Thank you

Thanks to all parents and members of our local community who came along to our recent Fairtrade coffee morning . We raised over £80 for Macmillan cancer care.  By Jamie.

Fairtrade Coffee Morning

We are holding another Fairtrade Coffee Morning on the 2nd of March at 10:00. There will be tea, coffee and biscuits. Everyone is welcome. The theme for Fairtrade Fortnight this year is Take a Step so if you're interested apply your step to the Fairtrade Website.

Fairtrade Hamper Winner

Our Fairtrade was the top prize in our raffle on Friday. On our last Friday of 2011, we gathered in the gym hall for the last 15 minutes to make the draw. Various pupils took it in turns to draw the tickets and it turned our Primary 4 had the winning ticket in their class for our Fairtrade hamper. Well done and we hope you enjoy the Fairtrade goodies over the holidays!

Fairtrade coffee morning

We are hosting our Fairtrade coffee morning on Wednesday the 14th of December at 11:30 am. There will be our Fairtrade tuckshop and Rainbow turtle products as well. We will also be hosting a raffle with prizes from local buisnesses e.g. Strathgryfe Tennis and Squash Club and St Mirren Football Club and the top prize is our Fairtrade hamper(items donated by P6). There will also be tea, coffee and biscuits. We will also have a live performance of P6 & P7 Clarinetists performing Christmas carols for everyone who comes.

Community Cafe

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Halloween Catwalk Show

The whole school took part in a Halloween catwalk show today. It was organised and run by some of the pupil Council reps and we all had great fun. Patrick and Evie from P7 were leading us on the microphone and we walked down the catwalk in our own Houses. The judges from our school were Mrs Kelly and Mrs Johnstone and the prize was fairtrade chocolate! Here are the photos of our prizewinners. by Anne B. & Juliet C.

Fairtrade Coffee Morning

On the 14th of October we are having a fairtrade coffee morning at our school. We will be selling fairtrade products and we will be selling some produce from Rainbow Turtle. It starts at 10:15am so please come along.

By Ruadhri and Mikey

Our Garden in May

Due to the gardening club being on a Monday, we've missed a lot of days gardening due to the recent holidays. We met today and had a lot of work to do. As well as weeding, we planted our veg out, added to the herb garden and cleared some of the rockery. During our gardening hour we had sun, wind and rain. Have a look at our slideshow to check out today's work.

First Ladybird of 2011 seen!

It was sunny but breezy this week when we went out to garden after school. We decided to give the planters a freshen up and planted them up with violas and pansies. These should last until May when the warmer weather kicks in (hopefully)! We cleared some weeds and split then moved a few plants which had overgrown since we first planted them.

We became excited when we found a ladybird in the rockery we planted last session. This is the first ladybird we have seen this year. Some of us wanted to call him "Bob" and some of us wanted to call him "Spotty". Then Tom came up with a brainwave and announced we should call him "Spotty Bob". Everyone seemed happy at this so we told him his new name and took his photo. We think he may have spent the winter in our bug hotel. We think we can see a little white egg in there too so we will watch to see what happens. Have a look at our slideshow.

Farmer Visits St. Fillan's

We entered the "grow your own" campaign again this year and our infants will be growing their own potatoes this year. We were luckily enough to be one of the schools chosen to have a farmer visit the school. Mr Carruth who lives locally came in to see us and he gave us lots of advice about planting our potatoes. He helped us plant them and told us lots about his family who are cattle farmers. He brought lots of pictures to show us as well as examples of the different things the cattle eat.

We are trying to grow our own food so that our food doesn't need to travel very far. This is better for the planet as well as helping local suppliers. We weighed our potatoes last year so this year we are looking for a heavier crop. Keep watching for an update. A big thank you to Mr Carruth for giving up his time to come in and help us.

First Day Back for Gardening Club

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The day may have started frosty and white however this didn't put our keen gardeners off. They arrived at school armed with warm coats and welly boots in preparation for their after-school gardening. This was our first day back since December and thankfully, as the day went on it started to warm up nicely. We had taken a break as not much happens in the garden during January and February as it's too cold for anything new to grow.

We had ordered some fruit bushes with our Morrison's vouchers and we unpacked these today. Before we started planting however we had a lot of weeding to do. Our compost bins were full to the top in December but when we checked them today they have begun to rot down and are only two thirds full now - so we added more weeds to the pile! Then we planted gooseberry bushes, a redcurrant bush, a blackcurrant bush, a blueberry bush and lots of raspberry canes. We haven't decided yet if we'll keep the fruit for ourselves or whether we'll leave it for the birds. Have a look at our slideshow to see what we got up to today.

Composting Talk from Scottish Water

We had a visit recently from Andy from Scottish Water.  As we are due to receive a large delivery of free compost from Scottish Water in the Spring time, he came out to let us know how the compost was made.  It is being sent from their Deerdykes recycling plant near Cumbernauld however they also have another recycling plant at Linwood which makes a rouger style of compost.  The ECO committee attended the talk and members of the gardening club from P4-P7 were invited.  As you can see from the photo many took up the invitation and showed great interest in this form of recycling.  Andy also showed the pupils the future plans for food recycling.

Gardeners Contribute Towards ECO Accreditation

Well done to the group of six gardeners who took the ECO inspector on a tour of the school garden recently when trying for our second ECO flag.  Pupils were asked many questions about the garden and grounds which they answered well.  This contributed to the rest of the hard work carried out by the school and our efforts were rewarded when we were awarded our second green ECO flag.  More details about ECO schools in Scotland can be found at the ECO Schools (Scotland) website.

Colder Days

The school gardening group has now wound down for the coldest months of the winter but here is a photo of one of our last days in the garden, prior to stopping. As you can see the sun was very low in the sky and there was a definite nip in the air. We had been clearing some of the weeds from the beds to fill our compost bins before winter set in. Both bins are now full to the brim! In the herb garden we have left a lot of the foliage on the plants. We were advised to do this by Bridge of Weir Horticultural Society members as it will give the insects who have been using our garden somewhere to shelter for the winter. They crawl inside the hollow tubes of stems and hide under the bushier leaves. We will cut the herb garden back and give it a good clear out in the Spring time when it starts to heat up. We raised £51 at the school Christmas Fayre with our craft goods and will use this to bulk out the garden in 2011. Our thanks go to Mr McSherry who comes in to help us with the garden every week and to the Mums who helped us with our bulb planting and crafting last term.  The school garden club restarts after the February break but full details will be issued prior to the first meeting.

ECO Work in the Garden - Sep 2010

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Well who would have thought the garden would have looked this good! When we first started out just a few months ago we had very few insects in the school garden. We now have so many plants growing that each time we are out we spot more insects, or different ones from last time. This is really pleasing our P1/2 and P2 as their ECO action is to increase biodiversity in the school grounds. They have spent structured time out in the garden as part of lessons as well as their break time when they could explore the garden with friends from different classes, passing on what they had learned and found. Have a look at our slideshow to see us in action. We know that we are making a difference by working as one big team as we now find it hard to count the number of living things we see in our garden. There are just too many to keep up with but we'll still continue our hard work!

Picnic Weather in June

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The month of June was beautiful and warm so the Garden Club decided to take full advantage of the weather.  After some end of year tidying, we had a picnic in the garden at our last meeting of the school year.  Some of our members were already away on holiday or in rehearsing for the school show that took place that night so we had a few missing members ..... but that didn't mean any food went to waste!  We had managed to secure a donation of plants from the Paisley Freegle website, a free way to recyle unwanted belongings.  We had a chat about where to plant these whilst we ate and worked out what we thought would grow best.  At the end we tidied our gardening equipment away for the summer holidays with the worry that when the school was closed our plants might die in the heat.  Luckily for the plants it rained for most of the summer so all of them grew amazingly well!

Our School Garden in May 2010

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We got together a dedicated bunch of volunteers who wished to do extra work in the school garden. We call ourselves the "St. Fillan's Gardening Club" and we meet every Monday after school. We have 7 raised beds in the school grounds and 7 large half-barrels. In May we gave 2 of our beds a makeover and tidied some of the others. We brightened up our half-barrels too with bright bedding plants. We bought them this year but next year Mrs Nicholson is going to challenge each class to grow some from seed. Bridge of Weir Horticultural Society kindly donated packets of seeds to us at their Flower Show. This will give us a great choice for next year.  We received a £50 micro-grant from  "Action Earth" which we used to establish a new rockery to celebrate 2010, the Year of Biodiversity.

Come Rain Or Shine!

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Sometimes we have to go out and do jobs round the garden but unfortunately we have no control over the weather.  Sometimes we are able to indoor jobs however often our garden club members choose to go outdoors, despite the horrible weather.  We've had fun in the rain and it's amazing to see how quickly one part of the school garden floods.  This is something we will have to work around - perhaps a bog garden at a future date?  Here we are out securing the rain catchers which had become loose.  We use this water first when watering our plants.  This is all part of our ECO work.

School Garden - April 2010

We spent a lot of time weeding the beds and pulling out old veg which had been left in the ground from last year. We don't have quite enough compost so over the coming year we hope to have all the beds fully filled and up and running. Keep checking back to see what we've been up to.