Raasay Primary School

Raasay Primary School has signed up for the Daily Mile initiative which is a fully inclusive physical activity whereby pupils walk, run or wheel for fifteen minutes on a minimum of three days a week. The activity has been shown to improve physical and mental health and is fully inclusive as each child goes at their own pace.

The boys have measured out the route within the playground and how many laps of the playground it takes to run a mile. They did some mathematical calculations and worked out that it is nine times round the playground. The boys are logging their runs and their times so that they can challenge themselves to improve their time each week. They are keen to build on their fitness ahead of the annual Inter Schools Cross Country in May.

Pupils in Raasay Primary School (Pupil Council) decided they would like to participate and support Comic Relief 2026 as part of their ongoing charity work. They decided that raise money by coming to school in their pyjamas and ‘doing something funny for money’. The older boys gave a short presentation to the Nursery about Comic Relief and what the money is used for. They also did some fun colouring activities involving designing their own Red Nose and had a ‘Red Nose’ and spoon race to finish off!

An amazing total of £81 was raised on the day and has been paid in to Comic Relief. Thank you to all who contributed. From our research £50 can supply 200 books to a school in Uganda which makes us very happy because as this links with our Reading Schools focus and our Rights Respecting Schools journey.

On Thursday 19th March, pupils undertook a workshop with Mexican artist, Daniel Godinez Nivon hosted by Atlas Arts.

Daniel is a visual artist whose work explores the ties between dreaming, community, and the natural world, asking what our dreams tell us about our relationship to the land, environment and the future. With a longstanding interest in the dreams of humans and other animals, indigenous dreaming practices and community-driven work across the world (especially in Oaxaca, Mexico), he is interested in remembering and reconnecting with dreams as a way of carrying important knowledge forward.

Making work with film, sound, drawing, and installation, he explores the stories passed through dreams, and the possibility of dreaming collectively. Together they will be discussing things like the dreams of birds and other animals, connections with Highland traditions, and eala-bhì’s (St John’s Wort) association with protection, dreaming, and visions.

The boys spent time in discussion before spending time outside in the environment before creating artwork inspired by their thoughts and ideas.

Katharine Macfarlane, Producer Atlas Arts reported: ‘We were both so impressed with the warm welcome at Raasay Primary and the pupils were engaged, enthusiastic and inquisitive – it made for a really fun and interesting session. Daniel (the artist) said that he left the afternoon feeling inspired and uplifted and enjoyed the discussions with the pupils immensely.’

‘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!