We have been learning about Scotland and St Andrew this week. We enjoyed trying some Scottish foods.

Liam: “I liked the cheese and oatcakes. They were delicious. I learned that the Scottlish flag is blue and white and is called a St Andrew’s cross after St Andrew.”

Yolie: “I tried haggis and I liked it. I also tasted cheese, oatcake and shortbread. The shortbread was my favourite. I learned that St Andrew is important in Scotland’s history.”

Callum, Cody and Cameron have been busy developing their teamwork skills. They have been sharing ideas and listening to each others ideas, trying them out and then choosing the best one.

Callum: “I was using the wooden railway to try and built a super long bridge. Every time we had it nearly there it fell through the tables. We are working on a way to keep it there without it falling. It was fun but very tricky.”

Class O have been learning about money and how to add values, budget and calculate change. Next week we will be doing a Secret Santa. We used our money skills to help us shop for presents for the Secret Santa.

Cody: “I enjoyed being indepentent in shopping for some of my firends. I was able to calculate the total cost, including a 5p bag, and choose things my firends would like.”

Cameron: “We went Out and About to the precinct. I had to buy three presents, some cellotape and wrapping paper. I was able to work out how much I had to pay the shop assistant all by myself. I was also the Road Safety Offier for the trip and was able to make sure everyone was safe on the walk.”

Class O have been using a variety of media and resources this week to support us in developing our Numeracy skills. We have been using board games, paper games and interactive learning to build our number knowledge, turn taking skills and problem solving.

Callum: “I enjoyed using Cool Maths games to help me develop my problem solving skills. Some of the tasks are quite tricky and require good knowledge.”

Liam: “Dominoes was a fun game. It was helping me with my adding. Run is a game that I played to help me with my estimation.”

Jamie: “I enjoyed helping Mrs O’Neill search and test new Maths apps for the iPad to help us further develop our Numeracy skills indpendently. We were also able to find a couple of French apps to help us with our French counting.”

Cody:” I played dominoes with Jamie. He is very good at it, but we both managed to win a games each. We high-fived at the end for good sportsmanship.”

Cameron:”This week I was a peer supporter. I was helping Yolie recall her addition facts through playing dominoes and dice games.”

Yolie: “I was learning about money and adding. I played dominoes with Cameron. Cameron won but i didn’t mind. It bwas fun.”

Class O have been learning about Buddhism this week as part of our Fesitival Fun learning journey. We have been researching beliefs, traditions and festivals.
We have enjoyed a variety of role play and art activities. Can you tell?

Cameron: Vesak is the festival og light where people decorate their houses and the street with candles and lanterns. I enjoyed making a colourful square lantern.

Cody: Dressing up as a monk and pretending to meditate was fun. I learned a huge number of interesting facts about monks and their daily life. However, I would not want to be one in real life becasue they do not get a lot to eat.

Liam: Buddhists worship the Buddha. They put pictures and statues of him in their houses. You have to take your shoes off when you talk to him.

Yolie: Buddhists believe that you must use kind words and not tell lies.

Callum: Buddhists live in all kinds of homes like everyone else, but some Buddhists choose to have a small shrine area in their house. This is a quiet place where a Buddhist can be alone to focus on their religious belief and practice meditation. I really liked prentending to meditate in the shrine room we made in sensory room.

We hope you enjoyed our reflections about Buddhism and Vesak (the festival of light). Over the next few weeks we will be learning about other world religions and important festivals.

This week Tracey from Tesco came to our class and was teaching us about rainforest fruits. We were given world maps and had to mark on the different rainforests around the world. Some of the rainforests we had never heard of for example the Cloud Forest in Ecuador. Once we had finished finding all the rainforests we go to try some of the fruits that grow there.

We tasted papaya, pineapple, mango, blueberries and coconut. These fruits come from rainforests all around the world. Once we tasted them we had to mark on our world maps where they were from.  Papaya and coconuts were from the Amazon Rainforest and the pineapples came from Costa Rica.

I tasted them all but my favourite was the pineapple – Annie

I also tasted them all and I liked the pineapple the best too but I didn’t like the papaya much – Louise

At the end of our session Tracey set us a challenge to design the craziest fruit. It could be fruits mixed together or your favourite food mixed with a fruit.  On the back of our maps we had to draw our fruit and see what the combination was. We had to make sure it had a name and then write about where it grew. We could be as imaginative as we liked. All entries need to be in by Wednesday so that they can be sent to Tracey who will choose a winner. There will be a prize for the overall P6 winner.

Annie & Louise

This week Class O were discussing foods that were healthy and unhealthy. We were investigating the food groups they belonged to and why they were important in our diet. We reaslised there was lots of fruit we hadn’t tried so decided to try them. We used our senses to help us learn about there tastes. We were smelling, touching, tasting and discussing what the fruits looked like. We used spinich, fig, passion fruit, tomato, kiwi, plum and nectarine in our test.

Cameron: In the fig there was too much seeds so I didn’t like it. However, the passion fruit also had a lot of seeds but I really liked it. In fact it was my favourite. It was very juicy.

Liam: I really liked spinich becasue it tasted yummy. I didn’t like any of the other fruits, but I was brave and smelt and licked a few. The passion fruit had a very strong smell and comes in a hard shell to protect the soft fuit inside. It smelt nice. The fig was squashy.

Callum: I did not try any of the fruits. They had strong smells that put me off trying them. I have been trying hard to taste new foods at snack to help me make more healthy choices.

Jamie: I tried all the fruits. This was the first time I had tried passion fruit, fig and spinich. They were nice and I would definately have them again. My favourite was the passion fruit becasue it was juicy.

Yolie: I tried some of the fruits. I liked spinich and kiwi. I tried passion fruit and it was tasty. I did not try tomato, plum, fig or nectarine becasue I did not like the smell of them.

Cody: I liked the plum becasue it looked nice, smelt nice and tasted nice. I had actually tried it before so I knew I liked it. I find it hard to try new foods becasue sometimes they don’t smell very nice and this puts me off eating them. However, I was very brave and smelt the tomato and tasted the kiwi. It tasted a bit like coconut but without the milk.

We are looking forward to Summer in Class B.  We have been learning that farmers grow fruit and vegetables.  We like fruit!  We taste fruit at snack time everyday.  We have been learning that some fruit is turned into something else like juice.

Farmers plants seeds.  The seeds need water and sun to grow.  Jake

We have watched our cress heads grow!  The cress is growing quickly!  We will be able to taste our cress soon.    The cress in the dark is growing but it is yellow and doesn’t look nice to eat. The cress seeds with no water are not growing.

Class B were experimenting with fruit as part of science.  We wanted to make ice-lollies and ice-cream using fruit.  They will keep us cool is Summer.

We ate ice-lollies.  It was sweet.  It was delicious.  They had been in the freezer.  David

Here are Jayden’s instructions on how to make ice-lollies.

1.  You need orange juice and apple juice.

2.  Put the juice into ice-lolly moulds.

3.  Put the lid on.

4.  Put them in the freezer.

5.  Wait for the ice-lollies to freeze.

6.  When they are frozen taste them!

My ice-lolly was orange.  It was so tasty.  It cooled me down.  Jayden

We made banana ice-cream.  We cut the bananas and put them in the freezer.  They went very frozen.  When they were frozen we put them in a food processor.  It was very noisy.  The bananas turned soft.  We put them back in the freezer.  The bananas turned into ice-cream!  Lewis

We tasted the ice-cream.  It tasted delicious!  Gabriel

Class B have enjoyed their Out and About experiences this term. We learn and demonstrate many different life skills when we are out and about learning in the community. Recently we went to the swing park! We were all able to demonstrate how to travel safely, and we know not to touch dogs that we don’t know. We had great fun playing in the swing park!

Congratulations to all of the pupils in Class B as they were all Star Writers this week!

A special well done to Aiden who won the Road Safety Poetry competition!

It’s A Wonderful World Class B have been learning about endangered species. We’ve been reading current scientific literature and watching news clips about endangered species. We’ve taken a special interest in Giant Pandas and have been studying these animals this week.

Humans and animals are both important so it’s hard to explain. If they didn’t chop down the forest the humans might not have anywhere to live. Maybe the humans could find somewhere else to live. Aiden

Endangered mean the animals are losing their homes not getting any food and they would be all extinct if they keep dying. Cameron

People are cutting down trees in forests; some animals like pandas need trees to be sheltered. Callum

China needs to cut down trees so they can build new houses. It’s not fair because the pandas can’t get any food like bamboo. If pandas become extinct there would be none left absolutely none. Some people kill pandas to get their fur and also make rugs out of them. It’s not a nice thing to do because pandas are really cute and it’s not nice to kill animals. Cody

Some Pandas lived in the zoo and some pandas live in the forest. Tian Tian and Yang Guang live in Edinburgh Zoo. Liam

Writing

This week, we are using our knowledge of Giant Pandas to write reports about these endangered animals. We want to share our reports with Class O, so that other people can learn about Giant Pandas, why they endangered and what is being done to help.

We had lots of fun in the sensory room learning more about Giant Pandas and creating a wonderful shared writing plan.

We’ve been working hard to include important features of report writing.

A title and a factual first sentence is important so the reader will know what it’s going to be about. Aiden

A report is like non-fiction because it has true facts and information. Cody

We were all star writers this week!

Our topic this term is ‘It’s a Wonderful World’. We have been learning to classify animals based on their similarities and differences.

‘A herbivore is an animal that eats plants. A carnivore eats animals. Omnivores eats animals and plants.’ Liam

‘If it has fur and also feeds milk to its babies then it’s a mammal’. Cody

‘A vertebrate is an animal with a spine’. Jamie

‘A spider is an invertebrate, it doesn’t have a spine’. Aiden

We worked in teams to classify the animals and made sure to use the information posters to help us make informed decisions. The adults were especially pleased with how well we worked together, asking each other great questions and making decisions together.

We found some sea creatures tricky to classify, as they look like fish but are actually invertebrates.

Class B enjoyed their Out and About experience this week.

We have been learning about money in class, so decided to go out into the local community to put our money skills to good use!

We donated some old items to charity, and then used our money to buy some new toys for Class B.

We made decisions together about what to buy and even shopped around in the local charity shops before making our final decisions.

We bought a Lego set, a science game, a Thomas the Tank Engine book and a cake shop DS Game. The boys in Class B were very polite when paying for their items and remembered to wait for their receipt and change.

We enjoyed learning about charity shops and how we can help to raise money for charity by donating unwanted clothes and toys. This week, Liam helped us to find a safe place to cross. We crossed the roads at the traffic lights and tried hard to decide when it was safe to cross. We’re looking forward to our next Out and About experience.

Class B have been learning to write Kennings Poems.  We enjoyed reading lots of examples and trying to figure out using the clues what the poems were about.  For our poems we have been writing about animals. During our poetry recital next week, we will try to read out our poems using a clear voice.  We’re looking forward to listening to the poems and trying to work out what animal the poem is about.

Do you know which animal these Kennings poems are about?

A sea walker.

A people nipper.

A snip snipper.

A sideways walker.

A shell wearer.

A meat muncher.

A throat tearer.

A jungle ruler.

A bone breaker.

A good sprinter

A vicious biter.

A meat sniffer.

In Class B we have been learning about the Easter story.  We enjoyed listening to and discussing the Easter story with Miss Robertson.

Miss Robertson set us an Easter story challenge!  We had to find the hidden eggs, crack them open and read the part of the Easter story that was hidden inside.  Once we had all of the pieces we placed them together in the correct order.

We’re looking forward to more Easter activities this week.

Have a nice holiday!

At maths we have been learning about 3D shapes. To celebrate how well we have done with our learning, we decided to make robot models using everyday objects. We worked really hard on these. We planned our designs, gathered the resources we needed and got to work building our robots. Once they were painted we labelled the body parts to show what shapes had been used.

‘My robot was based on a famous character from a company named Aardmen. I used cuboids, spheres and cylinders.’ Callum

We demonstrated safe and hygienic food preparation when we made oat cakes. We followed the Viking Oatcake recipe carefully and enjoyed tasting them once they were cooked. We chose healthy toppings such as sugar free jam and blueberries. We got the thumbs up from our special guest judges! We also made Viking Vegetable Stew!

‘Making the oat cakes was enjoyable. They tasted great, a bit like bread. I had syrup and blueberries on top.’ Jamie

We tried hard to use interesting describing words when writing character descriptions this week. We invented our own Viking Gods and described their appearance and special powers.

‘I like my Viking God because he looks like a Lego dude, he can read your mind!’ Cody

We also had great fun at messy play in the Sensory Room this week!