We were very lucky to have a visit from Kate Hookam who has been training the staff at the school. It was really wet and windy so we spent a little time in the school discussing all about fires and how to keep safe around them.

We then went out into the wind and rain and had an awesome time! We all got to use the fire steel to set fire to some cotton wool. it was really tricky to begin with but we all persevered and we all made it catch fire.

We also made our own den to keep us out of the rain. We worked as a team and made a dry space. The best bit was we got to have Hot Chocolate that we did on the fire!

Well, we have certainly been busy, we have really tried hard to make our models look amazing. We have found it to be very enjoyable and interesting. We have been working on Mr Renwick and he has agreed that we can have the club on a Friday after school as well as a Tuesday lunchtime…Success!

Here are some of our miniatures…

We asked him to see if some of the companies would sponsor our club. He has started writing to them (He says we have to write to some of them too). First on the list was a company that makes amazing anthropomorphic models. we love them and really want the Pumpkin creatures for Halloween.

Here are some of the ones we already have painted…

After the October break, we are going to be making dioramas.

We were all given a STEM challenge to build a dragon.

we had to follow certain rules. Our Chinese dragon had to:

• Be no more than 1 metre long
• Have handles to hold while it moves
• Be decorated
• Include some mandarin characters

Some of us worked on our own and some of us worked in pairs.

We like to find out what the children get up to when they are not here.

Two of our pupils got into crystals and came in to show us the start of their collection.

We had to make a presentation on China.

We had lots of interesting facts and even a rap to explain things!

This time we used Sway instead of PowerPoint to see which we preferred. Some of us preferred PowerPoint and some of us Sway.

We were tasked by Mr. Renwick to solve the crime of who stole the Osprey eggs from our local loch. The police had reduced the suspects down to four. We became forensic detectives for the afternoon. We had three types of evidence to test.

These were:

Water from the suspect’s boat

Shoe print and example of the shoe to compare

Fibre samples from the scene of the crime and from each suspect’s coat.

We worked really carefully and methodically to work out who did it.

We used red cabbage indicator to compare the water types… we got some impressive results!

we also got to use a microscope that was attached to Mr. Renwick’s iPad by Bluetooth.

After we had followed the science, we got to see the police notes and realised that if we had read these first then we would have automatically suspected the wrong person. Two of the clues could have been a number of people and it was the fibres in the end that gave us the culprit. The water was a big give away but, the fibres put the criminal at the scene of the crime!

We had great fun doing this and went on to find out what other things were acidic, alkaline, or neutral.

A big thank you to SSERC for the resources to do this fun, scientific afternoon.

The class loves doing their own competitions. we have had everything from drawing competitions up to model building. Our Rewards are getting more ornate. We started out with home made certificates. How about this for a home made reward!

Here is the art competition winner with their cup and certificate:

If you are really lucky you will find a Mumb in Skeld – what’s a Mumb? you may ask. Well, a Mumb is a creature that lives in Mumbia and they are found secreted all over the school. Each Mumb is different and the school loves hunting them.

We have had two seasons already!

Here is a close up of a rare Mumb:

We decided to write our own version of the school’s vision, values, and aims. We took what had been written and worked in three groups to think about what it meant and then came up with a list of words to use on our own.

We came together as a class and worked really hard on making our own version. Everyone had an input and we all listened to each other’s suggestions. in the end, we came up with something that everyone agreed with.

Skeld School is a creative school where we like our education and work hard to achieve. The school listens to our suggestions and we work well together as a team. We are good at listening to our teachers and each other. We get outdoors when we can to keep us healthy. We love to come to Skeld School where we learn and have fun.

We also thought about a motto, we did lots of research on what a motto is. Did you know some mottos are in Latin and some in French?

We eventually decided on one that we all liked. We chose it because we felt that it explained what things were like for us in Skeld.

We belong, we believe, we enjoy and achieve

What do you think?

Mr. Renwick was proud of us all as we put so much effort into this. We even picked a motto that he had in his top five.

we are really pleased with our painting 

we tried really hard to make our bears interesting and they all ended up being different. When we had finished painting we glued sand onto the base to give it a more natural look. When that was dry we stuck on grass tufts to make it look like our bears were in the wild.

We are trying to persuade Mr Renwick to run the club twice a week.