After the long weekend we will be making junk model castles.

Please bring in any junk you have at home ready to make castles on Monday 18th February.

Enjoy the long weekend! 🙂

**Star of the Week**

Our star of the week from last week was Lena! Lena has been working considerably hard on her writing, maths and reading and has shown big improvement since the start of the year.

Tylar was star of the week for this week for working really hard and getting all of her jobs finished.

Maths

This week we have all been learning about how to find the area of a shape. We know that area is measured in cm squared. We know that two shapes can be different but may still have the same area. We have been calculating area of given shapes as well as creating our own shapes of a certain area.  We have also had a little look at using half squares and counting 2 half squares to make a whole square.

Health – Internet Safety Day

On Tuesday it was Internet Safety Day. This worked well since we have Circle Time on a Tuesday. We spoke about what we use the internet for at home and spoke about websites, xbox live and other ways we use the internet. We watched some short videos of ‘Hector’s World’ which highlighted the importance of not sharing personal details with anyone online.  We also spoke about not using our proper name on online games and not chatting to strangers.

https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/5_7/hectorsworld/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3NU9PtreRY

We then used our knowledge of keeping safe online to create posters in small groups. Each group had a different focus for their poster and they will all get added together to make one big ‘Staying Safe on the Internet’ poster.

Topic

Since we were learning about parts of a castle last week, we have been applying that knowledge this week in order to design our own castles. We are going to work as a group and use junk to build our castle. As a class we decided on our success criteria and what we thought every castle needed to have. We will be using our plans to build our castles after the long weekend.

Play Zones

Miss Dow did a revamp of our play zones after we went home on Friday. The play zones now tie in with what we have been learning, for example, we have a castle to build, castle booking forms and tickets at the writing area and skeletons to build. We have been enjoying the new activities this week.

Curriculum for Excellence

We have also been learning this week about the 4 Capacities. Through all of our school experiences, we should be becoming 4 things:

Successful Learners

Confident Individuals

Responsible Citizens

Effective Contributors

We discussed what each of these mean and thought of some examples. We then had to fill in a table with some examples relevant and specific to us. This worksheet is in our learning journeys.

Learning Journeys

We have taken our learning journeys home this week. Please feel free to look at the new pieces of work and leave any positive feedback on our work. Add in any out of school achievements. Please sign the learning journey to show you have seen it and return it to school after the long weekend please 🙂

Gym

We have been focussing on badminton. We have been improving our serves, playing around the world and having rallies which have been lots of fun!

**Star of the Week**

Well done to Grace who wrote an excellent letter of complaint using strong language and thoughts and feelings towards the company.

Writing

This week we went back to basics and recapped capital letters and full stops. We know that we should be using a capital letter at the beginning of every new sentence and for any names of people or places. We know that full stops come at the end of a sentence. We discussed that a sentence is a group of words that makes sense together and doesn’t stop abruptly. We had to listen to some words and decide if it was a sentence or not. We then had to complete a worksheet filling in the missing capitals and full stops before doing a little bit of our own writing with the focus being on capitals and full stops. This is going to be our main focus in writing next week too.

Spelling

We had to copy out our words and try and get the spellings into our memories. We discussed each sound for this week and the definitions of any unknown words.

Maths

We have been continuing to learn about measurement with a focus on volume. We have been learning to read and use scales (such as measuring jugs) and we learned that even though containers may be different, they can still hold an equal volume of liquid. We experimented and had to think about how many of each small container we thought would fit into the litre container. We were surprised at how much water 1 litre was.

Topic – Castles

We were thinking about historical timelines this week. We know that timelines are always in chronological order. We spoke about the year 0 and the meanings of BC and AD. We then had to work as a team to place historical events in the correct order, imagining they were on a timeline. For homework we are going to be creating our own personal timeline choosing a few events from our lives.

We also learned about the different parts of a castle. We learned why castles had to have defense systems in place to protect themselves from enemies attacking them. We had to get into small groups to show how the draw bridge would work at a castle.

Science – Human Body

We have moved on from the bones this week and are starting to think about important organs. This week we were learning about the heart. We know that the heart is an organ and a muscle. We know that it has 4 chambers and it pumps blood to all parts of the body. We are trying to remember that veins take blood to the heart and arteries take blood away from the heart. We were able to decide activities that help to keep a heart healthy and activities that can be bad for the heart.

We spent a long time discussing how important the heart is and how it works. We watched the following video to reinforce this..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eVG45_iF9U

Health & Wellbeing

Circle Time

In Circle Time this week we were thinking about what we should do if we see something happen in the playground. We spoke about dos and don’ts and that it is our responsibility to report something if we observe something unacceptable happening. We also highlighted that we have control over ourselves – we shouldn’t be doing things just because someone has told us to. We will be continuing to think about these lessons in future Circle Time discussions.

Mrs Cox

This week with Mrs Cox we were developing our massage skills.

ICT

In ICT this week we had 3 Primary 7s come to help us and introduce us to Google Docs. We had to use our special Google login to log on and had to start practising using the dictionary feature and pictures feature of Google Docs. We found this quite tricky to use but we’re sure we will get used to it as we continue to use it and develop our skills in the future. Thank you to the Primary 7s for their help 🙂

Talks

Everyone gave fantastic talks this week and it was interesting to see such a wide variety of topics. It was obvious how much hard work and preparation had gone into the task. The most common next step for talks is to try and use more eye contact with the audience. Well done 3D! (apologies to anyone not included in the following photos – technology issues!!)

**Star of the Week**

Well done to James Benson  who was awarded star of the week for last week.  James received star of the week for always working hard and completing his tasks to a high standard. Well done, James! 🙂

French

We have been continuing to learn the months of the year in French this week. We have been using this song to help us learn them and we completed some tasks where we had to match the English to the French and also practise writing the French months.

Maths

We have been continuing to work on measure and have been learning about weight this week. The Pentagons have been converting between g and kg and cm and m and ordering big measurements.

The Triangles,  Semi-Circles and Squares have been understanding what a kilogram is. We passed around a kilogram weight and were all very surprised by how heavy it was! We then had to think of objects in the classroom that we thought would weigh around 1kg. We tested this out using the balancing scales.

We have  been estimating weights of objects and choosing the most appropriate answer. If possible, we then tested our estimations using the scales.

Science

We have started a mini science topic that we will be working on throughout most of this term. Our topic is the human body. We started this week by thinking about the skeleton. We discussed our prior knowledge to begin with. We then used the following website to learn about the position of the bones and to raise our awareness of their proper names.

http://www.abcya.com/skeletal_system.htm

We were all very excited and keen to learn about the skeleton and were very enthusiastic. We have a life-size skeleton in class at the moment which we decided to call Mr Bones (although we’re not sure if it’s a girl or boy!) Our task was to work as a group to try and label as many bones of the body as we could.

Our next task was to cut out a jumbled skeleton and join it back together again in the correct order using split pins. We then used our mini skeletons to work with a partner and test each other about some of the names of the bones and where we would find them on our skeletons.

Topic

We all had another piece of a puzzle and had to find our groups to find out what our new topic was going to be and our new topic is..

CASTLES!

Again, we discussed our prior knowledge and told Miss Dow any questions or things we would like to do in our new topic and she made a note of our suggestions. Our topic is going to focus on timelines, using evidence and castles in general before having a specific focus on local castles.

Writing

Miss Dow asked us to write a letter of complaint to Dominos. We had to imagine some issues that we could have with a delivery/pizza and use facts to describe this in our letter. We had to try and explain how we were feeling and use strong language to show how unhappy we were. We were all very keen to share our completed letters of complaint by reading them to the class.

Spelling

We were revising some of our previous sounds this week and working as an individual, pair or group to try and write down words that used a given sound. We used whiteboards to write down our answers.

** Star of the Week **

Well done to Conor for being awarded star of the week for excellent effort and improvement with his spelling. Keep up the fantastic work, Conor! 🙂

Topic – Scotland

Scots Language Descriptions

This week we have been learning lots of Scots words. We had to apply this learning to write a short description about an animal of our choice. We enjoyed trying to say the words, guess what they might mean and sharing our work with the class.

Body Parts in Scots

We also learned what all of our body parts are called in Scots. We had to draw a character or person and label the body parts using the correct vocabulary.

Scots Instructions

Miss Dow read out instructions in Scots and we had to follow the instructions. This worked well since we had just learned body parts.

Poetry and Stories

We have been practising reading and talking in Scots and comparing the language to how we normally talk. We read ‘The Gruffalo’ in Scots and a variety of poems from books that children brought in.

Maths – Measurement

In maths we have been working on measurement. We have had to ESTIMATE the length/width of an object and then measure it using a ruler or metre stick. We have also been comparing lengths and ordering objects by their measurements. We had to decide what was the best measurement to use. eg – smaller items would most likely be measured in mm and distances would be measured in miles or even km.

Circle Time

We had a very memorable Circle Time this week. Miss Dow chose a few of us to act as characters in a story and as she told the story, the actors had to improvise and act out what was being told in the story whilst the rest of the class listened and watched. The story was ‘The Girl Who Cried Wolf.’ We then spoke about the moral of the story and how it applies to us. We know that sometimes people don’t tell the truth to try and protect someone. We spoke about the importance of telling the truth and being honest.

Health & Wellbeing

We  became a masseur/masseuse this week! We spoke about mindfulness and the importance of taking a break and being mindful if we start to get stressed or angry. We spoke about how massage can be used to make us feel calm and relaxed. We enjoyed practising on each other!

French

We revised days of the week and colours. We were looking at the months of the years. We sang a song on Youtube and played a game. When Miss Dow said a month in French, we had to jump up if our birthday fell in that month. She made it easy to begin with by saying the months in French in the correct order but then it got a bit trickier as she said them in a random order!

Joined Handwriting

We had our first ever joined handwriting lesson. We know that our writing might become a bit messier before it becomes neater as we are learning a new skill that we have never done before. We were learning the ‘un’ and ‘um’ join. We self-assess our handwriting by drawing a little 🙂 next to our best, most successful attempt at a word and a 🙁 next to the ones that needed the most work.

Dancing

Since we have been learning about Scotland, Miss Dow taught us some of the steps of the Highland Fling. Grace was a big help too since she goes to Highland Dancing lessons. We were worked very hard and were very sweaty by the end of it! We then learned a new dance that Miss Dow calls ‘in, two, clap, clap, clap’ which was also lots of fun.

Library

Our library helpers were so fantastic this week! We had some technical difficulties with the scanner but managed in the end. Here we are being very independent…

Happy New Year to you all, I hope you had a lovely time.

We’ve been straight back to our normal routine this week and are ready for an exciting term.

Topic

We had a puzzle to solve on Monday morning to find out what our new topic was going to be.. we each had a piece of a puzzle and without talking we had to find our group and make up our puzzle. Each puzzle created a picture of a clue to what our topic was going to be..

the answer was… Scotland!

Lots of us have been bringing in Scottish books and objects to share with the class.

We started off our topic by thinking about all of the Scottish cities that we know. (Hopefully we all now realise that Union Square is not a city.. :/ ) We discussed the position of these cities on a map and spoke about cities that are up/down from Aberdeen and the time it takes us to get there. We were able to use this knowledge to help us plot the cities on a map.  We could use atlases to help us too. Throughout the rest of the week Miss Dow has been testing us and asking us to mark the different cities on the Interactive Whiteboard from memory.

We have also been learning about some Scottish myths and legends such as the Loch Ness Monster and Kelpies. In small groups, we had to use an information sheet to create a poster to teach other people about the myth we had been given. We had to include facts and pictures and make sure our poster was bright and eye-catching.

2019 Wishes

We had to think about our school resolutions/targets. We spoke about areas of maths and literacy that we wish to improve and work on this year/term. Some of us also had time to think about some wishes for at home – lots of children are wishing to be more helpful at home with cooking and cleaning their bedrooms! We wrote our wishes on a coin so that we could drop them into our wishing well on our wall display in the classroom.

Maths

We started by revising o’clock, half past, quarter to and quarter past times.

We have been continuing with ‘time’ in maths this week. Some of us have been using a rhyme and our knuckles to work out how many days are in each month of the year.

We have been playing matching games to help us. We have also been thinking about the order of the months and what months happen in each season.

On Thursday we were thinking about measurements of time – hours, days, seconds etc. When Miss Dow said ‘start!’ we had to count up to 60 seconds and stand up when we thought a minute was up. Some of us stood up as early as 40 seconds and some of us were standing up as late as 2 minutes! We learned some words we can use to help us count in seconds (elephant, mississippi etc) and then we were set a 1 minute challenge.

We had to work with a partner and use a 1 minute egg timer to see how many repetitions of an action we could do in a minute! We had to record our predictions before we could test if we were correct or not. Our predictions improved as we progressed through the sheet. The actions included things like burpees, writing our name, star jumps and even saying supercalifragilisticexpialidocious as many times as we could!! As you can see from the photos, we had lots of fun but were very tired by the end of it…

Art

This week we have been creating our own art in the style of a famous artist and designer, using his work as our inspiration. Since our topic is Scotland we focussed on a scottish artist – Charles Rennie Mackintosh. We learned a bit about his life and the fact he was an architect living in Glasgow. We know that some tea rooms he designed are now in the V&A Museum in Dundee. We noticed that his work is quite simple and uses a lot of basic shapes and a lot of lines. We realised that he uses a little bit of colour and that he is famous for his Celtic-looking roses. Our art work we produced was incredible – we definitely have some budding artists in our midst.

Circle Time

In Circle Time this week we were talking about when little things happen outside in the playground and in the class. We spoke about being able to ignore some small things if they are not very serious. We had to think about things that you would need to tell Miss Dow and things that you do not need to tell Miss Dow. We were given an example and had to use our hands to make a T if the example was a ‘tale’ and an S if the example was ‘serious’ and necessary to tell Miss Dow. This will be something we have to think about when something happens within our friendship groups in the future.

Today Holly and Jolly left us a secret note asking us to create our very own elf names!

A lot of children were asking for the website url so they could continue this at home…

https://www.namegeneratorfun.com/christmas-elf-name-generator

I just wanted to say thank you to all of the girls and boys in 3D for their hard work this term. We have learned a lot, progressed significantly and have been very creative! I’m very proud of you all.

Parents – Thank you for all of your support this term and all of the very generous Christmas cards and gifts I have received. It is very much appreciated.

I hope you all have a lovely, relaxing, festive Christmas with family and friends and I wish you a very happy New Year.

See you all in 2019 for another busy and exciting term….!

Miss Dow 🙂

Christmas Cards

We created our own Christmas cards with a mountain scene. We could choose whether we wanted to have snowmen, penguins, reindeer or anything else on our mountain design.

Christmas Elves

We have been using paper plates to create our own Santa’s elves! We started by painting the plates with a skin colour and attaching ears (they looked like pigs to begin with!!) and then we gave them a top and hat before finishing off with cotton wool.

Wrapping Paper

We had to use repeating patterns to create our own wrapping paper design. We could even do this at home to wrap up our families presents. We had to think of a pattern that would work for winter/Christmas wrapping paper.

Design Booklets

We have been reflecting on our topic this term and everything we have been making. These booklets were shared with parents on Thursday afternoon and we hope you liked them. They include a reflection page where we have had to think about our favourite decoration to make.

Christmas Party

We all had so much fun at the Christmas party on Monday. We were dancing, playing pass the parcel, corners, musical statues and enjoyed lots of lovely party food. Miss Dow tried to capture some of our best dance moves and party clothes…

Scavenger Hunt

Since all of the P4s and 5s were at their Christmas party on Wednesday afternoon we got to take part in a very special activity since we had the entire Blue Unit to ourselves! We worked in teams of 2 to complete a Christmas themed scavenger hunt. We used clipboards and had a sheet with 12 Christmas pictures that Miss Dow had hidden around the unit. We had to work together to find all of the pictures and tick them off of our list. We all loved this activity and had lots of fun working together and listening to Christmas music since we had the unit all to ourselves!

Cheeky Elves

Holly and Jolly have been very mischievous again this week! Santa has even been in our classroom on Sunday night as he left a magical, glittery footprint on the floor next to the elves’ door which we found on Monday morning. They even took an Elfie-Selfie and stuck them up all over our classroom on Friday!

Cinderella Panto!

We all thoroughly enjoyed the M+M Panto on Wednesday morning. We were very lucky that we got to sit at the very front! Since we were early to go through, we were allowed to get our photo taken in front of the backdrop… They even had some of the teachers and PSAs up dancing with them! (Miss Dow was glad it wasn’t her that was chosen!!)

‘Let’s Create’ Parents Visit

Thank you very much to all who came to our topic afternoon on Thursday this week. The children all seemed to enjoy showing you their work and sharing their learning experiences with you. We hope you enjoyed our song and thank you very much for all of your kind donations. These will be collated and as a whole, go towards a trip/event before the end of P3.

We are very excited to have you all in to see us tomorrow from 2.45pm.

We have officially finished creating our lovely decorations and we are very pleased with how they are looking after all of our hard work over the last few weeks!

We have also been working on our ‘design booklets’ which we will be sharing with you tomorrow too.

See you tomorrow…