November 2023 – Banton Biggies

Outdoor Learning Day

The day started with a touch of frost. Despite this we tackled the Bee hotel wild flower beds. These have become full of grass with no flowers. We have dug out the grass, and will cover them up over the winter. in spring we will seed some more will flowers. We added some sand to make the soli a bit less rich and covered them which will hopefully kill any remains grass to make room for the flowers.

Camera Stand challenge

We feed the birds in the playground and have a NatureWatch camera to take photos of our visitors. The class were challenged to make a better camera stand, that could be adjustable and move around on a tricky slope.

Estimating Weight

Next we worked on some estimating weight for maths. Everybody got a small contained and filled it with sand. They then weighed their own box but did not tell anyone else. The children then estimated all of each other boxes. We will calculate the best estimator when we are doing some inside maths. There are some accurate estimates.

Photos & Poems

In the afternoon we took our iPads out to catch some photos of the winter light, it was a lovely bright, but cold day. We also wrote some haiku inspired by the season.

Firepit

We ended the day reading our haiku round the fire pit and finishing off with some marshmallows s’mores.

Children round a fire toasting marshmallows.

New Podcast out BBP episode 8

BBP episode 8 haiku and poetry

Steady Hands Stage 1

We have started a new STEM project. Building some Steady Hand games for our Christmas Fayre.

Children working on making a steady hand game with wire & cardboard boxes

Yesterday me and my class were making steady hand games in the makerspace for the Christmas fayre. The games that buzz at you when you touch a shaped wire with a hoop.
Nathaniel

We were making a steady hand game it is a game you need to get all the way across if it beeps you are out. We were in the maker space and mr j wanted us to make a cool game. We made it because all the classes need to make thing for the Christmas fair so people would pay 10p to play and if they win the game you will get a sweet.
Alex

I also used my skills to make a box which is stable enough which was done using the make-do so that I can connect the metal wire to the box and have it not fall over.
I have also included a light and buzzer but doing that made the buzzer take all the power and the light wouldn’t turn on and the buzzer barely went.
Harry

I was with Alexia we had some mistakes like when we were duck taping the crocodile clips but the thing kept falling off it was frustrating but we got to the end eventually we just have to connect the wire.
Faith

In the MakerSpace me and my partner learned how to solve problems, one of the main problems we had was when one of the wires was not working, although it was tedious my partner and I got all the wires tested and turns out the one to actually play the game with was broken, when we found that out we had to swap the wire and wire the game up and it was worth it because it worked really well afterwards.
Olivia

The pupils worked really well with their partners, using their experience with circuits and working with cardboard. I a looking forward to seeing them when they are finished.

We have a couple more stages to go and will be making other games for the attendees of our Christmas Fayre.

Arcade Fun

Yesterday the class joined in with the Create-a-long session broadcast in Teams by Digital NL and Education Scotland as part of #CSScotland23.

We had a bit of bother with the sound, so had get caught up this morning.

The session showed how to make a simple maze game with Microsoft MakeCode Arcade. The class changed the games a little to have a Christmas theme, we hope to use them at our Christmas Farye.

I was impressed by how easily the class managed to work around any problems. Their experience with micro:bit coding and scratch helped.

After we finished the game we started loading them onto our kitronic arcade devices. This took a bit of patience as our AirDrop has become flaky recently.

A montage of screenshots some makecode arcade games. — Screenshot of the games online

The children have lots of ideas on how to extend the games and are exploring the tutorials to find other ones that we can use. Here are links to some of the games. I’ve not got links of them all yet.

Banton Mill

Last Friday we went a trip to Banton Mill. The was organised by Mr Carter, Mr Morecroft & Mr Barrie. Mr Barrie is the owner of the mill which is now the headquarters of Calders and the home of around 30 businesses. Mr Carter & Mr Morecroft are local history experts.

We learnt about how the mill operated, the water wheel and how it connected to the machinery. We also found out a lot about mill workers and the way the building had changed.

We had a tour underneath the mill to se where the water wheel used to turn, and the remains of the old spinning rooms.

Back in school we investigated how water wheels turn and made model pulley systems from lego.