Category Archives: Outdoor learning

BGE, Digital Technology, Health and Wellbeing, Outdoor learning

Week beginning 8th May

May 13, 2023 Mrs Kelly Leave a comment

Sports day. We were very fortunate with the weather and enjoyed some games and races with no rain! Unfortunately the iPad ran out of battery before the end of the races, so we only have photos of the games. And a few at the start of the races. We were lucky to have many former pupils who are now at Mearns Castle come and help run the games and give out stickers for the races, although Mrs Kelly said it made her feel old seeing them so grown up!

We visited 7.26 to see their coding showcase on Friday afternoon and enjoyed the entertainment, glow sticks and sweets. 😊

BGE, Health and Wellbeing, Mathematics, Outdoor learning

Week beginning 27th February

March 3, 2023 Mrs Kelly Leave a comment

Despite being a short school week we have packed lots in!

On Monday we spent time outdoors learning, exploring and challenging ourselves on our knowledge of angles.

On Thursday we enjoyed some world book day activities creating a word picture of our favourite authors, sharing summaries of our favourite books, writing reviews and making bookmarks to name but a few.

Friday saw our first bikeability session for this year. We made sure our bikes and clothing were safe before taking part in four fun activities to help us learn important skills before completing our level 2 on road bikeability training over the next few weeks.

We also took part in a quick design challenge where we created a random brief then worked in groups to come up with a suggested design solution….all in half an hour! The buzz and creativity racing through the class was phenomenal!

BGE, Health and Wellbeing, Mathematics, Outdoor learning

Week beginning 21st November

November 26, 2022 Mrs Kelly Leave a comment

This week our first group created their own six course tasting menu which has been successfully planned, ordered (within budget), prepared and cooked after some tremendously dedicated effort and strong team work. Here are some photos of us during this week’s cooking session. Huge thanks to our parent volunteer, without your help this would not have worked out so well.

We engaged in some great collaborative learning tasks week as we explored and reinforced our understanding of fractions together.

Although Friday morning was chilly we had a great outdoor session playing one of our own recently created games. It was a great success enjoyed by all after the creating team adapted and improved the rules following feedback from the rest of the class.

BGE, Digital Technology, Health and Wellbeing, Literacy, Mathematics, Outdoor learning

Week beginning 24th October

November 1, 2022 Mrs Kelly Leave a comment

Despite it being a four day week after the October holiday, we managed to pack a lot in!

Here are some of the activities and learning we’ve been involved in this week:

M&M theatre company presented us with Sleeping Beauty. Thanks to the PTA for funding this.

Our Spark Park fundraising sports event was great fun, we completed all the challenges and were lucky enough to have lots of pupil volunteers from Mearns Castle who helped it all run really smoothly.

Miss Hunter was invited to visit our class on Wednesday as we wanted her to see how well we were working in teams to improve our reading skills as we played ‘Reading Race’ in the classroom. She was really impressed and said we should definitely try to share our method with others to help them improve their skills in reading carefully and answering questions in a more in depth way.

Our Mearns Masters Showcase took place on Thursday. We invited the Primary five classes to our computer arcade and they played the three level games we created in our coding masterclasses. Everyone had a great time and the P5s were really impressed with our games.

Friday saw us outside on a rather chilly and wet morning to play some more of the games we created ourselves a few weeks ago. Everyone enjoyed their chance to teach and learn new games. We also took part in some peer assessment and worked really well on offering suggestions for improvements on each of the games.

Health and Wellbeing, Literacy, Mathematics, Outdoor learning

Week beginning 12th September

September 16, 2022 Mrs Kelly Leave a comment

On Wednesday we joined with the rest of the school in a commemoration assembly for Queen Elizabeth who sadly passed away last Thursday.

We then went outside and spent some time learning about scale and created some scale pictures of the Queen having studied a profile picture of her from a stamp. I am sure you will agree we made a tremendous job using sticks, stones and cones to create these.

In the afternoon we enjoyed some jam sandwiches, shortbread and a wee chat about our experiences of the royal family before starting on some grid art and pop art pictures of Queen Elizabeth.

Writing

We worked in groups to investigate how to enhance descriptions in our writing. We used pictures to stimulate discussion and created some fantastic pieces of writing as a result. The buzz in the class as we worked together was immense.

Star writers from last week were proud to receive their certificates and we heard one of them read out her story to us too.

Outside for PE this week we started sharing some of the games we have been creating in our groups. We worked on stamina and accuracy this week and really enjoyed teaching and learning from each other.

Health and Wellbeing, Mathematics, Outdoor learning

Week beginning 29th August

September 2, 2022 Mrs Kelly Leave a comment

Another fabulous week in primary seven has flown past!

Here we are enjoying some outdoor time learning to follow instructions and create pictures marking different types of angles with different natural materials.

Here is a photo of our star writers for the week.

We did well completing homework this week and we have discussed how to make it even better, neater and more meaningful next week too.

Digital Technology, Health and Wellbeing, Literacy, Mathematics, Outdoor learning

Week beginning 22nd August

August 25, 2022 Mrs Kelly Leave a comment

Well what a fabulous first full week back we have had!

We started our week enjoying some fun lessons focussing on children’s rights and creating our class charter, then Mrs Short worked with us on the topic of growth mindsets.

On Wednesday we were really fortunate to have a visit from the author, , who encouraged us to draw some of the characters from her books. Later in the day we learned about how to punctuate dialogue correctly and created som short pieces of writing using this skill.

Thursday was a bright and sunny day for most of the time, so after some digital learning in the morning, we headed outside for some orienteering and maths work before beginning to make some wind chimes while focusing on developing our teamwork and creativity skills.

Outdoor learning

Lots of learning outdoors

November 9, 2020 Mrs Kelly Leave a comment

We started off our outdoor session today with a word game using lots of vowels and consonants. Who knew we could create so many words with only a few letters and special golden question marks?!

We then moved on to practise our skills in observing, recording and analysing.

Finally we worked on a magic square challenge. We didn’t quite get it completed but we learned a lot about teamwork as we tried. 😊

Outdoor learning

Leaf collection, analysis and rubbing

November 2, 2020 Mrs Kelly Leave a comment

Following on from our lesson last week watching The Promise and thinking about colours and leaves and trees, we decided to go outside in the search for some oak leaves as well as many others.

We really enjoyed collecting the leaves, then focusing on their colours, sizes and textures. We started making some patterns outside, but the weather wasn’t kind, so we headed in and created loads inside. The whole class were entirely silent as we worked on these beautiful creations!

We then played a tree identification game on the woodland trust website and finished off the morning by using oil pastels and producing some delightful leaf rubbings.

Outdoor learning

The Promise

October 30, 2020 Mrs Kelly Leave a comment

We listened to the story The Promise by Nicola Davies and Laura Carlin. We also watched the animation of the story which was launched in Scotland on that day, Monday 26th October.

After watching we had some really interesting discussions on how the story made us feel, the importance of nature and life cycles. We then went on to write some beautiful poems and create some fun pictures with bright paper.