It’s the end of term at last and P2/3F have just finished our last busy week at St Clement’s.

This week we had a Showcase Assembly on Thursday when all the classes took a turn at going on stage and showing some of the things we learned recently.  We took some of the snakes we made as part of our maths learning.  They measured 1 metre long and we worked in groups to design patterns and colour them in.  Here are some of our snakes.   

 

We also made posters to show what half a metre looked like.  On our posters we had a see-saw that measured half a metre long.  At one end we drew something heavy and at the other end something light.  This would make the see-saw tilt, with the heavier object at the bottom, and the lighter object at the top.  Some of us drew a hippopotamus and a chicken, others drew elephants and teddies.

Next we used rulers to measure in centimetres and draw pictures of the 3 bears

and then we measured how tall Baby Bear was in this picture..

Not only did we do all this, but we then used metre sticks to measure how tall our learning partner was, and find out the length of our classroom, doors, and windows.  Finally, we used trundle wheels to find out the size of the Dining Hall!  It was great fun.

Following on from our Springtime assembly last week, we were surprised to learn that Spring is the time when people from China celebrate their New Year.  As well as learning about Chinese dragons, we  learned how to count up to ten in Chinese!  We read a story about Danny the Dragon and wrote our own stories about a dragon.  While we did this we listened to the song about Puff the Magic Dragon, which helped us with even more ideas for our stories.  Here’s Puff!

On Friday we had our lent fundraising in the hall when we had a Dancethon using a Wii.  There were lots of super dancers and Abbie won a prize for her dancing!

We had our last book sale of the term and most of us managed to choose some interesting books to read over the holidays…..(if we have spare time, because we’ll be very busy learning our times tables every day….well, maybe..)

Anyway, it’s time for P2/3F to have a well-earned holiday.  We hope everyone has a nice 2 week break.  See you all soon!

Well our class Assembly is now over.  We all had a great time rehearsing for it, and on Friday it was super to finally be on the stage in front of the school, our parents and carers for the final performance.  Everyone in the class had an important part to play whether it was reading, acting or singing.

Springtime and Easter was our theme, and we started off by sharing a few of our favourite things about this time of year.  Here we are on stage.

 

Some of us brought in fluffy animal toys to add to our springtime theme.  Charleigh’s toy lit up!!  Morgan’s piglet was almost as big as her!  Others dressed up in something bright and yellow…. isn’t Cameron’s outfit cool?

 

Some of the girls wore Easter bonnets.

 Here are some of the boys just before we started our performance…oh and Shauna, who is playing peek-a-boo behind her pink plaster!

 

 

We used puppets as part of our assembly.  Here are our puppets.

We sang the Spring Chicken Song and were very pleased that everyone in the hall joined in.  We sang our Spring Chicken song again when everyone was leaving the hall to go back to their classes, and they were all singing and dancing as they went out.  It was lovely.

We also sang a song about what happens when you plant a seed.  Logan planted a seed in a pot, then Keighan,  Marc and Kai pretended to water it while Brandon came on with the ‘sun’.  It was amazing because at the end of our song Ciaran touched the pot (with a magic wand) and a flower suddenly appeared!  The magic is a secret only P2/3F know about……

We finished off our assembly with a song about the true meaning of Easter because it’s not just about chickens and chocolate.  Our Assembly message was that when we roll our eggs it should remind us of the time when the stone was rolled away from Jesus’ tomb. 

Afterwards we went back to our classroom and Charleigh gave everyone a sticker for performing well.

  

Oops…where did Marc go??

Next week is our last week of this term.  We’ll be tidying up and taking some of our artwork home……remember to bring a carrier bag!

There were several red noses in P2/3F today.  We all had fun either wearing red noses or dressing up in something red just for today.  We started off our day with a Red Nose wordsearch and colouring in some Red Nose shape pictures.  Here we are busy at work!

 

Well it looks like Ciaran has solved the wordsearch!

 

Brandon and Cameron are still working it out!

 

Abbie and Alex are sharing some ideas…

 

Kai, Keighan and Taylor are almost done… 

Brandon and Cameron watch as red noses come to the rescue..

 

Kai and Alex put their red noses on too!

Then we learned how to do Red Nose chimney sums!  At first, we thought this looked really difficult but then we discovered how easy it is adding tens and units.  Here are some of examples of our red nose activities!

    

 

We also had a Chick Hunt today as part of our Lent fundraising.  We paid 50p and then had to look for ‘chickens’ around the school.  If we found any we won a chocolate egg. 

Later we went to our 10p book sale in the hall and bought books we thought looked interesting.  Here are some we bought.

We’ve been doing a lot of reading this week so that we can improve our reading skills.   We’ve also started to write a story about going on a camping adventure, which we’ll finish off next week.

Last week we read the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, and this week we heard the story of Jim and the Beanstalk!  It turns out that Jim’s dad was Jack!  We liked the pictures in the story, especially when the giant bought a ginger wig to cover his bald head!  

 

At the beginning of the week we watched BBC clips on our whiteboard about the terrible earthquake in Japan and it made us sad to see how the people who live there have been affected.  We found where Japan was on our globe and talked about how lucky we are compared to these people who live so far away from us.

 

On Thursday we read the story of Saint Patrick because it was his feast day on the 17th of March, and we also learned that it is the feast of Saint Joseph on Saturday.

It was Parents Nights on Monday and Tuesday when we had the chance for our parents and carers to visit the school and see the work we have been doing this term.   Our parents were pleased because we’ve all been working really hard.

At ICT we designed and printed invitations for our Assembly next Friday 25th.  It was fun because we had to choose different clip art to put on our invitations.  Our theme is Spring and Eastertime so there were lots of spring chickens on our invitations!!

 

We are looking forward to next Friday when we will lead the assembly.  Can’t wait!!

This week P2/3F have been busy getting ready for Easter.  Wednesday was the start of Lent and we learned that Jesus fasted for 40 days in the desert.  We thought Jesus must have been very strong to give up eating for such a long time so we wondered what things we could do extra-special during this time.  We decided we could give up eating things like sweets and crisps, or we could do extra things like helping Mum and Dad around the house….even tidy our rooms without being asked!! 

Here are some Easter pictures we coloured in.

 

 

 

On Pancake Tuesday we talked about pancakes then we had some to eat with drinks of blackcurrant juice!  For P.E. we had fun when we pretended that beanbags were ‘pancakes’ and bats were ‘pans’ so we had our own Pancake Races in the gym!

We read the story of Jack and the Beanstalk this week.  Our teacher mixed up pictures of the story and we had to put them in the correct order.  The pictures only went up to the part where Jack stole the hen and we had to finish off the story.  Here are some of our story endings.

  

We also read 2 other super stories this week: Aliens love smelly jelly and The Guard Dog.  We really liked the first book because the words rhymed and the pictures were funny!  The second book was quite sad but it had a happy ending….and a very cute little dog.

 

On Friday morning it was very nice to come into the classroom to find a present with a little note on our teacher’s desk from the cleaning lady.  She said that our classroom was always very tidy and it was a pleasure to clean the classroom for such tidy children!  Thank you very much from all P2/3F.

Also on Friday our school had a Fairtrade Coffee Morning to raise funds for charity.    

 

   Here are some pictures of this.

 

     Wow!  A chocolate fountain!

Oh, surely no one in P2/3F had something from the chocolate fountain…..oh, well it did look yummy!

  

We also had another fund-raising event on Friday afternoon when Primary 7 and Primary 1 painted our faces.  Here are some pink-faced rabbits!

 

  

Who’s this scary monster!!

Oh no, more zombies!!

  

Oh no, it’s that first zombie again!! He looks so scary…..

Oh good, here are some beautiful princesses, butterflies and bunny rabbits.

 

Oh and who is this lucky person with one of the winning raffle tickets?  Guess who’s won an Easter Egg, Marc?  It was on the teacher’s desk on Friday….I hope there’s some left for Monday.

This week P2/3F had a very interesting workshop about Fairtrade.  We learned about how chocolate is made from cocoa beans, which is grown in poorer countries in the world.  We were surprised to see what the plant looks like before it is made into chocolate.  Here is a picture of one of the plants and the Fairtrade logo, which we can see on different products for sale in our shops!

 

We learned that cocoa beans are grown by farmers in hot countries.  The beans are picked then sent to factories to be made into chocolate.  The chocolate is sent to different parts of the world to be sold in shops.  The governments and shop owners earn lots of money from selling us chocolate, but we were sad to learn that the farmers, who grow the cocoa plants in the poor countries earned the least!  Fairtrade is about trying to make it fairer for the people who grow food for us.  

Click on The Story of Chocolate  to see what we learned.

Some of us thought that the best part of the workshop was when we got to sample some of the chocolate….Mmmmmmm!! 

On Tuesday we talked about the Moon as part of our Space topic.  We watched clips from the BBC website about the first landing on the Moon back in the 1960s.  It looked very scary as the rocket was just about to land because it looked as if it was about to crash!  Fortunately, the rocket landed safely and we learned that the first man who walked on the Moon was an American called Neil Armstrong.  We thought it was funny to see him and the other astronaut Buzz Aldrin walk on the surface of the Moon.  It looked like they were bouncing on a trampoline!  There is lots of information about travelling into space on the BBC website.

This week we also learned more about the life of another saint – Saint Francis.  We watched a short dvd about him and learned that he lived about 900 years ago in Assisi, which is in Italy.  We checked on our globe where Italy is…..it’s a long way from Dundee!  Francis came from a rich family but gave up his wealth to become poor and help other people.  We think he must have been very brave to do this.

 

Next week we are going to learn about Pancake Tuesday, Lent and Ash Wednesday.

We have been active in the gym hall this week playing games.  We had fun ‘tidying the garden’ and playing team games with balls and beanbags.  For drama this week,  we acted out the story of the Boy who cried Wolf, and learned about following stage directions.  We also practised some more of what we are planning for our assembly at the end of this month…. it should be fun!

We did some baking this week with Mrs Thomson….but somehow most of the goodies were munched before we went home!  On Friday we helped Miss Lawrence to set up a Special Table in the Dinner Hall. 

Here we are having our lunch at our Special Table. 

  

This week was Catholic Education week in school.   Pope Benedict XVI wants us to become saints for the 21st century so we watched a programme about a very famous saint called Saint Bernadette who lived over 100 years ago in France.  We learned that she was just a poor young girl but Our Lady appeared to her at Lourdes and miracles began to happen.  Today hundreds of people still visit there hoping they can be helped too.  Next week we will be learning about Saint Francis of Assisi.

Following on from the visit from Brother Douglas, we also looked at the way people live in a poor village in Bangladesh called Gankul.  We learned how they plant rice in paddy fields.  It is really muddy because of the monsoon – that’s the name for the heavy rain they get in that part of the world.  The children wear no shoes and their feet are covered in mud.  It made us sad to see how poor they are compared to us.  The women work hard collecting tea leaves and carry very heavy loads on their heads.  We now have a very large globe in our class and we can see the different countries where these people live!  

This week a lot of us earned our certificates for good behaviour in class.   Here are some of our reward charts.  We can earn a juggling ball each day if we stay on GREEN!  We need 10 to earn a certificate.

In literacy we have been learning about the past tense of verbs.  We played a game on the whiteboard called Blast the Rocket, where we had to match the present tense word with the past tense of verbs.  It was fun!  Then we completed a worksheet to check our learning.  Here is some of our work.

 

 

We also read a traditional story about Little Red Riding Hood.  Then we had to write the story ourselves just up to the part when Little Red Riding Hood discovered that it was a wolf in the bed not her grandmother!!  We read another version of the story but this time, it was Little Red Riding Hood who was naughty, and the wolf was the good person in the story…..very confusing!!  Then we had to finish our own stories off but think up a different ending.  We were very busy doing this activity… and this led on to a Maths activity, where we had to count the goodies in Little Red Riding Hood’s basket.  Here is some of our work.

 

 

Later we had to solve a problem about the Red Hood!  We received this letter from Red Riding Hood –

We discussed it at circle time and wondered how we could advise Red Riding Hood to deal with this problem.  She couldn’t hurt her Grandma’s feelings…and her mum couldn’t afford to buy something else!  We decided that we could perhaps advise her to change the hood a little to make it look more ‘cool’.  To sort out the teasing, we thought she should either just laugh it off, or ignore it.  She could also tell her teacher who might be able to help.  We wrote our ideas in a letter.

We made a start on learning some songs for our assembly, which is at the end of March.  We think it will be fun.

 Oh, and before we forget, our teacher told us she has a new addition to her family.  Here’s a picture of Rusty the puppy!  Isn’t he cute?

 

This was a short week for us after having Monday off! Nevertheless we managed to get through quite a lot of learning.  On Tuesday we started our new reading books.  One group read about a Crocodile Bird, another group about a Computer paintbrush and another group about Mr Marvel and a cake! 

 

We’ve also spent some time reading the books we have on our Space topic in the classroom.  Here are some of them on display.

 

For Maths we learned about fractions and had fun colouring in different parts of shapes to represent fractions.  Next week we are going to learn more about subtraction and multiplication tables.  So another busy week ahead!

On Thursday we talked about what we would do for our Assembly on 25th March and started to learn some songs.  Lots of time to prepare but we’ve made a start!  More to follow about this…

On Friday we had a visit from Brother Douglas from St Paul’s, who told us about a small village in India called Manganumuthu,  where the people are being helped by the Manganumuthu Project.  Some of the older children from St Paul’s School have visited there and helped with this project.  It was very interesting and sad to hear of how poor these people are.  We are going to learn more about life in India next week when we do some research in the ICT room.  Here is a map of India.  The village Brother Douglas spoke about is so small it is not marked on the map, but he told us it was near the bottom of India and the climate was very hot.  There is no grass and the houses are very poorly built.

 

On Friday afternoon we rounded off our week with the Space Buddies dvd, which was great for letting us see some of the things we are learning about in our space topic, such as travelling in space,  gravity, rockets and the other planets.

Thanks to all the bloggers who have left comments on our blog.  Hope you are having as much fun blogging as we are!

As promised earlier, P2/3F are now pleased to announce that our robots have been built and are on display in our classroom.  This helped us when we were writing stories about Robbie the Robot.  We talked about robots and what they looked like as well as what they could do.  Then we described our own robot and what special things it could do.  Some of us decided that our robots could fly, or dance and some decided that their robots were girl robots.  Someone said his robot didn’t like girls and ate them up for dinner!  Others said their robots liked food from McDonald’s!

    

We also learned a song this week about how far the Sun is from our planet Earth.  Did you know it is 93,000,000 miles away?  It would take a very big rocket to go that far.  We talked about rockets and used different 2D shapes to make our own rocket pictures.  We used triangles, rectangles and circles.  How many of these shapes can you see in our pictures below? 

Cameron brought in a Message to Space giftbox this week which allows us to send a message from a space broadcast centre in North America into space using a laser telescope.  The message will be detectable for over 1,000 years.  We talked about what we would like to put in our message and will be sending this off next week.  Once this has been sent, we will receive a certificate confirming the message and the date it began it’s journey.  We will put a copy of this certificate on our blog for you to see.

P2/3F hope that everyone has a nice holiday until Tuesday.

Welcome to P2/3F’s new blog at St Clements. This term our topic is all about space and the planets. We have read the story “Aliens love underpants” and have used this idea  to create our own aliens. Here are two of our aliens.

We have also been been using maths to help us with some alien problem solving and using calendars to note up important dates for these friends if they ever decide to visit our planet e.g. our birthdays,  school holidays and Easter!  

Last week we started writing a story about a robot and on Friday we made our own robots using cardboard and tin foil.    Photographs of our robot friends will be on our next blog!

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