Raasay Primary School

‘The three pupils in the primary school attend Weaving Club every Wednesday afternoon at the end of the school day.  Working with them has been a joy – they are enthusiastic, dedicated and hard-working.  They started, a while back, on simple frame looms, learning the basics, then progressed to Micki Looms which allows them to work through slightly more advanced concepts.  

Each project we do introduces them to a new aspect of weaving. This most recent project was to weave a scarf using what’s know as the “Log Cabin” pattern.  It is quite a complex process and there are many things for them to think about : manipulating 2 colours with 2 shuttles, maintaining the “beat”, and keeping neat edges (the Holy Grail of all weavers!).  The boys have all done very well producing lovely scarves as you can see.  Next term we move on to “Clasped Weft” work – another step up in complexity – and I hope we will have more photos to show you when that project is finished.’ Lillian MacLeod, The Raasay Weaver

We were delighted that Catherine Travis Timms offered a ceramic flower making workshop for the pupils to make gifts for Mothers’ Day. Catherine detailed that ‘the roses were made from an air dry clay – cold porcelain  – which is ideal for modelling delicate flowers. Initial, base colouring , was incorporated into the creating of each individual flower.The boys were instructed in the technique of deep colouring and shading in order to bring the roses 🌹 to life.This involved use of fine motor skills, especially when dusting the centres of each flower. Listening was important,  as the instructions could be tricky.As the boys worked, their concentration deepened, as did their appreciation of the process . Their patience and methodical application to the process was exceptional. It goes without saying that the boys wee an absolute delight to teach!’

Thank you to Catherine for such an engaging and interesting workshop which the boys thoroughly enjoyed. The feedback from Mums was that they really appreciated their unusual and beautiful gift.

On Wednesday 18th March 2026, Raasay Primary School and Nursery pupils and staff along with parents and the community were joined by MOWI to clean our adopted beach below the playpark. We are cleaning the beach as part of Eco Schools and Rights Respecting Schools work that we are doing. This forms part of a wider, island focus on cleaning the Raasay Beaches and removing rubbish, plastics, rope etc. so that our beaches are clean and beautiful.

MOWI provided us with litter pickers, gloves and bags and we started cleaning from one end of the beach to the other. We filled a lot of bags and we found lots of interesting things: rubber duck (probably from one of our school duck races!), food can with Chinese writing, lots of rope, plastic lids, tyres, polystyrene, oil canisters and other small items. Probably our most intriguing find was a ‘message in a bottle’! We all gathered round to see what the message said as one of the MOWI team cut open the bottle. There was a piece of a lego magazine, a head lice leaflet and a handwritten note. On closer inspection we noticed the date on the leaflet was 2001 – 25 years ago! We were very surprised when our School Clerical recognised the telephone number on the handwritten note and realised that the bottle had been sent out to sea back in 2001 by her son. We learnt from finding this bottle that it can take hundreds or even thousands of years for plastic to decompose. The bottle we found was still in perfect condition and dry inside. We also learnt that we have a responsibility to keep our beaches litter free and clean and that we all have a right to play on a clean beach. Every term we will be checking ‘our’ beach to make sure that we are doing our bit in keeping it clean.

This is what we think after our beach clean:

“I think the beach clean was a huge success because we got six or seven bags of rubbish. Having MOWI helped a lot because they brought a boat and took the rubbish away. There were five of them in their team who volunteered their time”

“We wrote to MOWI and received a letter back saying they would help us in the beach clean. I feel happy because the letter we wrote made a difference”

“I would like to thank MOWI for helping us with cleaning the beach and giving up their time. I would also like to thank the community and parents for helping. I hope it is the start of many more beach cleans with MOWI”

Pupils are currently studying Renewable Energy and, as part of this, they were looking at generating electricity from moving water – Hydro Electricity. They were challenged to create electricity using the moving water and to record the electricity produced. They then had to make their scheme better and improve the output.

Part of the challenge was to work as a team – with this particular activity, it would only work if pupils worked together co-operatively and not as individuals – this they achieved very well and produced a successful outcome.

Pupils in P4-6 attended the annual Skye Schools’ Basketball Festival in Portree on Tuesday 10th March. This is a chance to experience competitive team sports with pupils from across the ASG and also an opportunity to develop friendships within their age group.

Pupils very much enjoyed the challenge and worked together in teams with pupils from different schools.

We celebrated World Book Day on Thursday 5th March. We all enjoyed coming to school dressed as our favourite characters or themes from a book. We were joined on the day by our Pets as Therapy dog, Freya and her owner Catherine. We particularly enjoyed reading the book they brought in – all about Bernese Mountain Dogs. We enjoyed sharing our books and stories between the Nursery and Primary School. The theme of World Book Day was ‘Go all in!’ so we explored our hobbies and interests and passions as part of this by creating an infographics poster. It turns out in Raasay Primary School that we are into our football, biking, engineering and cooking! We also explored how our interests can be developed through reading more about our hobbies and we are looking into buying books and stories relating to them. Our P6 pupil even suggested that we could create our own imaginative stories based on our interests and hobbies.

This term we have been really enjoying Murdo visiting for YMI. We have been progressing really well with learning lots of tunes an each week Murdo has been giving us a new tune to learn as he says we are picking up the tunes so fast that by the end of the block we should be able to have a set of Gaelic tunes that we can continue to practise. We have enjoyed creating a wee group and that our talents are recognised in different areas. One of our pupils has been really keen to continue developing his skills on piano so we asked Murdo about this and he supported in providing that opportunity. We are looking forward to thinking of a name that we can call our Group and we are also looking forward to sharing our learning through various performance opportunities. Watch this space!

As part of ‘Seachdainn na Gaidhlig’ (World Gaelic Week)  we (P4-6) took part in a collaborative ‘Day of Culture’ with Staffin and Kilmuir Primary Schools on Thursday 26^th February. The theme this year is ‘Use it or lose it’ (Cleachd i no caill i). Seachdainn na Gaidhlig was established in 2022 by the Scottish Culture and Music Organisation ‘HANDS UP for TRAD’ and it draws inspiration from other minority language movements in Ireland and in Nova Scotia. It advocates to honour and promote the language locally and globally fostering greater national awareness and recognition. The initiative offers opportunities for Gaelic speakers and those without the language to get involved in ways that suits them. This links with Article 30 of the UNCRC Rights Respecting Schools (minority languages).

We really enjoyed meeting with the other pupils and sharing our experiences of Gaelic. Before leaving for home we sung ‘Tobhta Fearna’ – our Gaelic song composed and written using words inspired by our Fearns topic a few years ago.

We were delighted to have recently been successful in our application for our fifth Eco-Schools Scotland Green Flag Award! The feedback below shows how much the hard work and efforts of the pupils were appreciated and we thank the community for supporting us on Eco journey.

‘Congratulations to everyone at Raasay Primary School for gaining your 5th Eco-Schools Scotland Green Flag Award! This is a great achievement and I have very much enjoyed reading through your journey. It is obvious that you have all worked really hard on your actions to make your school and your community a more environmentally friendly place to be. Well done!

Your Action Plan was well thought out and contained lots of interesting actions. I loved hearing about your composting scheme and involving the nursery in this will definitely help to establish long term habits.  I also really liked your helping hands chart for your light monitor duties and congratulations on your award for the Sustrans Big Walk and Wheel – achieving 100% for all journeys is an incredible result

It was great that you identified a need in the community for more health and wellbeing events and that you then came up with lots of different ideas for all sorts of ways to include every member of the community.  They also sound like a lot of fun! Your CPR training, kayaking and visits by Freya are a really good way to learn new skills but also to help improve your own mental health and more congratulations for gaining a Sport Scotland Gold Award – well done again!

Your Heritage topic actions were also very interesting.  Your Gaelic language must be very good to win gold and silver medals and the Oban Rose Bowl and again you have used your own learning and taken it out to family, friends and neighbours.  Having recently been to your island and cycled along Callum’s Road, I was very interested to read about your Christmas Show – what a great idea and again, a celebratory community event which brought people together and explored your common heritage.

For a tiny school you really do seem to have had a huge impact on your wider community and you should all be very proud that you have achieved so much and you have truly shown that even small schools can make a big difference.’

As part of their STEM topic ‘Designing a School of the Future’ pupils were tasked with finding out which sources of renewable energy would generate the most electricity. They had to experiment using solar panels and wind turbines (using a hairdryer as the wind source!). The object of the lesson was also to work together showing collaboration, communication and co-operation.