Today we went down to clean up the Taing Beach as part of the annual Voar Redd Up.
The children found lots of rope and netting tangled in the seaweed and amongst the rocks. There were also a few bottle and cans and some food packaging amongst other things.
The children did a great job and were very proud to be helping look after the local environment.
It is great to see the vegetables and flowers shooting up now after the Easter Holidays. The children have done a great job of looking after them so far.
The children have been out a few times getting the polycrub started for the growing season. So far they have planted tatties, radishes, sunflowers, parsley and some flowers.
If anyone has any spare pots, compost, seeds or plants they would like to donate to the school polycrub that would be fantastic.
I shall keep you updated with the progress. Just a lot of soil and digging at the moment!
The children have been learning about the ‘j’ sound this week and were delighted the jelly begins with j and they got to make some!
They did really good listening and following instructions to measure out the water and then cut, mix and dissolve the jelly.
The waiting bit was the toughest as it wasn’t until the next day that they got to eat it after it had been in the fridge overnight.
The children were delighted to be back at school this week. They are always excited to see what is new in the classroom but mostly they are excited to see their friends.
The train set is always a huge hit in the classroom. The children work together to build some really good layouts and play together so well with the trains
As part of their numeracy work the primary 1’s have been learning about Ordinal Numbers. They did this with the primary 2’s lined up and then they had their own little tub of objects to set out in an order of their choice. They practiced using the words 1st, 2nd, 3rd …….10th to say the positions of the items in their lines.
This term the IDL topic is titled ‘Here, There and Everywhere’. The children worked in groups to discuss and plan what they would like to learn about this term. Their drawing show lots of fantastic ideas and they are very excited about leading their learning through this topic.
The classroom has changed around a bit and they are very excited and enjoying the Halloween Shop and messy activities set up for them this week.
The children have been having fun playing literacy and numeracy games and going over some of the learning from last term.
As part of last terms topic learning about different materials the children created these beautiful magpie collages. They loved adding the shiny bits to the magpies nest to represent the treasures he found.
They also loved using magnets and finding out about how they reacted to different materials and to each other.
The children walked down to Taing Beach on Friday and had fun exploring in the ebb.
They found lots of shells, whelks, crabs and even a sea cucumber. It was so great seeing how curious and excited the children were about their finds.
The beetroot is amazing this year. The children pulled it up and it has been picked and put in jars. They will get a taste after the holidays.
The carrots – not so amazing. They didn’t get the attention they needed and didn’t get thinned out as the seeds had been sown too close together. The children enjoyed laughing at how small they were but did manage to crunch a few of the bigger ones.
All the children got a sunflower and tomato plant to take home and there were plenty for some of the other classes too. More peas have been eaten and the other plants are getting cleared out before the end of term.
The children thought that next year they would like to have a plant sale and raise money to get some new trowels and tools for the polycrub.
Huge excitement today in the polycrub as the children discovered several of the sunflowers had opened up.
A lot of the peas were also ready to be picked. The children tried a few and Conan brought a tub back to the school canteen. The cooks were delighted and will serve them up with the picnic lunch on Wednesday.
Another Monday afternoon exploring our amazing local area. A walk in the Strom Road and down to the little beach to complete todays task…….’what can you make?’
Some groups decided to do dam building…….
Others diverted the water flow into new channels….
the children came up with so many different ideas………..
There was also time to explore the shoreline and find out what lives there.
The children loved the Aesop’s fable called the Crow and the Pitcher. The primary ones made crow puppets and used jugs and glass pebbles to retell the story. They loved being videoed on the class ipad and watching it back.
The primary 2”s wrote the story and then read it to a partner who acted it out using props. This is Conans story. He did a fantastic job of spelling and remembering to include all the important parts of the story in sequence.
The radishes were the first thing to be ready for harvesting. They have grown really fast. The children got to take some home and the cooks at school chopped somefor the children to try at lunchtime.
The sunflowers are getting very big. The children have re-potted them and are keeping an eye on the flowers at the top to see which ones bloom first. They are measuring Laurie’s one everyday as it is the tallest at the moment.
They have also cleared out all the spinach. They got a little bag of leaves to take home and try and the rest has been frozen ready to add to a recipe soon.
Willum did a great job of tying up peas onto the canes. It is really exciting seeing the peapods growing now. The children are desperate to start popping them open.
The children finally got to try some peas today. So many growing now.
The polycrub looks amazing and the children work hard to water and look after the plants daily.
As part of our On Our Doorstep IDL we went to explre the areas nearby the school and find different colours of plants.
The children were vary careful and only picked what they needed to work in their IDL groups to create Colour in Nature pictures. They talked about and named different types of flowers and plants they found.
The results were beautiful…….and fun!
The children went out and looked at dandelions in the nature garden. They saw them at different stages of their lifecycles.
They looked at the dandelions using magnifying glasses to see the different parts and especially the little seeds. They watched the seeds float and fly around and learned about wind dispersal and self seeding.
They created these wonderful pieces using cut paper and paint.
At the end of last term the children sowed wildflower seeds into pots. These have been looked after in the polycrub and were now ready to be transplanted outdoors in the wildlife garden.
Every child in the school helped to sow seeds and many of them helped to plant them out amongst the trees in the afternoon.
Great teamwork from the children working together to create a ‘hot tub’ which became a ‘chocolate flavoured hot tub’ with the addition of some mud!
The children had a snack area and enjoyed sitting together outdoors in the sunshine.
Lots of engineering going on to make the water flow around bends and pour into different containers. Also using the water as a force to push objects down the pipes and figuring out how to make the water flow faster and slower.
Children’s imaginations are wonderful….these vehicles were taking them all over the world and beyond!
And there is always time to do a bit of climbing amongst the trees. The children learn how to do this safely and are really good at helping each other.
As part of our ‘Changes’ IDL learning the children loved the activities around lifecycles and metamorphosis. It all started with a visit to our school pond when we spotted several frogs.
The children worked in groups to create a 3D collage of a pond showing the different stages fo the lifecycle of a frog. it was lovely to see them collaborating and supporting each other with this.
The final ponds looked fantastic……..
As part of their learning about lifecycles they discussed the transformation of a caterpillar to a butterfly. It was so much fun learning this through drama.
These are the eggs!
Out of the eggs hatch the little caterpillars
The chrysalis/cocoon/pupa hangs while the caterpillar transforms inside.
The butterflies emerge from the cocoons, dry their wings and fly away.
Then they lay eggs!
The children are learning about what is ‘On Our Doorstep’ this term so every Monday we are heading out to explore.
Our first trip out was down to Taing beach.
During each trip out the children have a little challenge or activity to do in mixed age groups of four pupils. For this first visit the children had to collect 10 shells each and work together to create a design.
it was great to see the pupils of different ages working together on this task.
The children worked in pairs to create a kite using a variety of materials. Lots of skills were being developed through this activity – for example collaboration, co-operation, problem solving, listening etc.
The wind was blowing so it was great to go and test the kites. The children soon found out that in order to fly the kites well they had to work together.
