Hi Everyone

It was great to come back on Tuesday and hear all about the exciting things people had been doing in the holidays. We started our day back with a Circle Time to share our holiday news. Everyone got straight back into the swing of things and Mrs Leamy was very impressed with how well we were all reading after the holidays. This week we have continued to practise our French skills looking at bonjour and salut. On Wednesday we impressed Mrs Leamy again with how well we could say hello in French as she hadn’t heard us before. In writing we wrote about what we would like to do when we grow up. There are quite a few of us hoping to the teachers, a nurse, some policemen and fire fighters. Some people are inspired by their mums and dads and are looking to follow in their footsteps. We also made a start on our new topic ‘Gardeners World’ and drew the garden of our dreams.

We currently have a junk modelling area in class and there are some amazing creations being made. Please could you keep and send in any boxes, kitchen roll tubes etc.

There is a Primary 1 Shared Start next Thursday 1^st May, hopefully see you then.

We have all been happy to see each other on our return to school this week 🙂

We have been busy learning about measure in maths.  We particularly enjoyed measuring classroom objects using paperclips!

We have worked hard on our entries for the West Lothian Young Writer of the year competition.  We wrote about what we want to happen in the future.  We have lots of different career aspirations, from joining the police and fire service, to becoming teachers and international spies!

We have started working on creative dance with Mrs Innes, and Gymnastics with Mr Jeffries.

We made cards to say thank you and good luck to Laura, our High School helper, who has been a fantastic help to the class.  We will miss you Laura!

We have has a busy week back at school. We all shared our news from the Easter holidays and we all had lots of fun during the holidays!  In maths we are starting to learn about time. This week we practised our days of the weeks and months of the year by singing songs and we learned how many days are in each month. We are trying to learn a poem to help us remember.

In our writing this week we imagined we had a magic school bus which could take us anywhere. Some people went under the sea, inside computers and back in time. We used great describing words in our stories to describe the places we visited.

In art we have been making our poppies for the float. We used red paper to decorate the poppies and we wrote a special message in the middle of the poppy explaining why there is no place like Balbardie.We also were painting ‘Sunflowers’ by Vincent Van Gogh. We copied his style and painted one sunflower each to make a big class picture.

We are starting our new topic on weather and we shared what we already know and what we want to find out. We want to turn our play area into a science lab and a weather news station.

We have been learning about our rights. We know we have the right to an education, to play and to know about our rights. We discussed the rights at the Big Balbardie Blether and we designed a certificate for the Rights Respecting Ranger of the Month.

Class Awards:

Class Dojo: Evie

Table of the Week: Bright Sparks

Well done. Have a good weekend!

Blog  25/04/14

We’re back!

We had a great Easter and hope everyone else did too.

This week we had great fun learning about Louis Braille. We discussed how different our Easter holiday would have been if we had sight problems or were blind.

Sasha – I might not have been able to do my Easter egg hunt!

Dave – I got some nice gifts and I wouldn’t have been able to enjoy them as much if I was blind because I got an x-box 360.

Here are some facts we have learned about Louis Braille –

Lewis M – He was born in 1809.

Sasha – He invented a way for blind people to read it’s called Braille. Braille is raised dots on a page. Each letter is no more than six dots.

Dave – He went blind when he was five years old.

Jamie N – He cut his eye with a knife when he was three years old.

Teigan – He was seven before he went to school.

Eve – When he was ten years old he went to a special school for the blind in Paris.

Lily – He died in 1852.

Sam – He was a teacher at the blind school and died when he was 43 years old.

Some of us tried going upstairs blindfold with a friend guiding us.

Joe – I found it hard to know how far in to put my foot on the steps.

We used the Braille alphabet to make our own names. If you close your eyes and run your hand over the page you can feel the bumps that make up the letter in a name.You can see in one of the pictures how engrossed we all were in the Braille decoding activity!

After a long discussion we understand that we all have the right to be healthy and have access to education even if we had  problems with any of our senses.

BBB April 2014

This morning we held our 3^rd Big Balbardie Blether. We were very good at explaining the rights we have and what they mean. We are now all busy designing a rights respecting schools award certificate. We will transfer some of the skills we have learned this year, about designing posters and leaflets, to our task.

Eve – if you are doing a border make it something about the award.

Ray – Make the key parts stand out with bold writing.

Lily – to make it appeal to people make it colourful.

Teigan – make sure you include what the award is about and who it’s for.

Topic

Our new topic is A Slice of Scotland and we are looking forward to doing some map work next week!

Have a great weekend!

Alexander – “I’m really looking forward to Belgium because of all the exciting places we are going to visit such as Plopsaland and Sun Park De Haan.”

Rebecca – “I’m looking forward to going to the Risk Factory because it sounds exciting.”

Sam – “” I’m looking forward to the Risk Factory and I’m also looking forward to visiting places such as Tyne Cot cemetery.”

Dean – “I’m looking forward to Belgium because I want to stuff my face with chocolate! I want to see what the trenches are like too.”

Rabeea – “I’m looking forward to Belgium because we get to spend lots of time with our friends and also going to the clogmaker’s. I’m also excited about the Oscars.”

Christopher A – “I’m really excited to go to Belgium because I want to experience what life is like in Belgium compared to Scotland.”

Declan W – “I’m excited to see the look on everybody’s face when they go to Risk Factory because I went before with my old school.”

Alistair – “I’m excited about Belgium and the Risk Factory but even more excited about the High School visits later this term.”

Abbie – “I’m really excited about Belgium because I can spend time with my friends and I’m looking forward to Plopsaland.”

Louise – “I’m excited about Belgium and leaving my family behind for a week! 🙂 “

Fraser – “I’m really excited to go to Belgium, it will be a great experience and I’m nervous about who my roommates are.”

7b -“Thank you very much to Mr Welsh and Miss Henderson for our fantastic Balbardie hoodies. They are amazingly funky!”

P5m are really glad to be back in school after the holidays!!!

There are lots of exciting things happening this term.

We have the Sky Sports Festival on Wednesday 7 May.

Our topic is What a Wonderful World – a biology focus (Ava) , we will be looking at plants and animals (Emma B).

Here are some of the things we are looking forward to…

Mirren is looking forward to Celebrating Success.

Leon is looking forward to the Golden Club event already!

Nadia is looking forward to learning about Darwin.

Ava is looking forward to doing the topic it sounds fun already and we’ve barely started.

Eva and Lily are looking forward to learning about animals and plants.

Travis is looking forward to Fitness Fortnight.

Erin H is looking forward to the home learning task – where you have to give a talk on any subject!

Taylor is looking forward to learning about how plants live.

The term sounds really exciting! 

Mrs McClafferty is really looking forward to getting outside and investigating all the different species of plants in different habitats!

On Thursday P2e and P2g went on a school trip to Stirling Castle. We have been busy learning all about castles and were very excited to visit a real castle.

We explored the castle and we got to visit the great kitchens. We were able to name lots of the different kinds of foods they would have had at a banquet. We visited the banquet hall and some of us got to sit in the thrones at the table. We visited the palace and explored the rooms belonging to the King and Queen. In the palace we met a man who looked after the castle for the King and a chambermaid who served the Queen. They told us lots of information about the King and Queen.

We also had a workshop where we learned more about castle life. We got to see clothes and weapons used during medieval times. Rhuan and Ben dressed up in the jester costumes. Miss Elliot and Mrs Haddifon think they suited the boys perfectly! We also got to see the different armour that a knight would wear. We all tired to pick up the chain mail but it was really heavy!

We all really enjoyed our visit to the castle and would love to go back!

It has been a very busy term and Miss Elliot and Mrs Haddifon would like to thank all the boys and girls for working so hard and thank you to all the families for supporting the children throught the term.

Hope you all enjoy the holidays! See you in 2 weeks!

Congratulations to Freya for being the only person to successfully complete our Amazon Challenge. She showed great determination to finish all ten River Reward challenges including Lizard Language, Manatee Maths, iPad challenge and the Riddles of the River. Freya opened the mysterious chest and was rewarded with the prizes inside…