Willowbank School, KilmarnockThroughout our school week we use loads of technology to help us learn. See some of our IT activities this week. We also enjoyed our weekly ‘virtual’ assembly.
*Successful Learners *Effective Contributors
The Stars class made fabulous dinosaur fossils. We measured ingredients to make salt dough, divided the dough equally among us and imprinted with our favourite dinosaur shapes. After allowing the dough to dry we painted them. Don’t they look good?
Confident Individuals Effective Contributors *Successful Learners
Presently we are unable to access our photographs to blog but we have been very busy in the Stars class.
We planted sunflower seeds in pots for the school meadow. They are growing well and will soon need canes to support them. We also planted sweet pea plants in our garden planter. We’ve built another wigwam for them to climb up.
We continue to enjoy our dinosaurs theme making salt dough fossils and a sediment sand jar to show how fossils were made. We created a mod roc head for our giant dinosaur in class and made dinosaur footprints to compare sizes with our own.
*Successful Learners
This week the Stars class have planted onions and sunflower seeds. Hopefully they will grow well. We grew a baby dinosaur and explored frozen dinosaur eggs, We are creating a mod roc dinosaur head for our wall display. It will look good when painted. We modelled dinosaurs out of playdoh. Can you recognise them?
Responsible Citizens
We planted nasturtium seeds in the garden, for Earth Day, and built a wigwam to support the climbing plants as they grow. We must remember to keep them well watered! We did recycling and energy saving activities plus made a global cupcake flower picture. We also found that reading a story using a torch is not easy so we had better not waste electricity. At science we did a water pollution experiment. What will grow best……..the seeds with water or the seeds with lemon (acid) water? We will see next week.
The whole Stars class were delighted to be back together again this week, especially as it involved Red Nose Day. We did lots of activities including making faces, icing biscuits, creating superhero masks, playing promethean board games and doing a red volcano experiment. We even enjoyed a red nose and spoon relay race! We had great fun.
Hi there. Hope all is well with you. 
This week sees World Book Day fall on Thursday 4th March. Find below some activities to do if you wish.
‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’
Listen to the story, ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’. Try and do the actions and noises.
Book Scavenger Hunt
For this task you will need a lot of books! Count how many books you can find in your house that have the following items in them. Will you be able to find them all?
A castle
A frog
A witch
A bus
A teddy bear
A dog
A pirate
A train
A king
An elephant
A farm
A bike
A tiger
A balloon
A hug
Indoor Picnic
Plan a picnic to have indoors as it will probably be too cold to have outside. You could lay a rug on the floor. Make your favourite sandwiches , some fairy cakes or simply enjoy your favourite crisps, fruit and juice. Why not send some photographs of your picnic.
Build a Den
Use rugs, old sheets, cushions off the couch, dining room table and chairs or clothes horse to build a den. These are only suggestions. Read a book inside your den. It’s fun when using a torch to read.
I hope you enjoy trying some of these activities.
Have Fun! Stay Safe! 
Hope all is well with you and your families. 
Find below some activities to do so if you wish. Friday 12th February is the Chinese New Year. 2021 will be the year of the ox. The ‘Chinese Zodiac Story’, sometimes called ‘The Great Race’, tells the story of how the Chinese calendar follows a 12 year cycle, each year named after a different animal.
Below are two video’s showing preparing for and celebrating Chinese New Year.
Preparing for Chinese New Year
Dragon Dance
One of the colourful activities to watch is the dragon dance.
Create Your Own Dragon
Make your own handprint Chinese New Year dragon. You will need:- paper, pen, glue stick, sellotape, two sticks and scissors.
Seeing Red
Red is a lucky colour in China. How many red things can you find in your living room.? How many can you find in your kitchen?
Chinese Dragon Game
Find below a Chinese Dragon Game for you to try.
Noodle Handling.
Handle a tray of cooked noodles with your fingers. Try to lift noodles using chopsticks. If this is too difficult, use kitchen tongs. Try cutting noodles with scissors.
Paper Lanterns
Make paper lanterns to hang in your house. You can decorate them any way you like. Maybe use stickers or glitter.
I hope you have good fun doing some of these activities.
Have Fun! Stay Safe!
The Stars class made a poster showing child work and poverty abroad. After printing pizza vegetables we used our switches to take pizza orders then created pictures of our choices. Pepperoni was very popular!
Wishing you a warm ‘hello’ from the Stars class. We have all settled in well to our new group and are enjoying activities. We have been successful learners doing hard work both indoors and in the sensory garden. We have been learning about ourselves and our new classmates by doing activities together. This week we created DVD spinners for the garden and enjoyed making a grass head caterpillar. We will keep it well watered and see how it grows. It might need a hair cut soon!
