Today we thought about our year in Primary 2 and what we have enjoyed. Here are some of our thought………….

Keira – I liked having Mrs Clark, Miss Holwill and Mrs Rodger.

Rheagan – I liked our Castle trip.

Ryan – I liked visiting Stirling Castle.

Sara – My favourite thing was making our African masks.

Grace Q – My favourite thing was visiting Stirling Castle.

Fearne – I liked visiting Stirling castle.

Orlaith – My favourite thing was having Mrs Clark, Miss Holwill and Mrs Rodger in class.

Joseph – My favourite thing was the Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch.

Alex – I liked visiting Stirling Castle.

Dionne – I liked Golden Time because it was fun.

Lilyrose – I liked learning about Stirling castle.

Eilidh – My favourite thing was meeting Mrs Clark, Miss Holwill and Mrs Rodger.

Grace M – I liked having my Christmas dinner at school.

Kayden – I liked biscuit decorating at Golden Time.

Rhianna – I liked maths.

Scott – I liked doing the Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch topic.

Evie – I liked writing fun stories.

Esther – I liked finding out that I got my Headteacher’s award.

Freya – I liked learning about electricity.

Ehan – My favourite thing was performing our assembly.

Tiana – My favourite thing was visiting Stirling Castle.

Elise – I liked listening to the teachers.

Ava – I am going to miss Mrs Rodger smiling.

In maths we have been continuing our multiplication work and some groups have been using this to help them divide and share.

We started our new topic this week. It is all about Africa. We looked at a world map and found Africa on it. Africa is a continent made up of lots of different countries. We then looked at African animals and made animal fact-files. Orlaith brought in some African money, the note were called South African Rand. She also showed us her African drum and few people got to try to play it. We really enjoyed seeing this.

In art we designed African sunset pictures. We painted a red, yellow and orange sunset background using water-colour paint. Once it was dry we painted on the shadows of African animals using black paint. We had to be very careful and used very thin paintbrushes.

We would also like to point you in the direction of Mrs Collings ‘Our School Needs You’ post from earlier in the week. This includes a link to website where you can nominate our school to win £5000 towards our new library. Thank you!

This week we enjoyed our class trip to Stirling castle.

When we arrived we met a knight who lived in the 1500s. He was our guide for the morning and he took us on a tour of the castle. We looked at the gate where the portcullis used to be and we also spotted the arrow loops in the walls. We found out how the soldiers defended the castle, they would fire arrows at you, close the drawbridge, they would drop boulders on your head and pour hot sand down your armour to burn your skin. Very gruesome!

Luckily we survived and got into the castle where we saw the Chapel and the Great Hall. The Great Hall was where the King and Queen would entertain people at wonderful banquets.

We learned about some of the jobs people did at the castle. The worst one was the Gong Farmer who had to clean the toilets! They weren’t like our toilets, they were just a hole in the ground with a bit of wood over it. It was a very smelly job!

We then got to hold some of the knight’s Chain Mail armour. It was very heavy! Ehan, Ava, Alysheeya and Joseph all got dressed up in royal clothes. We found out that purple is a royal colour and if you wore it and you weren’t a member of the Royal family you were sent to the dungeons!

Our guide brought out the different weapons that were used, some of these were bows and arrows, swords and shields and axes.

Then it was time for some lunch, we sat in the beautiful gardens as it was such a nice day.

In the afternoon we had some free time to explore the vaults where we dressed up, played instruments and enjoyed the jester’s room. We also got to see the Queen’s bedchambers and her throne room. This is where you would go to see the Queen if you had a complaint and wanted her to fix it.

Soon it was time for the bus! We had a busy and exciting day and some of us even fell asleep on the bus home!

Some interesting facts we learned:

Keira: They only ate with spoons and knives – no forks.

Sara – The spoon was made from animals horns and horns are made from hair.

Grace Q – Not all moats have water – the ones that don’t have water are called dry moats.

Evie – Golf and football was banned in the 1500’s.

Well done to this week’s Dojo winers – Alex, Dionne, Ehan, Fearne and Tiana.

Some of the things we enjoyed in school this week are:

Tiana – We were writing about our Easter holidays.

Evie – We have been drawing daffodils with oil pastels.

Rheagan – I enjoyed reading ‘Charlie and Chocolate Factory.’

Grace M – We read the ‘Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch’ and this is going to be our new topic.

Orlaith – I enjoyed using the numberlines in maths.

Grace Q – I enjoyed looking at odd/even numbers.

Sara – We have been earning class Dojo points. We have to sit nicely and listen to get points.

Keira – I enjoyed playing dominoes with the tricky words.

Kayden – I enjoyed reading ‘Charlie and Chocolate Factory.’

Alysheeya – We have been writing new targets for our review jotters.

Well done to our top Dojo champions this week – Scott, Orlaith, Grace M and Evie!

We have had a lovely week to end this term off this week. We have been learning about Stirling Castle in preparation for our school trip. We learned some really interesting facts. Did you know that the world’s oldest football was found in the palace of Stirling castle? Or that Scotland’s first fireworks were set off from Stirling Castle? We also found out that it took 4 years to build and that there was no space for it so they had to build it on top of other buildings.

We have also been learning about the Easter story, how Jesus died and rose again. We then sequenced the story in the correct order. We also designed some lovely Easter cards to give to our friends and family.

P2B also loved learning about Autism on Thursday and we dressed in blue to raise awareness. We were given a task to design a big letter A for autism in any way we wanted. We decided to draw around our own hands and decorate them in blue pen and pencil. Once everyone completed theirs we stuck them all together in a huge A shape.

Finally lots of children have been working hard on their behaviour this term and achieved step 5. They all enjoyed a fantastic Easter egg hunt as their Golden Club treat today. Happy Easter everyone!

P2B have had a super week performing our wonderful show ‘Caterpillar Boogie.’ We had a really successful dress rehearsal on Tuesday when pupils from Bathgate West, Bathgate Early Years and Rainbow nursery came to watch us perform. We then did 2 super performances on Thursday for our parents and special people. We even had a lovely surprise for them at the end.

Some of the things we enjoyed this week are:

Grace Q – I liked our costumes in the show.

Orlaith – I enjoyed learning about the story of Easter.

Ryan – I liked the show.

Alex – I liked learning about castles.

Alysheeya – I liked learning about castles.

Dionne – I liked learning about Arrow Loops on castles.

Esther – I liked being a butterfly in the show. I liked giving the flowers to my gran and saying my lines.

Grace M – I liked everything about the show.

Eilidh – I enjoyed learning about castles.

Lilyrose – I enjoyed learning about all the different parts on the outside of a castle.

Keira – I enjoyed giving the flowers to my gran.

Rhianna – I enjoyed giving my flowers to Nana.

Scott – I liked ordering numbers to 100.

Evie – I liked looking at hard numbers.

Freya – I enjoyed being a butterfly in the show.

Ehan – I enjoyed spotting the signs of Spring.

Ava – I enjoyed counting up to 100.

Joseph – I enjoyed being a caterpillar in the show. I liked the facepaint.

Fearne – I liked being a Butterfly.

Kayden – I enjoyed counting to 100.

Elise – I enjoyed everybody smiling.

Sara – I liked learning about the different parts of a castle.

Pupil of the Week – Rhianna

We have had another busy week in P2B.

We have been practising lots and lots for our Caterpillar Boogie show and we can’t wait to perform it next week! Butterflies should remember their skin-coloured tights if they haven’t already brought them in and Caterpillars should remember their face paint permission slips.

In maths we have been partitioning 2 digit numbers into tens and units. We particularly enjoyed sharing this learning with our parents and carers at our Numeracy Shared Start. It was lovely to see so many parents/carers on Wednesday morning.

We have been finding out about life in a castle this week and have explored some of the jobs people had. Lots of pupils in our class would liked to have been a brave knight who rode on a horse and protected the King and Queen. Some others would have liked to have been the King or Queen wearing luxurious clothes and eating lovely food. Funnily enough, not many were interested in being a servant once we found out that servants had to sleep on the cold, stone floors huddled by the fire to keep warm.

In French, we have been learning the names of the colours and have been learning a song called ‘Arc en Ciel.’ It is about all the colours of the rainbow.

This week’s achievements:

Well done to Elise who was our Pupil of the Week for working well with others.

Tiana and Grace Q have been working very hard on their solo singing part in our show.

Esther moved up swimming level.