In RME this week, we have been learning about Hanukkah.

Hanukkah is the Jewish festival of light.

An evil king wanted everyone to follow his beliefs. Judah Maccabee did not want to follow his rules so gathered an army to fight. The army won so returned to the temple in Jerusalem. The temple had been destroyed so they began to repair it. As they were repairing it they found an oil can which would light a candle for 1 day. The candle stayed lit for 8 days and 8 nights.

Jewish people light 8 candles on a Menorah to celebrate the festival of Hanukkah.

We wrote the events of the story of Hanukkah on 8 candles and sequenced them on a Menorah.

On Tuesday 27th September, coach Jordan from the Ayrshire Tornadoes came in to do a basketball taster session with us. We all had a great time developing our basketball skills and improving our fitness through fun games and activities!

Some of our finished paintings!

We are really proud of our art work and have used it to create a wall display in the corridor!

We studied Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” art work. We thought about adjectives which popped into our head when we looked at the painting.

fresh                            joyful                           bright                          comforting                     happiness            

cheerful                          sunny                               summer                          calm                refreshing                   

beautiful                            yellow

We began by drawing a pencil sketch. We then used paint to colour our sunflowers.

We have been learning about Vincent Van Gogh. We used both the internet and a fact sheet which we read to note down some facts about him.

 He was a post-impressionist painter – Owen

Van Gogh became famous after his death – Thomas

He was named after his grandfather – Lewis

He was born in the Netherlands – Olivia

He cut off his own ear – Emma

As a child he was silent and thoughtful – Teigan

Van Gogh only sold 1 painting while he was alive called “The Red Vineyard” – Ailie

He died at the age of 37 – Emma

Born: March 30th 1853, Died: 29th July 1890 – James  

We have been set a homework challenge to prepare a solo talk on a famous artist. We got some class time to use the laptops to do some research. We were encouraged to take notes which we could then take home to use to help us prepare for our talk.

We are really excited to hear each others talks and find out some new information about a variety of artists.

We have been learning basketball skills in P.E. This week we played mini games and we were all very competitive! Here are some action shots from some of our games!!!

We have been developing skills such as dribbling, passing and shooting!

“I enjoy playing basketball because it is helping me improve my ball skills.” Sophie

“I’m really enjoying basketball. I enjoy shooting and I get a really good feeling when I manage to get the ball in the net!” Lilia

“Basketball is good because it helps us to learn to work together in a team.” Myia

Each week a few children from the class share a wider achievement. They can present their achievement in any way they want and we have had children do things such as show photos on a power point presentation, bring in trophies and display something which they have collected. At the end of the talk, the rest of the class are invited to ask questions. We all really enjoy getting to hear some of the interesting things which our class mates get up to outside of school.

Here are some pictures of some wider achievements that we have heard so far!

We created our own Rennie Mackintosh stained glass windows. We first drew line drawings to create the outline. We stuck wool to these lines for the lead effect. We finished by painting the stained glass in bold colours.

And finally some of the finished products…

We harvested apples from the school orchard and used them to make a toffee apple cake. We took turns of mixing the ingredients but we all got a taste of the cake in the end!

“It was crunchy!” Chloe

“It was yummy!” Kristopher

“The toffees made it chewy!” James & Brodie

“It was delicious!” Afton