The Lion Award
Congratulations to Kiara Chwedoruk P7 for showing exceptional consideration towards one of our new pupils who has English as an additional language.
November’s Learners of the Month
Congratulations to the following children who were chosen as learners of the month for November.
Nursery Connor Valette for recognising all his dice patterns and for joining in dice games enthusiastically, waiting patiently for his turn
P1 Samuel Gebrekidan, Cody Boyle and Poppy Welsh for lots or really good progress in Numeracy this term

P2 Mia McLelland for learning to read soft ‘c’ and soft ‘g’ words in such an accomplished way
P3 Seb McSorley for showing such enthusiasm in the topic on
Edinburgh and for always listening so attentively
P4/3 Sorina Kaimasidi and Mahir Meer for working hard in Big
Witing and for creating a clear set of instructions on how to make a poppy
P4 Julia Morawska and Jade Marongiu for their beautiful charcoal drawings
P5 Rosie McSorley for her imaginative writing
P6 Connor McNaughton for being an inspirational reading buddy
P7 Lia Wood, Maya MacHardie, George McNicoll and Mashaal Asim for using skills such as shading and cross hatching effectively to create a WW2 themed picture.
Stars of the Week November and December 2015
Well done to these children who were Stars of the Week in November and December:
Nursery: Yomna Ibrahim, Cole
Thomson, Caitlin Gilman, Josh
Grotlin, Jay Scott, Rury McCabe, Maka Matipano
P1: Safaa Arshad, Freddy Main, Talha Saif, Luis Palermo-Inglesias and the whole class!
P2: Tineyi Matega, Siddharth Rawat, Maryam Mahmood, Owen
Conway
P3: Ben Callaghan, Sabby Batra, Lewis Mackie, Jingrui Shu
P4/3: Grace Stewart, Erin Punton, Reuben Young, Prionta Anisa
Ashek
P4: James McKenna, Fizzah Kayani, Struan Ramage, Samara Oliver
P5: Page Patterson, Joshua Randhawa, Fraser McKenna, Aayan Hanif
P6: Jack Wells, Annela Kennedy-Darke, Paolo Khokon, Adnan Al
Tamini
P7: Sabrina Saleem, Kiara Chwedoruk, Lia Wood, Tamanna Rawat
News from the Friends of Prestonfield
School Playground
After all our wonderful fundraising efforts over the last couple of years we have agreed that Earth Calling will develop natural improvements to the playground in Feb/March 2016. Mrs Murray has worked hard to ask children and parents/carers about their needs and we have asked Earth Calling to create two natural decked areas with planters, seats and tables etc. on what is currently tarmac to increase the number of natural play spaces for all the children.
One area will be between the staff car park and the wildlife garden, including a walk way into the wildlife garden and the other will be an area in the infant playground- total budget will be £6000. Earth
Calling built our outside classroom and raised pond in the Centre
Garden so are well known to the school. Please see photos on our
Facebook page of a similar piece of work they have completed in other primary schools. We are very excited about this first phase of playground improvement. Once we have completed this phase, we will review what other improvements could be put in place. If you are interested in getting involved in later phases of this work, please let us know, as we need some dedicated people to take this forward.
Before and After School Survey
Thanks to those who filled in the before and after school survey, we had 35 returned surveys. The results of the survey are on our facebook page. 23 people expressed that they would definitely or maybe use a breakfast club which is a strong mandate. The school
3 will now work with the council to look at the possibility of setting up a breakfast club on a trial basis.
Also we received lots of feedback on our after school care provision and we have discussed these ideas with Gingerbread already about how to build on the good relationships that the staff have with the children and also improvements which could be made. If you have any spare outdoor clothing like waterproof jackets, hats, scarves and gloves, Gingerbread would love to receive them, so that all the children can play outside.
Road Safety
We have raised issues about the crossing between the school and the playground with the Road
Safety Team at the Council. They have done an initial assessment and acknowledge that we need a clear travel plan for this road as there are risks. Please do take care with your children crossing the road and please don’t park in front of the school gates on either side of the road as this restricts children’s views of cars as they try
to cross between the park and the school playground. This issue has also been raised through our Councillors and we will keep campaigning to make this crossing safer.
A big thank you to our Junior Road Safety Officers Luke Hynd and
Kieran Rodgers who raised the profile of smart parking during Road
Safety Week recently. Please can we remind everyone that there is
NO RIGHT TURN from Peffermill Raod (direction Cameron Toll) into
Cameron House Avenue. Mrs Murray would like to thank all those who have become ‘smart parkers’ and are choosing to park further away from the school, making the area much safer for everyone.
Second Hand School Uniform Stall
Please continue to let the school have any spare school uniform items that are in good condition for our second hand uniform stall which runs on the first Friday of the month from 12.00-12.20.
Christmas
We hope that you enjoyed the Christmas cards that your child designed which have raised over £200, thanks again to Lisa Taylor
(Josh and Sophie’s Mum). Also you may have purchased a tree decoration that your child created, thanks to Jacquie Pirrie (Ava’s
Mum) for organising these.
Next Meeting: Tuesday 23 February 2016 – 7-8.30 pm in the school
Louise McSorley, Chair of Friends of Prestonfield
Email us on friendsofprestonfield@gmail.com
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/FriendsOfPrestonfield
Supporting Parents
Details of parenting programmes are on our School Website or please get in touch with Helena Reid, Development Officer Parent and Carer Support, CEC on 0131 672 2629 or at
Helena.Reid@ea.edin.sch.uk

And Finally…
Many thanks for all your support as always. We have had an excellent start to the school year and look forward to continuing to work together with you to give your children the very best.
Please note that School will close at 12.00 for the Christmas holidays on Tuesday, 22 nd
December 2015 and reopen on Thursday, 7 th January 2016.
We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New
Year!
Fiona Murray
Mrs Fiona Murray, Headteacher
Diary Dates
Please discard all previous dates as changes are inevitable. Calendar dates are also displayed on the School Website.
December 2015
16 th December-Christmas Talent Show
17 th December-P5, P6 and P7 Christmas Party
18 th December-School Trip to the Christmas
Pantomime at the Brunton Theatre
21 st December-House Christmas Quiz
21 st December P1, P2, P3 and P4 Christmas Parties
22 nd December 10.45-Christmas Carols in the Centre Garden
22 nd December at 12.00-School and Nursery close for Christmas
Holidays
22 nd December-6 th January-School Closed for Christmas Holidays
January 2016
6 th January-School Closed-INSET
7 th January-School Opens
8 th January-Time for Reflection-Creating Confident Kids ’Reaching
Goals’
15 th January-Young Carers Assembly
15 th January 11.00-12.00-Committees
22 nd January-Scots Poetry Competition
25 th January-P7 Workshop at CMS Cameron McKenna
28 th January-Pupil Council
29 th January-Learner of the Month Assembly
February
Thursday, 4 th February 09.15-P5 Class Assembly
8 th -12 th February-Money Week
12 th February 11.30 Money Week Showcase
12 th February-School Closes for February Holiday
22 nd February-School Opens
26 th February-Learner of the Month Assembly
26 th February-Committees
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