Today is Mardi Gras which means Fat Tuesday. It is the day before Ash Wednesday which is the beginning of Lent. We learnt that the tradition of Mardi Gras goes back hundreds of years and explorers and settlers took the tradition worldwide.

One of the biggest Mardi Gras celebrations happens in New Orleans. We saw a King cake being made, costumes and floats being prepared and people having special masked balls.

As you can see we created our own Mardi Gras masks. They include the colours violet ( purple for justice), l’or ( gold for power) and vert (green for faith).

Enjoy your pancakes on Fat Tuesday, everyone.

Just to let you know that you have new Activelearn and Sumdog activities on your accounts. Please access them and complete as many games as you can to help with your multiplication skills.

On Sumdog, there are also reading and spelling activities for you which link to the work that we are covering in class. Please try these out to give you extra practice in the relevant skills.

Everyone was given their Fairtrade Fortnight – “Design a cup” competition sheet. Your design has to be submitted by 8th March.

Please remember that the week’s 6 spellings should be completed in your homework jotter and any of the additional activities should be brought in for marking.

In a few weeks we will be having the climate zone presentations, so please be starting to think about which zone you would like to talk about: arctic, temperate, desert or tropical and collect any materials for your model, etc.  Further information will be given about the presentation criteria soon.

ECO DAY

In Primary 4 we were learning about the importance of clean water, focusing on Article 24.

We looked at some of the water that children around the world have to drink. It is so dirty and full of germs that can make you ill or even kill you.

So we were looking at ways to make dirty water cleaner. In groups we tried different materials to filter the water to see which one worked best.

In PE we used balloons to help us develop our grip control for forehand and backhand strokes in badminton.

It was much easier to think about and control the racquet.  We then practised hitting to a partner making sure that we moved to return the balloon. We practised a sideways chasseé movement so that we could move and still look at our partner.

As part of our learning about climate zones, we have shown the four zones that we are focusing on by using colours and a key on a world map.

Primary 4 are creating stories linked to Fairtrade products and are either using Scratch or PowerPoint to create their animations.

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In HWB we were thinking about the health benefits of being active.

When we were learning about prepositions- the position of one thing in relation to another, we acted out the preposition word and in teams we had to guess the word. Some like beside and next to were similar or meant the same thing so they were trickier to guess!

Today we started our new topic by thinking about what we already know about climate zones. Some of us looked at the equator on a map of the world for the first time and the country of Greenland fascinated us because most of it is covered with snow and ice!

We will be learning about how the weather affects life in the different zones, how living things adapt to live no in the areas and how people use the different types of landscape in the arctic, temperate, tropical and desert zones.

In a few weeks everyone will have an opportunity to share their learning about their chosen zone. This can be using a model, PowerPoint, fact file or other method along with a spoken presentation. More details about this will be given out soon.

Please ensure that spelling words are written each week in your homework jotter and are brought in for me to check.

The food and activity diary that was given out  a fortnight ago should be ready for marking this week, so please make sure that it is completed and given in.

Activelearn games and Sumdog are available all the time and there has been very little recent activity, so please ensure that these resources are being used to help your skills progression.

On Sumdog, there are also spelling and reading activities linked to skills being learnt and practised in class, so this is another way in which homework can be more varied.

We have been learning about forces and the effect of friction by finding out how long it takes a car to go down ramps covered in different surfaces. We used stopwatches because the times were very quick except for the bubble wrap surface when the cars stopped!

In PE we experimented with friction and forces by playing Tug of War. 

Our biggest boy against our smallest girl is an example of unbalanced forces.

We learnt that having the correct soles in the gym hall will create friction and help us not to slip!

The final photos show an example of balanced forces; both teams were using the same amount of force, so they hardly moved.

I hope that everyone has a great few days break.

Clare fro Kodaly has been working with us in music to learn about beat and pulse. This week we started to learn about the musical notation.

In P.E. we are learning some basic badminton skills. We are learning to control the racquet to hit the shuttlecock successfully.

Here are some photos from Snowball Madness  yesterday – it was great fun!

We had a surprise when we came back in from playtime this morning!

There were footprints and we found a fox and a hedgehog with our badger at the bottom of the tree. There was a letter too! They want us to to find a new exciting and enchanting home for them to live in.

So, we set to work using visualisation to come up with ideas of places that our woodland friends could visit.

Next we will have to think about how the characters will think and feel as they enter these new and exciting settings!