We have had a fun week. This week we have been learning about doctors. We made life sized doctors by drawing around each other. We have been working hard in reading, writing and maths. We have been learning about sequencing stories. This week was our first swimming session this term. It was great fun. Everyone enjoyed having fun in the little pool and having lessons in the big pool. Here is what we enjoyed this week.

David: I liked playing with the pennies in maths.

Gabriel: I had to lay down on a piece of paper and Mrs McNeill drew around me to make our doctor.

Jayden: I liked painting Dr Ranj.

Lewis: I liked playing Mickey Mouse Club House with Liam and Gabriel in the playground.

Jake: I liked swimming.

Logan: I liked swimming. I liked it when we were swimming in the little pool.

This week Class O were practising their road safelty skills. We walked to the ice-cream shop, where we had to think about busy traffic and safe places to cross. We discusses the dangers of crossing between parked cars as well as the safe use of pedestrian crossings. We all demonstrated excellent road safety skills.
We were also consolidating our money skills from last term. We were all able to order an ice-cream which we had enough money for and callculate any change we should receive. When we go Out and About again we will continue to practise our road safety skills and will hopefully visit some other places in our local community that will help us develop skills and learn more about our topics.

“I enjoyed going to the ice-cream shop. I have been there with my family too. I was able to independently choose, order and pay for an ice-cream. I chose my favourite flavours – white chocolate and bubblegum!” (Cameron)

“I decided to chose a snow cone. I chose a zombie flavoured one. It was very sour but I really liked it. I paid for it by myself. I was very good at helping the group look for dafe places to cross the roads.” (Cody)

“I was confident calculating how much my ice-cream would cost, deciding if I had enough money and working out how much change I should get. I chose two scoops in a waffle cone – mint choc chip and white chocolate. It was delicious!” (Callum)

“I walked very well to the ice-cream shop and helped look for cars coming so we knew if it was safe to cross or not. It was hard to choose an ice-cream becasue there was lots of flavours. I chose bubblegum. It wsa blue. It was very cold but yummy.” (Liam)

“On the way to the ice-cream shop I help look for cars to see if it was safe to cros over the road. I chose a chocalte waffle cone with chocolate ice-cream and chocoalate sauce.” (Yolie)

Class O were very excited to be back at school this week. The enjoyed sharing their stories about what they did, where they went and who they spent time with during their summer hoildays. Everyone designed and created a personalised postcard to share with a friend about their holiday. This helped us recall writing in phraes, writing addresses and why addresses are important.

As well as looming back, Class O were keen to think about the whole term or their whole school year and discuss what they are looking forward to learning about.

Here are Class O’s thoughts:

Yolie: I hope we can go Out and About in the town and learn about the diffrent places and how to go there safely.

Jamie: I am looking forward to learning new strokes and techniques in swimming and learning to play new games with Mr Jeffries at PE.

Callum: I can’t wait to learn lots of new things in PE, at Out and About and during topic.

Cody: I am going to the Lowport with my P5 class. This will be fun. I hope I learn how to do lots of new things there. Swimming will be fun too.

Cameron: I am going to be learning lots of new things in Class O and in my P4 class. I enjoyed Maths yesterday with my P5 class. I hope Mr Jeffries teaches us lots of new games in PE this year.

Liam: I like reading books in Class O. I would like to read more books and learn about the characters and their adventures.

We are all looking forward to our first full week of school next week. We hope you enjoy reading our Blog each week. 🙂

This week we have been very busy learning more about the body and how to look after ourselves as we grow up. We have been focussing on making positive and healthy choices and investigated hearing and the lungs.

I have been learning about smoking and why it is bad for you. Smoking can damage your lungs even from being around the smoke. Your lungs will disclour with yellow and black. I really enjoyed the epxeriement and activities. They were very interesting. (Josh)

We investigated hearing and why it is important. We learned about how the ears work and how sound travels to the brain. I really enjoyed the Brainpop video we watched. It was fuuny. It talked about having cheese instead of a brain. I carried out a sound walk. I could hear lots of differnt sounds. (Cary)

We have been learning about the human body. We have learnt about the lungs and how they help you to breathe. We also looked at the ears and how they are importent for hearing. We learnt all the different parts of the ears and what their job is. (Caitlin)

I really enjoyed learning about ears and lungs this week. We had a model lung made out a bottle and a balloon which helped us to learn about how we breathe. We learned about what we could hear by going on a sound walk around the school. (Adam)

I have been learning about parts of the body especially the eyes and face. I can name the different parts of the eyes. I drew a picture of my face. I talked about my feelings when I grow up and become a teenager.  I enjoyed swimming yesterday. Everyone had to swim underwater and go through the hula hoops. We were also beginning to learn the breast-stroke. It was tricky. You had to swim with frog legs!

by Caitlin

I learned about parts of the body. I enjoyed learning about the heart and how it works. I really enjoyed investigating a murder on a construction site. The digger and spades were great to use to dig up the bones.

by Cary

I learned about the heart and how it works. You will die if your heart stops beating. I have been learning the two times table in Maths and I am good at it.  2 x 11=22.  I wrote a story about the crime scene in the playground and another murder on a construction site. I enjoyed investigating the murder by digging up bones and dressing up as a construction worker with a yellow vest and hard hat.

by Adam

I had an amazing week in Belgium with p7. My favourite part was the chocolate factory. I learned lots about the Wars and the War graves. This week I have enjoyed writing about a crime scene and a murder.

by Geordie

I have been learning about money in Maths this week. I have been learning about the combinations of coins that make £1 –  100 1pence coins make £1 – 50 2pence coins make £1 and 2 50pence coins make £1. I have enjoyed writing about a crime sence. I enjoyed being a detective and investingating what happened. It was fun digging in the sand to find bones. It was a human!

by Josh

Class O came to school on Wednesday morning to find a crime scene with a body!

Cary discovered a shoe. It was in fact a size 13.5 trainer. Investigations were carried out and it is believed this is the shoe of the attacker.

Josh took some blood samples and put them in a evidence bag to be tested at the lab.

Caitlin was in charge of note-taking so she had to write down all the details found at the scene.

Geordie had to accurately take measurements from the evidence and drawing of where the body was found so we could piece together the crime.

Adam used the eqipment to look for DNA and other vital evidence.

Class O really enjoyed the invesigation and used their findings to successfully write news reports about the incident.
Well Done Class O!

Class O have been very busy with their learning this week. We have been concentrating hard on our Literacy and Numeracy, as well as learning about Easter and doing Easter crafts. There was a mischievous character who cut the heads off Mrs Laing’s daffodils, ate our chocolate egg and left footprints!

Caitlin: This week was big float week at swimming and I really enjoyed it. We have been making Easter Hats and cards with Mrs Henderson. I really enjoyed doing these as well.

Josh: I have been learning about coins and adding money this week. I was using real life problems to help me. I have also been learning how to collect data and put it into a graph. This is quite tricky. I really liked making an Easter card with Mrs Henderson. Someone cut the heads off Mrs Laing’s dafodils and we had to investigate who did it.

Adam: I enjoyed writing my spelling words in messy things this week. The playdough has been fun becasue we now have it as a choose tray. The silly string was fun. It was messy!

Geordie: It was a very busy week in Class O. Everyone has worked so hard. Some mysterious things happened in the class when we were upstairs. The flowers were cut and the egg was eaten. I enjoyed investigating how and who did this.

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Caitlin: This week we have been learning more about the rainforest. We have been researching endanngered animals. I learnt that the rainforests are being destroyed, which means animlas are loosing their homes. I made a rainforest in a box by drawing, painting and making animlas.

Geordie: I really enjoyed making rainforest art. I have been learning to use shape, colour and pattern. I like working independently.

Josh: We have been learning about endangered animals and making a rainforest in a box. I am going to make a snake to go in my rainforest. White tigers are an endagered animals. They are hunted. There are only about 400 left in the world.

During the second week of Fitness Fortnight Class 3 tried lots of different activities.

On Monday we had wrestling, Tuesday was the obstacle course and on Wednesday we had the skipathon.

Callum – The obstacle course was really fun,  it was good that we had the ropes out. When I first went on the ropes I didn’t know what to do so Miss Robertson helped me. I sat on the knot and I swung across to the other side. Wrestling was really fun.  I had to get my partner down by pulling their arms. It was a bit tricky.

Cary – Wrestling was fun at PE. My favourite part of the wrestling time is when you had to snatch the ball out of the other person’s hand when you were rolling about. It was great with Callum who was my partner! The obstacle course was a nice activity too. I finally got to swing on the rope. There was also a tunnel, a running and jumping course and a high jump.

Geordie – The best bits of the obstacle course were the rope swing and running and jumping mountains. The tunnel was the hardest part. I didn’t really liked the skipathon. There was a lot of skipping and I am not so good at it. Mum sponsored me £5 for trying. I really liked the wrestling, it was me versus Aiden. It was a good match, it was a tie. It was very funny! The aim of ball wrestling is to get the ball. It was easy because I am so strong!

Liam – I was crawling through the tunnel. It was dark in the tunnel. I was happy, it was fun :).

Our views on Commonwealth Health and Fitness Fortnight

Callum – It was awesome, cool and great. My highlight was the obstacle course. It was awesome!

Cary – It was fairly good but not perfect. My perfect fitness fortnight would have wrestling everyday!

Geordie – I give wrestling 5 stars out of 5!

We began our Fitness Fortnight activities last Monday with a Class 1, 2 and 3 Silver Circle. We all had three activities to do – PE with Mr Jeffries, making fruit salad and finding out about the Commonwealth games on the Smartboard.

Callum – At PE there was a running game, a javelin game and a long jump one. My favourite bit was the running one. We had to go all the way round the track. We had to remember not to go inside the markers. This was tricky and very hard for some people. Then we made fruit salads in class 3. I made an apple one. It had apple juice in it and apples.

On Tuesday we had gymnastics.

Josh – I liked doing the sausage roll. You keep your body tight together and then you roll.

Geordie – Gymnastics was great. I was walking along the balance beam. It was very hard and scary.

Cary –There was a bouncy thing there to run and jump on.

Wednesday was Sports day.

Josh – My favourite race was potato and spoon. It wasn’t an egg and spoon race.

Cary – It was fun when I did the big lap. I like running!

Geordie – Sports day was good. I was so close to winning but my bean bag fell off my head and that was annoying!

The award ceremony at the end of the day was good because we got medals and stickers.

On Thursday afternoon we went swimming as usual, then on Friday there was a funfair to say goodbye to Mrs Waddell. We all agreed that this was the best day of the whole week!

Callum – It was really amazing. I liked everything, the ice-cream even had sprinkles on it!

Josh – I loved it. I liked the bouncy castle best!

Cary – It was really fun. I wish I had more tokens but even so it was a really nice thing.

Nathan – It was fun. I liked the bouncy castle best.

Geordie – It was awesome. I enjoyed the ice-cream. The death slide was really high. It was dark but not scary. The music was awesome. I was dancing until the end.

We all wish Mrs Waddell a very happy retirement 🙂

This week we continued our experimentations with electrical circuits. We used an electronics kit called Brainbox to build different projects.

Cary  – The brainbox stuff was so great, it couldn’t be better. There was a spinny thing that went in the air like a helicopter and I put all three batteries together and it went really high. I tried to make a circuit that made two spinners fly up in the air but there just wasn’t enough power in the batteries to launch two spinners at once. Three batteries still wasn’t enough so I took a spinny thing away. Then it went really high and I was really happy.

Nathan – I liked doing the motor launch spinning wheel. For that you needed to make a circuit with batteries, connectors, a motor and a launch disc.

Callum – It was very amazing. I was trying to get the two aeroplanes to work.  When I tried only one it worked but two wouldn’t work at the same time.

We learned more about switches this week. We tried out three different kinds, the press switch, the slide switch and the dry reed switch.

Nathan – If you want a switch I would recommend the push switch. If it makes contact with the metal then it works.

Callum – The slide switch is an on and off switch just like the one on your wall for your light. I used a push switch and a slide switch. They both had to be on at the same time to complete the circuit.

Cary – I really like the reed switch. When the magnet comes close to the metal parts the two metal parts come together and form a power line! If I had 100 batteries and had that magnet switch just think how high the spinner would go!

Cary had seen on TV that you could make a battery from a potato so we decided to find out if this was true. We looked on the internet and found out that citrus fruit are supposed to be even better at producing electricity, so we got some lemons.

Callum – It was very exciting to see the lemons. We used four. We put a zinc nail and a copper coin into each lemon. These made good conductors. We linked copper and not copper with wires. The lemons made enough energy to get the light bulb to work. It was exciting!

This week we played a new game at Maths Mission time. It was called Kim’s game. Everyone had to look for a whole minute at some objects on a tray and try to remember them. Then one thing was taken away while our eyes were closed!

Callum – Kim’s game was a hiding game.

Geordie – You have to identify what is missing. I noticed a duck was missing. Then we played Kim’s game with numbers. We used the answers from the 3 and 5 times tables. I discovered that 24 was missing. I hope we can play it again next week!

This week as part of our energy topic we built some electrical circuits.  We used batteries, wires, bulbs, buzzers and motors.  We investigated the effects of adding switches, more batteries and more bulbs to the circuit.

Josh – I thought circuits were good.  I made some of my own, like a light bulb and a buzzer.  I had to use two batteries to make it work.

Nathan – When my circuit had two batteries the bulbs were brighter because there was more power. The motor went faster with two batteries and the buzzer was really loud and sounded higher up.

Cary  – The switch caused the electricity to stop and go, when you let go of the switch it would turn off. It broke the circuit. I am very happy that I finally got to know how switches work. It was great to experiment with different circuits.

We thought about what sort of energy the electrical energy was changed into. Sometimes it was more than one sort!

Callum – When the light bulb lit up there was light energy and a little bit of heat and when the buzzer sounded there was sound and a bit of movement energy.

We swapped the wires for different materials to see which would let electricity flow through.

Cary –We found that things like the tin foil and paper clip were conductors. These were the metal things.

Callum –The string and the plastic spoon were insulators.

Callum – I was hoping this was a bad plan to use one wrapped tin foil, two batteries, a switch and two light bulbs. But when I tested it it actually worked. I was very happy.

Callum – In the sensory room we made a ‘Don’t touch the wire’ game. When we touched the wire it went BBBBUZZZZZZZZ. The two wires touching created an electrical circuit.

Geordie – I like the operation game, the nose lights up and the buzzer goes. You can get Operation Shrek and Operation Mater.

On Thursday  morning we had our Celebrating Success assembly. Josh, Cary and Liam all received certificates. Here is Liam having his certificate presented by Mr Welsh.

Liam – Mr Welsh gave me a card. It was a Head Teacher’s Award. He said  “Well done!”  I felt happy.

A big congratulations to all the certificate winners :).

On Wednesday it was Liam Carr’s birthday.  He turned 12.  We had a special party in class 3.  We had special snacks, a birthday cake and we played the Wii.

Geordie – The party was awesome.  I also liked the Wii because I had 4 shots!  I really like Liam.

Callum – I really enjoyed the cake and the Wii.

Liam – I got a present.  It was Bumblebee.  I liked it.

Josh – I liked it because it was nice.

This week we also learned about electrical dangers in the home.  Here are some of the things we learned.

Callum – Don’t put forks in toasters even if your toast is stuck.  You could get electrocuted.

Geordie – Don’t get electrical things wet.  NEVER take them into the bathroom.

Josh – Don’t trail electrical cables across the floor.  Put them at the side so people won’t trip over them.

Mrs Stewart showed us this super website.  Go here to find out more.

http://oldsite.switchedonkids.org.uk/index.html

This week we have also been practising our ‘Build Up’ song for Celebrating Success.  Here is a sneaky peak.

We are very excited about Celebrating Success and hope to see lots of our family visitors there.

This week we went to the shops for Out and About.

Josh had a shopping list from his parents and it was his responsibility to find and buy everything on the list. He said “It was great to buy my own sausages. I had them for dinner and they were tasty.”

Geordie had some items to buy for different people. Miss Henderson needed toothpaste and Mrs Stewart needed ribbon. He said “I got toothpaste for Miss Henderson. It was great because she gave me a sticker.”

Cary and his family needed some messages from the butchers and newsagents. He said “I was pleased to get a certificate for super manners at the shops. I didn’t know that I was that polite.”

Callum had an item to buy for Mrs White at Boots. He said “I enjoyed it a little but I got cross at the end.” Hopefully next time if Callum tells the adults there is a shop he would like to visit we can go there too. Unfortunately there wasn’t enough time on this shopping trip!

Nathan agreed with his Mum a budget and he was unsure what he wanted to buy before we left school. After a chat with Mrs Stewart he decided on a book from WH Smiths. In the end he decided on a comic. He says “I got something that was cool. The books were too expensive.” Well Done Nathan for making a good independent choice.

The adults think that all boys are showing excellent skills whilst out in the community and are showing progress in their independence skills.

This week Geordie and Josh performed in the p6 show, The Wizard of Oz.  Josh was a munchkin and Geordie was the gate keeper to Oz. 

Geordie – It was unbelievable being in the show.  I was really tired after the show.  I did really good and was awesome.  Mum bought me a Lego City toy for working so hard in the show.

Josh – The show was great.  I didn’t like getting the make-up on but it helped me look like a munchkin even though I was too tall. Dad bought me a Bionicle from the internet for doing so well.

On Monday the other boys in class 3 went to Bathgate Academy to watch the dress rehearsal. 

Callum – I loved this play.  I wish I could be in the Wizard of Oz.  Even though I wasn’t in it I loved the show. 

Cary – It was different than I thought.  It was better than I thought it was going to be.  I thought it was going to be exactly like the movie but it was a bit different.  The actors and actresses were good.

Miss Robertson and Mrs Stewart helped Josh and Geordie back stage.

Miss Robertson – I think both boys worked very, very hard and put in a lot of effort.  I was extremely proud at all performances and I can’t wait to help the children next year.

Mrs Stewart – I loved the show.  I thought all of the pupils in p6 did a fantastic job.  I was very proud of Josh and Geordie.

Josh and Geordie would like to say a huge thank you to Mrs Innes and Pamela for helping them to prepare for the show 🙂