It was great to get a visit from two spledid Vikings from the Bressay Up Helly Aa. It was Astryd’s Show and Tell this week so she got all her own Viking outfit on and brought in her dad and grandad to visit the class.
They looked fantastic and Astryd was able to talk lots about her experience of being in the Bressay up Helly Aa. It was lovely to see the three generations together and the class had a great time listening, asking questions and trying out the axes, shields and helmets.
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 working hard in art these past few weeks and have produced these stunning collages based on Rousseau’s Tiger.
The children have had a great day today. They are so excited by books and reading, which fantastic. They were keen to share their favourite books they had brought from home.
They looked so lovely in their costumes and pyjamas at school today.
They enjoyed World Book Day activities in the classroom.
The afternoon was really special as the whole school came together and shared books in a paired reading session. There are photos on the School Blog.
The adults had a lot of fun too!
The children have really enjoyed creating an aeroplane and airport to play in this week. They have been talking about all the different jobs and have been really good at taking turns and playing together in this area.
They love being the pilot and co-pilot and its good to have cabin crew ready to help passengers with safety and snacks. They have made tickets and passports to take on their flights with them.
Air traffic control have been guiding the plane safely and they are taking the security very seriously. They have been asking the passengers lots of great questions to see where they are going on holiday and what they have packed in their suitcases.
In class we have been learning a little bit about Chinese New Year. They have been talking about the festival and looking at photos of the celebrations.
The children loved the story of the the Zodiac for naming the Years. This is the Year of the Snake and we looked at calendars and dates in class. Most of the Children were born in the Year of the Dog or the Pig.
We set up a little Chinese Restaurant in class and the children have been trying out chopsticks.
We also had some chinese masks, costumes and other items to investigate and play with in class. Can you guess who are behind these masks?
The children loved the chinese lanterns which were hanging up and the dragon so they had a go at making their own lanterns.
The children have been building up to this visit. They have made shields, axes and helmets for their own class squad and have been practicing marching and singing in class. Some of them made this amazing galley boat with the loose parts and have enjoyed Viking related play options in class.
They looked and sounded fantastic when they all grouped together for this photo.
They were really excited about doing their quiz which they had prepared for the Jarl. They drew big posters of things linked to the Jarls real life and then had fun choosing random things to draw for the answers to questions.
We managed a quick rehearsal before the Vikings arrived.
We didn’t manage to get many photos during the visit. I shall add more if I get any.
This was a very special visit form the Lerwick Jarl Squad to Whiteness School. Many of the Squad member were ex-pupils of the school, including the Jarl Callum Grains.
They sang and cheered and the bairns loved it. Afterwards the children got a chance to meet some of the vikings and try on helmets, hold axes and shields and pose for photographs.
The children had decorated the hall for the Vikings coming and their artwork looked amazing
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.
It was great to take advantage of the beautiful morning and get outside for some literacy fun. The primary 1’s had great fun playing hopscotch with words and writing with chalk on the tarmac.
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 children loved practicing their spelling words in the snow last week.
It is great to see the interactions between the children. Seeing how they support, encourage and help each other is just lovely.
The classes have really enjoyed their lessons at Scalloway pool this term. Mr Kirkness was impressed with their listening and effort and both classes have made lots of progress with confidence and skills.
Each week the classes take turns at going in the pool so while the p2 group are in I teach the p1’s at the poolside and vice versa. It is quite a productive time and the children are kept very busy with maths and literacy activities.
A huge thankyou to all the parents who volunteered to come along each Tuesday. I am very grateful for all your help.
Christmas hats on and all set for a delicious feed of Christmas dinner today.
The school cooks did a tremendous job and the children really loved their special meal. Lots of lovely manners as they remembered to say ‘please’ and ‘thankyou’.
The children have had great fun using different materials and resources to create symmetrical designs. They have been using mirrors to check for symmetry indoors and outside and also painted wonderful symmetrical abstract designs.
They have also been learning about the 2D shapes and practised counting sides and corners. They designed their own pictures using different shapes.
We are very lucky at Whiteness to have so many fantastic resources for the children to use…..some modern technology mixed with some very old puzzles.
The Primary 2’s have been learning about which shapes can tile and which ones can’t. they found examples in and around the school and might find examples at home too. They investigated tiling using the different shapes they had been learning about.
The children have also been learning about 3D shapes and using their knowledge of 2D shapes they can describe the faces they can see. They have been learning about flat and curved faces as well as counting the vertices on the different shapes. They loved using the ‘feely box’ to describe and guess the shapes.
Again we found lots of examples of 3D shapes in the school and outdoors.
They used shapes to build models and the p1’s practiced sorting shapes into ones that could roll or not roll and ones that could stack or not stack.
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.
Most Friday mornings in Term One have been spent outdoors in our Loose Parts Zone. This gives the children opportunities to develop so many skills like co-operation, problem solving, teamwork, collaboration, etc.
Each time we go out there are different ideas, children go into different groups, different friendships develop, they get more confident using the materials available and allow their imaginations and creativity to take over.
The parent council provided us with some new resources, including half round guttering pipes and some very sturdy stands to support the pipes at different levels. This has led to some amazing problem solving and water courses in the playground.
The tree area is great for the children to learn about taking risks but being safe. They love building Dens and climbing in the trees.
On these mornings we usually have our snack outdoors which has been lovely while the weather has been good this term.
And we get to play too………
The children started building houses in the junk modelling area and got really into it, making floors, rooms, furniture etc. They began including ‘mini-me’s into the houses too.
From this they decided to make a big town with roads between the houses.
They then began to create other buildings and areas in their town. There was a park, hospital, school etc.
The toy cars were brought out so they then built garages and even a multi-story car park.
They worked in pairs to draw plans of their towns and include all the buildings they thought should be included. It was great to see the primary 2’s labelling parts of their plans and writing names on their buildings.
The children have also been learning about different aspects of safety, including crossing the road. They did some role play in the games hall and had turns at being the lollipop person.
They then re-played crossing the road safely in their ‘town’, using the toy cars and mini-me characters.
The children have been learning about the changing seasons and have been out looking for signs of Autumn.
They loved learning about hedgehogs and making cosy nests for them to hibernate in out in the wildlife garden. They even found lots of slugs to feed them with.
They were really excited and worked together to make hedgehog ‘houses’ to create a hedgehog village in the shared area. it has been played with so much this week.
They used lots of different materials to make the houses nice and cosy for the hedgehogs. Some had sleeping bags, fridges, to keep the bugs fresh, alarm clocks to let them know when Spring had arrived- the children’s imaginations are amazing.
They even made a campfire and toasted marshmallows.
The primary 2’s wrote about their houses.
They also wrote some hedgehog facts and added them to a class display which they had made.
