Our topic from now until Christmas is Night and Day.  We have been looking at the Sun, the Earth and the Moon to understand why we have day and night.

Some of the many interesting questions that we would like to find the answer to are:-

Damian – What really is the size of the Sun, the Moon and the Earth?

Isla – Why does the Moon turn into different shapes?

Fraser – How hot is the Sun?

Vinny – How was the Earth made?

Millie – How does the Moon move?

Jack – How do the clouds move?

Ruby – Why is the moon so rocky?

Flo – The Earth is in space so are we in space or not?

Today we have already discovered that the Sun is very, very, very  big.  In fact you could fit 1,300,000 Earths inside the Sun!

The Moon is quite small and is only about one quarter the size of Earth.

We will let you know the answers to our other questions as soon as we find out!

Primary One  made their own little pine cone hedgehog characters, named them and then they made the background setting themselves.

Then came the really fun part – they made up and told their hedgehog stories to other people.

We really enjoyed Buddy Day when P6 came to visit P2 and we played games and read stories.  Everyone in our class agreed that it was fun playing and chatting  with our P6 buddies.

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Primary 2 have been doing some Problem Solving and they decided to take the task in another direction – they wanted to make their own versions. The problem was to find as many combinations as possible for 10 frogs and 2 lily pads. ( They made 6 lily pads to make the task even more challenging ).

When everyone has made their frogs and lily pads we will all play our games and write our combinations as sums.

We have packed up our hedgehogs, added some hedgehog food and then covered them with leaves for camouflage. Then holes were added to the top of the box to allow all of the sleeping hedgehogs to breathe!

They will be put in a safe place to hibernate over the very cold Winter months.

We will need to remember to wake them up about March!

Can you remember why hedgehogs hibernate in Winter?

We investigated how hedgehogs make tunnels and burrow in the sand in our classroom. We used pipes and tubes and built up wet sand around them. Then we created a hedgehog house out of sand too. Many of us were not very happy about playing with wet sand at first but, once we tried it and found that it was great for tunnelling and building we decided we really liked playing with wet sand.

We went on a nature hunt around our school grounds to collect leaves and twigs. Then we created a nature area in our classroom  where we play and have fun investigating. Mrs Hope also did an Art lesson with us where we used dried  leaves and twigs to create hedgehog pictures. This was really interesting and our display of work has been much admired.

• Hedgehogs have 36 teeth.
• They are born with their prickles under their skin and the prickles grow when the hedgehog is about 3 days old.
• They live in countries other than Scotland. Thistle the hedgehog is an African Pygmy hedgehog.
• They live in hedgehog houses made by humans, in leaves, under hedges and sometimes in hollows in trees.
• They go to sleep in the Winter until about March. This is called hibernation and they do this because the foods they eat like slugs, snails and  bugs often die off in the Winter-  so they would not have enough food to eat if they did not hibernate.
• They have four legs and they are very long. Hedgehogs are fast runners!
• Foxes, badgers and dogs are predators for hedgehogs.
• Hedgehogs face many dangers and they have to be helped by humans to survive.When they are frightened they curl up into a ball but, their prickles also warn predators away.

The only question we still have to research is – “Do hedgehogs live in colonies or not ?”

Well done, P2/1 it was fun finding out the answers to these questions as we worked on our hedgehog topic.

Our new topic this term is Night and Day.

We came up with the following questions we would like to find the answers to:

Why does the moon only spin around the earth?

Why does the earth spin around?

Why does the sun only spin around the earth?

Why is the world a circle when the world is flat on it?

Why is the world like a line when it is a circle from space?

Why does the earth have gravity?

I want to know about all the animals that come out at night.

Why does the sun come up and the moon goes to sleep?

Why does the earth have air in it?