Category Archives: Uncategorized

Our First Day in Amsterdam

May 23, 2016 User deactivated

That’s us in Amsterdam. We started our day with a slightly delayed KLM flight and arrived in Amsterdam in the afternoon. Once we had landed, we were met by a lady who had organised a bus to take us to our hotel. We dropped our bags off at the hotel and went to the dining area to have some lunch. We also got split into three different groups led by Mr Robson, Mrs Santi and Mrs Yedd.
Once we had finished, we hopped onto a bus that took us to a City Sightseeing Tour Bus that would take us around eleven parts of Amsterdam, telling us all about the different areas and its history. On this trip we saw famous landmarks such as, The Secret Annex, famous canals, the only windmill left in the city centre and the Jewish History Museum. Some of us were already a little tired and had a small snooze on the bus!
At the end of the tour, we ventured back to our hotel, where we were given the keys to our hotel rooms and told who we would be sharing with. With a little time to settle in to our rooms, we got to relax a little and unpack. The teachers then came in to check on us to see how things were going, before dinner.
At dinner, we got the chance to sit with our friends and talk about our rooms and favourite parts of the day. We can’t wait for the next few days and all the adventures to come!
By Maddie, Susie and Lilah

Class Trip, Latest News

Mearns Castle Transitions

May 16, 2016 Gayle Santi

Some pupils from Calderwood Lodge have recently gone to Mearns Castle for extended transitions.

At the extended transitions you get to meet some staff who work at the school. This is a great opportunity to be shown all around the school and told all about what the school is like and what we should expect when we go there.

A little while after the extended transitions, two pupils from Mearns Castle, who had been former pupils at Calderwood Lodge, visited our class. Their names were Ryan and Olivia. We remember them well from when they came to Calderwood. They are now Mearns Castle pupils and came to tell us when the whole class all about the school and what to expect from transitions. They told us about the clubs we can attend, the classes, the teachers, the school uniform and what subjects you will take. They also talked about which house you will be in and who your year head will be.

This was a great chance to ask questions and hopefully ease any nerves we had.

Not long now!

By Josh and Amy

-My Achievements, Class Trip, Expressive Arts, Literacy and English, Religious and Moral Education, Technologies

Yom Hashoah

March 22, 2016 Gayle Santi

The Yom Hashoah Project

The Primary 7 class has been working on a project led by Mrs Hyman (Freddie’s mum!). We were all given the task of going away and creating our own ICT collages based on a person who lived through World War II.

We have been learning about Ben Helfgott and ‘the boys’. Many of the people that we have chosen to work on were children in the Holocaust and separated from their families. Many now live in the U.K and we have looked at and learned a little about what their lives are like now.

With the people we have chosen, we have selected pictures and words that link to them and help people to learn more about them.

When we had all finished our collages, we had them printed on to fabrics which are now going to be sewn onto a cloth which we will keep, as a pillow or a tea towel.

Our collages will also be shown at an event for people to see them. Ben Helfgott is also going to be coming to the Yom Hashoah event at Giffnock Synagogue to speak. He was actually in the Olympics as a weightlifter and even won a gold medal!

In these lessons with Mrs Hyman, we have put colour on to the cloth to brighten it up, we have also been stitching the fabric into the cloth and some of us were just learning how the stich.

The people we have chosen, we have picked because there was something about them or their story that stood out to us and inspired us.

By Susie Tenby

Class Trip, Religious and Moral Education

Chanukah

December 14, 2015 Gayle Santi

chnaukah

Every year, Calderwood Lodge celebrates the Jewish festival of Chanukah. All of the world Jewish communities celebrate this festival and in Calderwood Lodge we feel that it is a great time to show how much we appreciate everything we have in life.

In our school, the primary four class preformed The Story of Chanukah at the school Chanukah Assembly. Other performances included:

A group of primary sevens preforming the Chanukah story by taking song lyrics from the well-known musical “Les Miserable” and turning them into Chanukah related lyrics,
Children playing Chanukah songs on the violin or viola,
The school choir preforming their Chanukah songs to the whole school.

We also go down to our school hall each afternoon and watch a selected child from each class say the brachot and light the Chanukah candles.

This year, all the classes have had the opportunity to visit Shul and light the cnadles there. You can read more about that in Hassan’s blog entry.

Chanukah is about rededication and remembering the great miracle that happened many years ago. It is also about showing thankfulness to the people around us that we sometimes forgot and also forget how much that person has helped us. It is also about having fun and continuing the Chanukah traditions that are carried out every year by people all over the world.

Happy Chanukah Everyone

By Madeline Friel

Class Trip, Religious and Moral Education

Candle Lighting at Shul

December 10, 2015 Gayle Santi

On Tuesday, P5, P6, P7 went to Giffnock Shul. We went to Shul this week because we are celebrating Chanukah. When we arrived, each of the boys had to wear Kippot to respect the Jewish Religion. We read the afternoon prayers with Rabbi Eli and afterwards we lighted the candles on the Menorah.

When we finished prayers, we had sugary doughnuts, chocolate doughnuts and orange juice and also the Rabbi gave us gifts which were dreidels, to help us to celebrate Chanukah. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and found the Jewish traditions very interesting.

By Hassan Hashmi

Class Trip, Health and Wellbeing, Latest News, Literacy and English, Religious and Moral Education

Mitzvah Day

November 26, 2015 Gayle Santi

On Thursday 26^th November, the Primary 7 class visited the People’s Palace, as part of our World War Two topic. Once we had finished with our workshops and had lunch, we drove over to Westacres Care Home as part of our Mitzvah Day activity.

The Primary 1 class had all made lovely Chanukah cards as part of their Mitzvah Day activities. Since they are all a little young to visit Westacres, we took the cards and delivered them all for them. When we arrived, we sang a number of Chanukah songs for the residents and Lilah and Maddie played a Chanukah song on their violins. We also brought our writing jotters along with us to read them stories that we had written at school. By the looks of it, some of the men and women fantastically enjoyed them!

At the end, we sang once again because they had enjoyed it so much first time round. We sang a few Chanukah songs such as Ner Li, Maoz Tzur, and Sevivon. They all gave us a massive clap at the end. Some also said that we were amazing!

To end off our visit we decided to sing Bim Bom because everyone loves that song! We said goodbye to the elderly people and they us to come visit us again soon! I think we did a great mitzvah by visiting the elderly people and hopefully we can do it more often through the year and not wait a whole year for Mitzvah Day again.

Vaneeza Ali

Class Trip, Social Studies

Our Trip to the People’s Palace – WWII Workshop

November 26, 2015 Gayle Santi

Today the Primary 7 class went to the People’s Palace as part of our World War Two topic in school.

To start the trip, we met Laura who asked us lots of questions about World War Two, to see how much we had been learning. We got lots of questions correct! We then split into two groups. One of the groups went to the dairy shop and learned all about rationing. We learnt that you had a ration book and had to get it stamped every time they did a shop, we also learnt that you would get a block of cheese that would have to be shared between a family of 5 or more 5 and it would have to last about 3 weeks. We asked about the other foods and what might happen if you had allergies or needed Kosher food.
While Group 1 were at the Dairy, the other group were given a clipboard with a piece of paper which had a series of questions to answer and they had to find the answers in the museum.

Once both groups had a turn at both areas, we all got together again to take part in some role play and some of us even got to dress up. There were four groups: Woman’s Land Army; children and babies with gasmasks; first aid kits and injuries and Anderson shelters. We learned a lot here and got some great photographs too.

After that we all got to have lunch in the Winter Gardens in the lunch area and we all got a lot of time to eat and enjoy some time with each other. After we had finished our lunch we all got to look at all the interesting plants and trees that you don’t normally see in parks and gardens. It was a great day and it will help us a lot with our own curricular event for WWII when the parents visit.

By Amy Quigley

The whole class!

Questions about WWII

The Dairy Shop

An Anderson Shelter

What to take with us?

Real life War experiences!

-My Achievements, Class Trip, Health and Wellbeing

Swimming

October 8, 2015 Gayle Santi

This year, the Primary 7 class have been first to start their swimming lessons. We go to Eastwood Swimming Pool every Thursday for a 6 week block.
We all started off by getting changed for swimming and getting everything ready and putting a pound in the locker for all of our stuff. Once everybody is ready, we all start head for the pool. For our first lesson, we were all very excited to jump in the pool. To begin, we had to do the front crawl in pairs from the shallow end to the deep end.
In other lessons, we have been working on our back stroke with a float. The teacher is always there to give us help along the way.
At the end of each lesson, we all get to dive or jump into the pool and choose our favourite stroke to swim a length.
We asked a few people about their thoughts on the swimming:

Gabby “I enjoy having swimming lessons because when we started in Primary 7, I wasn’t able to do the front crawl and now I am getting much better”.

Freddie “It’s fun and healthy at the same time”.

Amy “Our teachers are really helpful, they are always giving us tips on how we can improve”.

Class Trip, Literacy and English

Edinburgh Book Festival

September 11, 2015 Gayle Santi

Edinburgh International Book Festival 2015

In August, Primary Three, Five and Seven were lucky enough to visit the Edinburgh International Book Festival. The book festival is now a key event in the Edinburgh festival season, celebrated annually in Scotland’s capital city.

Each year writers and illustrators from all over the world come to the book festival and incorporate amazing workshops for schools and visitors.

This year Primary Seven met Nick Sharratt and Vivian French. We were even lucky enough to be able to work with the two of them in an extremely detailed and enjoyable workshop. They helped us to learn new skills that would help us all to improve our illustrating and writing. We learned about the start of Nick Sharratt’s career and the fact that he drew a market square at the age of nine and took it into school to show to his teacher and she thought it was good enough to be put up in the school hall! That was the day he became determined to, one day, become a professional artist.

After we had completed our workshop we continued to explore the book festival and discovered the bookshop. Most of the class had brought money to buy a book. We were fortunate enough to be given a discount voucher for three pounds off the price of any book of our choice.

At the festival there were ‘book doctors’. These were people that gave advice on books and helped you make the right choice before buying one or even a series of books. Not everyone used the book doctors which is understandable because some people prefer to choose books themselves. I used the book doctor and found them really helpful.

Before we headed home, the last thing we did was spend time walking around taking pictures and meeting actors and actresses who were playing a variety of characters from all sorts of books. They were extremely good at playing their chosen roles.

Overall, everyone enjoyed the day and I hope that we can go back again, if not as a class, I will definitely go back with friends some day.

By Madeline Friel

Primary Seven

Class Trip, Health and Wellbeing

Safety in the Park

September 3, 2015 Gayle Santi

Safety in the Park

Primary Seven went on a school trip to Arthurlie Park 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.
The children were split into groups of five to six people and each group attended certain activities at various times.
At one of the main activities which taught children a lesson about ‘stranger danger’, many people followed. One member of staff dressed as a ‘stranger’, advised that children should follow her. Little did some children know, there was a policeman observing the whole scenario, and then explained to the children why they should not have followed the woman.
The stations were all there to help us to make sensible and safe choices

1) Drink Station
Here we got to try out ‘Beer Goggle’ to see how alcohol can affect your vision.
Gabby “this station taught me how horrible and dizzy you could end up feeling if you drink alcohol”.

Safety in the Park

Primary Seven went on a school trip to Arthurlie Park 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.

The children were split into groups of five to six people and each group attended certain activities at various times.

At one of the main activities which taught children a lesson about ‘stranger danger’, many people followed. One member of staff dressed as a ‘stranger’, advised that children should follow her. Little did some children know, there was a policeman observing the whole scenario, and then explained to the children why they should not have followed the woman.

The stations were all there to help us to make sensible and safe choices

Drink Station Gabby “this station taught me how horrible and dizzy you could end up feeling if you drink alcohol”. Here we got to try out ‘Beer Goggle’ to see how alcohol can affect your vision.
Stranger Danger Amy “I felt embarrassed that I followed the lady who didn’t have any identification. It was very easy to be convinced by somebody who we shouldn’t have been trusting”.
Rethink your drink
We discussed good drinks and bad drinks for people and how some drinks are a little deceitful with their advertising. Rachel “I was surprised by how much sugar was in Diet Coke and Coca Cola Life”
Community Safety Here we discussed dog fouling, graffiti and the penalties these can bring about. Maddie “It surprised me that you could get fined up to £500 for dog fouling!”
Road Safety Amy “it is often presumed that it is the driver’s fault in a bike accident, but quite often it might be the cyclist’s fault”.
Cyber Safety At this station, we learned about how easy it is for information to be revealed online, without you realising you are doing it. Online activity can be very dangerous and this station raised the awareness of many of us. Gabby “even the smallest detail can reveal so much about your life that you don’t realise”
Fire safety Freddie “whenever you have a campfire, you must put rocks around it, in order to prevent the spreading of fire”.