School Activities
from August 2023 to June 2024
26.6.24 - Summer Picnic
Families joined us today for a lovely summer picnic to mark the end of term. We also wanted to say a fond farewell to Phyllis, our wonderful dinner lady who has served 32 years here. Phyllis is a very special member of staff who will certainly be missed by everyone at Balnain. We would like to thank her for everything she has done for us over the years and we all wish her a very happy retirement! We look forward to hearing about her new adventures!
The children really enjoyed the big football game today too!
Parents v pupils....
and the children tell us they won!!
Great fun! 😀 ⚽
24.06.24 - Landmark Forest Adventure Park!
Wow! What a fantastic day we all had at Landmark! The sun was shining for us too.
There was something for everyone there and many of our pupils challenged themselves today by doing something new. The children were fantastic and represented our school so well. What a great way to start the last week of term! Well done Team Balnain!
20.06.24 - Puddles to Ponds
John Orr, our local Highlife Highland Countryside Ranger, joined us today along with Janet and Caley for an amphibian study in our school pond. From our pond dipping, we managed to identify several species. Caley and Janet helped us to learn to identify the newts in our pond. We can now confirm that we have a family of palmate newts. We can identify them by their strongly webbed hind feet, and a yellow underside. We learned that the males have a distinct filament on the end of their tail. We counted seven adult palmate newts and two young efts. We also caught dragonfly nymphs which we anticipate will turn into dragonflies this summer as we could see the early development of wings on their bodies. We also discovered a number of great diving beetles, which are quite large! We learned that despite their size, they can fly! We hope to get some new pond plants which will help to combat the abundance of blanket weed and will also provide some new hiding spots for some of our pond species. We all enjoyed a very exciting and informative pond dipping session today!
19.06.24 - Disc Golf
We all enjoyed having a go at Disc Golf today. The discs and basket were kindly loaned to us by Patrick, who has worked hard to develop the Drumnadrochit Disc Golf Course which has recently been ranked as #5 in Scotland! It was great to try a new sport and children and families are welcome to have a go at the course in Drumnadrochit. We might see some of you there during the summer holidays!
18/6/24 - Today we had a visit from Susan from INVOC to let us know the results to the Orienteering League.
Balnain Primary won the Small Schools Competition again and 4 of our pupils won individual medals - Lucy won Gold in P6-7 Girls, Eirica won Bronze in P4-5 Girls, Joseph won Silver and Angus Bronze in the P4-5 Boys competition. Well done everyone!!
Susan also gave us valuable feedback on how to improve our performance for the competition next year. Roll on to the 2025 season!
18/6/2024 - We are delighted for Angus who won Player of the Season at his rugby club. Well done!
13.06.24 P6/7 Transition Dance
Our P6 girls had a wonderful time at the High School for their P6/7 Transition Dance! They danced the night away with all their friends from Cannich Bridge and Glenurquhart. Huge thanks to everyone who helped to organise this event!
10/6/24 - Thanks to our Parent Council, we have had our Den Building Kits for a couple of weeks and they have produced several designs and are learning which structures to build onto to obtain a strong base, our fence definitely works better than the football goals. They are also helping our pupils to develop their negotiating and compromising skills.
5/6/24 - Orienteering
Our final orienteering course was at Culloden Woods. We are very proud of our young orienteering team who have approached each INVOC event with such enthusiasm and positivity! A special well done to Jasmine and Katie who wanted to try and complete this course individually. Everyone else completed the course with a partner. Well done to everyone for doing so well! We have all been learning lots from each event and have been developing our skills along the way. Well done team!
4.6.24 - Baillie Cup
This year, we entered a joint team with our friends from Cannich Bridge Primary School. It was great to see everyone compete in different races and encourage each other to do their best. We celebrated each others achievements too! An extra special well done to Gregor who was awarded a gold medal for running the 600m and an extra special well done to Annick who was awarded a gold medal for her 150m. Well done to our Cannich friends who also won medals today! It was great to spend the day with you all! Thank you to everyone who participated - we are very proud of you!
29/5/24 - Police Scotland visit to the school
Sargent Brian Bisset and Constable Keith Whitelaw from the Community Beats Team visited our school today as part of our class project regarding Government and Rules.
They explained that the main aim of the Police is to Keep People Safe and to do this there sometimes have to be rules or laws in place.
We discovered there are lots of different Teams within the Police - Beat Team, Traffic Cops, Dog Handling Team, Detectives and that you have the ability to either specialise or move around the Teams. The Police get to work with lots of Partners - Coastguard, RNLI, Fire and Ambulance Services to provide the best service available to the public.
It was very interesting and we had the opportunity to try on some of the Police Uniform and be handcuffed but several of our pupils were able slip these off and as they left they switched on the blue lights and siren on their Police Truck.
20240529_145426.mp4
25/5/24 - Inter Schools Athletics Championship
Team Balnain took part in the annual Inter Schools Athletics Championship, this year it took place in a new location - The Queen's Park Stadium.
Our team this year was Angus, Joseph, Jasmine, Alexa, Eirica and Lucy and it was a very tight competition, lots of medals were won by our pupils. Final team positions were decided in the last event of the day the 4 x 100m relay which unfortunately we finished 2nd which resulted in our team finishing 2nd place by only 1 point.
Our P5 and P6 pupils were competing against mostly P7 pupils so roll on next year when our pupils will have the opportunity to compete again.
21/5/24 Generation Science - The Green Machine
Today we had our second visit from the Generation Science team and this time we learnt about renewable energy. We discovered different types of renewable energy, built mini renewable machines and discovered possible renewable options for the future.
15.05.24 - Orienteering
Our school team enjoyed participating in the Craig Phadraig event. Well done to everyone for completing the course! Lots of learning points to take away and remember for future events too.
8/5/24 we had a lovely surprise this morning when we discovered that there are chicks in our nesting box! We could see 5 chicks in the nest. They were very noisy when they were being fed by their parents!
1/5/24 - Orienteering
We had our first Invoc Schools Orienteering Event today at Cawdor! Everybody did so well to complete the course as it was quite challenging. We all learned some new skills today! We are looking forward to the next event already. Well done Team Balnain!
1/5/24 - Music
Mrs Livingstone delivered a super music session today where the pupils sang 'Dark Island'. They also played accompanying instruments: Katie played her violin and others played chime bars, xylophones and glockenspeils whilst Mrs Livinstone played her beautiful harp. Well done everyone - it sounded superb! We always enjoy our music sessions with Mrs Livingstone. 😊
25/4/24 - Today we had a busy day of interactive learning with visits from Generation Science where we discovered the secrets of electricity using a combination of hand generators and practical demonstrations of nano bots, electrons and batteries.
In the afternoon John Orr (Highland Ranger) came and visited us to talk about Ponds to Puddles. John gave us lots of information about ponds and how crucial they are to the ecosystem. His visit also included a pond dipping sessions at our pond we found 2 breeds of newts, dragonfly larvae, diving beetles along with lots of other creatures.
19.04.24 - Orienteering After School Club
We had a great turn out for our first orienteering session today and the sun was shining for us too! We practised our skills for orienteering through playing fun games and we remembered the importance of 'setting' or orientating our maps! What an enthusastic and energetic bunch! We're looking forward to our next session already!
19/4/24 - This morning Mr Iain brought 2 'pet lambs' to school for us to feed and take care of. There was great excitement amongst all the pupils, some have fed lambs previously but for a few this was a brand new experience.
19/04/24 - Gardening Session
We made the most of the good weather today and spent much of our time outside. Bird feeders were refilled, flower seeds were sown and everyone helped to weed our raised beds. Fantastic job Team Balnain!
It was great to see so many signs of spring today. We noticed lots of buds on our fruit trees and even some blossom too. Spring has definitely sprung at Balnain!
17/4/24 - What a great return to school, we have reconnected our bird box camera and saw a pair of House Sparrows building a nest - this morning we found an egg had been laid overnight.
28/03/24 - Easter Egg Hunt
Today we enjoyed our traditional Easter egg hunt around the school grounds followed by some hot chocolate.
A lovely way to end the term for everyone.
Happy holidays!
27/3/2024 - We held our annual Egg Decorating Competition - it was great to see that all of the pupils had thought about their design beforehand and their finished designs are eggtastic!
Congratualtions to Charlie for his winning 'Mr Tickle' design and well done to our joint second place designs: 'Skerryvore' by Lucy and 'Eggsited' by Katie.
27.03.24 - Young Violinists
We were treated to a performance from the newest members of Mr Osbourne's Violin Tuition group.
Well done to Joseph, Charlie and Alexa! Keep up the good work!
26.03.24 - Primary Enterprising Maths Challenge
We are very proud of our P6 pupils as they entered this event in Dingwall Academy today. They represented our school so well and worked hard as a team to complete many challenges throughout the day! They started off by producing a fantastic poster on the theme 'Problem Solving & Geometry' which they titled 'Attack of the Awesome Angles'. Then they completed a round table challenge, a team challenge, head to head challenge and a relay challenge! We enjoyed meeting up with our friends from Cannich Bridge Primary and Glen Urquhart Primary too.
It was a great experience - well done girls!
20/3/2024 - McRobert Cup
We entered 2 teams in the McRobert Cup this year
P6/7 Girls - Jasmine, Lucy and Katie
P4/5 Boys - Angus, Joseph and Charlie
It was the first time they had entered this event and all did very well, roll on next year's event.
7.03.24 World Book Day
We really enjoyed sharing our favourite books today! Thanks for bringing them in and telling us all about them. It's great to recommend books to others. Keep reading guys!
Silver Blue Peter Badge Winners!
Pupils in P2-6 were delighted to receive their Silver Blue Peter Badges this week! Earlier this session the children sent off applications for this special badge which is awarded in recognition of kindness. Kindness is one of our school values. The children explained how they have demonstrated kindness towards others and many of them chose to explain how they helped Ailsa and her family earlier this year by running the Baxters 5K and raising over £12,000 to support them while they were facing some very difficult and challenging times. We think the badges look great and the children are very proud to have been awarded them. Well done Team Balnain!!
1.3.24 Curling - Our last session
It was wonderful to see everyone use their skills that they have been developing over the past few weeks today. We went straight into games today and it got quite exciting and competative! Very close results and we all wished that we could have played on. Well done everyone! Special well done to Jasmine who was right on the button today with her curling stone landing right in the centre of the house! Thanks to Derek and Keith for being great coaches for the past 4 weeks.
22/2/24 Over the last couple of weeks we have been making Vegetable Soup in our Cooking Club lessons, the children got to practice their peeling, cutting and grating skills.
16/2/2024 Curling week 2, this week we learnt about sweeping and how this can make the stone move straighter and further along the ice.
15/02/24 - RSPB Big School Birdwatch
We took part in the Big School Birdwatch today and we saw a number of birds at our school bird feeders. The most popular birds were house sparrows. However, we were very surprised to see little creatures scurrying around at ground level below the feeders....we thought they might be voles or mice. They were so fast it was hard to identify them!
12/2/2024 - STEM Energy Workshop
Our older pupils enjoyed a trip to UHI, Inverness to take part in an Energy Workshop.
In this module, pupils undertook challenges that reflect some of the skills and careers that are part of the Scottish energy sector, focusing on turbines, energy storage and electrical engineering.
What is energy? - Pupils explored a series of small games and challenges to explore the different energy types and transformations, classifying the different energy types they recognise. They investigated electrical appliances, identifying the energy transformations happening within them and the types of wasted energy that the appliances gives off.
Pupils were very excited to use cola battery cells to build working battery circuits! They measured the voltage in the circuit using a multimeter as they built up the circuit to contain 1, 2, 3, and 4 battery cells.
Pupils finished off the afternoon by using LittleBits to build different electrical circuits and complete a series of challenges.
What a great day with so many learning opportunties! Thanks to Tim for delivering all of the activities today in such a fun and engaging manner! We look forward to working with you again in the future.
12/02/24 - The Lighthouse Keeper's Lunch
Our younger pupils had a themed day at school, with activities based on the book 'The Lighthouse Keeper's Lunch' by Rhonda & David Armitage. We enjoyed reading the story together, then we used recycled materials to design and make our own model lighthouses. Pupils also explored how they could add a light to their models and investigated making simple circuits to add to their designs. Then they enjoyed playing with their model lighthouses too. These Lighthouse Keepers have lots of adventures!
9/02/24 - Curling
Today we had our very first Curling taster session at Inverness Ice Rink. The children did so well and really enjoyed the opportunity to try something new. Keith and Derek were super coaches who helped everyone to build their confdence on the ice and develop some techniques for curling. We are really looking forward to building on our skills over the next few weeks. Well done everyone!
2/2/24 - Scottish Ballet Workshop
We were so excited to welcome Robin (musician) and Taylor (dancer) to do a workshop based on the ballet that we enjoyed yesterday. The children were put through their paces and really enjoyed learning some dance moves. They even recreated some scenes from Cinders! We realised that ballet dancers are incredibly fit, agile, strong and dedicated!
1/2/24 - Scottish Ballet - Cinders
The whole school thoroughly enjoyed the Scottish Ballet's performance of Cinders this afternoon at Eden Court. We were delighted to see the orchestra, the dancers, costumes, set, props and special effects. It was so lovely to see the children appreciate the performance and follow the story that was told purely through music and dance. It was a twist on the traditional tale of Cinderella which we all loved!
25/1/24 - STEM Project - 'Powering the Future'
The first part of our new project involves learning about electricity and renewable energy. We explored how gears work to transform the slow rotation of turbine blades into fast rotation that allows a generator to generate electricity. The pupils had to make the gears and then connect them in various size orders and count the number of rotations of each gear.
25/1/24 - Online Ceilidh
In celebration of Burns Night, Feis Rois held an online Ceilidh for Highland Primary Schools - about 100 schools joined the event which included signing and dancing. It was great fun!
We have already signed up to the next one in March.
15.01.24 - Dancing Achievements
Annick and Eirica were proud to tell us of their recent achievements in Highland Dancing! Both girls passed and were awarded a lovely certificate and a bronze dancing medal. Well done to both of you!
15.01.24 - Kodaly Music Sessions
Rosalind is back to deliver some more fun singing games and activities to help develop our musical skills.
P1-4 always enjoy these lively sessions!
10.1.24 - We built a Bird Table and Bird Box
We had a visit from Roy and David at Glenurquhart Men's Shed on Wednesday and with their help we built a Bird Table to replace our broken one by the School's entrance, and a Bird Box. We all took turns in the construction: drilling, screwing and stapling.
It was great fun and we are looking forward to undertaking more woodwork projects over the course of the school year.
19.12.23 Party! Party! Party!
We had great fun at our Christmas Party today! Everyone looked very smart and enjoyed all the singing, dancing, party games and party food. Thanks to our Parent Council for providing our refreshments. When we got back to school after our party, we discovered that Santa had been in our classroom and left presents under the tree for us! We're all feeling very festive now!
18.12.23 The Story Behind 'The Cutter'...
One of our talented P6 pupils has been learning to play the guitar and she has recently been learning to play the Runrig tune called 'The Cutter'. We were delighted that she performed this in front of the class today. Mrs Johnstone went on to tell us all the story behind the song...
'The Cutter' was written by two brothers, Rory and Calum Macdonald, who were brought up in Northmaddy in North Uist in the Outer Hebrides. They wrote this song about a local man Seonaidh Morrison or 'Seonaidh Beag Iain' who emigrated to Canada. We discussed the tradition of cutting and stacking peat and how Seonaidh Morrison came home to North Uist every summer to help cut peat for his mother.
We watched an interview with Seonaidh Morrison which was in Gaelic. Mrs Johnstone helped us to understand what was said.
12.12.23 Cakes & Crafts Coffee Morning
What a feel good community event! Our pupils really enjoyed seeing everyone today. Thank you so much to all our families and friends in the community for supporting us to raise money for MFR Cash for Kids. Huge thanks to all our wonderful staff for donating baking for our bake sale. Thanks to our families who also donated baking and to Cobb's Bakery for generously supporting our event. The children were delighted to be selling their Christmas crafts too. We also had a very special visitor today...it was such a wonderful surprise to see our friend Ailsa and her family! Thank you all so much for joining us and for helping to raise an incredible £500 for MFR Cash for Kids!
11.12.23
Visit from Highland Astronomical Society
We were delighted to welcome Pauline MacRae from Highland Astronomical Society this afternoon. Pauline told us all about the Observatory in Inverness and showed us some spectacular photos that were taken from it. She told us some fascinating facts about the planets and answered our many questions! Pupils were amazed to handle a real meteorite too! We also learned more about the relative distance between our planets, the phases of the moon and solar and lunar eclipses. It was an incredibly informative session! Many thanks to Pauline for her time today.
7.12.23 Christmas Lunch
Everyone was feeling festive today when we enjoyed our Christmas Lunch together! Thanks to Phyllis and all the catering staff today. 😊
Balnain GS Workshop.movGreen Screen Animation!!
After a much anticipated wait, we have received the recent green screen recordings from our Animation Day with Drew from Eden Court.
We had such great fun making these and we think they look great!!
1.12.23 Storytelling at the Library
We enjoyed a very special trip to the library today as we were invited for an Icelandic Storytelling session. Alda is from Iceland and she is visiting the Highlands as part of her studies into library services in rural communities. She read us three traditional Icelandic Christmas stories about the Yule Lads and the Yule Cat. We were joined by some of the nursery children who will be coming to Balnain next year. It was a lovely transition opportunity! Thanks to everyone involved, and special thanks to Meg from Highland Libraries and Alda for her super storytelling session.
28.11.23 Crafts
We are busy getting ready for our upcoming Christmas Cakes and Crafts morning.
Pupils have enjoyed creating some lovely crafts which will be for sale on Tuesday 12th December at Balnain Hall.
Here's a sneaky peek at what they have been up to....!
27.11.23 Marbling Art
Pupils were impressed with the marbling technique used in art today. We plan to use these for our Space display as we think they will look great as planets.
24.11.23 Class Talks
We have really enjoyed listening to everyone's class talks this week! We recognise the hard work that pupils have done to research, prepare and deliver such interesting talks. We have all learned so much about famous scientists and explorers! Our younger pupils did a super job of their Show and Tell too.
Our P1 pupils have been learning to build words from the sounds that they know. Great job in completing these word cards!
Balnain Vetinary Centre was open for business again today. The pets were in good hands today with our vets and have made a full recovery!!
Pupils have enjoyed making some new Kapla creations. Some of them were inspired by our Kapla books. Look how well they have done!
24.11.23 UNICEF's Gold Rights Respecting School's Award
An exciting package arrived at school today....we were absolutely delighted to discover that it was our Gold Right's Respecting School's Certificate and Banner. These will now be proudly put on display! 🤩
20.11.23 World Children's Day
We joined in with a virtual assembly with the Children and Young People's Commissioner Scotland for World Children's Day today. Today marks the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989.
17.11.23 Children In Need
We had a lot of fun today and managed to raise over £40 for Children In Need. Many thanks to our Badger house group for organising the activities and huge thanks to our families who donated tasty treats for our bake sale. Thanks everyone!
13.11.23 Colour Charts
As part of our artwork, pupils have experimented with colour mixing and have created some exciting new shades. Then, in the style of Farrow & Ball, they created colour swatch samples. They carefully chose names to match their shades and wrote a little description beside each one. We love them!
Pomegranate Tasting...
One of our reading groups are currently reading 'The Boy At The Back of the Class' by Onjali Rauf. During the most recent chapter, one of the characters was trying to source a pomegranate for his new classmate and we realised that many of our pupils had not heard of this fruit before. So we brought one into school and had a little tasting session!
Balnain PS Animation Workshop Films 08 11 23.mp4Thanks to Drew at Eden Court for sharing the animations that we created during our recent animation workshop day. Everyone had great fun putting these together!!
10/11/23 JRSO Competition Winners
Our Junior Road Safety Officers were very impressed by the standard of entries for their first competition of this school year. Pupils had to use bright colours to colour in their posters for the 'Be Bright, Be Seen' campaign. Congratulations to Jackson and Eirica for their winning entries. Hope you enjoy your prizes! All pupils received reflectors from Jasmine, Lucy and Katie. Well done everyone!
On these cold and frosty mornings, pupils have enjoyed looking for ice in the playground. Sorley was super at finding ice and even managed to make a wee smiley face!! 😊
20231110_113049.mp410/11/23 - Children In Need
The Badger House Group are planning a dress down day and bake sale for this year's Children in Need Day next Friday 17th November.
Kapla towers...
Joseph was delighted to build a Kapla tower that was taller than Mrs MacLeod today! Great job!
8/11/23 Eden Court Animation
'This is the best day ever!!' - this was the cry from so many of our pupils today! 😃
We had so much fun with Drew from Eden Court! We learned about the history of animation, optical illusions and the persistance of vision. We explored different methods of animation too and the highlight of the day was getting to use the green screen! Pupils had the opportunity to use the green 'Morphsuits' too! So much fun! Pupils learned how to use stop-motion animation and incorporate their green screen animations, as well as use sound effects. Terrific creativity and teamwork today as pupils worked in groups to create their own mini animations which we will share once they are finalised. Thanks to Drew for the most memorable day!
2/11/23 - Tuck Shop!
Our first Tuck Shop of the term and everyone was delighted to have something warm to eat and drink at playtime today as it was so cold outside! Hot chocolates and toast with various toppings were available from our P6 pupils. Looking forward to next Thursday already!!
Gymnastics 26/10/23
Some of our pupils were involved in creating these cool pyramids today as part of their PE lesson on gymnastics. Great teamwork guys!
26/10/23 - Cross Country
Our P6 pupils did us proud today by competing in the Cross Country event at Bught Park. 🤩
25/10/23 - Our Junior Leaders have been leading lunchtime activity sessions with our pupils. Thanks to Louise, our Active Schools Coordinator, for helping to set this up. Everyone enjoyed playing tennis today - great job girls! We love your new Junior Leader badges too! 😊
25/10/23
Huge well done to Lola - who was awarded this amazing trophy for her street dancing this week!
Keep up the great work Lola!!
Volcano!
We have been learning about Natural Disasters as we have been reading about some of them in the news recently. We had a lot of fun creating a mini model of a volcano which 'erupted' when bicarbonate of soda was added to vinegar.
20231006_120451.mp4Cooking Club - Apple Crumble
The school was smelling delicious today as our cooking club were busy making apple crumbles. Everyone managed to make their own tasty dish to take home with them. It's great to see all pupils developing their food technology skills and becoming more confident in the kitchen. Great job everyone! The apples were from our own apple tree in the school grounds, which when the produce is homegrown it always makes everything taste better.
Huge thanks to Mrs McCloskey for leading these sessions for us!
On Sunday 1st October our school took part in the Baxter's 5K to raise funds for Ailsa and her family. Ailsa is a former pupil who is currently receiving medical treatment in Glasgow's Children Hospital.
As at the 3rd of October we have raised £10,160 to help Ailsa and her family, to make life that little bit easier, as they go through the toughest of times, facing some of the biggest and most frightening challenges of all.
It has been so heartwarming to see the strength and support of our community. Thanks to you all! We are so proud of our runners for completing the 5K!
Well done Team Balnain!! Small but mighty ❤
18.09.23 Today we have a visit from Fèisean nan Gàidheal and we had the opportunity to participate in an interactive drama workshop with our Drama Officer Angus Macleod. The workshop linked the subject of rewilding with Gaelic poetry and a special focus on the nature-praising bàrd Duncan Bàn MacIntyre and his poem Moladh Beinn Dòbhrain (In Praise of Beinn Dobhrain).
14.09.23 Cooking Club
Everyone enjoyed the first Cooking Club session today. We made tasty blueberry muffins, using some of the delicious blueberries that we picked at Balnain Blueberries this morning. Great job everyone!
14.09.23 Balnain Blueberries
We were delighted to accept an invitation to visit Balnain Blueberries today. We enjoyed a lovely walk to meet Brigitte, who showed us around her blueberry patch. We learned more about the eight different varieties of blueberries that she grows on her farm and how she cares for them. In addition, we learned more about the biodiversity that lives within her blueberry patch. Frogs, toads and even hedgehogs live there. Can you spot a frog in our photos? Everyone enjoyed sampling and picking their own blueberries to take home too. We will be using some this afternoon in our Cooking Club when we make blueberry muffins - yum!! Many of our pupils had purple tongues by the end of the visit!! Thank you so much Brigitte for a fantastic morning!
8.09.23 - To finish off our Friday we had some free playtime and Gregor took the opportunity to build a Kapla tower taller than himself.
6.09.23 - Ahead of Team Balnain's entry in the Baxter's 5K Run on Sunday 1st October we held our first training session.
We talked about how far 5K is and the need to pace ourselves and that it is alright if you need to walk.
Team Balnain's aim is for us all to complete the distance.
5.09.23 - This morning we had our first YMI music session of the term, these will take place up to the end of November, this is an opportunity for our pupils to learn about traditional Scottish Music
4.09.23
Eirica won two 1st Prizes at the Glenurquhart Horiculture Society Annual Fair on Saturday
29.08.23
Due to the rain today, we took our football coaching inside. It's great to see everyone developing their skills!
24.08.23 Music
Mrs Livingstone joined us today and we all had great fun with our music session this afternoon.
22.08.23 Ross County Football Coaching
Everyone was delighted to welcome Ross County Coach Chris this afternoon and develop our football skills.
We enjoy playing with playdough and we were also using playdough to make the letters of our names. Well done boys!
25.08.23 Library Visit
We had our first visit to our local library today to promote reading for enjoyment. Everyone was pleased to choose some books to enjoy for the next few weeks. Many thanks to Glen Urquhart Shinty Club for lending us their minibus and many thanks to Iain for driving. Happy reading everyone!!
23.08.23 All About Me Bag
Here are just some of the interesting items that pupils brought in this week to share with us. We had to guess why each item was chosen and why they were special. Thanks for sharing!
18/8/23 Nature Walk
We enjoyed our nature walk to Loch Meikle today. We spotted lots of interesting things and noticed some seasonal changes too.
Pond Dipping
Our pond is looking healthy! We were lucky enough to discover a range of wildlife in and about our pond during our sessions this week: a frog, a dragonfly, newts, pond skaters, waterboatmen, great diving beetles, whirlygig beetles and dragonfly nymphs were all spotted! If you look very closely in the photos you might be able to see some of them too!
17.08.23 Creativity!
Another one of our school values is CREATIVITY and our pupils all enjoy the opportunity to be creative! Our younger pupils enjoyed transforming a large cardboard box from a recent delivery into an impressive pirate ship! Our older pupils enjoyed creating a giant outdoor 'marble run'.
16.08.23 Team Building Challenges!
One of our school values is TEAMWORK and it is something that we think we do well at Balnain. This week, we completed some team challenges in our house groups. The pupils worked well together demonstrating skills in communication and encouragement as well as perserverance and positivity. Well done to everyone for building their cup pyramids and for transfering their ball across the playground.
16.08.23 House Groups
We held our annual ceremony to allocate the House Groups to our pupils.
We are very lucky that like a famous wizard we also have a Sorting Hat for our groups Red Deer, Badger and Squirrel.
15/8/2023 - Welcome Back to our new school year
This year we have 3 new pupils join our school and we hope they all enjoyed their first day and look forward to welcoming them back tomorrow.
