Beyond the classroom
The life of the primary school encompasses many other activities apart from the classroom based work. We believe that broadening children's perspectives is an essential part of their wider experience. We seek to encourage the children to be involved in as many different activities as possible and are pleased that the vast majority choose to do so.
Either by venturing beyond the campus or by welcoming visitors, the pupils regularly have the chance to take part in exciting visits or participate in challenging activities in school.
Class Visits
From Primary 1 the children will go out from school to visit the wider world. Being able to go and see a place linked to a topic makes it become more real for a pupil and to hear an expert talking about their specific field increases the children's knowledge. There are huge advantages to be gained from good educational visits. Recent visits in the last three years include:
- the local Crieff library, the Ceramics Centre, the Crannog Centre Kenmore, Bannockburn, Stirling Castle, New Lanark, Butterfly and Insect World, the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh, Discovery Point Dundee.
Visitors To Morrison's
Equally it is often appropriate that experiences come to us and we now have an annual project with Scottish Opera which involves all the P5 - Transitional pupils and a book week for the whole school.
Scottish Opera spend a whole day working with the children and at the end of the session, parents are invited in to see the final show. Recent successes have been, ‘A Tale ‘O Tam', ‘Fever' an investigation into bacteria, and this year's ‘Big Bang Show,' a brief history of nuclear physics!
Book Week sees the arrival of authors and storytellers. We runcompetitions and the pupils also have the chance to dress astheir favourite book character.
Other visitors have included the local firemen, ambulance crew, Salvation Army, Save the Children and Morrisonians with stories to tell.
Residential Visits
At the top end of the primary school we offer two residential learning experiences of which we hope all pupils will take advantage. Our Primary 6 pupils do not venture too far from Crieff but spend two days based at Comrie Croft, a local outdoor centre near Comrie. Here they experience some easy hill walking, basic map reading and fun and games outside. Only an overnight stay, it is an excellent introduction to what follows in Transitional.
Our Transitional pupils travel over 60 miles to the Kindrogan Centre at Enochdu east of Pitlochry. In a quite stunning and remote setting the pupils have a week of outdoor, environmental education. The jam packed week includes: orienteering, hill walking, studying water habitats, map reading, team building exercises, drama activities, role play and, as in P6, lots of fun and games as well. It is through experiences such as these that the pupils increase their social skills, increase their confidence and learn to work cooperatively with each other over and above the acquisition of knowledge through the activities.
‘All The World's a Stage'
The opportunity to take part in performances from Primary 1 onwards is available to every child. Indeed at our annual Christmas concert every primary pupil takes part in normally unforgettable shows. While the younger children provide entertainment in the centerpiece Christmas performance the older children sing in year groups accompanying themselves as well. All classes put on two assemblies each year to their peers and this is seen as an important part of developing their confidence. All pupils take part in the annual Scottish Recitation and Singing competitions.
We also put on larger productions annually where the children can be involved in the challenge and excitement of the school show. Our most recent productions have been the Transitional pupils performance of ‘The Terrible Fate of Humpty Dumpty' a contemporary play tackling the issues that surround bullying and the highly entertaining musical review, ‘How To Eat Like A Child.' This involved almost fifty P5 - Transitional pupils in a funny and lively show where adults were shown how to think like children so we could gain a better understanding of how their minds work!