Busy! Busy! Busy! We  are getting ever closer to showtime for Olivia and we have been rehearsing lots this week. We had the chance to watch Oliver too, so have been busy writing film reviews and character biographies.  We are (pretty much!) word perfect and the Flower Sellers even had the chance to perform at our Opening Ceremony.  Talking of which, did you make it along?  We got the chance to view our work and we are all really proud of our efforts. But remember you can still buy our artwork via the school office if you want to.

Our Bake Sale and Games Morning happens on Wednesday for p1-p7 pupils, so please remember to bring some money – all proceeds go towards the cost of putting on our show.  Thanks to Mrs Jamieson for all her sterling hard work in helping us put this together.  Oh and if anyone wishes to bake then all donations will be gratefully received!

This week we did a very exciting experiment! We first tried predicting whether certain objects would float or sink. We had to cut out the pictures of the objects and stick them under the heading of FLOAT or SINK. After we made our predictions, we carried out the experiment by filling up a bucket with water and placing the items in it.

We found out that these items floated:
-beach ball
-paper
-pen
-pencil
-loom bands
-ruler
-dice
-plastic cup
We found out that this item sunk:
-rubber

Archie said that he thinks the rubber sunk because it was heavy. So we decided that lots of things that are heavy will sink!
If we predicted correctly, we gave ourselves a smiley face 🙂 If we didn’t predict correctly then we gave the picture a sad face 🙁

To carry on thinking about floating and sinking, we decided to make art pictures of a pirate ship!
FIRST we painted the sea blue
THEN we drew a boat and cut it out before sticking on the picture
THEN some of us drew on portholes
FINALLY we stuck down lollipop sticks and our sails on top to make a jolly roger flag

We think our pictures look fantastic! What do you think?

To go along with our pirate ships, we listened to instruction on how to make pirate hats! We posed for our picture saying “ARRRRR!”

We have been very artistic this week and made another fantastic picture. We made collage flowers and layered different coloured tissue paper on our picture to make it look very interesting.

We have had a great week in Primary 1w and are looking forward to learning more next week. Next week we are looking forward to learning more about mermaids!

-Miss Wilson & P1w

Did you know that pirates took dried food as well as animals onto their ship?  They would eat the eggs and milk when the animals still had food, when they ran out of food for the animals they would be butchered.

Pirates used to salt, dry and pickle a lot of their food as they did not have fridges, freezers or cans like we do.  During the journey their food would rot but they still needed to eat it.  However, when they were near land they would land and take on fresh supplies.

We pretended to be pirates this week on a long journey.  At first, our rations were hard tack biscuits, dried fruit and pickled cabbage (so we would not die of scurvy).  Luckily our food was not rotten.  We all really enjoyed the hard tack.  Olivia would have soon been the captain as she was the only one who liked the pickled cabbage and would not have got scurvy.

Then the captain said that land was near so we got a map to find fresh supplies.  We collected pineapple, corn bread and pawpaw.  We also managed to catch fish but not sea turtles.  We all much preferred these rations although we missed the hard tack!

Week beginning 1st February 2015
This week we have had a very busy week learning about the Egyptian writing system called hieroglyphics. We got a letter from our Egyptian friend Mahu who wrote his letter in hieroglyphics. We had to break the code and find out what he said. We had different activities on hieroglyphics; our favourite was writing our names to make a necklace. We designed mummy cases and had a competition to display them outside our door and in our role play area- Emma and Evie were our winners.
We also this week chose group names for our tables we are;
The Snakes, The Egyptians, The River Nile, The Pyramids and the Glowing Necklace. We have to work as a team and if we do we can win table of the day. Table of the day get to win a prize and get to use special pens.
We have been learning to put words in alphabetical order. We played activity, where we had to put our names in alphabetical order. It was really fun but was a little tricky when we had names starting with the same letter like Emma, Eva, Evan and Evie.

Week beginning 8th February 2015
We have been learning about Egyptian Gods this week. We went on the computer and looked up Egyptian Gods. It was very exciting and tricky using the laptops. When we were researching the Egyptian Gods and Goddesses and we fact files with lots of interesting facts. One interesting we learned was the ancient Egyptian’s thought that Geb the God’s laughter was an earthquake.
We wrote a story about a pyramid adventure. Some of our stories had people getting stuck in the pyramid or finding someone in the pyramid. We are looking forward to finishing our exciting story next week.
In music we have been learning ‘The Three wee Grumphies’ in Scots. We found out grumphies are pigs and have been acting the story. We are going to do it on the stage next week, we feel a little bit nervous but we can’t wait.

Week beginning 15th February 2015
This week we have been learning about Egyptian Gods. We found out the Gods names and their powers. Our favourite God was Ra. He was the God of the sun. The Ancient Egyptians believed he was the most important God. After we found out about the Gods, we created our own and gave them special powers.
We also designed the inside of our pyramid in the role play area. We used chalk on the walls of our pyramid and drew on different symbols using hieroglyphics. With a partner, we drew pictures of the Egyptian Gods which would be found inside the pyramid.
In maths this week we have been exploring measurement. We measured different objects round the class and compared them. We found out Evan was the tallest in the class and we compared our heights.

Bye for now,
P3b

Tickets for Olivia are now on sale so make sure you are at THE Show Of The Year!!  All the best people are coming, and it is most definitely the best show in Bathgate !  Get your tickets before it’s a sellout!!  Posters are up all over the school, so please tell your family and friends.

We are having a Victorian Fair on the 4th March for all pupils in the school.  Each class will be given a time slot to  come and play Victorian games like Splat the Rat, and have the opportunity to buy cake and candy.  All money raised will go towards covering the costs of putting on our performance, and as part of our maths is learning about profit and loss and running a business, we have to make the books balance!

We are all really excited about our Art Exhibition on Thursday.  We used skills of line, tone and shading to create charcoal drawings of Olivia’s London, and the results are superb – we hope you think so too!

Have a great weekend!!

Another great week!

Maths has been very challenging this week! We have had great fun in our problem solving lessons. We worked collaboratively to solve a problem that almost pickled our brains …..here it is….can you solve it? We’ll give the answer next week!

Andy, Oliver, Joseph and Miles each own a bicycle. One has a green bike, one has a blue bike, one has a white bike and one has a silver bike.

Work out the colour of each person’s bike from the following clues:

Oliver does not like white.

Andy borrowed the green bike because Oliver was using his bike.

Joseph does not like blue.

Miles does not like green.

Joseph does not like green either.

Miles borrowed the silver bike because Joseph was using his bike.

Andy’s favourite colours are silver and blue. His bike is one of his favourite colours.

Joseph borrowed the blue bike because Andy was using his bike.

Miles’s favourite colours are green and white. His bike is one of his favourite colours.

Come on parents get your problem solving hats on !!!!

Writing/LATC

Once again we are taking the opportunity to use our topic to enhance our writing. We have learned how to write instructions to make a thumatrope and a peg doll. We now know that instructions come in different forms: bullet points, numbered, short sentences, in a list or as a paragraph depending on what the instructions are for.

Comprehension

Mrs Duncan has introduced us to the fabulous author Anthony Browne. We have been learning about illustrations and what they can tell about a story that isn’t written in the text.

Polina – I enjoyed learning about how to read a picture. Anthony Browne hides lots of little pictures in the bigger pictures and thy help you to think more about the story.

Valerija – I think his books are really strange but good. They are a bit like brain teasers!

Brooke – Mrs Duncan let us hear from Anthony Browne and he said that he makes the pictures in his book like spot the difference pictures because he liked that as a boy.

Expressive Arts

Working with Mrs McClafferty we have made peg dolls that Victorian children would have played with. We have also had great fun designing and creating a piece of artwork for the art exhibition next week.

Mrs Drummond has been working us very hard to learn our rhythm piece that we will perform at the opening ceremony of the new hall.

Have a great weekend folks !!!!

This week in our writing we had to think of at least 3 facts about the life of a pirate or facts about pirate ships. Some of the facts that we wrote about were:
-Eva’s fact was that pirate ships had jolly roger flags on them
-Jodie’s fact was that the sailor drove the boat
-Farrah’s fact was the scrubber or cabin boys cleaned the deck
-Lewis’s fact was that the jolly roger flag was put up to scare other people on their ships
-Max’s fact was that the anchor was thrown out the ship to stop the ship like a break on the car

This week we also made pirate portraits. We drew a picture with pencil first of a pirate’s face and then added detail. Some pirates had eye patches, some had bandanas, some had gold teeth! Once we drew our pictures with pencil, we then painted them to add colour and more detail. Once our pictures had dried we stuck on a border. On the border we wrote some pirate sayings! Some of the sayings that pirates said were:
“ARRRR!”
“Ahoy me maties!”
“Land ahoy!”
“Shiver me timbers!”
“Arrr me maties!”
“Walk the plank!”
When writing all these sayings we discussed using a punctuation mark. We talked about when we would use this in our writing and a lot of boys and girls have been impressing Miss Wilson by using this in their writing lately.

Another exciting thing we did this week was starting to make our very own treasure chests! We have only started painting them so far, but we will hopefully finish them soon and add gold, jewels and many other things to make them look interesting!

We are loving learning about pirates and are looking forward to learning more.
-Lucas wants to learn more about what pirates eat and drink
-Eva wants to make some more pirate food
-Maisie wants to learn how to make a pirate hat
-Jodie wants to learn how to make pirate jewellery
-Holly wants to learn more about mermaids

Have a lovely weekend! Don’t forget that next Thursday is the Art Exhibition. It will be held in the new hall from 3:30-6pm. We hope you received your invites from the children and look forward to seeing everyone there!

-Miss Wilson & P1w

This week we continued our learning about the rainforests of the world.

Lauren U: “We learned about the different layers of the rainforest. The top layer is the emergent layer and you would find most of the birds and butterflies up there.”

Kieran: “The emergent layer is roasting hot because it is closer to the sun. Emergent trees poke out above the canopy.”

Ellie: “The next layer is the canopy and different animals live there. It is still quite hot there and looks like a giant green umbrella.”

Kai: “We would find animals that swing such as spider monkeys or orang-utans or climbing animals such as sloths.”

Kendal: “The next layer down is the understory. It’s dark and damp because there is not much light getting through the canopy.”

Adam: “You would creatures in the understory like emerald tree boa, tarantulas and red eyed tree frogs.”

Callum: “The bottom layer is the forest floor. The conditions are very dark, wet and damp. The ground is sand but covered in dead leaves and plants.”

Isla: “Down there you would find things like jaguars, driver ants and gorillas.”

Jay: “I learned that in the rainforest chimps bang on trees to let other chimps know where they are.”

Antonia: “Elephants are the only animal that can eat belly button fruit because their horns point downwards which lets them open them up.”

Nathan: “I learned that tribes can make a tent out of leaves in less than an hour.”

Isla: “A bushbaby urinates on its paws and then spreads its scent all over the jungle!” 

Emily: “I learned that elephants go to these parts of the Congo rainforest called byes where they will hang out with each other. They scratch their bums against tree trunks!”

Jay: “I learned that glass frogs have see-through skin and you can see all of its organs.”

Kai: “Elephants help new trees grow by eating the fruit then spreading the seeds in their droppings.”

Ellie: “In the Congo, the elephants have made tracks through the jungle which lead to the different byes.”

Who has impressed?

Lauren C: “Lauren K and Kendal impressed me because even though we got beaten by Simpson Primary at the netball festival we still came second.”

Kendal: “I’m proud of Antonia for getting 80 out of 80 for Big Maths Beat That and congratulations to everybody else who got their best score.”

Antonia: “Nathan has impressed me because his hair has looked nice for the last two weeks!”

William: “I’m proud of Callum for getting 55 (his best) in Big Maths Beat That this week.”

Kieran: “Kendal has impressed me by being a good friend by sticking up for them.”

Chloe: “The Electric Eels table impressed me by winning table of the week for three weeks in a row.”

Adam: “Jack has impressed me because he has almost reached step 5.”

Mr Berginis: “I was really impressed with the descriptive writing the class did about the Journey of a Raindrop. They used lots of similes to describe the animals and the conditions and I look forward to displaying them up on the wall.”

We have been comparing what we do for fun and what pirates would have done after all their chores on board.  We thought we would not do anything the same, especially after we realised they did not have TV or computers, but…..

We both enjoy listening to music and lots of us can or we have family/friends who can play an instrument.  

There were some activities that were similar.  Pirates played dice game, this is sort of the same as we use die to play board games.  Pirates liked to do craft activities.  We love to do this.  Pirates would have used bone and rope and we use paint and paper.

One thing we have never done is tied ropes.

We pretended we were pirates for the afternoon and learned to tie a knot and play a game using only dice.  We were very busy and had lots of fun!  Thanks to Jamie for taking our photos:) 

Katya: “I enjoyed finishing off our Viking art because it was really fun using gold paint”

Tobin: “I enjoyed maths because we learned our 9 times table”

Steven: “I like self- assessing our writing because we got to go over our own work and make next steps”

Aidan: “creating open and closed sentences was fun because I enjoyed asking people different kinds of questions”

Lewis: “I enjoyed learning the three times table and I found it easy”

Michelle and Paige: “we both liked making up own Scottish Dance in groups for P.E”

Noah: “Nycos was really fun because we learned how to keep the beat by stepping on purple and green spots and clapping at the same time”

Fiona: “The 9 times table  games were a lot of fun and helped me to practice the times table quickly”