This week Primary 7 had an outdoor learning workshop arranged by Karen in the Nursery.
We went over to the park and an Ecologist also named Karyn put together a few environmental exercises such as: working out the age of the trees, collecting different leaves, labelling parts of a tree and using a maths experiment to measure how tall the trees were.

In Autumn all the leaves on the trees change colour because of a chemical called chlorophyll, then the leaves fall off the tree. Trees that do that are called deciduous trees. Trees that stay the same all year round are called evergreen trees.

Karyn also taught us several different types of trees such as: birch, oak, spruce, cherry blossom, silver birch and horse chestnut.
Our first activity was to gather different types of leaves. Altogether we had to gather 12 different types of leaves. Some of them were; beech, birch, holly,(do not touch holly, it’s spiky!) oak, ash, alder, horse chestnut (a conquer tree) silver birch and sycamore.
The second activity was figuring out how old the trees were. One way of figuring out the age is cutting it open and counting the rings inside of the trunk but we weren’t going to do that! So instead, we got a piece of rope which had a knot every 25 centimetres and wrapped it round a tree. Then we counted each gap in 10s and that is how old the tree is.

There were also other activities including races to label parts of a tree.
Our overall experience would be 5 stars as we thoroughly enjoyed the activities!

By Talia and Hannah

P7 had been working very hard to prepare a great Rosh Hashanah Assembly for the rest of the school. Each class participated in the assembly.
P1- sang a song about apples.
P2- recited a poem about honey.
P3- presented their beautiful pomegranate art work.
P4 – made challah but it was just too yummy not to eat so instead they showed us the cloths that they designed especially for their challah.
P5 – performed a great, entertaining water dance called Ufshaftem Mayim.
P6 – sang the akeadia song which was about Avrahams big test at Mount Moria.
P7- all wrote their own parts about different aspects of Rosh Hashanah for the assembly.
Abi, Pippa, Leah, Talia, Aisha, Hannah and Ben performed a dancing extravaganza for the song Dip Your Apple by Fountainheads.
Abi inP7 also played her guitar and sang a new Rosh Hashanah song called Shana Tova, Happy New Year (Rosh Hashanah Song for Children)
We think that we can speak for everyone when we say the assembly was a huge success.

By Pippa and Abi

As you may know most classes in the school have started using dojo points. Dojo points is a reward website where each student has their own Kung Fu avatars.
You can gain Dojo points by being well behaved and doing good things! We came up with our own ways to earn points: being responsible, participating, being persistent, respectful, team work, time keeping and working to a high standard.
When we earn 150 dojo points as a class or more then we get to choose our prize such as: lunch in the park, sitting beside whomever we want, a party, etc.
If an individual person earns 15 dojo points or more, then they also get to choose from a few choices such as: sitting on a cushion, writing in pen, packing up five minutes early, etc.
Hope you have found this blog interesting!

By Talia & Zainab

Forest schools is when young children go outside into the woodland area and explore by being innovative.
Last week a group of children went to find an appropriate area for us to start our innovative scots invention.

This week we were split into groups of 3 and 4. When we arrived in our designated area, we found materials which we could use and thought of possible inventions which we could make.

We had to plan using a template given to us. We had to answer: what materials we could use, ideas that we could invent and draw and label our chosen invention.

We had a very fun time and can’t wait until next week to start building!

By Rachel and Sergei

On Thursday 25^th of August we had a school trip to Arthurlie house, in Barrhead for an educational event called  Safety In The Park.

Safety in the Park is an event to teach young children about drugs, road safety, law and your health and wellbeing. It included activities which warned you about electricity, fire safety and cyber safety.

First we were split into groups then we went to our activities.

Here are our top 3 favourite activities:

1. The first of our favourite activity  was when a man taught us about safety on social media. He showed us a pretend Facebook account and we had to point out things that were unsafe. For example,   the girl let strangers follow her, she told people where she lived and told them that she was home alone.

2. Our second favourite activity was when a man told us  not to drink alcohol and if someone over age bought a drink for someone under age they would have to pay £5,000!( WOW!). When we were asked questions and got the answer right. we got to try on the drunk goggles. They looked like ski goggles but when you put them on it felt like you were in a simulator.

3. The last fun activity was when a woman told us to go to our next activity around the corner and a woman came up to us and said,  “I’m your next activity, come with me.” So we did. She asked us our names and if we did anything nice during the summer holidays. Then out of nowhere a police man came up to us and as soon as we saw him we would be in trouble, we knew we were tricked that was an experiment to see if we would walk off with her.(a stranger)

By Pippa and Daniel.

As this is the first blog, of the year for primary 7 we will start off with the first day of school!

As we like to say (the last first day of primary school) because we are in the highest class now. It was nice to see our class mates again and our great teacher Mrs Fraser. We know our teacher’s great because we had her in P4 and now that we are in P7.

There are many new teachers in the school. I will first tell you about our Ivrit (Israeli language) teacher Mr Guetta. Mr Guetta is kind hearted and improves our Ivrit a lot by saying Ivrit words. Another amazing teacher called Miss Itcovitz teaches French and because of her we will remember lots of new vocabulary. Our class will make sure they will feel like they are at home in Calderwood Lodge.

The excitement of maybe becoming a house captain is coming. Each house represents teams for the school. There are 4 teams Emek, Galil , Negev and Sharon. Two primary 7s from each team will get to be the leader of their team. We really want to be house captain and we will try

our best for Emek and Negev . I hope you enjoyed our blog, bye.

By Ben. J  & Leah.N