This week in Primary 6a we have had a fantastically fun first week! We have reacquainted ourselves with the class iPads but we were a bit worried that they had shrunk over the holidays. Fortunately for us Mr Welsh had bought new iPad minis for our class – Flyn thinks that this is awesome!

On Tuesday we all had good fun with our Primary 1 buddies. Our class has paired up with Miss Bollen’s Primary 1. Jack thinks it is great fun to play with his buddy and Finlay thinks his buddy is funny. We are all looking forward to working with Primary 1b to help them learn.

We have been learning more about the UNCRC and our rights. We are in the process of creating our Class Charter and here are a few of our designs.

Miss Anderson is using Class Dojo to monitor our behaviour and make sure that all the good things we do are recorded. Pupil login details will be shared in Home Learning jotters when they are handed out. So far we have had 130 positive things happen in our classroom! That is over 40 a day.

We hope everyone has a good weekend and look forward to reading any comments that are left for us!

Miss Anderson and P6a 8)

We had fun making a diorama with our P6 buddies! The buddies prepared a fact poster about the Chelsea Flower Show. We learned that the chelsea flower show gardens take 25 days to build and it is 500 London buses long. Also the winning flower was a Geranium.  We then had the challenge of making a garden diorama of our dream garden that could be entered into the show.  We had a variety of media to choose from, we made ponds, washing lines, apple trees, picnics and much more! It was so much fun working with the buddies! Some of our gardens even had moveable parts like see saws and windmills. Lastly,we had to write a ‘Did you know?’ caption to attach to our diorama. Look at the fun we had! Please feel free to look at our work on the school gallery! 

We have been learning about Climate Change.   In Bangladesh climate change is having a major impact on those communities living in riverside areas. Heavier, longer rainy seasons mean that land where farmers used to be able to grow crops to feed their family is being flooded before crops can be harvested. As a result families go hungry.

We were challenged in a small group to design and make a structure that would enables farmers to continue to grow their crops even when the land floods.

This is what we thought:

The floating gardens are very cool, it held 560g

It was fun but challening, mine worked ok (NR)

I enjoyed making the floating gardens ao that it could hold seeds and learning how the floating gardens are really made (JR)

Our floating garden was alright, ours held 540g

Our garden held 560g.  I liked my floating garden because we used each others ideas and worked as a team (MP)

I think the floating garden was fun to make and we did well.   Our floating garden managed ti hold 560g.

The best thing is that it floated and was challenging (LL)

It did sinnk but it was still fun to make (NM)

I think the garden challenge was fun.  I think the ‘raft’ could have supported more  if we had provided more support and therefore it would have been stable.

We have come to the end of our sports electives. We have enjoyed the experience and learned lots of new techniques and skills. On Thursday we were entertained by the Musical Theatre and Dance groups who had worked really hard to put together a showcase performance.

These are some of our thoughts:

• I enjoyed my sponsored swim! (EM)

• The best bit was the last week because we played lots of games (football MH)

• I learnt how to use arm drive and different running ‘gears’. My long jump was really fun! (Athletics MP)

• In musical theatre I enjoyed performing to the audience the most!(AS)

• I really enjoyed my football elective. It was great fun – all the shooting and passing games. I will pick it again next year. (DM)

 • I enjoyed doing golf elective. I learned a lot more about golf and skills I need. I enjoyed going on the range. (GF)

• My sports elective was golf and I learned how to hit the golf balls by putting, chipping and full swing (JR)

• I enjoyed my sports elective because I learned lots of new dances and it helped me to be more confident on stage (BP)

• I really enjoyed basketball because I got to refresh my memory after going to a club for 2 years (KP)

• I learned how to cook a lot of different food; it was a lot of fun. I enjoyed making shortbread and banoffee pie. (MH)

• I learned how to hit the shuttle up and down, it was very fun (EM)

• I really enjoyed that we got the chance to go on the course with a coach (Golf TD)

• I really enjoyed athletics it was very fun for all us. We learned lots of new skills and got better at them each week! (EB)

• I love learning new things and my confidence improved! (MB)

• I learned new dives and I enjoyed the fun day (swimming)

This week in P6 we have been practising our assembly again and nearly ready to blast off into space!

On Thursday afternoon the children that had been the Musical Theatre and Dance  electives put on a show for P6 and P7 at the Regal Theatre.

“It was awesome” Luke

“It was really cool and fun and I liked watching all my friends” Rabeea

“It was really fun and nerve wracking, but we really developed our skills and I would do it again.” Christopher Allan

Some of the class have been looking after the nursery children that will join us in Balbardie after the summer!  The children were very excited about coming to P1!  Some were quite shy, some were quite loud and noisy!

We are really looking forward to the gala day tomorrow and wish Balbardie Primary School float  ‘good luck’!!!

P6m

This week we had visit to the library! The librarian read us a Horrid Henry short story and some of us were able to choose a book that we will read for our class presentation.

This week was our last sports elective week. 🙁

Here are some of our thoughts on the sports elective.

I really enjoyed the Badminton and I won a badminton racquet – Fraser

We had a fun day and went on the big floats and kept capsizing them! Taylor

The swimming elective was really fun and one day we had to swim 25 lengths! I forgot my swimming costume one day so had to buy a new one (on my birthday)! Rabeea

Musical threatre was really inspiring and the amount of progress we’ve made in such a short time is amazing! Everybody has got lovely singing voices and are amazing dancers.  Christopher A

We have had lots of fun practising for our class assembly!  We hope you are going to be able to come and watch us perform on Friday 14th June.

Finally, we were all really proud of our school when the 4th Green Flag was raised at Grounds Awareness Day!

We have had a busy afternoon with the Primary 1 to make models and masks of mini-beasts for their assembly.  Some of the models using junk, plasticine and drew pictures.  We used lots of different to decorate out models.  We helped the primary 1 to use non-fiction books to find out facts, we read and the primary 1’s had to summarise.  This is what they said….

• We learned how many legs a spider has.
• Butterflies have lots of colours.
• Caterpillars turn into butterflies.
• We wrote questions about mini-beasts on a big leaf.
• We learned facts about the mini-beasts so we can tell people at our assembly.  Our P6 buddies helped us.

Daniel M and Jessica were very impressed with Jake’s bumble bee.

We are all really proud of ourselves….we have made our lighthouses!  Miss Holwill challenged us to include a switch in our design using our conductor knowledge.  We weren’t very sure how to do it at first but we all managed in the end!  This meant we could make our lighthouse’s light flash. 

Here is a video for you to look at….

http://youtu.be/8i470fnxqM8

From

P6

We have been learning about electricity.  So far we have investigated circuits.  A circuit is like a bike chain, the battery pushes electrons round the wires and components.   We experimented making our own circuits and the effect of adding more light bulbs in either series or parallel.  We learnt how to draw circuits.  We then tested different materials to see which were conductors, metal spoon or paper clip, and insulators, chalk or plastic.  We are going to use this knowledge to build a light house.

In maths we have been working on decimals and division.

In music and drama, we have been learning and practising a dance that we will show to parents at the Celebrating Success Assembly!

We have been researching the case for and against Scottish independence.  We have been sourcing relevant information and making notes to help us to structure our arguments.

We are all very proud of Rabeea, who sung beautifully in the Balbardie’s Got Stars in their Eyes final.  Well done Rabeea 🙂

 Today we had a visit from Emma from the SSPCA.  The SSPCA looks after animals in Scotland.  We learned lots of interesting facts about what to do and not do if we see wildlife in trouble.  For example we should not touch young animals as their parents will not look after them again.  When hedgehog’s wake up from hibernation you could feed them cat food (but not fishy ones).  If you are concerned you should call 03000 999 999.  We played Top Trumps which told us about rescues that the SSPCA had done.  There were facts about the animals, species information and rescue information.

Today we attended an Electricity Workshop.  We learned how to keep safe around electricity, top tips include:

• Not to climb towers (pylons)
• Not to switch light switches with wet hands
• Don’t stick a knife in the toaster, even if it is switched off.  Turn it upside down and shake it to get the stuck toast out
• Don’t go fishing or fly a kite under the towers or near cables
• Don’t touch cables with sticks etc.
• Don’t go inside/over the fence to a sub-station, phone them to get your ball back
• You can go to a power station with an engineer

We also learned about the underground cables which carry 400 000 volts.  The cables are very thick.  We also saw the insulators.

At the end we had a quiz….Dean was very speedy at pressing his buzzer! Congratulations Dean as he knew the answers too.

Natalie and Jennifer had exciting news to share with us this week.

On Wednesday 29^th January David Carry, a famous swimmer visited Swim West Lothian Masters. David Carry is a double Commonwealth gold medallist and Olympic finalist.  His best event is the 400m freestyle.  He showed us some front crawl technique.  He also asked us what we think about when we swim.  Afterwards he showed us more technique, it really helped!  We also got his autograph and picture.

All of the swimmers including us had a fantastic time with David Carry.

Our sports electives start in a few weeks, maybe in the future a class will be writing about one of us!

We are still enjoying being nursery carers; today group 1 helped the children and played games with them.

On Friday we had another spiffy Alice rehearsal.  We have learnt an epic dance routine in Alice, we all had lots of fun and are getting better at remembering the steps (DM).  Watch out for the special guests!  Megan P enjoyed learning the new songs and can’t wait for the show. She also thinks we are getting louder!  Everyone agrees that it is fun and exciting.   In class we are also reading the book Alice in Wonderland, as one of our reading activities we made Caucus Race games.  Natalie thought it was lots of fun, both making them and playing them!

In maths we are working on percentages, we are getting more confident in linking our fraction knowledge and percentages.   The groups are now working on the percentage of a set.

In writing we are continuing stories, it is fun to continue in a style.

Ashley likes sharing what we do with everyone via the blog and looking at everyone else’s news.

This week we have been learning lots more about Alice in Wonderland.  We now know lots of the songs that we are going to sing.

We enjoyed giving Mr Welsh and Miss Henderson a little preview of our Caucus Race 🙂  They were impressed.

We have been learning more about Sex Education.  This week we have learned about how babies are made.

In maths with Miss McAllister, we have been working hard to practise our times-tables.  We are going to continue practising these at home.  In maths with Mrs McLafferty, we have been learning about fractions.  We have learned how to change a mixed number into an improper fraction.

In writing, we have been focussing on writer’s craft, and have been continuing stories started by another author.   Miss McAllister was pleased with the effort that we are making in our writing skills and story-writing lessons.  A visitor came in to have a look at what we are working on in story-writing.

In maths we have moved onto percentages. It’s harder than ever but I’m making links with my fraction learning (MH).

Everyone in Primary 6 has been split into groups for the musical. We need to use our collaborative skills to achieve our goals. We have responsibility for all the different parts that go into putting on a show, like staging and costumes.

Loch a’ fowk in skale we learnt a poem in scots. Uir class choose Jake, Ella, Natalie an’ Megan P tae represent us. We pure enjoyed watchin’ Jake’s as he included actions. We hink ‘Missus Nae Offence’ was th’ funniest. They thooght it was scary (NR) an’ interestin’ (MP) tae perf’rm fur th’ judges.

We had fun in the snow this week. Mr Welsh challenged us to a snowman building competition, it was cold and fun (MP)…who won Mr Welsh?

This week we also found out about our choices for the Sports Electives. They look really fun and I think they will make a difference to my future (AJ). I am looking forward to learning new skills (MP). Today PC Arnott visited us. He spoke to us about alcohol and drugs. It was very informative (AJ).

Bye…

We are all really excited as we have started rehearsals for our show.  We are all really enjoying it and are beginning to learn our songs, dances, actions and words! It’s lots of hard work but good fun.

Maths is getting even trickier….we are finding fractions , when the numerator is greater than 1, of a set.  We are all trying our best and are getting more confident each day!

 Finally we would like to welcome Mr Jefferies to Balbardie, we really enjoy the bubble game 🙂