Second Place Spotlight – The Quest: Short Story Competition ✨📚

As part of The Quest Weekend, we challenged local schools to create their own Nessie-inspired tales—and they delivered!🌟 Second place goes to Balnain Primary School, who wowed us with their creativity, imagination, and heart. Their brilliant story earned them a full class tour of The Loch Ness Centre! 🏆🎉

We were so impressed by all the entries, we’ll be sharing one story every week—starting with Balnain’s magical tale. Dive in, enjoy, and be inspired by the next generation of storytellers.

🖊️ Read the story https://nuvi.me/9ub0eq

15.5.25 P4/5 were helping our younger pupils to learn more about orienteering today. 

They also used simple maps and supported pupils in P1-3 to program Beebot to complete the course. 

 14.5.25 Orienteering at Craig Phadraig Woods

Our Orienteering Team enjoyed running the course at Craig Phadraig this week. Everyone is developing their map reading skills and recognising more map symbols and features. Everyone is also remembering to check the number on each flag before using their dibbers to make sure it matches the numbers on their map. Lucy and Eirica completed the yellow course today which was a longer route and had additional challenges. Well done to all of Team Balnain!

8.5.25 Loch Insh Day 2

Up early for more adventures! Today we were kayaking and got to experience the Jungle Float! 

This was followed by a BBQ and a disco.

29.04.25       Bikeability- Session 2

Another great session with P6 and 7 today! We started with a brief recap on last weeks skills in the playground and then headed out into the street. There the pupils practised right turns, signals and emergency stops. This meant they got to encounter real traffic and had to react to their surroundings.

Very well done to everyone, looking forward to our next session! 

30.04.25 INVOC Orienteering at Craigmonie Woods

Our P4-7 pupils were excited to participate in the first of the INVOC Schools Orienteering League events today. It was a beautiful afternoon to be in the woods at Craigmonie, however we soon really felt the heat when we had to face a steep ascent at the very start of the course! Well done to everyone who took part and completed the course today. 

25.04.25     Bikeabilty

Primary 6 and 7 began their first session of Bikeabilty today. All the pupils began to work through their level one training. This involved bike checks and going through general bike safety. They then went on to do simple manoeuvres in the playground. We are all really looking forward to our next session. Well done everyone!

4.04.25 Egg Hunt

Another tradition here at Balnain is our annual Easter Egg Hunt in the school grounds. Everybody had to search high and low for their own eggs...and some were harder than others to find!! 

Such great fun on the last day of term! Happy holidays everyone!!

1.04.25 UHI Shinty Cup - Good luck to Katie and Angus who have been selected to play for Glen Urquhart Shinty Club in this competition along with teammates from Glen Urquhart Primary School.

26.03.25 McRobert Cup

We are so proud of all of our cross country runners today! The McRobert Cup is the biggest cross country event in the Highlands with over 760 pupils competing! It was a fantastic experience for our young athletes. Huge well done to everyone who competed today!

25.03.25 Primary Maths Challenge

Our Maths Team travelled to Dingwall Academy today to compete in the Primary Maths Challenge. Katie, Angus and Connie represented our school so well and displayed terrific teamwork, marvellous maths and plentiful positivity throughout the whole day as they completed challenge after challenge! We were very impressed with their poster on the topic of 'Codes and Ciphers' and we were hugely impressed with their strategies for the Head to Head Challenge game Sequencium. 

Well done to you all - you did Balnain proud today!!

24.03.25 Urquhart Castle

Today, our pupils visited Urquhart Castle to enrich their learning about our historical topics: Scottish Castles and The Jacobites. Urquhart Castle has a fascinating history! Many thanks to our wonderful guide, Paul, who was very informative and was happy to answer all of our questions!

17.03.25 Culloden Battlefield

P4-7 enjoyed a field trip to Culloden Battlefield today to deepen their understanding of The Jacobites. Thanks to their amazing tour guide, Rebekah, our pupils developed their knowledge and understanding of this historical topic. 

12.03.25 Great Glen Cross Country Competition

What a lovely morning for the inaugural Great Glen Cross Country at Glen Urquhart High School! Huge thanks to our Active Schools Co-ordinators Dagmar and Colin for organising such a successful event. Our P4-7 pupils really enjoyed participating and are very proud of their achievements.

P4/5 Girls - Annick came in 2nd place and was also awarded the P4/5 Girls Team Trophy! This was a very impressive achievement, as Annick was the only girl in the Balnain P4/5 team! Well done!

P4/5 Boys - Ben and Charlie competed in this section and came in 2nd place in the Team Award.

P6/7 Girls - Connie, Alexa, Ella, Lola, Eirica, Katie, Jasmine and Lucy all competed in this section, and came 2nd place in the Team Awards. A very special mention to Eirica who came in 3rd place and Lucy who came in 1st place overall! Amazing achievements! Huge well done!

P6/7 Boys - Joseph and Angus both competed in this section and they were awarded the P6/7 Boys Team Trophy. A special mention to Angus who came in 1st place overall! Very well done!

We are very proud of ALL of our runners who participated today and completed the course.

It was great to see such great team spirit across all the schools. 

We are already looking forward to 2026!

4.3.25     We had a very special visitor in school today! 

Pupils were delighted to help look after Jock, our little pet lamb, throughout the school day, giving him bottles of milk and some exercise at playtime and lunch time. Thanks for looking after him so well! ☺

14.02.25 Food Bank

We are delighted with the amount of donations for the Highland Food Bank! 

Thanks to all of our families and staff who donated so generously.

11.02.25 Safer Internet Day

Our Digital Leaders had an online Teams meeting with Digital Leaders from Cannich Bridge Primary and Glen Urquhart Primary School this morning to share different resources to use for promoting online safety. 

Glen Urquhart shared ideas for password protection and what to do if you think your password has been used by others. They also recommended a book 'The Bongles and the Crafty Crows'.

Cannich Bridge shared a fantastic slide presentation about online stranger danger and being safe about sharing personal information online. They also shared information about recommended age limits on social media accounts.

Balnain shared a resource that they will be using at our assembly this week - 'Chicken Clickin' by Jeanne Willis. The key messages from this book are about having secure passwords on devices and considering who you are talking to or 'friending' online.

It was great for Lucy, Lola, Joseph and Charlie to link with other Digital Leaders to share ideas about promoting internet safety. Well done everyone!

22.01.25 Making Robots!

P1-3 were very busy with the woodwork bench this week as they all designed and made their own robots. Pupils had to do careful measuring, sawing and hammering to help create their own designs. Well done everyone!

22.1.25 P4-7 UHI Visit Robotics and Mathematics

The P4-7 class visited the Newton Room at the UHI to explore Robots and Perimeters. They discovered how to program Lego Mindstorms EV3 robots. They also explored strategies to calculate the circumference of circles and the perimeter of other 2D shapes. They had great fun!

6.1.25     Darts! 🎯

Pupils in P1-3 were inspired after hearing about Luke Littler's incredible achievement of becoming the new World's Dart's Champion....at the age of 17! We set up our wee dartboard in class and enjoyed recording our scores. What a fantastic way to develop mental maths skills!

6.1.25     Happy New Year!!!

Welcome back to school for another busy term at Balnain! It was great to see everyone again today and catch up with all your holiday news.

17.12.24    It's Party Time!

Everyone had a lot of fun at our Christmas party this afternoon!

18.11.24     P4-7 Library Visit

As it is Book Week Scotland, P4-7 were invited to our local library for a special story telling session with Lizzie McDougall. Lizzie showed us her 'story quilts' which she had made herself, to illustrate folk tales. The big one was hanging up behind her and she also had some smaller ones too which the children are holding up. The tales were mainly from Highland areas. 

31.10.24     Trick or Treat Tuckshop!

We were all in for a treat at Tuckshop today! Our fantastic P7s created some special tasty treats for their tuckshop today....hot chocolate and some edible magical wands! Great job girls!

 31.10.24     Potion Making!

We had great fun doing this experiement! We used red cabbage to make an indicator and we tested it out on common household solutions and loved seeing the magical colour change! The red and pink colours that were created indicated that the solution was acidic.

23.09.24     Kodaly Music Sessions

P1-3 welcomed Rosalind back for our first block of Kodaly music sessions this year. Pupils really enjoyed developing their musical skills through singing songs and playing games. Everyone had a lot of fun! We look forward to seeing Rosalind for the next few weeks and again later in the year.

9.9.24    Pond to Puddles Art Competition Winners! 🤩

Exciting news to share with everyone at assembly today...

We are delighted to share the results of the "Ponds to Puddles" art competition from last session, which was part of the Curling Pond restoration project at the Highland Folk Museum. We are proud to announce that 4 pupils from our school have been recognised for their exceptional creativity and artistic talent in the following categories:

Blackbird - Sorley 

Hedgehog - Jackson

Field Fare - Lola

Common Diving Beetle - Angus

Each winning piece will be featured on the interpretation panel at the Highland Folk Museum, which will be viewed by thousands of visitors each year. Well done to everyone who took part - we were very impressed by ALL of your entries! And congratulations to our winners - we are very proud of you all!

Copies of all your entries were sent home before the summer for families to enjoy.

6.9.24 - Our pupils had the opportunity to try some of our home-grown Victoria Plums today! Isn't it great to be able to grow your own? We were very pleased with the first ever crop of fruit from our plum tree, which was just planted last year.

P1 have been busy doing some puzzles this week...good job everyone!

We reminded everyone of our school values here at Team Balnain.