As part of their John Muir work P5N went out on to the school field in pairs armed with a ruler and a trundle wheel and were tasked with measuring the height of the trees.

A cooler afternoon than group 1 had yesterday but still a great day for investigating plant diversity in Sanquhar Woods. We too had time to enjoy exploring then sitting and working in our ‘special place’.

We all agreed that ice cream is one of our favourite desserts. Most of us buy it from the supermarket. One or two of us have ice cream makers at home. None of us had made it using ice, salt, cream, milk, yoghurt and a bit of elbow grease. But now we have!

In our Science context we are learning about changes in materials.  Today we made observations about what happens when substances are added to water.  We mixed salt, flour, soil and sand with water and found that the salt dissolved but the others didn’t. The next step was to investigate the filtering process to separate substances from water.  This helped us to understand more about the differences between soluble and insoluble substances.  Our next step will be to use our notes and findings to write up our experiments.

P7H took to the playground to revise their mental and written multiplication methods.  Groups had 3 minutes at each question station where they had to decide on a method and find the answer together.  If they finished with time to spare they played clapping, chanting and racing games to help memorise their multiplication facts.

These Primary 4 and 5 boys certainly are.  All of them are making very good progress with their tennis skills.  They are showing good control when rallying with different partners and love playing the game ‘I’m in Heaven’.

This week the children participated in a blind food tasting session: the aim was to investigate the link between our sense of taste and sense of smell. The children also thought about whether the foods were sweet, sour, bitter, salty, spicy, etc.

Today we began to understand the term ‘bio-diversity’.  We looked at images of living things found in woodland and began to realise there was a large variety of plant life, insects, animals and birds to be found.  Next we were tasked to collect small samples of plant life such as clover, leaf litter, bark, pine needles, lichen, and so on.  The best bit was going back to sit in our ‘special place’ to arrange our collections onto a sticky strip. We got the chance to show our partners our work and discuss our samples.  Again the weather was warm and sunny and it was nice to be in the dappled shade of the woods this afternoon.  Thank you to all the mums who came to help today.

At the end of last term, the P7 French class got to sample some French food.  This came after a lot of hard work spent learning vocabulary for food and writing their own scripts for ordering food at a restaurant.

On offer was Ratatouille, Baguette, Croissant, Brie, Port Salut, Roule, Ardennes Pâté and Crêpes au chocolat.  Some items were unfamilair to some but everyone sampled everything and it was quickly devoured.  The general concensus was that french food is….. délicieux!

P6/7M’s last session of PE at Forres Academy was hands down the most fun – we had a go at Boxing and Sparring.  Everyone got the chance to wear the gloves and ‘jab and cross’ at our partner who was wearing the pads.  The best part was having a go at sparring against the dummy knicknamed by many as ‘Bob’.  Even Mrs McRitchie and Mrs Galbraith got the gloves on and had a go!