On Friday mornings we have been doing some Drumming with Joy. The children have been so good at listening and trying their best with all the games and different rhythms. Their confidence is growing week by week and they are really enjoying this opportunity to learn about African music and cultures.
As well as drumming there is time for dancing, singing and a lot of fun.
The children love playing the Dunduns keeping the beat throughout the pieces they have been learning.
A few weeks ago we all went for a walk up the Strom Road to find frogspawn and tadpoles. The bairns were so excited to see them and wanted to bring some back to school.
They loved watching the tadpoles swimming around and using the magnifying glasses to get a closer look at the frogspawn.
The frogspawn and tadpoles were returned to the outdoors to grow into froglets and then frogs.
The primary 1’s made these collages demonstrating their understanding of the life cycle of a frog.
As part of their work on lifecycles the Primary !’s made these beautiful models withe their buddies after reading ‘The Hungry Caterpillar’ story.
This term the children have done a lot of Information Handling as part of their maths. They have been collecting data using tally marks to sort information and create pictographs and bar charts.
They worked together to create this graph outdoors and had to answer lots of questions about what it showed.
The Primary 2’s did a great job sorting objects and numbers into various Carroll Diagrams, taking care to make sure everything got placed correctly.
The weather has been amazing this month and the plants are thriving as they have been well watered and looked after by the primary 1/2 class.
The older children have also been getting involved in planting and looking after the polycrub on Tuesday afternoons as part of our IDL work in school.
We had our first harvest of vegetables. There was great excitement when we pulled up a few radishes and took them into school to clean and prpare for tasting. There were not many children who liked them but they gave them a try.
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 enjoyed listening to the Easter Story today and watching a short animation about it. After discussing the reason we roll eggs at Easter time they got to work painting and designing their own egg ready for rolling later in the day.
It was p1 versus p2 in the Egg Rolling competition. The egg that travelled furthest after two shots and had no cracks was Ollie’s.
After lunch the children enjoyed an Easter Egg Hunt in the School grounds. It’s great to be back at school.
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.
