T4 Newsletter

Thank you to all of our special visitors who attended our community café The children worked hard to prepare for the café- baking, finishing artwork and learning all about Scotland. They felt proud and excited to share their learning with you all, making it a very special afternoon for them. Thank You!

Despite the snow we all enjoyed dressing up as our favourite characters to celebrate world book day. We had two prize winning costumes- Pinocchio (Kaylib) and  Captain Underpants (Indi)- well done!

During the day we read stories in the book corner, completed a book review about our favourite stories, looked at our homework tasks and watched traditional children’s stories on the smart board. It was a great opportunity for the children to enhance their love for reading stories!!

As part of our Scotland topic we have  looked at different Scottish castles and the features of a castle. We listened to a powerpoint about the different parts of a castle and used the information to create labelled diagrams. Then we drew our own castles and labelled its parts. We watched a video with lots of pictures of castles as inspiration for our own castles.

We used all of our new knowledge, plans and junk to create our own castles in a team.  We worked together to build a base, think about the parts of a castle, use the correct terms and most importantly work the sellotape! We then gave each other feedback on what was good about the castles so far and how they could be made better. After a run around and thinking time at snack we came back and improved our castles. Time for the lift test- had we done enough sticking to allow our castles to be lifted from the table? If not we improved this. After lunch we discussed colours and design and got painting. Finally they were finished and we took some photographs using the IPAD.

It was a very busy day filled with lots of learning opportunities! The task allowed for creativity, challenge, enjoyment and most importantly a time for them to put their knowledge and skills together. It led to lots of discussions, cutting, reflecting, sticking, problem solving and team working-  very important skills for learning! The children will be displaying their hard work at the community café on Thursday.

P1M and P1C joined together with Miss Roberts for another outdoor learning session. They made counting sticks, explored patterns, weaving and using natural materials. The children enjoyed wrapping up in waterproofs and wellies to embrace the experience despite the cold rainy day!

Miss Roberts has been very busy creating wonderful learning experiences for the children following on from their night sky  science lesson. They have constructed their own split pin astronauts, created rockets in different ways and completed a cut and stick rocket task. Before each task the children watched a video story about spacemen and what space is like. They discussed clothing, planets with a focus on the moon.

This term we have been very lucky to work with Ms Roberts for Science every Tuesday afternoon.  We explored Electricity, looking for hazards, toys , liquids and today we were learning about the night sky. At the beginning of the lesson we listened to night time music and pretended to stargaze. We then discussed everything we can see in the sky at night. We used all of our knowledge of the night sky to create a labelled night sky picture. We had to cut and stick the words to match the pictures. We could use one of Ms Roberts special gold pens to colour the pictures and write our names on the back. Some people even copied the title of the task carefully onto their card all by themselves. We are going to use all of our science work to create a Science working window in our class to show all our new learning and skills.

你好 nĭ hăo !

( Hello, mandarin Chinese)

After a lovely long weekend we were very busy learning about Chinese New Year. We watched videos of the street parades and a dragon dance, we read  a power point with lots of information about Chinese New Year traditions, listened to traditional Chinese music and we read a story called the Dragon Dance. We had to remember 4 main facts.

1.   What is the capital of China?
2.   What food is eaten with nearly every meal?
3.   How long do celebrations normally last?
4.  This is this year of the ? I was born in the year of the ?

We showed our learning in many different ways over the next two days.

Task 1- We used our cutting and colouring skills to create a dragon mask. We used bright bold colours and had to cut around the mask really carefully! This was tricky as the dragon had lots of spikes.

Task 2- We completed a worksheet to answer question number 4.  This is the year of the dog therefore we had to fill in the missing word and draw a picture of a dog. We then used a calendar to find out what year we were born in. Most of us were the year of the dragon and some the year of the snake. Miss Munro was born in the year of the Monkey which we found very amusing! We had to draw a picture of our animal.

Task 3- We threaded string to create a traditional red money envelope. It was a bit like sewing but without a needle. It was tricky to aim the string through the holes in the card. When we were finished we decorated them with a Chinese zodiac symbol. Some people remembered all 4 facts and received a chocolate coin for their money wallets.

Task 4- We copied Chinese characters to write our names in mandarin. We wrote our names in English along the top and copied the Chinese character underneath carefully with a pencil. We then copied over with a pen. The Chinese characters looked very different to our alphabet.

On Friday afternoon we joined Primary 1C to taste some Chinese foods. We all tried some thick Udon noodles with soy sauce, some egg fried rice and prawn crackers. The prawn crackers were the most popular food and the noodles the least.

The Primary 4s and 5s were invited to watch a dragon dance in the hall and were very kind to film the dance. We then watched the dance on the smartboard and discussed the costumes. Some people found it loud and scary!  However most of us loved the bright colours of the dragon and  enjoyed when it was naughty and threw the lettuce over the boys and girls.

This term we are learning all about Scotland for our topic. We have set up a Tourist Information Centre in our class.  It is filled with leaflets, tickets, posters, postcards, timetables and lots of things to write with.  We can choose to be a tourist looking for information, a tourist guide who shows people the different places to visit or a Tourist Information Assistant who provides information. We have enjoyed exploring the different writing materials, types of information and using our imagination. We used our new knowledge of postcards to write our own postcards about places to visit in Aberdeen. We then sent a real postcard to Inverness with lots of questions about Inverness and we are now waiting for a reply. How Exciting!

Our Information was provided by Aberdeen Tourist Information Centre. Check out their website  or pop in for a visit next time you are in town. https://www.visitscotland.com/info/services/aberdeen-icentre-p332241

We worked hard to learn The Prince of Orange dance with P1C during our PE lessons in January. We enjoyed performing our dance in front of the whole school at the ceilidh. We found making an archway very tricky!