P5D
It’s been a short week but we have still been busy!
We are really enjoying our Scottish topic and building on what we were learning about last week we have all produced an A5 mini poster showing a Scottish landmark or something traditionally Scottish. Here are some of our efforts –
A Scottish Thistle by Rachel.
Scottish things by Rebecca
The Scottish Flag and some Scottish words by Ray
The Loch Ness monster by Sophie
When we finished our mini posters we swapped them with a partner and had to give feedback about something we liked and something that could improve the poster.
In maths this week we have been learning about co-ordinates. Some of us are learning about quarter, half and whole turns while others are learning about identifying the position of an object on a co-ordinate grid. There’s also a group working on co-ordinates using the ‘x’ and ‘y’ axis.
Ava – Doing the co-ordinates was really fun and I think I am much better now.
Eve – At first I thought it might be hard but I had to refresh my memory of what I had learned before about co-ordinates and that helped me.
In music this week we have had lots of fun practising our song for the celebrating success event in school. We are focussing on dynamics and trying to use our voices to convey the emotive and rousing elements of the song.
Rebecca – I am finding it tricky to control my voice and not shout when I am singing the rousing bits.
Have a great weekend!
P7b’s thoughts on Belgium
Fraser – I really liked Belgium and my favourite part was when we went to Plopsaland because the best ride was the Anubis which was really fast.
Rabeea – My favourite part of Belgium was sharing a room with Sophie and Zenaib because it was fun trying to wake them up in the morning by tickling them!
Hannah – I really enjoyed Belgium because it was fun and it was great sharing a room with Isla and Louise. My funniest part was when Louise was pretending to be Bob Marley.
Luke – I really enjoyed Belgium because it was great fun and I was sharing with Sam, Fraser and Alistair and one day in our room Fraser and Sam got squashed between the beds.
Eve – My favourite part was World War Day because it was interesting looking at all the graves and it was exciting to go to all the different museums and cemeteries.
Sophie L – My favourite part was the water park. I really enjoyed it and I thought the chutes were really good and the whole thing was excellent.
Louise – On World War Day, the atmosphere was really still and I found it breathtaking how all these people had to die for our freedom.
Sophie M – I really liked the waffles, especially the nutella on them!
Alexander – I enjoyed the Brugge trip and seeing all the old buildings like the church tower on the canal boat and the swans and ducks.
Rebecca – I really enjoyed the clogmaking demonstration because it was cool how he made the different patterns on the clogs and it took him 200 hours to do the patterns on one particular clog!
Celebrating Success and a special birthday in class 3!
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.
Planting and Growing
This week class 1 enjoyed planting peas. We filled our pots with compost then added water. We used a pencil to create a hole in the compost before adding our pea. We have been estimating how long it will take until our plants start to grow. Every morning we check to see if the plants are growing. We will keep you updated on their progress! We will be learning more about how to care for plants and what plants need in order to grow.
Look at our wonderfull butterfly display. Please take time to read our butterfly poems as you pass by in the corridor. We created a flower display of what we already know about the garden, and the different things that we would like to learn during our topic.
Thank you to everyone in class 1 for completing your home learning to such a high standard. Cameron brought in ‘The Very Hungry Caterpiller’ DVD for us to wacth. Miss Barrie was so impressed as everyone in class 1 was able to describe what was happening at the different stages in the life cycle of a butterfly.
News from P5m
Another short week in P5m but still lots of learning to be done and interesting news……
Eva, Emma B and Katie are looking forward to singing our song at Celebrating Success.
Adam is looking forward to performing with his dance group, Pulsation Z at Deans High School! Well done Adam!
Nadia really enjoyed watching Rockford’s Rock Opera and learning all about extinction!
This week Sophie learned that all living things need MRSGREN!!! Can anyone remember what they stand for?
Ross is really enjoying singing ‘Let it Go’! (And is doing really well at it – Mrs M)
Aaron, Cameron and Josh are looking forward to our Darwin walk! (If it stops raining!)
Lily enjoyed showing the class her dad drumming in his bands called Eden’s Curse and Code of Silence! We all thought it was really cool!
Keep pracitising our song for CS!
P6a
Last week P6a were busy with addaptive testing. The children concentrated and worked really hard on this.
Our new topic for this term is Ancient Greece and the children have been using the internet and research books to find out information about about Ancient Greece. We have looked at a timeline of significant events and some of the features of its Geography which led to the development of City States, such as Sparta and Athens. The children have enjoyed doing some of their own research to add to their knowledge. I have set a mini home learning project on Gods and Godessess for the children over the next three weeks and am looking foward to seeing their ideas to present what they have learned.
The Green Group have been learning about decimal numbers. The Blue and Maroon groups are continuig with division. The Red group is revising some multiplication facts befor looking at division also.
I hope the children have all had a lovely holiday weekend.
P4b
What a week!
This week was a very busy week.
In maths we have started looking at numbers and how they work. It can be a little tricky to work out the sequences. In writing we tried to improve the letter that we were given and that was challenging.
We also learnt how to be cool when an incident in the playground made us think how we could behave and respond to real life situations.
We had lots to do for assembly so we took every opportunity to rehearse the different parts. It took a lot of teamwork, cooperation and listening. In the end we got it right and it went really well. We managed to run through in the correct order, change into costumes silently and remember all the moves. Mrs Ghafoor said we were awesome!
Now we get to rest as this was a very busy week for us. Enjoy the long weekend!
P4b
BELGIUM UPDATE 6
What a wonderful day we’ve had! The sun was shining and the thrills were plentiful at Plopsaland!
We’ve tackled the speed, loops and corkscrews of the Anubis, been soaked on the Log Flume and Super Splash. We’ve braved the Wombats partner coaster, the Shuttle speed coaster and the Dragon coaster. We’ve explored the new Wickie the Viking land and some of us were brave enough to go on the new Tidal Wave spinner. We also soaked each other on the Battle Boats and thanks to the sun we took no time at all to dry!
Some have slurped on sloppy slush puppies, some chewed on sticky candy floss, some munched on crunchy popcorn and others licked wicked Mr Whippy ice cream!
We’ve arrived safely in Dover and are now preparing to tuck into our Maccy Ds before journeying up the road to meet you all in the morning…bright and early 😉
The Life Cycle of a Butterfly
This week class 1 have been learning about the life cycle of a butterfly. We watched an amazing class clip which shows how a caterpillar hatches from a tiny egg. Did you know that the caterpiller eats the egg that it hatches from? We watched carefully as the caterpillar transforms into a chrysalis, and then how the butterfly emerges from the chrysalis. Miss Barrie had the most fun of all, watching our facial expressions during the class clip!
‘The egg is on the leaf. The egg is tiny’ – Joe
‘The egg hatches and then it hatches more and more and more. A caterpillar comes out’ – Cameron
‘The caterpillar likes to eat the egg’ – Yolie
‘The caterpillar eats leaves’ – David
‘Inside the chrysalis the caterpillar is busy and will turn into a butterfly’ – Lewis
‘In Jake and The Neverland Pirates the golden caterpillar turns into a golden butterfly’ – Jayden
‘Out of the chrysalis comes a butterfly’ – David
We created life cycle posters by sticking the different stages of the life cycle in the correct order. We also demonstrated our understanding of the life cycle of a butterfly during drama. 
Miss Waddell taught us a butterfly dance; we tried hard to remember the steps and used colourful scarves as props, to represent our wings. We enjoyed recording and watching our dance routine to help us self-assess our work.
Class 2
It has been a busy week in Class 2.
Liam and Dylan had a great day at Mill Farm on Wednesday.
Liam enjoyed learning about a gosling and touching it’s soft feathers. He thought it was funny when it did the toilet on the lady’s trousers. Yuck!
Dylan said “I went to Mill Farm. First we went on the tractor ride then adventure zone. After lunch we went to see animals. I saw a gosling. I liked the park.”
On Thursday we went swimming. Everyone in class 2 likes swimming.
Caitlin said “It was good fun!”.
Aiden was a great helper at the swimming pool. He said “I was helping people at swimming yesterday. First I helped people put their clothes in their lockers. Later on I said three, two, one to start the swimming race”.
Mill Farm
Some of the children from class 1 and class 2 went to Mill Farm this week. We had lots of fun exploring the oil museum. Dylan especially enjoyed going into the coal mine! It was really dark inside, and we got a sense of how life would have been for men who worked down in the coal mines.
We took a tractor ride around the farm and managed to spot some farm animals. We saw cows, goats, sheep and pigs. We listened carefully to Elaine as she told us all about one of the goslings on the farm. A gosling is a baby goose. We each had a turn of gently stroking the gosling. It was very soft and fluffy! Have a look at the eggs. Do you know which egg is a chicken egg, and which egg is a goose egg?
‘I liked seeing the rabbits and the gosling. The gosling did a poop and got Elaine’s trousers all muddy! Oh No said Elaine.’ David
We had great fun in the adventure zone! The adults were very pleased with how everyone behaved and followed the Mill Farm timetable! Thank you to Lewis’ mum who came with us to Mill Farm.
Hello from P1b
This week we started our new class topic Gardener’s World. We watched a short video about different things that plants need to grow. We learned they need space, soil, air, sun and water. We then worked with a partner to make a poster to show this information.
Yesterday, during shared start, we made flowers that represent us. First we glued a photograph of ourselves onto the middle of a flower. We then chose five coloured petals to stick around our flower. Lastly, we wrote adjectives to describe ourselves on the petals. They will look amazing on our new class display!
On Wednesday we played a game of snakes and ladders with our buddies. We were learning how to take turns and follow the rules of a game. We also practised numbers to 3o as we recorded the numbers on our game board. We were very excited when we won the game 🙂
P2e
This week we have been busy learning more about our new topic on weather. We have turned our castle into a weather news station where we can change the weather forecast and pretend we are news reporters on t.v. There is also a science lab where we can pretend to do weather experiments. Over the next couple of weeks we will be addingd to our role play area. We learned about different types of weather and in which season you would normally see that weather. We then had to design clothes for Weather Teddy to wear in each season. In art we chose our favourite type of weather and painted a weather landscape picture. We had to mix different colours of paint to create different shades.
In language this week we have been learning all about non-fiction books. We know that we read these books for information and that these books usually have a contents page, glossary and index page. We are enjoying reading our non-fiction books for homework. We have also been learning more about the alphabet and learned a song to help us remember the five vowels. In our writing we were explaining what job we would like to do and why. We had lots of different jobs including zoo keepers, astronauts, scientists, ice cream van drivers and builders.
We really enjoyed assembly today and we all liked the Japanese fan dance and the Tai Chi.
Hope you all have a nice long weekend!
Our Farm
On Monday Jamie came and visited us and told us all about his farm. These are some of the things we learned:
- How he planted his crops (Jamie)
- That he grew barley and Brussel sprouts (Callum)
- That he did not have any animals any more so he was an arable farmer (Noah)
- That vegetables are grown in tunnels (Amber)
- That grass is a crop…
- He brought his tractor for us to look at, it has GPS (Archie)
We have also been learning about different types of farms. In our groups we researched the different types of farms that are found in Scotland. We made a model of a farm and shared some facts.
Arable is just crops.
Did you know that ¾ of Britain is farmland and a 1/3 of that is arable?
Pastoral farms have animals.
Did you know that there are 80 types of pure breed of sheep?
Horticulture farms grow flowers, plants, fruit and vegetables.
Did you know that there are bumble bees in the tunnels that pollinate the flowers?
Aquaculture is a fish farm.
Did you know that mussels grow on ropes in the sea for 2-3 years before they are ready to eat?
p5D
This week we have been busy learning about our place in the world. We played an interactive game with a globe that helped us pinpoint where we live.
Rebecca – I learned that the globe is the 3D version of a 2D map.
Ray – I know that Scotland is in the United Kingdom along with Northern Ireland, England and Wales.
We have also been learning about things that are traditionally Scottish. Working in our table groups we had to record as many things as we could that we thought were traditionally Scottish. Here are some of the things we came up with –
Josh – Shortbread and tartan.
Eve – Bagpipes and the Scots language.
Anais – Irn-bru and whisky.
Dave – Scotch pies
Sam – Porridge and the Thistle.
Rachel – Highland cows and Shetland ponies.
Maths –
We have been learning about the decimal point and how to convert from pounds to pence and vice versa. In our mental maths we were quite disappointed when tried the loop cards for the first time this term …..our time wasn’t as good as we expected ! We are all keen to work hard to improve and get back to our best!
Language –
We are all enjoying our Tools for Writing rapid fire game. Mrs Drummond throws a football at someone (it’s a sponge one !) and we have to be able to say what type of word she said. Was it a preposition/adjective/noun/proper noun/connective/verb/adverb ? It keeps us on our toes and helps us with our writing.
Well it’s the holiday weekend so that’s it for now. Have a good one everybody and remember to stay safe no matter what you are doing!
More exciting news about our topic!
Class 3 boys have dived into their new topic ‘energy’ this week! They explored some different types of energy and what the source they came from, battery or mains.
Cary explains what he did in sensory room on Wednesday. “I explored battery power and plug powered items. Heat, light, movement, sound were the types of energy produced. My favourite item to explore was a ‘coffee froth’. It was a battery powered item which produced movement and some sound energy. I liked it best because it made my hand feel fuzzy.”
Callum tells us more about the sensory room “It was very exciting, my favourite items was a pig that went “oink”. It was battery powered and produced sound energy. You had to use your hand and put it in the pig, like a puppet. It sang the Old McDonald had a farm song. I liked it because I could make it go really fast or really slow. Miss Robertson explained that I was using my own energy to help power the pig. This energy is called kinetic energy.”
Liam goes to another school and has topic there with them. This week at maths times, he has been busy learning about patterns. One of the jobs was for Liam and Josh to go through the school and find different types of patterns to photograph. They found a lot of coloured patterns like the pegs, or the artwork on the walls in the infant area. Josh helped Liam to find tessellated patterns.
Josh explains what tessellation means: “It’s shapes that fits together to make a pattern.”
Can you find any patterns in the school or your own classroom?
Geordie says that he has really enjoyed reading all about Belgium! He is super excited about the chocolate factory and getting his own hoodie next year! 🙂
BELGIUM UPDATE 5
Just back from an emotional and interesting day discovering Flanders Fields. The Ypres area we visited was the scene of some of the heaviest fighting of WWI and over 500,000 soldiers lost their lives in this 8 mile area.
Our first stop was Tyne Cot Cemetery where we paid our respects to the 12,000 Allied soldiers buried there. Next we visited the artefacts and exhibits at Passchendaele Memorial Museum and made our way through the underground tunnel system. We then sat in the sun and enjoyed our packed lunches before taking some time at the Balbardie tree to plant our crosses, hold a minute’s silence and read our letters of thanks to the fallen soldiers.
In the afternoon we visited the German Langemark cemetery and compared it to the Allied Tyne Cot cemetery. We then visited the Bayernwald trenches at which point the heavens opened and the rain began to pour which only helped to create a realistic setting. Next we had frites for dinner and munched them along with our rolls and juice in the town square in Ypres.
Our final stop this evening was Ypres where we watched the nightly last post ceremony at the Menin Gate which holds the names of 55,000 soldiers who died but were never found during WWI. Natalie and Fraser took part in the ceremony and did a fantastic job of representing the school as they laid our wreath.
Time for bed now and Plopsaland in the morning before beginning our journey home.
BELGIUM UPDATE 4
Good morning!
Last night we enjoyed our last night at the beach and our final chance to try the waffles and frites. Once again the waffle stand was most popular which is no surprise given our delicious dinner yesterday was beef stew and frites! It was yummy and was wolfed down in great measures with lots of people having seconds!
We’ve just tucked tucked into a superb cooked breakfast of sausage, bacon, scrambled eggs, beans and rolls. Now we’re heading off for our World War day and we’ll be back late tonight so it’ll be a later blog tonight.
Enjoy your day!
BELGIUM UPDATE 3
Hello from an overcast and warm Blankenberge. 🙂
Last night we enjoyed a dinner of soup, roast turkey, potatoes, carrots and pannacotta for dessert. We then journeyed to the beach for more fun and devoured loads of waffles, ice cream, candy floss or frites.
Today we have travelled into Holland where we met the clogmaker Boyd who gave us a demonstration of traditional clog-making and also modern machinery. We visited his gift shop and he kindly engraved little clogs for us to bring home.
After lunch we visited Sun Park De Haan and had a ball on the different flumes, wave pool, jacuzzis and river rapids. It was a fantastic afternoon.
Now we’ve got room inspections followed by dinner and then beach. Love to everyone back home.
