P2C 2021/22

We participated in British Science Week by investigating and carrying out interesting experiments across the week. As Easter is not far away, we explored the process of incubation by looking at the life cycle of a chicken. We started with a well known philosophical question to spark our thinking and generate discussion and questions.

Following this, we learned about the natural process of how chickens incubate their eggs and how this can be replicated mechanically using an artificial incubator. This was a brilliant way to incorporate knowledge of engineering, maths and science successfully to create this process.

We then designed our own incubators and noted what key features they would have, resources we would need to make them and drew these to help us visualize them. Play is a very important element in allowing the children to practice realizing their ideas by working with their peers to share and construct these in reality.

The children then created models of their incubators using materials they had sourced in the classroom. They are extremely resourceful and it was very interesting to see the variety of ideas on display.

In P2C we love to read and write imaginative stories and were very excited to be invited to create a bubble with Mrs Norman’s P7 class. This allowed us to safely mix with other pupil’s and for P7 to read and share the fantastic collaborative books they had made with us.

Our class were absolutely fascinated by the fact that super group work and incredible creativity had led to self-made fiction and non-fiction books of this quality and loved listening to these being read by senior pupils. They asked lots of relevant and interesting questions and were very impressed by what they had heard and seen. This certainly inspired our own ideas even more!

We learned about how some Christians prepare for Easter by participating in Shrove Tuesday or ‘Pancake day’ as it is better known, before the season of Lent. It was very interesting for the children to explore how this is celebrated around the world as Mardi Gras or ‘Fat Tuesday’ where rich foods are eaten and cultural festivities are vibrant and creative with lots of religious significance for practising Christians.

Of course, the fun part was following a pancake recipe and applying our measuring skills by using scales to measure out the ingredients and cook our pancakes to enjoy!

The children were given an assignment to create and present an individual presentation to their class on the subject of their favourite hobby or interest. They used a talking and listening literacy criteria to base this on and participated in peer assessment and feedback.

It was wonderful to see the hard work and terrific effort they all put into creating and practicing for this activity and I was very proud to see them stand in front of their peers and speak with such confidence and enthusiasm. They were very discerning in the feedback they gave each other and this was a very successful and positive experience for the children overall. What a talented bunch we have in P2c!

We are keenly watching out for a variety of birds in our Woodland area and recording this information on a survey so we can submit this to the RSPB at the end of February. It was great fun to do this as well as practicing our data collecting maths skills using tally marks.

We have explored traditional ideas of Scottish culture and part of this is the kilt. Having learned the basic principles of weaving, we thought it would be fun to try this out for ourselves.

Having prepared our warp boards we used a variety of coloured wefts to weave a pattern and make our own kilt patterns. Then we designed and created our own belt buckles based on the Scottish coat of arms, flowers and symbols.

We discovered the national flower of Scotland is the Thistle and used green and purple tissue to create our own.

As part of our Scotland Topic we have learned about the life and works of the Scottish poet Robert Burns. We decided to prepare and cook a pot of ‘Tattie’ soup and really enjoyed developing our cooking skills using utensils, ingredients and following a recipe.

After investigating the types of foods Scotland is famous for producing, we loved tasting haggis, Orkney oatcakes and Arran cheddar cheese, as well as our yummy homemade soup! Not forgetting to address and toast the haggis. We are very adventurous in P2C and are always ready to try new things.

We are re-starting our toothbrushing programme in P2 very soon! In preparation for this we have been busy reminding ourselves of how to take care of our teeth as they transition into our adult set. It is very important that we not only understand how often we should brush but also the right toothbrush to use, amount of toothpaste and even the correct technique to best prevent decay and cavities.

It was really useful to find out more about what teeth are made of, how our food and drink choices can affect our teeth and how they grow in our mouths at our age. When we begin to put this into practice in school, we will be experts in how to brush!

We have started a new health topic and are learning all about the different food groups that make a balanced diet. The food pyramid helped us understand the quantity of each group we should aim to eat every day to  make sure our bodies receive the correct amounts of nutrients they need to help us grow.

We then created our own eat well plates to illustrate our understanding of this, after we discussed what foods belonged to each group we were able to think about how we could design our own healthy lunchboxes.

There are so many different Literacy skills we practice every day in class; reading, writing, phonics, sentence building and we enjoy them all! Take a look at how great we are at making and spelling longer words, practicing our letter joins in handwriting, rolling and reading our new words and so much more!