On Friday 31^st of August, Miss Gunning gave us the challenge of creating a contraption which could be used to protect an egg being dropped from a height. BUT it wasn’t that simple, we had a limited amount of resources.

• A paper plate
• 3 cotton balls
• A napkin
• A piece of paper
• A plastic cup
• 3 pieces of sellotape

After creating our contraptions it was time to put them to the test. We knew that it would be messy so we used bin bags to protect the ground. Then it was time…

We started by dropping them from Miss Gunning’s shoulder height, if your egg survived then you were through to the next round. Then it got harder. Miss Gunning dropped it from an even higher height . This got most teams out, although there were 3 teams left. We went outside and tried to throw it over a meter stick and then we finally got our winners: Rehanna and Jamieleigh!

Here you can see some of the videos from the challenge.

Reported by Amy and Daisy

Click on the links to watch the videos 🙂

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As part of our ‘Big Splash Fortnight,’ P7 visited the Nautical College in Glasgow to undertake a variety of different workshops. Pupils spend time in the welding workshop and wrote their names using molten metal. They then used electricity and lightening to cut strong metal into different shapes. We had to make sure that we wore our protective goggles and overalls because there were a lot of sparks!

We also spent some time in the Seamanship Centre and were challenged to tie lots of different knots using rope. John was chosen from our group to pretend that he has been frozen at sea and experienced being put into the giant foil bag that slowly raises your temperature.

Our final workshop was working with Catriona to look at ‘Marine Engineering and Naval Architecture.’ Our group focussed on the stability of the two ships and were shown different ways to measure the stability of the ship and how to calculate an average to determine which boat would be safer to travel on.

We concluded our trip by having lunch whilst listening to a presentation about the Royal Navy and merchant ships. It was really interesting and we had a fantastic day! 🙂

Here is a video of Callum welding his initials onto metal:

We have been getting our photographs taken for the P7 yearbooks – here is a taster of things to come… 🙂

Our whole class were entered into the ‘Scottish Engineering Leaders Award’ and Arnar was  selected to have his invention  work displayed at the Public Exhibition at the Barony Hall in Glasgow last weekend. We are all really proud of Arnar! Look at his invention below.

P7 have been entered into the ‘I’m an engineer!’ competition this month. This is what we have been asked to do:

1. Build a helicopter type vehicle with at least one electric rotor
2. There should be access to see the workings and no commercially produced parts may be used
3. Testing will be around the smooth movement of the rotor, balance and proportions
4. A 3volt electric motor should be used for the circuit and a switch must be included
5. Teams will be marked on their teamwork, method of building, skill of building, design solution and testing

Miss Gunning split the class into pairs and we have worked together over the weeks to create our final pieces. We then invited the whole school to come and see our completed models and the teachers in the school voted for their favourites. It was a very hard decision to make but Reece and Chantelle (The Anime Gamers) and Charlie and Mia McCutcheon (The Nuclear Bakers) were our overall winners and will represent Holmston Primary at the grand final. We hope that you like our photographs!

On Wednesday 10th of May, some of our P6 and P7’s went to Dam Park Stadium to compete in the South Ayrshire Relay Championships. There were lots of other schools there and we were lucky that it was a nice day. Miss Gunning, Miss Robson and Callum’s mum came across with us and cheered us on too! We have some really fast runners at Holmston and a few of our teams came first in the heats. ( I think that we were the loudest school when it came to cheering others on). We hope that you like the photographs that were taken by some of us on the day 🙂

On Friday we went litter picking down past Ayr College. This was after an input from one of our community support workers called Peter who told us all about litter picking and the penalties that you can receive for dropping litter. We managed to fill two whole red bags and our picture has been posted on the ‘Keep Scotland Beautiful’ website.

This term we are studying the poem Tam O’Shanter by Robert Burns. We were really interested in the verse:

The wind blew as ‘twad blawn its last;

The rattling showers rose on the blast;

The speedy gleams the darkness swallow’d

Loud, deep and lang the thunder bellow’d:

That night, a child might understand,

The Deil had business on his hand.

We noticed that Burns used onomatopoeia to describe how terrible the storm really was and we looked at each word individually. Miss Gunning split us into three different rows with the word ‘loud’ ‘deep’ or ‘lang’ to focus on. We re-created this storm using sound only – here is our video 😀

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P7 went to the SKY Academy in Livingston to visit the SKY Skills studios. We had an AMAZING day! Pupils were split into different teams and were each given different roles in order to produce a news report on global warming. There were 4 groups and each report was combined to produce an overall news report, we all found the final report hilarious – especially when Aaron (the main news reporter) appeared on screen wearing a pink suit jacket and glasses. The main job role titles were: Producer, Director, Scriptwriter, Camera operator, Reporter, Expert, Eye witness and Editor.

Have a look at our photographs below – can you see who is carrying out which role?

We thought that we would give you a little insight in to our class reward system!

As a class, we decided that being rewarded for effort, manners and kindness was a good idea, so we came up with this…

Everyone was given 50p at the start of the term and throughout the term we try to earn as much money as possible.  We made our own class currency using gold and silver paper and cut the coins into relevant shapes. As a class, we created a P7 shopping list  which includes items like: Buy the comfy chair for the day, sit next to a friend, a brain break and many more. We find that we are more motivated to earn these rewards because we picked them ourselves.

Miss Gunning is extremely impressed with the overall effort of the class, some people are real savers and have managed to save over £10! The aim of this system, as well as praising pupils, is for pupils to stay out of debt. If someone breaks a class rule or does not follow an instruction, they will be asked to pay a fine back into the class bank. If  pupils end up with a negative bank balance, they will get a phonecall home and parents will be notified as to why money has been lost. Luckily pupils are so eager to impress that we have not had many phonecalls home!

Here is a photo of the shopping list that we made 😀

We also have a star of the week and this is selected by Miss Gunning every Friday. She bases her choice on the actions and effort made by pupils that week. This week our ‘Star Pupil’ is Glen! He said that he wasn’t expecting to get the award but is pleased that he got it. His certificate is stuck onto our door for everyone to see and he has worn the star medal all week in class.

We also have group points and we earn these if our table is working hard as a team and if we keep it tidy. ‘Team Deadsec’ are winning so far with a score of 1140 points but this could all change before Friday. The winning table get to keep the table trophy and they get a prize from the prize box. P7 are very competitive!