Welcome back P4!

Happy 2018, let’s make it an incredible one filled with lots of new opportunities,  new experiences, and new learning!

Maths Rockx

We have been learning our 4 times table along to the One Direction song What makes you beautiful.

Thank you to the adults who have bought this app at home. I am sure your children will enjoy learning their tables with these songs.

We have also used the song Row Row Row Your Boat to learn the stations of the 4 times table. Ask your child to sing them to you.

If your child is finding it tricky to understand what multiplication is all about. Use the language sets of. Use household objects and make sets  e.g. 2 sets of 2 apples. Write it as 2 x 2 apples. Point out sets in real contexts e.g. shops, your body 2 sets of 10 fingers, pairs of socks, gloves ….

We are enjoying playing Bingo to help us learn our tables. If you wish to do this at home choose a times table, draw a rectangle and split it into 6 boxes. In each box write an answer from your chosen times table. The caller calls out e.g. two sixes, 2 times 8, 2 multiplied by 5, 10 multiplied by 2 etc. If you have the answer to the caller’s question score it out or cover it with a counter/penny etc. Have fun playing.

Last Monday we had our first visit to Peebles Swimming Pool for swimming lessons. Mrs. Thomson and the pool staff were very impressed with everyone’s confidence and hard work in the pool.

REMEMBER your swimming kit every Monday until the Feb holiday.

We had great fun today making different types of omelettes.

First we cracked open the eggs and put them into the freezer bag.   We then made sure that all the air was out and sealed up the bag.

Then we squashed and shook the bag to mix the egg.

Next we added either cheese, ham, cheese and ham or cheese and tomatoes (or no filling).  We then made sure that all the air was out and resealed the bag.

Then we shook and squashed the bag to mix the egg and the filling.

The bag was then placed in a pot of boiling  water and left to cook for around 10-12 minutes.

Carefully, Mr Sellar got the bags out of the water and cut them open.

Finally we got to taste our delicious omelettes.

Thank you Mr Sellar for all your help today.

We have had a busy first week of 2018. Look at all we have learned to do. We have worked hard on our handwriting and have found different ways of practising how to form our letters correctly. We have explored how to use the Waxy Doodles that Santa brought us for Christmas. These will really help our fine motor skills.

We have been learning how to tell the time by exploring the clock face and looking at digital clocks. We made clocks and can use them to show 1 o’clock, 3 o’clock etc. We also explored how long a minute was by doing different actions and timing them. It was very hard to do star jumps for a whole minute!

Task:
Read a book of your choice by the end of January
Make a presentation to share with the rest of the class.

Your presentation should contain:

1. Title Slide
1 slide – include the title of the book, author, picture of cover, genre

2. Summary of the story
3 slides – one for beginning, one for middle, one for end. Think carefully about the KEY events in the book. Write a paragraph each about the beginning, middle, and end of the book. Create one slide for each section of the book.

3. Understanding of character
1 slide – Think about how the main character felt at the beginning of the book. How do they change as the book develops? How do they react to key events? Do they change by the end of the book. Explain how/why they change.
1 slide – Describe some qualities one of the characters had that you either admired or disliked. Explain why you feel this way.

4. Understanding of setting
1 slide- Describe the main setting of the story. If the story is set in more than one main location, please choose your favourite one. Write descriptive phrases of the setting from the book on your slide to provide evidence.

5. Understanding of theme
1 slide -What are the themes of the book? What key messages do you think the author was trying to convey?

6. Evaluation
1 slide – Write a paragraph telling your opinion of the book. Explain why you would or would not recommend the book to a friend.

Practise your presentation before you hand it in so you feel confident about sharing it with the class. 

Today we learnt about how jet engines work to use and fight against forces to keep planes in the air. We demonstrated this by making a human engine and then created a balloon jet engine.

P4 are learning about how countries around the world celebrate Christmas. We have learnt that they all have different traditions and cultures!

Today we learnt about how they celebrate Christmas in Germany, as one of our pupils is part German. His mum came in to tell us about the traditions they had when she lived in Germany, and how she has mix of German and British Christmas traditions now they live in Scotland. Some big differences we heard about are that they celebrate Christmas day on 24th December, they have lit candles on their tree, and they have meat fondue as Christmas dinner!

Thanks you Mrs Bennett for coming to talk to us and sharing the amazing traditions from your childhood!

We have been learning about patterns and sequences in numeracy. Today we had a Christmas patterns session – we had to continue the patterns as accurately as possible. We also used repeating patterns to create snowflakes!