Miss Hamilton and Primary 5.1 decided to enter an interesting competition that offered the chance to scoop the top prize of a visit to Edinburgh Zoo!

Pupils had to design a kite that reflected the link between Scotland and China. We studied Chinese Kites from our Mandrain room and noted how colourful and detailed they were.

We then decided whether we wanted to work in groups or on our own to design and build our kites.

We made use of different skills within our groups and used a variety of media to create our colourful kites.

We can’t wait to add the finishing touches when they are dry! All entries will be sent off soon.

Primary 5.1 got into the spirit of Valentine’s Day by learning to sew their very own lovebug that they could gift to someone special. 🥰

The class were introduced to proper sewing needles and the few pupils who had experience of sewing shared their knowledge and tips with the class. We then got started on marking and cutting our colourful felt, learning how to create a running stitch.we then applied it so we could fasten the two sheets of felt together.

Once our lovebug was sewn, we stuffed it full of fluff and closed the gap with our needle and thread. We were very careful with our sewing needles but we gained lots of confidence once we started sewing.

Lastly we added some googly eyes and gave our lovebug a name. 💕 Did a little lovebug turn up in your house?

After our novel study of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, we decided to polish up our dancing skills and learn The Oompa Loompa dance from the 2005 Tim Burton film adaptation.

We used a step-by-step guide on the big screen in our classroom to learn the moves and keep the beat.

Once we had our moves perfected, we split off into groups to create our own 16 beat group dance to compliment the part in the  story where Augustus Gloop gets sucked up the pipe! We worked brilliantly in our groups, creatively coming up with inventive ways to tell a story through movement.

We also had A LOT of fun being Oompa Loompas for the day! 😝🤪

DANCE TROOP TIME!

Group 1 and 2 used concrete materials to explore more complex number patterns. We made the first 3 terms before identifying a rule that would allow us to continue the patterns.

Once we felt confident, we created our own challenge sequences for a partner to solve.

After the success of our Castles and Bridges Technologies topic, we have decided to keep the enthusiasm going by holding fortnightly S.T.E.M challenges! We can chose to work on a S.T.E.M project when we finish our classwork or during choice time.

What is S.T.E.M? 
S.T.E.M is a curriculum based on the idea of educating students in four specific disciplines — Science, Technologies, Engineering and Mathematics — in an interdisciplinary and applied approach.

So far this month we have had a Snowball Catapult Challenge where pupils have designed and built catapults to launch a snowball (cotton wool) as far as possible! We have reflected  and changed our designs as we test them.

We have been learning lots of skills in gymnastics and gaining confidence whilst performing.

We have been creative in the ways in which we travel, jump, land and balance. We have also tried lots of partner, trio and group balances. We have recently been trying to improve our rope skills.

We have been learning to apply our imagination and creativity into design. The pupils of Primary 5/1 have been given full responsibility over their class display.

We have been doing a novel study on Charlie and the Chicolate Factory, focusing on how Roald Dahl brought character and setting to life through his words.

We focussed on the chapter ‘The Chocolate Room’, highlighting the variety of words used. We then made a sketch of what we imagined the room to look like. We voted on our favourite design and got to work on creating our class display.

We used materials in our art cupboard to make a chocolate river and waterfall, candy floss clouds, name signs and candy cane trees.

We can’t wait to see what it will look like when it’s finished!

I would like to take this opportunity to thank parents and families for their very kind get well messages and lovely Christmas gifts. Presents were delivered to me over the holidays and quite a few tags had fallen off the gift bags so I feel it’s better to have one big thank you on our class blog!

Stay tuned to our blog to see all our learning in the new year.

P5 continued to learn more about area and perimeter this week. We thought it was time we challenged ourselves to apply our skills in real life challenges. We discussed jobs that may use area and perimeter as part of Developing the Young Workforce (DYW). We understand that the builders and architects that have been involved in building our new nursery will have used lots of skills in area and perimeter too!

Miss Hamilton set the class two NRich problem solving challenges. First, we thought carefully about the problem and then discussed how we could begin to solve it. After much discussion and evaluating, we finally reached our solution! Both groups shared their learning with one another. We discovered that:

• Squares and rectangles can have the same perimeter and area.
• Squares and rectangles can have the same perimeter but different areas.
• Squares and rectangles can have the same area but different perimeters.

Well done to our amazing problem solvers! 💪 We love a challenge!

Through the Window challenged us to figure out why glass windows and their frames had been priced the way they had. We had to work backwards to guess, check and improve our possible price solutions after figuring out the area and perimeter. Phew! Lots of collaboration and discussion meant we were successful in finding the answers:

• Each square of glass was £10 per m2.
• Each length of frame was £5 per m.

Our second challenge was called Numerically Equal. We had to investigate whether it was possible for a square to have an equal perimeter and area.  Again, we worked logically together to guess, check and improve. It didn’t take too long before we found that a square with sides 4cm would work! We increased the challenge and checked all other possible solutions before seeing if a rectangle could also have equal perimeter and area. As a group we found a solution: a rectangle with sides 6cm x 3cm! One pupil even realised the rectangle’s length was twice the breadth. Very impressive.

For the last 2 weeks, Primary 5 have planned, written and illustrated their own spooky stories. We listened to lots of different types of Halloween stories read by Miss Hamilton and discussed their key features. We took inspiration from these stories and used our imagination to create a short chapter book.

We are so proud of them and we had the best time launching them on Halloween. Primary 6 kindly visited our classroom to read our stories and give us some feedback on our work,

We got some lovely feedback from Primary 6:

“That was such a good story. I loved the twist at the end!” 

“I loved your characters. You described them really well.” 

“The story I read was really funny even though it was spooky!” 

To celebrate, we dooked for apples and tried some Halloween themed targets such as suduko and French poems.