We are learning all about Minibeasts in P1 at the moment.

This week we are finding out all about Bees and how important they are for our world.

What we know about bees?

TC – Bees eat honey

HD – IF you are naughty to them they will sting you.

LHF – If you touch them they will sting you.

ED – If you touch them they bite and they buzz.

LL – Bees have honey. They make a home. They eat honey. When you be nice to them they go around you.

JP – If you stand on them they sting you.

Do bees want to sting you?

LM – No – because they want to you be friends with them.

HH – When the bee stings you it dies!

We watched a film about an important job that bees do…

What is the job of the bees?

KD – The bees help the flowers grown.

LL – It can make any fruit grow – apple, peach, pear or orange!

We know now that they take POLLEN from one flower to another.

EA – It is stuck to their legs!

If the bees die, what will happen?

BD – We won’t be able to grow and fruit or flowers.

LS – We wouldn’t have any food,

KD – We would be hungry.

What can we do to help?

RS – Not squash them

BD – We need to make pollen for them.

We are going to plant some special ‘Happy Bee’ plants in our P1 garden.

What will we do if bees come to our garden?

HH – We will see them – we wont be scared.

LL – We will say welcome bees!

BD – We won’t pick the flowers – we will let them grow.

Hello ‘Making Good Choices’ Readers!

Welcome to the new academic year. I am now teaching a fantastic group of P1 children – aged 4 and 5 years old.

We will be starting off our ‘Making Good Choices’ work by making a connection with our ‘Minibeasts’ topic. We are going to learn all about BEES! and their importance for a sustainable future.

Mrs J x

We have been learning about what plants need to grow and develop:

• SF: Heat
• SW: Light
• KC: Soil to grow in, to get food from.
• AA: Water

We looked at our bean plants and thought about why some look healthier than others:

• CS: What is funny is that the less healthy ones have grown taller than the healthy one.
• RB: The tall ones have been trying to reach up high enough to get the light that they need.
• CS/RB: We need to put them in a sunny place, somewhere where someone isnt blocking the light.
• KC: We could put them out in the garden.

We took the seeds and planted them outside in the hope that the weaker bean plants would be able to reach the light that they needed to become healthier.

We noticed that the healthiest bean plant was just sitting in the water – not even really into the soil so we learned that beans LOVE water!

We are excited about Red Nose Day today and we are wearing our pyjamas and having a Comedy Gig to raise money and celebrate the day. But we wanted to take a moment to think about why it is a good choice to raise money for Comic Relief and what it helps people to do…

What is Red Nose Day for?

• KC – RND helps raise money for people to live and helps them be so happy.
• KA-H – It is so people get food.
• JH – We raise money so that people can get food and water.
• JW – Not dirty water – the clean kind that people can drink. The good water.
• LC – You raise money.
• AA – It helps people get healthy.
• KL – They need food to help them eat.

We watched this video about Adoja and Sharifa…

Why does she want to go to school so much?

• CS – To make good choices.
• KA-H – To learn.
• KC – To help her know what life is about in school.
• JW – To learn numbers.
• JC – To learn stuff.
• LC – To write.
• SW – How to count.
• AA – To get healthy food.
• RB – To learn skills.

Why is it important to know all these things?

• KL – to get better.
• JC – To get smart and to get money for food. If you are smart you get money. You can go to work.
• KC – She wants to get better at knowing more stuff.

We made posters showing all the reasons that it is important to go to school!

What is stopping the little girl from going to school?

• EM – She actually had a job. It wasnt a good job.
• RB – She was selling charcoal – it is something that starts a fire.
• CS – If they didnt sell charcoal the family wouldnt get any money.

What can Comic Relief do to help?

Comic Relief says…

“Teachers at a kindergarten run by Street Girls Aid urged Adjoa to send her daughter to regular lessons. The young girl was already behind in her education and they said if Adjoa did not have enough money to cover lunch fees, books or uniform, they would not turn her away. The project is the local partner of Street Child Africa, which receives money raised through Red Nose Day to support parents and provide good quality early years teaching to children who would not otherwise be in school.”

At the end of our discussion P2A felt really proud that we had been able to do something in our school to raise money to help other children around the world go to school just like we do. What a great way to use a Friday morning!

Yesterday we went on a walk over the Forth Road Bridge, and today we talked about all the water that we saw flowing under the bridge.

We watched the video clip in an earlier blog post about saving water and talked about why it was important to save water.

“I know that the water comes down as rain, goes into the drains and then goes out to the sea.” (CR)

Why do we need to save water?

• Because if we have no water there will be nowhere for the fish and the sharks to live. (MC).
• If people use too much water there will be no more water for people to have and we will have nothing to drink. (KC).
• If you use too much water there will be no water to have a bath and a shower. SW.
• There will be no water for the earth to live. (SF).
• If you don’t have any water you will get dehydrated. (RB)
• Animals need to drink as well to give us meat and milk. (MC).

There seems to be loads of water – why do we need to worry about running out?

• We could still run out because there are loads and loads of people who need water! (RB)
• Lots of the water isn’t clean enough for us to drink. (RB)
• You can drink the water out of your tap. (RS)

What can we do to save water?

• Could you melt down ice to make water? (EM)
• Just take a wee bit of a drink and save the rest for later (CR)
• Turn the tap off when you don’t need it (RK).
• Turn the tap off when you have been using it (CR)
• Only use a half cup (JH).
• We could have a quick shower instead of a bath to use less water (JC).
• Use bucket rather than a hose (RS).

A message from Mrs Jeffries…

At Christmas this year I left my school in Dunfermline to take up a new post at a school on the west side of Edinburgh.

I am still working in P2 and I am continuing the ‘Making Good Choices’ project with my new class – P2A.

P2A is a group of 22 children who live in Edinburgh, Scotland.

We looked back at the subjects covered on this blog so far and we looked back at the first post about use of paper.

We watched the clip on that post and read the ’10 Things I can Do To Help My World’ book and we started to think about using paper…

What we learned from the video clip:

• You can use paper to make things rather than putting it in the bin – like wrapping up a gift or making a diary – AA
• You should always reuse the paper – EM
• You don’t chuck it the bin – JW
• You can recycle it – EM

Why is it important to save paper?

• We use trees to make the paper – RB
• Animals live in trees – EM
• We are loosing important parts of our world – AA
• The trees provide food and shelter for lots of animals – KC
• Protect us from the weather – JW
• Stop the storm water from flooding us – KC
• The more trees we keep chopping down the less air we have – KC
• Trees clean the air – HN

WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO IN OUR CLASS TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE?

1. Use both sides of each piece of paper. (AA, RK, SW, JC and HN)
2. Only use a little bit of paper each day (CS)
3. Do your drawing on a little piece of paper (JW)
4. Use small cut off bits of paper for making. (KC)
5. Recyle it when it is used. (RB).

Today we talked about our blog.

We learned:

• A ‘blog’ is a regularly updated website or web page, typically one run by an individual or small group.
• The word ‘blog’ is short for ‘web log’ which is a log (a record of where you are on your journey) which is placed on the web (the internet).
• We learned that the internet is a huge invisible web of information where people can share what they know and what they think with one another. We have placed our blog on this web so that people can follow our journey and share our ideas.
• We learned that ‘google’ is a way to search through the web.
• We learned at lots of other things we have heard about like ‘facebook’ are also parts of the internet.