On Tuesday afternoon we went out and about to the pet shop.

Callum – I got to hold the rabbit!

Josh – I held some animals, it was nice. I held the snake, a turtle and a bearded dragon. The bearded dragon felt soft not spiky.

Geordie – I held the bearded dragon too. I really liked it. It had spikes on its face. It was a bit like a child because it was crawling over me!

Cary – I loved the visit to the pet shop. It was a nice experience for two reasons.

1) I got to see other pets and

2) I got to see peeled snake skin! It was on the ceiling. Snakes shed their skin eventually and it comes off by itself. They just wriggle out of it!  I would like to go back next month to see the bearded dragon eat some food.

Thursday 6th March was World Book Day. In class 3 we listened to a story from a book called Revolting Rhymes. The author Roald Dahl wrote his own version of Cinderella which we decided was much more gory and exciting than the original!

Cary – The Cinderella poem was really good.

Geordie – It was awesome!

Josh – I thought it was a bit weird.

Callum – It was very funny :).

Liam –  Cinderella danced at the ball.

We looked at the vocabulary  that Roald Dahl used instead of said. He included words like yelled, muttered, bellowed, roared and replied.

We all agreed on the part of the poem that we liked best :).  This is it. We hope you’re not too squeamish!

Now came the Ugly Sisters’ go.

One tried it on. The Prince screamed, “No!”

But she screamed, “Yes! It fits! Whoopee!

So now you’ve got to marry me!”

The Prince went white from ear to ear.

He muttered, “Let me out of here.”

“Oh no you don’t! You made a vow!

There’s no way you can back out now!”

“Off with her head!” the Prince roared back.

They chopped it off with one big whack.

We are looking forward to reading another Revolting Rhyme next week!

At writing time this week, we had to try to improve our writing by adding wow words.

Geordie  – It was cool and awesome to write wow words.  It makes my writing much better.  One of my wow words was ‘screeched’.

Josh – I gave myself a thumbs up.  I used the word ‘hurried’ instead of ‘ran’.

Liam- I liked my writing this week. The pictures make it fun and also help me.

Liam wrote ‘The car skidded on the ice’.

Callum- I wrote about a story. It was very long. There was a boy, a girl, a robber and lots of others. It’s a work in progress story from the never ending story game.

We would like to challenge you to improve these words:

Went

Said

Walk

This week the boys in class 3 decided that the choose tray items were needing refreshed.  Geordie had a great idea to go to the local charity shops and see if we could find anything new.

Before we went we thought about what type of items would be appropriate and set ourselves Out and About targets.  Miss Robertson and Mrs Stewart gave each of us a budget.  We were responsible for looking after the money and had to think about a safe place to keep it.  We also had to look at the prices in the charity shops to see what we could afford.

Callum – I thought Out and About was good.  I got a red truck for choose time.  I got a receipt.  It was very nice seeing some Thomas things too.

Cary – I didn’t like shopping in the charity shops because there wasn’t much to buy.  The only good things were too expensive.  I saved my money to add to my budget next time.  Next time I would like to go to somewhere I know has good toys for a reasonable price.

Josh – My target was pay for my item myself.  I chose a book and it cost £1.25.  I did very well and gave myself a thumbs up.

Liam was impressed with our new purchases when he saw them the next day.

Liam – I like the new choose trays.

On Tuesday we went on an out and about trip to the library.  Before we left our class we each set ourselves 1 target.  We had to think carefully because the target had to be challenging but achievable.  When we returned we thought about whether we had achieved our targets.  Mrs Stewart and Miss Robertson said we all did very well.

Josh – My target was to ask the librarian how long I could keep my book for but I did something even better.  I asked her ‘Is there a book about dragons?’.  She found me a book about dragons and that made me happy.

Cary – My target was to pick a book myself.  I did great.  I chose two books by myself.  Then I got my own library card and borrowed the books using the machine. 

Callum – My target was to pick a book by myself.  I was good at the library.  I now have my own library cards, one to keep at school and one to take home.  It is good to have books to read.  Out and About this Tuesday is going to be great.  We are going to the theatre to see the pantomime stage.  I hope this is going to be the greatest day ever.

Nathan – I wrote my own target. It was to be better behaved than the last time I was at out and about.  I was very well behaved and I was very kind.  I chose 2 ‘Diary of a Wimpey Kid’ books and borrowed them with no help.

This week is West Lothian Money week.  We have been learning about money.

Liam – I was counting 1 and 2 pence coins.

Josh – I have a money task for my home learning this week.

Geordie – Money is very important because we need it to buy things.  We aren’t old enough to have lots of money but some of us get pocket money.

Cary – I learned lots with Mrs Stewart because we had real coins instead of pretend coins.

We also had some good news this week.  Callum will become a class 3 pupil in November.  He came to visit and he joined in with our money week tasks.

Geordie – Callum and I played a game together on the smartboard.  We had to spend our coins to buy food.  It was good to work with Callum.

We are all very excited about Callum joining class 3.

Geordie – I think it’s cool.

Nathan – I think it’s a great change.

Cary – I quite like that Callum is coming.  He is one of my friends.

Mrs Stewart is very proud of all of the boys for welcoming Callum to class 3.

In class 3 we are reading the ‘World According to Humphrey’.  It’s a novel which we have purchased on ibooks on the ipad.  Mrs Stewart plugs the ipad into the smartboard so we can all see the pages as she reads them.

Geordie – It’s a really good story.  It’s cool to see it on the smartboard.

Josh – I like listening to the story.

Cary – The story is interesting and sometimes funny.

We have been practising our predicting skills.  Humphrey the hamster was taken to Mr Morale’s house.  He is the headmaster.  We predicted what he would do there.

Have a look at some of our predictions.

Cary – I liked predicting, especially because I got to draw my prediction.

Liam – I drew Humphrey biting the children.

We are enjoying reading the story and we are really looking forward to the next part.

Cary – It’s so exciting.  We always stop at exciting parts and I need to wait for the next bit.

On Monday the sensory room was transformed into the solar system.

We lay down and relaxed in the dark as we listened to a solar system song.  The planets hanging in the sensory room glowed in the dark.

Cary – I liked it.  I felt tired zzzzzzzzzz.

Nathan – I was a bit worried about the dark but it was okay.

We learned that there are 8 planets.  Do you know what they are called?

Geordie – I learned that Pluto is now called a dwarf planet.

We used a special torch which had slides to look at the planets more closely.  This was really cool.

Geordie – I thought the rings of Saturn looked like the inside of an onion.

The best part was we invited some pupils from p6a to enjoy our sensory room experiences with us.  We really liked having them join us and we are going to invite some more pupils next week.

We have had a very fun week in class 3.

We worked as a team to create a new chart on the Golden Wall. We had to decide on our new theme together and compromise to come to a joint decision. We decided to create a robot themed chart. We helped each other to make the 4 stages to get to the Robot Factory. If we reach the Robot Factory we will get all of our golden time on Friday. We each made our own Robots for the chart.

Josh – I liked that the pupils got to choose the ideas for the chart.

Geordie – I had another idea for the chart but I compromised with the other pupils.

We also learned about some of the rights of children. We are visualising the articles to help everyone in the school recognise them. We are putting a little picture on each article. Please use them on your class displays.

Nathan – I am good at visualising the articles because I know them so well.

We are glad to be back at school.

We have started a new community learning programme.  Each week we go to a different place in the community.  Mrs Stewart gives us all a target before we go and we have to try hard to achieve it.  We have ‘Out and About’ books where we write in our targets and stick in photos to prove we achieved them.  Then we write a comment about the outing and read Mrs Stewart’s comment.  If we go to the same place with our parents, they can write a comment too. 

 What we think about our target books:

Geordie –  I liked the bit where I colour stars to show how well I did.

Josh – I liked getting the book and I liked taking it out and about with me.

 This week we went to Simpson Library in Bathgate.  We all had our own targets.

Geordie – My target was to check out a book by myself. I did this but I was a bit disappointed that I couldn’t get out a teenage comic.

Josh – I had to choose a library book by himself. I found a fictional  book about dragons which was great!

Then we had a library challenge.  We had to get into teams and find out important information about the library.  We had a challenge question paper and clipboard.  For some of the questions we had to look for clues in the library.  The signs and notices in the library helped us.  For other questions we had to ask the library assistants to help us.  They were very helpful indeed.

Geordie –  I did very well with the challenge  and wrote down lots of the answers.

Whilst we were there Nathan, Geordie and Josh each got their very own library card.

Nathan – Getting my own library card was a little bit cool. I might use it with mum.

Geordie – It is awesome!

We really enjoyed our visit to the library and can’t wait for our visit to the supermarket next week.

This week in Class 3 we had planned to go to the library. Unfortunately  we could not go because Miss Waddell was ill. We hope to go next week instead. We all like to go to the library and to choose our own books. Geordie likes books about cars and Josh likes books about dinosaurs and dragons. We hope there are lots of books on these subjects when we visit the library next week. We have started filling out the correct forms so we can have our own library card. On the form we need to fill in our names, address and school.

We made more fun food  pictures this week  using different fruits including a pineapple. We made a character called Pretty Pineapple  and an eggplant which we named Exhausted Eggplant (eggplants can also be called aubergines). In our picture Exhausted Eggplant had just finished a running  race. The race was won by Proud Plum who was given a medal!

This week  our Star Writer slot was a little bit different as we didn’t write instructions to make anything. Instead we had to think of a creative way of getting rid of our teacher or school! The ideas included freezing the school, locking the teacher in a dungeon and turning the teacher into a toad. Mrs Stewart enjoyed reading them and they made her laugh so much 🙂

This week in Class 3 we went to Lana’s cafe. We walked down to the cafe with Mrs Stewart and Miss Waddell. The weather was nice and sunny when we went.  We were learning how to order our own snack and to pay for the snack after we had finished. Geordie had some toast and an orange fruit shoot, the toast was tasty. Josh enjoyed an empire biscuit and an orange fruit shoot, it was really good. Euan had some ice- cream with sprinkles on it and also toffee syrup along with a fruit shoot.  Nathan had a really big slice of chocolate cake which looked really tasty. This was our first time since the start of the year going Out and About. We hope to visit the shops or the library on our next adventure. We all showed good manners and remembered to say please and thank-you. Mrs Stewart and Miss Waddell were very proud of Class 3. We also made funny vegetables with Mrs Strain. It was fun.

Aidan’s new tutor that he will have next year paid him a visit in Class 3.  Aidan thought she was really nice and was pleased to meet her. He is looking forward to going to high school after the summer even though he is going to be leaving some good friends behind. We will miss you Aidan and hopefully you can stay in touch.

We are on holiday from school Monday and Tuesday but look forward to being back at school on Wednesday.