Life Skills: Sewing and Textile Technologies 

P4.1 have been learning the basics of how to sew with Mrs Denny. We have learned how to thread a needle and sew a running stitch. We also explored tools that help sewing, like pins and thimbles. Our tuff tray and STEM corner had binka material and blunt needles for us to experiment with threading a needle and creating a running stitch.

To celebrate love and kindness on Valentines Day, P4.1 created adorable squishy Lovebugs to gift to someone at home or to keep for themselves. We used a running stitch to attach two pieces of felt together and stuffed them with fluff.

A group of ladies from a local sewing group in Barrhead visited our school to share their skills and help us out. They were very impressed by our manners, re- silience and effort! For most of us, it was our first time sewing and we absolutely loved trying something new.

We were so engaged with our sewing and Mrs Denny loved to hear that so many pupils tried sewing at home after their lessons. 🧵We have also had pupils show us their knitting and crochet projects.  We have been continuing our Health and Wellbeing lessons all about Friendship, Empathy, Emotions and Kindness. Our Lovebugs are a little symbol of love and kindness and we will gift them on to someone who means a lot to us. What’s nicer than a handmade gift? ❤️

During our Viking topic, we explored different types of materials Vikings would have worked with, such as wool, leather and linen. We worked in groups to create a large Viking man and woman from collating different materials. We learned how we can mark material with pencil and pull it tight to cut it.

Health and Wellbeing: Friendships, Kindness and Empathy.

In Health and Wellbeing, we have been exploring empathy and trying to understand how our friends are feeling by looking at body language and facial expressions as well as listening to what they are saying. We have explored ways to be a better friend and deal with disagreements. We created a friendship tree with examples of things that good friends do, like apologise to each other, compromise and make each other laugh!

Literacy and English & Drama: Class Novel

We are still reading our class novel, Ottoline and the Yellow Cat. We have made some interesting predictions and asked excellent questions based on the evidence we have collected in our notebooks.

Building on our Health and Wellbeing lessons, we tried to understand the thoughts and feelings of a strange little character called Mr Munroe who cannot speak. We had to look for clues about his body language and actions in the novel. Mr Munroe was wearing many crazy disguises in the story to get the attention of his friend, Ottoline. Can you spot the different item added to his disguise each time?

We tried a drama technique called a ‘Forum Theatre’. Two pupils were the actors and the rest of class had to instruct them how to act by looking back in the book. In particular, we had to look for verbs and adverbs. We had so much fun using props to enhance our drama and staying in character.

Ten o’clock: Ottoline inspecting the curtains and Mr Munroe trying to get her attention.

Eleven o’clock: Ottoline inspecting the polishing of the door handles and Mr Munroe trying to get her attention.

Twelve o’clock: Ottoline is checking the taps in the bathroom and Mr Munroe is starting to get fed up of being ignored!

Mr Munroe slams the door as he goes into his bedroom in a huff! Much to the shock of the maids who were sorting the towels.

Lunch was a bit awkward between Ottoline and Mr Munroe. Not much was said! We think Mr Munroe was perhaps feeling tired or overwhelmed after getting so annoyed.

Two o’clock: Mr Munroe STILL can’t get Ottoline’s attention as she inspected the MB Hoovering company.

Three o’clock: Mr Munroe has resorted to wearing flippers and gloves to get Ottoline to notice him…but she is too busy inspecting the maids folding her pants and socks!

Four o’clock: Ottoline is enjoying relaxing in her comfy bed and she’s had enough of Mr Munroe trying to ask her a question!

Five o’clock: Dinner time and Mr Munroe has given up! He is nowhere to be seen. Ottoline has dinner alone, served by the cooking company

Six o’clock: The last inspection of the day! Ottoline helps the Light bulb Company inspect the roof lights. However, Ottoline wonders where has Mr Munroe gone after bothering her all day…

We gave amazing directions to the actors and all actors managed to stay in character really well! Mrs Denny thought everyone worked really well together. We had great fun gathering all the props and exploring the interaction between the characters in more detail. ❤️

Numeracy and Mathematics

The Squares and Triangles were exploring and identifying more complex 3D shapes. We built shapes, explored their properties and nets, used technology to visualise shapes, and identified them in real life environments. We have also explored patterns within the properties of pyramids and prisms. Lots of great discussion and revision!

The Circles have been strengthening their knowledge of money, creating larger amounts with notes and coins. They have been calculating change from up to £5. This group have also made great improvements in recalling their 3 and 4x tables with speed and accuracy.

Crazy Hair Day

Thanks to all parents who supported Crazy Hair Day. We loved seeing each others fantastic designs!

The XA Factor – 21st February

Congratulations to our 3 lovely pupils that got into the XA Factor 🙌 We are so proud of you all and your confidence and talent on stage was great to see! We have so many talented pupils in P4.1, many of whom auditioned this month. Keep up the confidence as I know you have inspired many other pupils to audition next year.

Happy New Year! ✨️

We have been easing ourselves back into routine and enjoying the opportunity for a fresh start in the new year. We reflected over the goals we set in September and celebrated the many pupil successes! Many of us achieved goals such as learning our multiplication tables, improving our story writing and spelling, and drinking more water.

“I actually know my multiplication tables now. My 6, 7, 8 and 9. I just need to get better at dividing – I’m not as quick”

“I’m actually so proud of myself. I feel like my writing is a lot neater and my capital letters touch the top line.”

We can tell we have been successful through improvements in scores and personal confidence. Our new goals have been set for March and we’re motivated to work towards them! 💪

We read the book One Word for Kids to encourage us to think of a word that will motivate us towards a personal goal all year. Some of us chose to make our words into a bracelet at the tuff tray!

As we learn new concepts in Literacy and Maths, we are always revising previously taught concepts from P2 and P3 (First Level). In Maths, we realised that we would all like some more support on fractions, finding change from money, step division and reading time. Over the next few months we will be continually revising alongside our new learning to boost our confidence! We have already made a start through play, game boards, Chromebooks challenges and lesson starters.

In Literacy, we have been continuing to improve our comprehension skills by exploring inferential questions – these are questions where the answer is not obviously in the text and we have to ‘read between the lines’ We have been learning to look closely for clues and pair this information with our life experiences to make an ‘educated guess’. This can bs a tricky concept but we are doing incredibly well. To begin, we looked at pictures with no captions to guess what is happening. We have played along with the New York Times’ feature ‘What is Going on in the Picture?’

To further help with making inferences, we have also started a fantastic new class novel, Ottoline and the Yellow Cat 💛 It is a mystery novel which has a mixture of detailed pictures and text. Last term, we were learning to find evidence within a text and we are now having to put that to the test as we search for clues in our novel this term! We are keeping a notebook full of clues and evidence whilst we read! We are asking lots of questions to try to make connections between the clues in the book. Who will be the first in the class to crack the case?

P4 have also started a month of Mandarin lessons. So far we have learned about Chinese culture, greetings, tones and numbers through playing lots of games and watching videos. We have also tried writing Chinese characters – something which has been very popular with pupils. This reflects out school values of respect as we learn how other cultures communicate and celebrate festivals which are different to ours.

January brings Burns Night on the 25th. We have been getting cosy and listening to lots of stories in front of our fireplace in January with many of these stories being in Scots. We picked out the Scots words we found in the story ‘Neeps and Tatties’.  We already knew the meaning of quite a few Scots words and we explored more using the Oor Wullie Glossary! We made fantastic speech bubbles which show the meaning of the Scots words through lettering, colour and illustrations.

In Science, we worked together with P7 pupils to build Scribblebots. These simple robots would revise our learning from our electricity topic where we built circuits. We have been working on various talking and listening strategies. P4 listened well to P7s instructions and followed them confidently.

Primary 4.1 had the best time celebrating the festive season during December, mixing learning and fun!

We all looked fantastic in our outfits for our Christmas party. 🎄 Our classroom has been all cosy and decorated for Christmas so we took some pictures by the fireplace.

We played lots of games and danced the day away at our party ❤️

We have been rounding up all of our learning in Term 1 with lots of revision. We revised spelling rules using different games. Check out our Christmas tree word pyramids. Weve also been using magnetic letters and even morse code!

We wrote fantastic imaginative Christmas stories about going on an adventure inside a snowglobe! ❄️ We had typed them up on Google Docs, using both hands to type quickly. We learned how to use the ‘review’ feature to best check our spelling and grammar during our redraft. We are trying our best to spot and correct mistakes in our own and others’ work.

We shared our stories with P2 and it was lovely to see so many confident readers sharing their work. ❤️

To add to our Christmas writing, we were delighted to be visited by Santa’s actual reindeer! We fed them carrots and lots of us shared a cuddle or a pat with the reindeer. Funnily enough, many reindeer ended up featuring in our Christmas writing! 🎄

In Numeracy, we have all improved our speed and accuracy when recalling our multiplication tables 🏆 Pupils and staff are delighted at the achievements of P4.1 and we will continue to revise our 6, 7, 8, and 9 multiplication tables in the new year to get even faster! We have also been improving the speed of our mental maths by using number fans, concrete materials and quick quizzes.

 

In December, we were learning to identify 2 or more lines of symmetry within a shape or picture. We investigated the natural symmetry within snowflakes using microscopic images and then created these beautiful symmetrical paper snowflakes to decoarate our classroom. We had to be very accurate when folding and cutting. We think they look gorgeous! ❄️

Over in the creativity corner, some of us chose to make some sustainable decorations. We made a beautiful gingerbread garland from cardboard and Posca pens. We love how personal and handmade they look. ❤️

In ICT, we applied what we learned about coding in Scratch and tried coding a BBC micro:bit using Make Code.  The BBC micro:bit is a pocket-sized computer that you can code, customise and control to bring your digital ideas, games and apps to life! We turned them into Christmas decorations. Some people created Christmas images in lights whilst others had scrolling messages. We love our glowing digital tree! 🎄✨️

We have also engaged in various S.T.E.M challenges, either with a partner or individually. We have shown really good resilience where we keep trying and don’t give up! We have also worked well with each other and shared ideas.  💡 Some of our challenges included:

• Make the longest paper chain you can from one sheet of paper.
• Build a sturdy sleigh from Knex or LEGO that is big enough for a baby elf.
• Create a giant snowflake.❄️
• Build the tallest tower made of playing cards. 🃏

Some of us really enjoyed making paper chains and got carried away, joining more than one chain together 😄 This paper chain was bigger than some P4s so we hung it from the ceiling! ⭐️

We have also connected our skills from Literacy and French by using a bilingual dictionary to look up the meanings of French words and figure out if they are masculine or feminine. We created these beautiful mini-books for Christmas.

 

We have been immersing ourself in the French language on a daily basis by revising our numbers, days of the week, months of the year and classroom instructions in French. Mrs Denny writes the date in French and will often just begin speaking French with actions for the children to follow. We enjoy playing games to revise speaking, listening and reading familiar words in French.

There have been many school events in December and we thank all families for their support with these. P4.1 particularly enjoyed visiting P7.1 and P7.2 during their Make £5 Grow Sale. We were very impressed by their advertising and business ideas. It was great to see so many older siblings setting such good examples. 🥰

Well done to our violinists for their first big performance on the stage at the Christmas Concert. We were so proud of you all. 👏

Merry Christmas and all the very best for 2026 when it comes – from Mrs Denny, Mrs Crae and Mrs Kane. 🎄✨️

It’s been a busy but a fun month in P4.1! November has been packed with learning, new experiences and achieving goals. We have been working with a lot more independence and focus,  enjoying learning outside and in the classroom.

Social Studies

Our new topic is based on learning about different climate zones around the world and how they affect living things. We have explored Polar, Temperate and Tropical climate zones and we are starting to name countries within each zone. We are becoming more familiar with the seven continents and five oceans and can point them out on a globe and on a map in an atlas.

We joined a live lesson ran by the National Museum who explored biodiversity in Scotland within a temperate climate zone. We have also been learning to take notes whilst watching and listening.

We shared the animals that we knew from four different ecosystems: urban, rural, forest and coastal. This fantastic lesson brought artefacts from the National Museum in Edinburgh straight to our classroom! We studied different insects and animals, including microscopic images and looking at the skulls of different animals and learning how they have adapted to their surroundings.

Writing

We read books, watched and listened to videos and researched how living things, such as animals, people and plants, adapt to different climates and made notes. Here is an example of some notes about the four layers of the rainforest:

We used these notes to create some excellent pieces of writing (non-chronological reports, fact files, and poems). We continue to build longer sentences with a variety of openers and connectives. We are focussing on using word banks and rules to help with spelling.

Reading Comprehension & Drama 

To celebrate the release of The Twits on Netflix, we have been reading the book by Roald Dahl. Our class novel has helped us to develop our comprehension skills by answering different types of questions and looking for evidence in the text. We have had great fun using drama to explore the characters and scenarios through hot-seating, freeze framing, thought tapping, improvisation and even short scripted news reports!

Numeracy and Mathematics 

The Squares and Triangles have started learning their 6, 7, 8 and 9 multiplication tables after revising their 3 and 4.  We have been looking at patterns within each table to make them easier to learn and playing lots of games to familiarise ourselves with the multiplication and division facts. We have been very motivated to improve our fluency and speed when recalling facts in each table. After exploring lots of different ways of learning tables, P4.1 pupils can now identify ways that work for them individually and are starting to revise in their own time.

The Circles have also been exploring their 3 and 4 multiplication and division facts through games and songs with Mrs Denny and with extra support from Mrs Kane and Mrs McMillan. We continue to strengthen number bonds every day. 

Cross Arthurlie turns 60! 🎈🎵

P4.1 had a great time celebrating our school turning 60 with a silent disco, a whole school slosh and a look at what school may have looked like back in the 1960s.