All posts by Ms Laidlaw

Wednesday Challenge!

Good Morning boys and girls 🙂

I hope you’ve all got your hard hats and high visibility vests at the ready because this week I am looking for some very creative construction workers.

For our Wednesday challenge this week, you have a choice.  Depending on what you resources you have lying around at home you can choose which activity suits you best. Both challenges are all about problem solving, creativity and building something strong!

CHALLENGE NO. 1

The Spaghetti Tower

You will need: dried spaghetti and marshmallows (If you don’t have marshmallows I think blue tac or play doh would also work in the same way but I haven’t ever tested this)

Using only those two things, I’m looking for the TALLEST free-standing tower that you can build. There are some pictures below to give you some ideas 🙂 Remember it needs to be strong enough to stand on it’s own, without falling over as well as being as tall as you can make it.

CHALLENGE NO. 2

Float your Boat

I know that spaghetti and marshmallows might not be lying around your house (or you just really want to hold on to the spaghetti as it’s a luxury at the moment!) so this next challenge might be a better option for you.

You can use anything you can find around your house. Some suggestions might be: tin foil, paper, straws, lolly pop sticks, toilet roll tubes, plastic cups, lego, play doh.

Using whatever resources you choose, I’m looking for you to build a boat that can actually float on water but it must also be strong enough to hold 3 coins (any coins will do). So you will really have to think about what you make your boat out of and how big it is going to be.

 

If you want to take part in this weeks challenge, I would love to see what you come up with! You are a very creative bunch so I know I will be impressed 🙂 Please send your photos to gw18burnsidephotos@glow.sch.uk. Remember this is a public blog so I won’t be able to post photos with faces (I’ll have to cover them up) and I won’t match names to faces either. On Friday I will post our challenge pictures into the ‘Weekly Challenge’ tab at the top.

Enjoy building!

Miss Laidlaw

Virtual School Trip

Scroll down further to find this weeks main home learning post.

Hogwarts

Thanks to Miss Ferry and her wonderful discovery, this week we are off to the wizarding world of Hogwarts! If you don’t know much about Harry Potter you could start off by listening to the first book, ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’. It is currently available to listen to for free on audible at the link below.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

DIY Hogwarts Letter and Harry Potter Envelope and Hogwarts Seal

Dear Primary 2,
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Term begins on Monday 27th April. Pupils may bring, if they desire, an owl or a cat or a toad.
PARENTS ARE REMINDED THAT PRIMARY TWO ARE NOT ALLOWED THEIR OWN BROOMSTICK.
Yours sincerely,

Minerva McGonagall sig

Minerva McGonagall
Deputy Headmistress

 

You’re a Wizard!

You’re no longer a muggle so you will need a wizard name! Click the link below to discover yours.

Wizard Name


School Supplies 

First things first, every wizard needs wand! Before you head off to Hogwarts you will need to visit Ollivander’s in Diagon Alley to pick up  your wand. Take the test below to see what wand is yours. Remember ‘The wand chooses the wizard.’ You’ll need a grown-up to create an account to do this  – it’s free.

Ollivander’s Wands

While you’re here, why not explore Diagon Alley. The video below provides a 360° tour. Simply click play and then use the mouse to drag the screen.

 

Hogwarts Express

Now that you’ve got all your school supplies, head for platform 9¾  and hop aboard the Hogwarts Express. Harry met his best friends Ron and Hermione onboard the Hogwarts Express. Find out Who is Your Hogwarts Best Friend 

Take in the views of the Glenfinnan Viaduct (in Scotland!) as the Hogwarts Express thunders along high above the valley.

Hogsmeade

You’ve arrived at Hogsmeade Station. Feel free to take a look around before you head up to Hogwarts Castle.

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Welcome to Hogwarts , let’s find out what house you belong to! Click on the link below and answer the Sorting Hat’s questions.

Sorting Hat

Once you have been sorted into a house you can find out more about it by clicking the link below.

Gryffindor

Hufflepuff 

Ravenclaw

Slytherin

 

Hogwarts Tour

Now that you know your house it’s time to explore your new digs!

Hogwarts Great Hall

Potions Classroom

Dumbledore’s Office

Gryffindor Common Room

Hagrid’s Hut

Forbidden Forest

Lessons

It’s time for you to learn all the tricks of witchcraft and wizardry. Create your Hogwarts Student Profile and choose your first class.

Care of Magical Creatures

Dragon Spotting

Magizoologist Profile

 

Flying Lessons

Invent a Flying Broomstick

Invent a Wizard Sport


Charms
 
Enchanted Objects
 
Learn your spells:
1. Expecto patronum – to summon up a Patronus
2. Accio – to call an object to you
3. Wingardium Leviosa – to levitate objects
4. Expelliarmus –to disarm your opponent
5. Lumos – to ignite one’s wand-tip to provide light
6. Alohomora – to open locked windows and doors
7. Avada Kedavra – to bring about instant death
8. Sectumsempra –  the incantation for one of the Half-Blood Prince’s spells
9. Obliviate – to make the subject forget
10. Riddikulus  –  to make a Boggart take on a comical appearance and eventually explode 
 
Potions
 
Make Your Own Potion
 
Defence Against the Dark Arts
Patronus
 
History of Magic
Harry Potter: A History of Magic was exhibition originally held at the British Library. In collaboration with Google Arts & Culture it can now be viewed at the link below. This gives you behind-the-scenes access to everything from before the books, including notes and illustrations by J.K Rowling. You can also try your hand at lessons including Potions, Charms, Astronomy and Defence Against the Dark Arts.
Harry Potter: A History of Magic 
 
Herbology
Professor Sprouts Greenhouse Scramble

 

Wizard or Muggle?

You’ve completed your trip to Hogwarts! Click on the link below and choose a quiz to test your Harry Potter knowledge.

Harry Potter Quiz

Which House

Ghost Stories

Quick Quotes

 

Puzzles

Hogwarts Wordsearch

Location Wordsearch

Beast Wordsearch

Spell Wordsearch

Triwizard Wordsearch

Wizard Wordsearch

Spot the Difference

Colour in – Diagon Alley

Professorise Me

Design a Sock for Dobby

Bookmark

Create House-crest-door-hander

 

Theme Park Rides

Follow the links below to hop on board some of the rides at Universal’s ‘Wizarding World of Harry Potter’. If you can cast the video to your television it will make it even more realistic. Hold on tight!

Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure

Flight of the Hippogriff

(Watch from 1 minute 26 seconds – 2 minutes 36 seconds)

I hope you all enjoy your trip to Hogwarts boys and girls. You know I love Harry Potter so I was very excited about this! I’ll definitely be finding out which house I’m in and trying out all of the virtual tours.

We have some siblings in Room 4 and this would be a fabulous thing to do together 🙂
Again, big thanks to Miss Ferry!

Miss Laidlaw

Home Learning w/b 27.4.20

Good morning boys and girls (and grown ups) Happy Monday!

Remember, only to do whatever you can. Some days, that might be nothing and that is absolutely fine 🙂

Handwriting

This week we are going to keep working on joining up our letters. Remember you should be trying not to lift your pencil off of the paper when you are joining the letters. Some letters don’t join which means there are some words where you might have to lift your pencil – like after the letter ‘b’ in ‘b i g’.

Focus on Comp

Read through the text and answer the questions. Remember to practise writing in full sentences.

Strawberries, Grapes and Pineapples


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lemons

 

Reading

Personal Reading – 15 mins each day
You can chose your own reading books or use the free books website I posted last week to find a book to read.

Although I am providing a couple of options for reading this week. Just pick and choose which suits best.

Similar to last week, click on the link and follow the activities provided.

Strawberries, Grapes and Pineapples
Week 4 The house that Dad Built

Lemons
English_Week_2_Reading

Alternatively, using your own personal reading book. You can choose one or two of these activities:

  • Summarise the book you have chosen. We’ve done this loads. Remember just the important parts! and don’t forget capital letters and full stops.
  • Create a new front cover for the book you have chosen. Don’t forget the title, author and illustrator.
  • Be a text detective. See if you can spot any of this weeks spelling words in the book.
Spelling

From this week, I’m going provide new spelling phonemes/common words. You can click on the ‘Spelling’ tab at the top of the page to see a variety of spelling activities you can carry out to practise your words. At the end of week I would suggest trying to complete a spelling test with your grown ups to see how much you have learned. This will probably be the only ‘new’ learning  as such every week.

REMEMBER – Show your grown ups how to ‘say, make/break, blend, read, write’ these words. We are experts at this! If you have a whiteboard and magnetic letters at home you could use those to make your own spelling board. If not, you could try writing each phoneme on a small piece paper and on a flat surface still using your 5 finger approach.

Red Team
‘ow’ – owl, brown, growl, now, crown, allow
common words – how, where, now, too

Purple Team
‘oi’ – boil, spoil, coin, most, toilet, join
common words – their, some, then, last

Yellow Team
th – thin, with, cloth, thick, thorn, thud, moth
common words – this, then, that

(th is tricky – there’s a video below to help you)

 

 

Learns Its
Below are the ‘Learn its’ for this term (for all groups). These can be practised a little bit each week to ensure speedy recall.

Activity 1
Use the login card from the home learning pack to login to study ladder. I have set up a pod for each maths group. There are a couple of things to do so have a play about with it since it’s the first time we’ve had a go.
http://www.studyladder.co.uk

Activity 2
Click on the link below to practise rounding to the nearest 10. Squares – challenge yourself by rounding 3d numbers to the nearest 10. Triangles and circles – Keep working on 2d.

Week 4 Rounding

Activity 3
Click on the links below to practise adding and subtracting 10. Squares – You could try using numbers above 100…

Adding 10

Subtracting 10

Activity 4
Use doorway online to practise o’clock and half past times. We have learned all about this already so impress your grown ups with how much you remember.
https://www.doorwayonline.org.uk/timeandmoney/abouttime/

Remember there are lots of other maths games you can use to keep practising all the things learned so far on Top Marks. The ‘numeracy’ tab at the top lists things we have learned so far 🙂

If you are looking for something different – The Jump Start Jonny videos are great fun to get us moving and dancing to some music. He has a YouTube channel where he’ll be posting something new every Monday! And he has a website with lots of free activities too.

https://www.jumpstartjonny.co.uk/home

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8PDFwCV0HHcl08-1SzdiBw/videos

I know that home learning can be tricky and we might be spending lots more time looking at our screens – I know I am! Here are some screen-free ideas you could try to help clear those busy minds and relax a bit.

Screen Free Activities

The link below has some wonderful colouring activities that you could display on your window.

Key worker colouring

Other

French
https://www.french-games.net

Have a go at some of the French colours games. You might want to try the lessons first to remind yourself.

WW1
With your grown up, have a go at some research this week. Try to find out what the children did during the war. Did they stay at school? Would they have been able to do home learning like us? What toys did they play with?
You could even make a poster to show what you have learned 🙂

Again, there are loads of links. Please let me know via the comment if there are any issues. I will be helping the boys and girls in the Calderwood hub this week so at times I may be a bit slower to reply than usual. Have a great week everybody!

Miss Laidlaw

 

Fantastic Work Fridays

Good Morning boys and girls,

Wow! I really enjoyed spending some time yesterday looking through all of Room 4s emails and photographs. You lot have been very busy and it’s lovely to see your happy faces in some of those pictures! I am so proud of how hard you are all working and it’s good to see that you are remembering it’s important to have fun too 🙂

I have uploaded the Wednesday Challenge photos I have received to the tab at the top (see how your friends got on) and I am glad you all enjoyed it. There were some very interesting finds. Well done everyone!🌟 I wonder what next week will bring…

Some of this weeks fantastic work

I love this puzzle that AC was working on – I might need to try a circle one like that next. It looks tricky. She also wrote a great imaginative story all about a black and white horse. Well done A⭐️

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

C.P has been hard at work with her dad making an amazing WW1 tank. Isn’t it just fabulous? I love the detail and the camouflage colours. Wonderful job C👏🏻

Some more WW1 learning going on in JM’s house. He found this war memorial on his daily walk in Cambuslang park and spent some time reading it. He has also been recreating WW1 battles with his own toy soldiers!

As well as this JM has been making bird feeders out of milk cartons (very Eco friendly) and enjoying some quiet reading time. You are a star J!🌟

And I’ll finish off with some really wonderful news this week…

Our SB had a very special spring break this year as she became a big sister over the holidays! What a beautiful picture she has sent us (have a look on twitter to see her properly) and what an amazing big sister she will be. Congratulations S and family, such lovely news for us all to hear✨

Remember if you haven’t yet ‘checked in’ leave a comment on our check in station that I posted yesterday. I will post this every Thursday.

Well done for working so hard this week everyone! Have a great weekend.

Miss Laidlaw🌸

 

We’re going on Safari!

Hi boys and girls 🙂

I hope you’re enjoying the home learning activities for this week. Today, as mentioned on the school app, I thought we could do something a bit different and go on a ‘virtual’ school trip to Blair Drummond Safari Park. There is a live lesson all about monkeys today at 12pm on their Facebook page. During the lesson, there will be a question and answer session if you have anything you would like to ask Shonagh. There will be a fun quiz after to test your knowledge. I will be watching too so leave me a comment below to let me know what your favourite part was or a fact you learned. If you can’t tune in at 12pm, don’t worry. You can still watch the video at a later date. Last week’s lesson about penguins is still available too! You can access their Facebook page by clicking on the link below.

https://www.facebook.com/blairdrummondSP/

Have a good day!

Miss Laidlaw

Check in!

Good Afternoon🌞

Following on from Mrs McGarvey’s message on the app, we would love to know how all of the boys and girls are doing.  Leave a comment on this post to ‘check-in’ and you can help the children to tell us how they are and anything nice they have been doing.

Boys and girls, see if you can spot your friends comments and what they have been doing!

After a busy morning on my laptop, I’m now spending some time resting in the garden with a cup of tea and enjoying this glorious weather!

Miss Laidlaw🙂

 

Free Books

Just a note to let you know about a fantastic website Miss Muir came across!

https://readon.myon.co.uk/library/browse.html

This website has lots of free books to read online. You don’t need to register or login.Books are organised into various different categories, if you search for an item you can filter the options to books for your year stage using the funnel button at the left of the screen (for P2 we would be Year 1).

There is an option to have the book read aloud to you using the play button at the bottom left of the screen once you select a book to read. Words are highlighted as you read and there’s even a dictionary built in that you can search for the meaning of any words you are stuck on.

Have fun reading some new books!

Ps. It’s so lovely to hear from some of our children and parents in the comments! But please remember to sign off your comment with who you are (who your child is) as sometimes email addresses aren’t very clear and it would be lovely to know who I am hearing from.

 

Wednesday Challenge!

Good morning boys and girls,
I hope you are all having a lovely week!

Today is our first ‘Wednesday Challenge!’. This is just a bit of fun for everyone to get involved in. If you complete the challenge you can send a picture to gw18burnsidephotos@glow.sch.uk. I am going to make a tab at the top of the blog called Challenges and I’ll post your pictures there. You can have a look at what your friends have been doing and even leave a comment for them.

Todays challenge is all about the alphabet. Can you find something in the house that begins with every letter of the alphabet? HOWEVER, they must all be able to fit on a dinner plate… so no chairs, fridges or televisions 😉

Here is an example of one I found below.

I can’t wait to see what kind of things you find 🙂

Have a good day!

Miss Laidlaw🌞

Home learning W/B 20/4/20

Good morning everyone and welcome to back to home learning week 4. I hope you all had a lovely Easter and some time off from doing school work. And of course, I hope the Easter Bunny treated you all to some chocolate eggs 🙂 I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I can eat any more chocolate for a while now!

Now that the spring break is over, most of us have probably had a go at lots of the tasks in the home learning pack. This new week sees the start of Term 3 and whilst it still feels very strange not to see all of your lovely faces in class, I’ll do my best to keep everyone busy and learning. Every Monday, I’m going to be posting a variety of literacy, numeracy and other tasks. All of the literacy/numeracy activities I suggest will be building on things that we should already know. These tasks can be carried out, in any order, throughout the week. I would suggest one numeracy and one literacy activity each day. Again, everybody is in a different situation so please do whatever you can with your child and don’t worry about completing it all.

Spelling
Revision week! Pick 10 common words from the tab at the top to work on.
Activities you could try; rainbow spelling, scribble spelling, backwards spelling, alphabetical order and multi-sensory spelling (paint, pasta, chalk etc).

Handwriting
Now that we have all been working hard on our letter formation and can write wonderful words and sentences, we can start to think about learning to join those letters up! In your pack there is a handwriting booklet (I know some of you may have had a go at this already). If you have tried this page, you can have another practise on paper or try to think of some other ‘un, um’ words to join.

Focus on Comp (Comprehension)
Read through the text and answer the questions (make sure to practise writing in full sentences)

Strawberries, Pineapples and Grapes

Lemons

 

Dictionary Skills
Click on the link below to find a list to put into alphabetical order. Remember, if the first letters are the same jump to the next one.

Strawberries, Grapes and Pineapples

Fruit Alphabetical Ordering Sheet

Lemons

Alphabetical Order Worksheet

Reading and Writing

Personal reading – Try to set aside some time every day to read for enjoyment. This is the most invaluable thing you can do at home and a minimum of 15 mins each day is perfect.

Click the link below to find a poem.  Follow the reading and writing activities that are provided. Instead of printing out the sequencing cards, you can use a ruler or something with a straight edge to divide a piece of paper into the boxes and draw your own.

Strawberries, Grapes and Pineapples

Dad and the Cat and the Tree

Lemons

I Really Want To Be A Cat

Extra writing – Ask your child to write about how different our spring break was this year. Include what things they did instead of going out to visit new places or visit their friends. What was their favourite thing to do? and how did they keep in touch with family and friends. Remember to use VCOP (vocab/wow words, connectives, openers and punctuation) and illustrate your writing.

 

None of these numeracy concepts should be new learning to us. These links should take you straight to a PDF document with helpful reminders/hints and activities you could try. It can be can printed (if you are able), use paper to complete or work through orally together with your child. As long as you work on the concept ( eg. odd and even numbers) it doesn’t matter which way you do it.

Odd and Even Numbers

Week 3 odd and even numbers

Challenge! 
Squares – Can you make up odd and even 3 digit numbers?
Triangles – Can you make up odd and even 2digit numbers?
Circles – Can you memorise all of the odd numbers to 10 and all of the even numbers to 10?

Doubles
Squares and triangles, you should be working on doubles to 20. Circles, you should be memorising doubles to 10.

Week 3 – Doubles

Adding Tens Numbers
Squares and Triangles, if you can confidently add 10 you can try adding 20/30.
Circles, keep working on adding 10

Week 3 – Adding 10, 20 and 30

Adding 5 single digit numbers
We can all do 1d + 1d, this is a bit of fun using your learn its.
If adding 5 is too tricky, try adding 3.

Week 3 – Adding more than two single digits

 


There are lots of ideas on previous blog posts but some popular ones were;

  • Joe Wicks  – 9am PE with Joe on YouTube
  • Active sports weekly challenges on Twitter

O T H E R

WW1 – continue to work on creating those WW1 3D tanks
Art – Get creative outside; you could use leaves and sticks to create a picture or chalk and tape to create a work of art like the one below.

My COVID19 Time Capsule
An additional activity that I really liked is this printable time capsule booklet. As this strange time will be one for the history books for years to come, it might be nice for the children to look back on and maybe even act as a helpful reminder in the future to appreciate all of the little things we can all take for granted!

Covid19 Time Capsule

And finally, if you are looking for more activities do, there are loads of of resources and ideas on previous blog posts if you scroll and have a browse.

I will be posting throughout the week (including a fun weekly challenge!) and I will be available to reply to any comments/messages. Remember you can share your learning via gw18burnsidephotos@glow.sch.uk. Any problems with any of the links, please let me know via that comments.

Have a lovely week boys and girls, it looks like it’s going to be a sunny one so if you’re lucky enough to have a garden maybe you could do your work outdoors or if not, get out for a lovely sunny walk for a break away from school work.

As always, I miss you all loads!

Miss Laidlaw 🙂

3.4.20

Good morning everyone🐥

Happy Friday! Today will be the last day of home learning before the easter holidays. I know it’s not quite the Easter we were expecting but I hope you find lots of fun things to do with your families. The next home learning post will be live on 20th of April.

Here some pictures of wonderful work by Rhys this week. He has been very busy and even had some time to do some baking in between all of this too. Well done Rhys!

When home learning resumes I’ll continue to share our learning on Fridays. Remember you can send all the amazing work to gw18burnsidephotos@glow.sch.uk

Missing you all lots. Hope the Easter bunny is good to you!🐰

Miss Laidlaw 🐣