We have begun to explore fractions of measurements, focusing on half centimetres. We now know that on our rulers, a half centimetre is represented by the longer line that sits between two numbers. We know that to write a half measurement, we use a point and then the number 5, for instance 3 and a half is 3.5. We used this new knowledge to successfully identify a series of measurements.

During today’s writing lesson, we created a storyboard, which allowed us to retell the story of The Wee Lassie Who Swallowed A Midgie in our own words.

Gymnastics is our new topic for PE. Today we worked on floor skills such as forward rolls, pencils rolls, cannonballs, and rolling up into a standing position.

We continued with our novel study ‘There was a wee lassie who swallowed a midgie’. Today we built our own Nessie puppets, using many of the symmetrical folding skills we first learned back in Term 1.

Today we were introduced to trundle wheels and measuring tapes. We learned that these tools are useful for measuring around corners and curved edges. We worked in pairs and trios to measure the distance from our classroom to a variety of locations around the school, as well as the length of our classroom and our play area. We recorded our findings on the board, and compared the distances of the different locations.

Our last lesson of this week was Science. We are continuing with our Living and Non-Living Things topic. This week we explored the human life cycle, how it compared to animals and plants, and the main similarities and differences between the three. Pupils worked through a number of tasks including life-cycle sequencing activities.

Today we explored alliteration as part of our literacy lesson using our novel study, ‘There was a wee lassie who swallowed a midgie’. We identified all of the alliteration used in the story, learned the difference between alliteration and rhyming words, and then we wrote a few sentences each, using alliteration, about some of the animals featured in the story.

We were estimating lengths in today’s numeracy lesson. We found six different items, estimating the length of each and then using either a ruler or metre stick to double check. We also utilised ICT, taking part in a measuring game.

Our Badminton lessons concluded today with a 4 team tournament, where pupils got to put all their racquet skills to the test. In what was at times a very competitive session, there was plenty of smash shots, overhead lobs and good teamwork on display.

This week, we began a new class novel, ‘There was a wee lassie who swallowed a midgie’. We combined this with today’s numeracy lesson, where we were again using non standard units to measure classroom items. Today, midgies were our measuring unit. We were given a variety of measurements and had to find items in the classroom which we estimated were close to our chosen measurement. We then used our midgies to measure items including chromebooks, chairs, books, tables, stapler and jotters!

We used our ICT time today to research Scotland, supporting the topic work we are doing in class. We are becoming more confident in logging on to our computers independently, using the Kiddle search engine, and then using our whiteboards to take short notes on interesting facts about our country. We learned about the capital and largest cities, the name of our flag, the number of councils, the busiest airport, and how Scotland is one third of the size of Great Britain, as well as other less well known facts!

Our learning on Length continued this week, as we explored non-standard units of measurement. These can be random objects such as counting cubes, dice, sharpeners, paper clips, and even things like our fingernails! After drawing various lines with our ruler and measuring these in centimetres, we then used our non-standard measuring objects to record how long our items were!

Continuing with our Badminton lessons, today we worked on our ‘smash shot’, developing our skills in over-head racquet control. We worked individually, and with partners and then played a game of trying to ‘smash’ our shuttlecocks into a box on the floor!

This week, we began our new numeracy topic which will explore Length. We learned about centimetres and metres, and saw these on a ruler and a metre stick. Important words were now know are longer, shorter, taller and smaller. Our first activity involved us working in small groups to sort ourselves into height order, and also to sort ourselves by shoe size. We then developed our measuring skills by drawing a selection of lines using a ruler, each one a different length. These were then sorted into order, from shortest to longest. Finally we were using our ruler to measure and draw some 2D shapes, which we labelled with the measurements used.

Today we began to explore Living and Non-Living Things as part of our learning in Science. We discovered that humans, plants and animals have lots of similarities and differences. We can now also identify objects that are non-living like bins, footballs and slides. We were also surprised to find out that there are items which are non-living that contains materials from living things, like tables and pencils which contain wood that is originally from trees. A scavenger hunt in the playground was a good opportunity to look for both living and non-living things in our local area.

Our first week back after the holidays, and we have begun Badminton as our new PE topic. Today we worked on racquet control and passing in pairs and then trios. We finished off with a game designed to develop our aiming skills, where we had to try and place our shuttlecocks in hoop, with more points earned as the hoops got further away.

Our Christmas themed learning continued this week, as we used our knowledge of symmetry and shape to create a 3D Christmas Tree. We began with using our rulers and scissors to measure and cut a 20cm 2D square shape, which we then folded to create 4 lines of symmetry. Further triangular folds created the Christmas Tree shape. We finished off by making small cuts along the length of our shape to create the branches. We opened up the final shape, folding small triangles at the edge of the branches, allowing our tree to stand unaided in 3D form. A great way to showcase our growing skills and confidence in model building!

With Christmas on the way, we got into the festive spirit with some Christmas Tree Tessellation. Using our knowledge of tiling 2D shapes, we knew that shapes with straight edges are best for tiling together. We explored Christmas Trees and as a class we used our problem solving skills to work out that rotating Christmas Trees allows them to be tiled together into a continuous pattern.

We built on our learning focused on quadrilaterals, regular and irregular shapes, and right angles, by exploring the school to look for different types of shapes. We used our right-angle tools to identify right angles, finding that they are everywhere from books, to windows, to computer screens and even on the floor!

This week we have been learning about quadrilaterals, which are four-sided shapes like squares and rectangles, the difference between regular and irregular shapes, and also right-angles. We demonstrated our new learning through adding right angles to a series of shapes, and colouring shapes green if they were regular, and red if we thought they were irregular.

Today we discovered the triangle-based pyramid. This was a new 3D shape that we learned about during our numeracy topic focused on Shape. We built our own models, building on the skills we developed last week.

As Christmas draws nearer, we explored a winter village scene, complete with Christmas Tree, as part of our learning in expressive arts. We used our skills in line and shape drawing to recreate a classic image including snow covered roofs and hills, a forest and an imposing church to set us in the festive mood. We finished off our art with lots of colours, contrasting icy blues with lush greens.

We explored nouns today as part of our literacy learning. We now know that nouns can be a person, a place or a thing. Working in two teams, we explored the school building, hunting for different nouns that we recorded in our notes. Some nouns that we found included a phone, a bell, a magnifying glass, a drum, the Science Room and even Mrs Stewart!

In our Shape lesson today, we discovered a new shape – the triangular prism. We learned that it is created from both rectangles and triangles, and is a 3D shape with 9 edges, 5 faces, and 6 vertices. We then built our own models, using straws and Play-Doh. Everyone in class achieved all 5 of our success criteria, which the class agreed on beforehand.

We created a winter themed canvas painting when two local artists came to visit the school. We were really excited to hear that our work will be displayed in a local gallery.

Our basketball skills have really developed over the last few weeks. We combined all the skills we have been learning to take part in a 5-a-side mini tournament. Some excellent teamwork, passing, dribbling and shooting was on display. Each team won a match, and well done to the Green team, who finished with two victories!

We explored healthy eating, learning about the five food groups as part of our health and well-being learning. Pupils designed their own healthy plates, showing how much of each food group we should be eating in our daily diets.

Our numeracy work has seen us learning about pyramids. This inspired today’s spelling activities where we used pyramid writing to continue developing our spelling of ‘ss’ and ‘se’ words.

Our creative arts this week has an Autumn into Winter theme. We noticed from our classroom windows that the trees are starting to lose all their leaves. We are creating a 3D collage, using coloured card to represent the leaves, with a few still on the branches, and the rest lying on the ground. The class enjoyed hanging their pictures once complete.

In our Number Talk today, we focused on doubles, where we worked up to double 20. We recognised that when we use doubles, we are following the 2 times table. We used this knowledge to then extend our learning into near-doubles, where we learnt that to solve tricky sums, we can use our nearest double to help us work towards the answer. Pupils enjoyed ‘being teacher’ and sharing their answers on the class whiteboard.

Developing our listening skills is important for success in our learning. Today we followed our teacher’s verbal instructions to draw and colour a piece of art that we could not see, we had to only listen to what we had to draw and the colours we had to use, step by step. It is clear we have some superb listeners in class!

Today we have been sorting a variety of shapes, using our knowledge of 3D shapes. Pupils worked on this independently and were delighted to self-assess their work.

We begin each week with our Morning News. This lets us share our stories from the weekend; where we’ve been, what we’ve done, and who we spent it with. This lets us develop our independent writing skills, whilst the best bit is sharing this news with the rest of the class.

Tiling with 2D shapes is progressing well. We have now begun to create our own patterns using squares. We are utilising our measuring skills, using a ruler to ensure even-sized, neat lines, and then selecting four colours to use in a repetitive pattern.

Our basketball skills are really developing and we are now becoming really confident with our passing and dribbling. This week we worked on our shooting. We combined these skills in a mixed team match, with two players from each team competing against each other before switching with our team-mates. The fast-paced rotations were the perfect opportunity to hone our skills, and it was great to see some ‘baskets’ scored!

We have begun to use 2D shapes in tiling patterns as our numeracy topic, focused on shapes continues. Pupils discovered that some shapes can be tiled like squares, rectangles and triangles, whilst circles are not a good shape to use in tiling. There were some excellent patterns created, and the pupils were delighted that they met the success criteria that they themselves decided on. Well done P2/3!

This week we are practising our ay, ea and y sound words that we have been learning over the last 3 weeks. Pupils have been working hard on writing the words alongside building them with their magnetic letters.

Question Marks have been our focus in Grammar lessons over the last few weeks. We can now tell the difference between a sentence and a question, and can add in missing question marks within a piece of text. Creating our own questions lets us share our learning with the rest of the class.

We are extending our knowledge of 2D and 3D shapes in our numeracy topic, this time looking for real life example of these shapes. We successfully identified a number of both 2D and 3D shapes in the playground. The children were especially proud of the Octogon they discovered!

Basketball will be our focus of learning for PE over the next few weeks. We have been developing our skills in chest and bounce passes, as well as keeping control of the ball whilst dribbling. We used these skills in a passing relay, and in a basketball possession game.

We have been continuing with our Shape topic. This week, we began to explore 3D shapes, and how they relate to their 2D equivalents. Pupils are learning how to draw 3D shapes – we might have some future architects in our class!

Our new Maths topic, exploring Shape began this week. We learned about the term vertice, which is another name for the corners of a shape. We identified how many sides and vertices, a variety of 2D shapes have.

This week, our PE learning focused on Hockey. We have been developing our skills in dribbling, passing and shooting.

Today, we were learning about Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Light. We discovered that it celebrates Lakshmi (the goddess of wealth) and Ganesha (the god of wisdom). These celebrations include food, music, fireworks and decorating your house with patterns called rangoli. We created our own colourful rangoli in class.

This term, football has been our focus during PE. We have developed our skills in dribbling, passing and shooting. Today we played a 4 team ‘corners’ match. There was some fantastic skills on display, some great goals, and lots of sweaty faces by the end!

Inspired by the incoming weather storm, we explored the water cycle, and how rain is formed, as part of our Science learning. We replicated the four stages of the water cycle, using water, shaving foam and food colouring to create our own mini rain showers.

We then recorded our experiments by drawing a labelled diagram in our Science jotters.