We are very pleased to share that we raised £268.30 from the Day for Change Dress Down Day in February. The photo below shows two of our RRS reps with the cheque we’ve sent to UNICEF to help more children enjoy their right to education.
Thank you to everyone who took part.
Last week we began our new topic ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’. We discussed dinosaur objects and recorded what we knew/wanted to learn. We were very interested in dinosaur footprints. As a result, we learned what fossils are and that palaeontologists study fossils. We made our own dinosaur fossils using dough and went digging for pretend bones in the sand pit.
We also looked at the different sizes of dinosaurs. Did you know that a brachiosaurus was as tall as eight men standing on each other’s heads, a stegosaurus was as big as a bus and a T-Rex’s tooth could have been as long as 20cm!
We labelled different parts of a dinosaur’s body. During this we learned that a stegosaurus had plates on its back to defend itself from attack.
Thank you to Lauren as she went a trip to the museum last weekend and brought in a fossil and dinosaur egg for us to see. We put the dinosaur egg in water and it’s beginning to crack. We are very excited to see the dinosaur inside!
English and Literacy
We enjoyed reading our books in the dark den this week. We had to use the light from the torch to help us to see the pictures and words. We had to follow the words carefully with the torch.
‘I was reading The Bears and the Honey’ it was very very very good’. Lewis
We enjoyed writing magic words with Miss Cameron. We wrote our words on paper using white wax, and then painted on the paper to reveal the hidden word.
Building a word wall was good fun. We put on our builder clothing and used our word bricks to build a word wall. We had to read the words aloud before adding them to the wall. 
Joe and Yolie enjoyed selecting stories to read on the iPad. Joe enjoyed reading the Three Little Pigs. We enjoyed playing a game on the iPad which helps us to listen to and identify medial sounds in words.
This week both Cushion Clubs made pancakes on Tuesday. Everyone thought they were fun to make and even better to eat! Some of the children tried maple syrup for the first time and they were impressed with it. Kai could tell us all where maple syrup came from. Good for you Kai! Summer thought Mrs Stewart was great because she could flip a pancake in the pan and it didn’t land on the ceiling or the floor.
Update on Mrs Waddell’s amaryllis from last week – it still hasn’t started growing!
Thank you so much to everyone who came along to the first Balbardie Family Quiz Night. Comments at the end of the evening were very positive and we hope that you all had fun. Congratulations to the winning team, The Brains, Beauties and Baldies with 76 points and to everyone else who took part. A massive thanks to all those who donated raffle prizes and helped on the evening. The House Captain Team and Head Boy and Head Girl did really well with organising and running the event and we were very impressed with how well they did.
Many thanks once again.
A number of parents have established an informal walking bus to help with bringing children to and from Balbardie from the green area of Bathgate. This is a group of parents who are helping each other out to reduce traffic around the school and from having to come out every morning and afternoon to the school. The walking bus is off to a wonderful start. If you would be interested in joining the rota then please speak to one of the walking bus mums at the end of the day in the P1/2 playground.
Here we are on the first day of the walking bus:
“Shared Start – making Roman clay houses” (Sophie).
“Art – creating an ice-cream sundae! (Grace).
“Learning about the Romans; what they wore” (Robbie).
“Outdoor P.E. with Mrs Mitchell” (Murray).
“P.E. with Mr Jeffries” (Ciaran).
“Maths; adding and taking-away with hundreds” (Scott).
“Reading, using SRA cards” (Casey).
“Doing RME with Mrs Mitchell” (Jack).
“Running games in outdoor P.E. I came third!” (Gabriel).
We all had our Grand Opening! We made our own museum with 5 exhibits. These were:
1.Sphinx
2.Gods
3.Death masks
4.Tutankhamun
5.Mummification
It was lots of fun taking parents around our museum. We all had different jobs. These were:
1.Ticket office workers
2.Curators
3.Tour guides
4.Shop assistants
We also had visitor badges for all the parents.
We made our own artefacts, e.g. death masks, sarcophagus, etc.
We made sure we had facts on all the tables about each exhibit and we researched these facts ourselves.
We all enjoyed our jobs a lot!
We also had thank you cards and welcome tickets that we handed out and made ourselves.
It was a fantastic open morning and we hope all the parent senjoyed themselves – because we certainly did!
Please find below the information leaflet which explains in depth the CEM adaptive testing taking place in school over the remainder of this session.
Mr Berginis set us a technology task for homework to construct a 3D bird. We had to use light materials so that its weight could be supported by the vines in our classroom and we had to choose a rainforest bird such as toucan, macaw, harpy eagle etc.
Here are some pictures of our fantastic, finished, feathered, flying designs. Pop along to our classroom rainforest if you would like a closer look…
We have had an amazing week.
This week we were in Italy and found interesting facts for Italy, we visited Milan and looked at the fashion capital and the handbags for the new season. Based on this, we designed and created our own handbags using a net for a cuboid because the spring 2014 bags were cuboid in shape.
We also learnt how to make pizza. We watched a clip on YOUTUBE then chose and chopped our ingredients to add to our pizza. We had PE straight after so Mrs Jamieson kindly cooked them for us and we got them just as we were ready to go home. They were delicious!
We also had music with Miss Doolan and learnt all about beats in music. We were quite good at keeping the beat. Miss Doolan will work with us for the next few weeks.
To finish off our week, we had parents and grandparents come in. We got the chance to show them what we do in class. We had coordinates connect 4, big maths; parents were under pressure to complete the big maths facts in timed conditions, researching facts for any country around the world, spelling and VCOP activities. We were better than the adults as we bet them in almost all activities!
Enjoy your weekend.
Here is what some of us thought about the open morning:
Scott – I enjoyed working with my mum to complete the fact wall about ‘Around the World’. I learned that the 50 stars on the American flag represent the 50 states of America.
Clara – I enjoyed doing research about different countries using the netbooks and library books.
Louise – I learned that France is a hot country and there are famous mountains called the Alps in Italy and it is covered with snow at the top and is a very very cold up there.
Lexis – In Spain there fashion is based on bright colour especially red and yellow.
Cameron B – I learned that Jamaica has more beaches than cities.
Isla – it was nice to work with mum and dad today to do tasks together and for them to share their knowledge.
Jane – I liked my mum seeing my class today.
Question of the Week: What do you know now that you didn’t know this time last week?
See you next week!
P4g
Following a visit from the talking thinking tree, we worked together to align our leaves of thought which were focussed on our new topic, the body.
Our biggest areas of interest were what our bodies can do, what happens inside our bodies, and things that can go wrong with the body. These are the areas of our topic that we will therefore cover first.
We have started off with looking at the external parts of our bodies, and have had fun playing games, singing songs, and comparing parts of our bodies with each other. Although there are lots of things that are the same, there are also other things that are different, such as the colour of our eyes and hair, and we like the fact that everybody is unique in their own way 🙂
It’s been an exciting week for birthdays in the class, with three birthdays in the one week alone! A great big Happy Birthday to Murray, Charlotte and Hannah 🙂
Today we enjoyed inviting our parents into the classroom for the Open Morning. We look forward to seeing you again for our shared start on Thursday aswell.
There was great excitment today at our Open Morning with lots of mums, dads and grandparents coming to visit our classroom and taking part in a range of activities. Thank you to everyone who came and we hope you enjoyed it.
This week we have started our new topic ‘Superheroes’. The topic came from the children’s own interests and is proving to be a great success. On Tuesday we created our own superhero character and we will develop these further next week.
Mrs Leamy returned on Thursday to find that Superhero Mission Control had landed in our classroom. We are going to add things over the coming weeks to make it a superhero base.
During outdoor P.E on Thursday we enjoyed some superhero time showing lots of our superhero skills. We will keep you posted of our superhero developments and if you are in an emergency and need some superhero help you know where to call:)
This week we have been very busy finishing our castle. We now have a dungeon with a dragon and a treasure chest and a banquet table with a jester to entertain us. We enjoy playing in our castle but we have to be careful when going in because there is a crocodile in our moat!
We have been learning about the features of a castle and can name some parts of the building such as the drawbridge and the arrow slits. We now know why were castles were built and how the different parts helped to keep them safe from an enemy attachk.
In writing this week we have started a new story about a dragon. We are reading the story ‘Zog’ and it gave us some great ideas about dragons. Miss Henderson came down to read our Detective Granny stories and was very impressed with our story writing.
In maths we are starting to look at multiplication. We are learning how to count groups of objects.
We all really enjoyed the open morning today. We created self portraits for the banquet hall in our castle. The adults that came to visit our class helped us to use different materials. Thank you very much to everyone who came along and we hope ou enjoyed yourself!
This week we were busy building our castle and fireplace. We have been learning why and how castles were built and what the different parts are called. We also turned ourselves into Kings and Queens and made our portraits during our Open Morning. Thanks to all Parents who came along and helped us, we hope you enjoyed it!
In Phonics we were visited by the Phonics Ball and we had great fun learning our tricky words. Mrs Haddifon was really pleased with our Spelling this week and can see progress in us all.
Thank you to all the family and friends that popped in to see us. This is what you thought:
Thanks to Daniel M for being our photographer
In January the Cushion Club turned their hand to gardening. They planted an amaryllis and over the last few weeks they have carefully tended it and watched it grow. It seemed to grow a little bit taller everyday and they were extremely careful to leave it near the light and turn it every day. Every Monday was a ‘WOW’ when they saw how much it had changed over the weekend. They have noticed that it had two flower heads and they eagerly awaited the first flower. This week the first flower head opened and it was beautiful! It was coral and cream just like the box said it would be. The amaryllis grew from a bulb. Mrs Waddell planted one at home at the same time. She is not as ‘green fingered’ as the Cushion Club children so she brought her amaryllis into school to see if the Cushion Club children could work their magic on her bulb. Sadly it doesn’t look as if it has worked! We are guessing how many flowers we will have on our Cushion Club one.
P5m are really excited about making scones and delicate cucumber sandwiches for our open morning on Friday – we hope you can join us!
This week we have been learning ……
A Victorian work song – Ava & Leon
We learned about how rich Victorian children lived – Erin H
Emma C & Ava learned that the youngest age for a chimney child was 4!
Craig learned that a lot of Victorian families had up to 10 children! Crikey!
Eva learned that rich Victorian families liked to holiday by the seaside. ‘Oh we do like to be beside the seaside, oh we do like to be beside the sea’……………
Adam learned that rich children were scared of their parents and that they were raised by a nanny and a governess. Adam also learned that rich girls would be married off as soon as possible and boys would have to go to work. Well done Adam, you have shown that you have learned alot this week!!
Ross learned that rich Victorian children were only allowed downstairs to see their parents for 1 hour a day. There wasn’t very much love between parents and children.
Nadia learned that Victorian children had no rights, but children today do have rights that protect them,
Ali learned that children that worked in the factories often feel into the machinery and got killed.
Josh learned that later in the Victorian period children at the age 10 were banned from being chimney sweeps. Ross learned that chimney sweeps often lied about the age of the chimney children.
Robbie enjoyed painting the chimeny for our chimney child wall! And what a great job Robbie, Lily, Emma B, Mirren and Mrs Oag did! Thank you!
Brilliant blogging P5m!
I’m looking forward to seeing who can remember the Afternoon Tea Party Etiquette tomorrow! Remember, get that pinky in the air!!
Mrs McClafferty & P5m!
The House Captain Tea, Head Boy and Head Girl with the help of Miss Henderson have been organising a Family Quiz Night to be held in the Bathgate Royal British Legion on Thursday 6th March 2014 at 6.30pm. Tickets are £2 for an adult and £1 for a child and can be purchased from the school office. Teams can have up to a maximum of 6 people in them. There will be a raffle on the night and we would appreciate any donations you could give us for this. The bar will be open on the evening to purchase drinks and burgers, chips etc. will be available to purchase too.
Thank you to everyone who has bought tickets so far. We still have a few left and would love to see you there.
Natalie Reilly (Head Girl)
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