All posts by Mrs Cooney-Schoenhofen

P5 update from August and September

Over the past couple of months, P5 have been learning a lot about the Titanic and have even made a huge wall display of it; each making their own cabins and/or lifeboats. Did you know, there were only 20 lifeboats on the real Titanic but it should have had 64?!

The children also took part in a STEM activity to see if they could make a tinfoil boat that floated and could carry coins. We certainly have some budding engineers in our class!

In Health and Wellbeing, we each created our own Colour Monsters to explore feelings and emotions. They’re on display outside our classroom if you’d like to come and meet them.

In RE we listened to and discussed the story of Father Damien who lived with sufferers of leprosy. He was such a kind and inspirational man; he made a real difference to this outcast community.

As part of our topic The Titanic, the children worked in groups to try to put the inventions/events in order. It should give some parents out there a wee chuckle!

 

The children worked in groups to demonstrate working in canon, mirroring each other and matching.

P5 have been exploring movement: balance, weight through arms, jumping, inversion and rotation.

At the beginning of the year, our P5s worked in groups on 2D Shape.

The first Golden Time in the class saw our pupils working together socially in small groups. We even had a domino rally!

 

Our class were given potatoes FROM OUR GARDEN!! We made 4 kinds of potato wedges from them and they didn’t last long!

We also hosted a MacMillan Coffee Morning and raised £425! Well done to everyone involved and a huge thank you to everyone who baked, bought or donated – we couldn’t have done it without you.

 

Summer Term in P4/5

We have been learning about India this term. These beautiful Rangoli patterns have been inspired by the Hindu tradition for festivals.

We have also done some beautiful artwork as part of our work on Pentecost and Corpus Christi.

Whilst some of our class were preparing for the school show, the rest were doing STEM activities. They worked on Beebots and Spheros, aswell as building bridges and towers. These children did a great job presenting their work to the rest of the class.

P4/5 March Reflective Friday

On the 8th of March, we released the brown trout alevins into the Calder. We each had a container of 3 or 4 fish. One of our favourite parts was pouring them into the water. It was really good to get fresh air and a chat with our friends on the way to release the fish. It was great seeing them in the river for the first time. Some of us felt it was a bit sad because we had been looking after them for 6 weeks but it was great to see them searching for – and finding – food for themselves! Some of us felt a bit nervous for them because we noticed a lot of rubbish like glass, plastic, branches, crisp packets, bottle tops, broken bikes and so on in the water.

 

 

We have been learning about plastic pollution after releasing them because we saw all that rubbish. We have watched videos about the harm that is done to fish and other creatures in the sea and we’ve been talking about how to stop using so much plastic. We have been writing persuasive letters to people to convince them to stop using single-use plastic.

Don’t use so much plastic.

Recycle plastic.

Reuse plastic.

Don’t litter.

Don’t waste plastic.

At this month’s Merit Assembly, Sophia and Logan showed everyone their presentation about the Brown Trout.

 

This month, we have also been learning about the church and what being an altar server means. We have prepared questions to ask existing altar servers. Oscar has even just become an altar server! Well done, Oscar!

 

Science Week was this month.

We did lots of experiments including:

Skittles in hot water: the Skittles melted and the water turned different colours.

Bouncy egg: we put one egg in vinegar and waited 24 hours and when we took it out, there was no shell but it was bouncy!

Bending water: we got a static charge on a ruler and put it beside running water from the tap.

Blow-up balloon: We put a balloon over a jar of vinegar and bicarbonate of soda and it blew up the balloon!

We even tried some experiments that didn’t quite go to plan! It was great fun. Some of us tried them at home.

 

Some of us made non-fiction books about our interests such as guinea pigs, horses and Fifa.

 

It was also World Book Day.

We came to school in costumes or in our pyjamas and we read books and went round the classes. In our class, we read Friend or Foe by Michael Morpurgo about World War II and children being evacuated.

 

Going Bananas for Fairtrade

We held an event in Fairtrade Fortnight to raise awareness of Fairtrade. The children had great fun decorating Fairtrade bananas, eating Fairtrade bananas and other healthy snacks at our chocolate fountain stall, baking using Fairtrade products such as Fairtrade sugar and also showing their support of Fairtrade by getting their faces painted with the Fairtrade logo.

Here are some photos from the event which raised more than £500 for Mary’s Meals!

P4/5 Reflective Friday post

We have been given a huge responsibility in our class: a hatchery to take care of and prepare for our new arrivals, the brown trout eggs. We have been working hard to keep the water clean and cold.

 

However, it’s not all hard work in P4/5. We learned a bit about Robert Burns today as it’s his birthday. We learned what the song Auld Lang Syne is about and we sang it together while joining hands, just like we do at Hogmanay!

 

Clyde in the Classroom – Trout Eggs

We are so excited about getting fish eggs to look after in P4/5! We chose a good spot for them, near a socket but far from radiators, and Clyde in the Classroom delivered our hatchery on Friday so we can start taking practising taking care of the eggs before they are delivered next Monday! We have lots of water bottles in the freezer to make big ice packs but could do with some more, please, so any empty screw-cap bottles of water, please please sent them our way!  Thanks!

P4/5’s Reflective Thursday: December

What a busy month and it hasn’t even finished yet!

We started the month with a trip to the pantomime to see Jack and the Beanstalk. The boys and girls said it was brilliant! They really enjoyed the songs and the acting and had many, many favourite characters including the mum, the giant, MooMoo, Archie, Jack, the princess and Fairy Flora.

The boys are girls also contributed to the impressive grand total raised by the parent council at the Christmas Fayre by making tree decorations in the shape of reindeer faces and snowmen made of marshmallows. Well done everyone!

It was P4/5’s First Friday Mass this month, too, which focused on the season of Advent. The boys and girls did a wonderful job handing out hymn sheets, taking part in the offertory and being on the altar to do readings, bidding prayers and more. Mrs Daisley and Mrs Cooney were immensely proud of everyone who practised for our special mass.

This month we have had a special visitor to the class; one of Santa Claus’ special helpers, Ralph the Elf. He has visited every pupil in P4/5 and has given them all a letter and a chocolate. He had some serious messages for the boys and girls about how to stay on Santa’s Nice list. We all really like Ralph and here are some reasons why: he’s friendly but respectful; makes lots of spelling mistakes; he’s funny, smiley and silly; he makes us laugh and has big ears!

We also had the pleasure of watching the infants’ nativity show. The P4/5s used some excellent adjectives to describe it: nice, cool, good, amazing, brilliant, extraordinary, fabulous… and their favourite characters were the donkey – who was cute – and Nisha the inn keeper who is Zak’s little sister!

The P5s were very lucky and got a chance to go on a wee trip to do Arts and Crafts. They made presents and stable shapes using tiling and mosaics; they sang a silly song called Bubblegum and Fluff and played team games and quizzes. While the P5s were away, the P4s did their own arts and crafts in class, making wreaths and advent candles.

Finally, we enjoyed our Christmas party on Tuesday where we danced in traditional Scottish ceilidh dances and played some party games.

I daresay the boys and girls in P4/5 are now far too tired for Christmas so let’s just skip it this year – give Santa a year off!!

P4/5’s November Reflective Friday Entry

In November, P4/5 did lots of exciting things.

We had a teacher called Miss Grant who was really nice and kind. She came to help Mrs Daisley and Mrs Cooney

We went to the cinema to see Fantastic Mr Fox and it was really exciting. We wrote a recount all about our trip to Cineworld at Silverburn and it was all thanks to Miss McGuire who got us the tickets! Thanks Miss McGuire!

We learned about money and we used real money on Poppy Day! We organised it together with Miss Gallagher and P5/6 and we raised lots of money while having a great time! We enjoyed learning all about Remembrance Day, that it’s been a hundred years since World War 1 ended at 11 o’clock on the 11th day of the 11th month. We also learned that poppies grew in Flanders Field when there was a break in fighting. We found out about the conditions of the soldiers who had to sleep in the trenches in places called dugouts. We learned that they got hardly any sleep, very little food and they were surrounded by barbed wire and sewage. As a result of these conditions, they developed trench foot which is when their toes fell off. Yuck!

Mrs Paterson from Mossend Primary came to read us a story called The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. She’s the head teacher there so we were extremely lucky that she picked our class to read to.

We made firework safety posters and learned that you should never wear gloves while holding a sparkler.

We got a new pupil in our class called Josh. Hi Josh!

We learned all about how to write instructions for things we have made such as poppies and Christmas decorations.