Congratulations to Lewis who was recently featured in the St Mirren’s Black and White fan magazine. Well done! Thank you Mrs McGoldrick for supplying this photo as she is also a fan of the Buddies too.

Today, I’ve decided to start issuing digital badges as a means of rewarding individual contributions to our new digital way of working. Below are an example of some badges I have made for the winners of our weekly quiz.

If we like this idea, I can make a whole series of badges, and I’m of course open to any suggestions.

Happy Easter and welcome back to P623’s digital classroom.  I hope you had a lovely Easter break. Spring is definitely here and the signs are all around.

This year’s lambs have a been born in the field behind my house and are now looking quite big.

The frogs and toads are spawning in the golf course along the road from me.

And the view of Glasgow on my daily walk looks beautiful on a clear Spring afternoon.  Share any signs of Spring with me and I will be happy to post them for the rest of the class. Lea tells me that the trees are in blossom where she lives.

I have already shared this on our Google Classroom but it’s such a fantastic service that I want to post it again on here.  If you are a member or the East Renfrewshire library service, you can still access a  wide range of materials from ebooks, audiobooks, magazines and newspapers. My family and I have been using this a lot since the lockdown closed all the libraries and it’s amazing: you get access to current on the shelf top magazines and newspapers.

ER Culture and Leisure ebooks and ER Culture and Leisure emagazines

I don’t have a lot to share with you at the moment, but Emie sent me her recreation of our Egg Lander challenge.

This week, I set the children the challenge of using green screen technology at home to create a short video or photo. This is my short Lego Star War movie introduction (excuse my son’s audio in the background) to provide some inspiration.

So far, I have received two videos and they are both amazing. Firstly, Jamie send me this video which I think is possibly inspired by Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak.

Jemma decided to combine two of our Google classroom activities and produced this green screen video about polar exploration. Fantastic!

I’m so pleased that the children have been able to learn new skills at home whilst having fun.

I also set an art activity this week with the phrase, “What I’m going to do!” as the inspiration.

Noah made this this as he is clearly missing getting outside with his friends.

Wint is thinking about taking a aeroplane flight to visit her family.

And Jamie has read my mind with this very evocative piece of art. Great work everyone!

I also posed a question on Google classroom this week about the current distance learning workload.

From the chart above, we can see that 85% of the 13 children who answered the question think that the number of activities per day is about right. I will continue polling the children to assure that we have got the balance of work just right.

Sorry I haven’t posted as regularly as I have been, but I was working in school on Monday and yesterday I have been experiencing problems with my broadband service at home ( bad timing!)

Lewis and Aatish have been trying the Try for 10! game with the playing cards in your Home Learning pack. It is not as easy as it sounds but Aatish is doing well in the photo above. One more move and you’re done!

Here is Ibrahim and Wint’s solutions for yesterday’s Countdown challenge. Great job! Remember to challenge your family and friends too.

On Monday, I put a question up on Google classrooms asking the children if they had done anything kind for someone over the weekend. Again, I put their responses into a WordArt and as you can see below, family feature heavily in their response.  I hope that everyone is keep happy and healthy during these unprecedented times, and I sure we will all come through this if we keep looking after each other.

Keep sharimng uyour photos with me and I will endeavour to post them here. Thank you Alesha for sharing this with me, it did make me smile.

Delisha has also been busy baking and decorating these lovely cakes.

After finding a lizard out on a walk in Whitelees Windfarm this week, I made this (and yes it is my voice. I’ve been asked this a few times now).

I challenged the children to make similar videos using the written polar animal fact files that they already created in class.  I’m very happy to say that they didn’t disappoint.

Firstly, this is Jamie’s video featuring the mysterious Narwhal.

Next, we have Lucy’s Musk Ox video.

As a bit of fun on Friday, I post the photo below of me dressed up as Flint of the Fur tribe, one of the main characters in our class novel Sky Song.

Again, I challenged the children to dress up as a character from a book and here they are.  Grace decided to involve her family and they dressed up as Calvin and Hobbes.

Ibrahim dressed as Greg Heffley from the Diary of a Wimpy Kid book series.

Zac has been dressing up as Shrek.

We also have a few late entries for our create a villain activity this week. This is Kill Joy Noah’s villain.

Lucy’s half eagle, half human creation called Blur.

The terrifying Shadow Snatcher from Lewis’ imagination.

And finally, Jamie’s untitled mammoth snake monster.

The children have also been keeping me informed of all the other things they have been doing at home. Jemma has been building tunnels for her hamster Snowy, baking and going on bike rides.

Despite all the changes in our lives in the last week, it is good to see that most children in P623 are “Feeling good”.

Could I ask families to continue sharing their photos with me so that I can share them here to help the children keep in touch with each other.  Thank you!

Again, thank you to all the children that have shared photos with me of the activities they are completing at home.  Today i asked you to create your own villains and bring them to life in a piece of artwork.

Zaina has created a character called Wickedmoon and her artwork looks amazing.

Ibrahim has done an annotated pencil drawing of his villain.

Finally, Lea has created a character called Fang.