On Wednesday P5m visited the Bennie Museum to learn more about Victorian toys. Here are some of the interesting things we learned.
Sophie – I learned that the Victorians didn’t have any electronic devices or toys. I think that we’re lucky to have tablets and X Box.
Eva – The Victorians played alot of outdoor games like skipping, playing on stilts, hoop and stick, and beds (hop scotch)!
Emma – We learned how the children made their games and that they put hot coal inside the iron to make it hot! (Mr Welsh didn’t know about the iron!)
Adam – We learned about making fortune tellers and we hope that we are able to make our own.
P1m Discover More about Life on a Real Scottish Island…..
This week, we have been busy thinking about what life on an island such as Struay might be like.
In preparation for the Visit of Reverend MacDonald, we collectively planned a range of questions to ask Rev. MacDonald.
Thank you to Reverend MacDonald for coming to the school to visit us. We enjoyed looking at his interesting photographs of the Island of Lewis, and listening to his talk about Scottish island life. Reverend MacDonald’s photos stimulated even more questions from us and we all enjoyed finding out more about island life. It turns out that life on the Isle of Lewis is very similar to life on Katie Morag’s island.
Hot lines of P1 questioning included animal and recreation related questions. We were really keen to find out which animals live in the waters surrounding the island, and to learn that island life is far from boring, as there is a lot to do there. We liked the fact that the island children get the chance to spend lots of time outdoors 🙂
P3W crack the code!
We found hieroglyphic messages hidden in the school! We worked in groups to try and crack the code so we could translate the messages.
Caitlin – One of the codes was: “My dad is a farmer and he works hard.” Another code was: “I have two sisters and one brother.”
Sophie – One code was: “My name is Mahu. I am ten. I go to school.” Another code was: “My brother left home two years ago.”
Noah – The last code was: “Can you help me find my lost brother?”
Ross – The hieroglyphics were really fun!
We also found out lots of facts about the River Nile and how it was used by the Ancient Egyptians!
Tom – We found out that the River Nile was used for camels drinking out of it.
Ty – The River Nile was flowing over 4,000 miles (6,400 km).
Eva – The River Nile can be used to clean your shoes, body, clothes and hair.
Abbie – The River Nile goes to the Red Sea and also the Mediterranean Sea!
Liam – It also is used for having a bath, catching fish to eat, drinking out of, and lots more!
We are looking forward to working with Mahu to help him find his long lost brother and also finding out more about Ancient Egypt!!
Class 2
This week looked at mental maths strategy. We practised number doubles. Knowing number doubles can help us get fast at maths. We played a card game. We had to pick a card then double the number. Snakes and ladders was fast this week because we doubled each dice number. This made the game twice as fast. Jamie won the game. We all had fun.
Class 2 learned about compound words. We got so good at making compound words that by Friday we knew lots we could paint. We had fun guessing our friends words. Compound words are when we put two small words together to make a new word. example light+house=lighthouse
Our new topic is called Being Cool in School. Lesson 1 helped us to understand that everyone has feelings. We can respond to these feelings in different ways.
Jamie: Art is starting to get really good.
Aiden: I am good at doing good behaviour.
Dylan: Class 1 are learning about Scotland. I was able to tell them interesting facts about Robert Burns because Class 2 found out facts last term. It is good to pass on learning.
P4b
Another busy week for us.
This week we looked at where and how grid references are used. We also had a look at ‘Billy Bug’which helped us with grid references. Our 3D UK map was completed – it was very tricky painting the mountains and land around it because the outlines had become faded when making it 3D. It’s now complete and ready to use! In art we used blending to create different shades of colour for our houses – we are getting quite good at mixing and blending to create different shades of colours.
We are learning our Big Maths facts and have already shown an improvement in our results! We need to practice our number bonds and times tables to get better. We played bingo using numbers in French and that was lots of fun.
We have been looking at the Synagogue and why it is an important place for people of the Jewish faith. We liked the ’10 Commandments’ that they have as they are simple rules to follow – just like our Golden Rules.
We have worked very hard at home and at school to remember our Scots poems – three winners from the class will go on to the finals on Monday. We have also been looking at Scots words and what they mean. We will use this in our writing next week.
Next week: P.E will be on Thursday afternoon instead of Monday afternoon.
Enjoy your weekend.
P2e
We have been busy this week learning more about Scotland. We were looking at a map of Scotland to see where Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness, Livingston and Bathgate are. We have also been learning some Scots words. We read some stories and poems with Scots words including the Gruffalo in Scots. We have now created our own Scots dictionary. Some of the words we have in it are ‘breeks’ which means trousers and ‘muckle’ which means big.
We have also been working hard in out writing. We were writing a story about Katie Morag. We had to have a clear beginning, middle and end in our story. We found this quite tricky at first and we are going to keep working on our story writing this term.
We have been learning about a famous Scottish artist called Charles Rennie Mackintosh. We liked his designs and shapes he used, but some of us did not like the colours he used in his artwork. We creaated our own art pieces in his style. I think you will agree that they look fantastic!
Class awards:
Class dojo: Mya
Pupil of the Week: Gemma for practising hard to learn her Scottish poem
MVP: Rachael
Drama award: Mya
Table of the Week: Bright Sparks (Rachael, Cameron, Aaron, Cameron, Grace and Kaitlin)
Reminder: Our class assembly is on the 24th of January/ Parents/carers are welcome to come along at 9.45 and there will be refreshements after the assembly.
See you all next week!
P5d
Table of the week with 660 points – Puffins – Joe M, Carter W, Lily M, Mhairi H, Josh C, Shaun H.
Pupil of the week – Mhairi Hinton
Mhairi has worked particularly hard to overcome her reluctance to recite her poem in front of the class. Well done Mhairi !!!
Here’s a bit of what we’ve been doing this week –
TOPIC
This week we looked at key things happening in Scotland between the time William Wallace was killed (our last topic) and Princess Victoria becoming Queen in 1837. Then we made a time line of key dates from Queen Victoria’s birth up to the present day. This helped us to begin to understand where we stand as individuals in this chronological timeline.
Ava was very surprised when she realised that she had a place on the timeline.
Ava – I was so surprised to think that I was a part of the timeline. It made me think that the world is a huge place and that I am an important part of it.
Maths
We have had lots of fun with symmetry the past two weeks. We know about reflective symmetry and we’re all very good now at identifying lines of symmetry and marking them down correctly. We particularly enjoyed making symmetrical patterns on squared paper, some of us worked with partners and found this challenging but fun! We also linked maths to our topic work when we looked at art by William Morris who designed symmetrical patterns for wallpaper.
Music
We have been learning about classical music and the composer Johannes Brahms. We listened to Brahms Lullaby and we were surprised that we all knew it already as we had heard it when we were younger. We discussed how the music made us feel and what images it created in our minds when we closed our eyes.
It made me feel really sleepy – Sasha B
It made me feel young again – Joe M
I like that we are learning about classical music because it is from the Victorian time and we are learning about Victorians – Sam D.
Have a good weekend everyone!
P1l The Isle of Struay
This week we have been looking at the Isle of Struay and we have created part of it in our classroom.
Our first task was to work with a partner to create one of the houses from the island. We tried to include lots of detail from the pictures we had. When we started our topic Alfie asked what kind of animals might live on the Isle of Struay. On Tuesday Mrs Leamy asked us what kind of animals might we see round Bathgate and as well as lions and chinchillas we thought maybe squirrels, foxes and rabbits. We then had a look at the animals that Katie Morag might see and we found out she could see puffins, otters, seals and even basking sharks. We drew them and added them to our display and we are sure you will agree it looks great.
We also thought about the weather on Struay and how it would effect people getting there. We used the internet to look at the weather in Bathgate and on the Isle of Coll. We found out that often it was warmer on Coll but also windier.
Bye for now P1l
OOR WEEK IN SCUIL BY P7B
We’ve been focusing on Scot’s language and words this week. Here are some of our favourite words:
Eve – HURDIES – bum
Rebecca – FOO’S YER DOOS? – How are your pigeons?
Freya – PUDDOCK – frog
Isla – ARGIE-BARGIE – fuss, argument
Declan – GOWK – fool
Nicky – WAIN – child
Alexander – NETTERCAP – spider
Sophie L – WHEEST – be quiet
Tom – EEJIT – idiot
Alistair – RAMFEEZLED – confused
Sam – STRAMASH – pushing and pulling
Sophie M – DUNDERHEID – stupid
Louise – CRABBIT – grumpy
Emma – HOOLET – owl
Rabeea – SCUIL – school
Hannah – CUDDIE – horse/donkey
Abbie – LUGS – ears
Amber – BUMBEE – bee
Josh – CLAMJAMFRIE – party
Callum – HOWE DUMB DEID – dead of night
Jane – CHAVIN AWA – pecking away
Christopher A – GLAIKIT – stupid-looking
Christopher S – BOAK – feel sick
Luke – BOWDIE-LEGGIT – bow legged
Mr Berginis – NUMPTIE – fool
Who has impressed?
Rabeea: Isla has impressed by working hard to learn all her lines for Cinderella and never giving up.
Amber: I’m impressed by Sam and Sophie L for winning drama pupil of the month.
Jane: I’m proud of the p3/2 pupils because they just kept going during their assembly when the music stopped.
Isla: I’m impressed by Eve, Amber and Rebecca for getting the breakfast club pupil of the week.
Eve: I’m impressed by the whole class because we have tried to make our show successful.
Christopher A: I’m proud of everybody who has been working on and off stage for Cinderella because no matter how big or small a part everyone has, they have worked hard and committed.
Christopher S: I’m impressed with us all for winning Mr Berginis’ pupil of the week.
Abbie: I’m impressed with Rabeea for getting a good score in Big Maths and impressed with Hannah for stepping at the last minute to be Teaser and learn her words.
Put yer jaiket oan!
In class, we have been learning a lot of Scottish words and been learning in lots of different ways. Such as: using play-doh to spell our words, doing word matching games, creating our washing claes line, and so on.
We have been very busy this week with other learning going on in our class. Here is what we have been doing:
Sophie – We have been doing our Burns’ Poetry competition and 3 people have got through to the finals and I am one of them!!
Abbie – We have been doing times tables – 2x tables, 5x tables and 10x tables.
Tom – We have been making our “Kindness Tree”. Our “Kindness Tree” is made up of promises that we have all made about school. My promise is “I will try my hardest to never get on the sad cloud and get minutes off Golden Time”.
Ty – We have been learning our times tables. I know that 2 x 2 = 4,
5 x 3 = 15 and 10 x 9 = 90!
Caitlin – We have been learning Scottish words! A goonie is a dressing gown, bitts are boots, a jaiket is your jacket, sannies are plimsole shoes and a sark is a shirt!
Other News:
Pupil of the week – Brooklyn -> for doing fantastic times table sums in Maths.
3 Burns poetry finalists: Sophie, Caitlin and Megan.
MVP for January – Ty.
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year!
Class one have had a very busy start to term 3. We celebrated our first day back to school with a New Year’s party! We enjoyed learning about New Year celebrations in Scotland. We tried on kilts, watched the famous Edinburgh fireworks display, counted down to zero and wished each other happy new year. Mrs Nicol and Miss Barrie taught us how to link hands and dance to Auld Lang Syne.
We discussed and wrote about our new year’s resolutions.
Cameron – ‘I would like to make lots of Valentines Day and birthday cards in 2014’.
David – ‘I would like to sleep in my new tent’.
Joe – ‘I would like to get better at dressing up as a vampire’.
Learning Across the Curriculum
Our new topic is ‘Scotland’. We have been talking and writing about where we live and who we live with. The children in class 1 have been sharing what they already know about Scotland.
Cameron – Nicholas from the X Factor is Scottish. We talk Scottish and some people say ‘aye’.
Yolie – Balbardie Primary School is in Scotland.
David – I live in Scotland.
Joe – They love kilts and there are lots of houses in Scotland. The flag is blue and white.
Lewis – My house is in Scotland.
Jayden – Me, Mummy and Daddy live in Scotland. The flag is blue and white.
This week we have been learning about the flag of Scotland. It is called the Saltire and the colours are blue and white. We painted Scotland flags and were very careful to paint within the lines.
We have been learning a Scottish song called ‘Three Craws’. The children in class 1 have worked very hard to learn their words and actions. We created fantastic props for our new song. We made lollipop puppets and craw hats.
Science
We celebrated Joe’s birthday this week. We had a party and enjoyed dancing and playing musical bumps. We also made strawberry jelly!
We all helped to make the jelly and had fun investigating how water can change from one form to another. At first the jelly was a solid. It was very tricky to cut into small chunks as it was hard and wobbly. We watched as the kettle boiled the water. We could see the steam coming out of the top of the kettle. We know how to be safe around hot water and understand that steam is very hot too.
‘When we added water, the jelly was gone’ Lewis.
‘The jelly looks like a drink now’. Cameron
We put the jelly in the fridge and when we took it out, the jelly was solid again.
‘It’s like a statue now’. Joe
We enjoyed smelling and tasting the jelly. Everyone liked the smell of the jelly. Some of us liked the taste and some of us didn’t.
Class 3 Go Shopping
This week the boys in class 3 decided that the choose tray items were needing refreshed. Geordie had a great idea to go to the local charity shops and see if we could find anything new.
Before we went we thought about what type of items would be appropriate and set ourselves Out and About targets. Miss Robertson and Mrs Stewart gave each of us a budget. We were responsible for looking after the money and had to think about a safe place to keep it. We also had to look at the prices in the charity shops to see what we could afford.
Callum – I thought Out and About was good. I got a red truck for choose time. I got a receipt. It was very nice seeing some Thomas things too.
Cary – I didn’t like shopping in the charity shops because there wasn’t much to buy. The only good things were too expensive. I saved my money to add to my budget next time. Next time I would like to go to somewhere I know has good toys for a reasonable price.
Josh – My target was pay for my item myself. I chose a book and it cost £1.25. I did very well and gave myself a thumbs up.
Liam was impressed with our new purchases when he saw them the next day.
Liam – I like the new choose trays.
Starting 2014 in p3/2
Welcome back and Happy New Year. It is wonderful to be back into school life and lovely to hear everyone’s stories and of course how good Santa was to everyone.
We have had a busy two weeks so far, learning about Sir James Young Simpson and learning our parts for our class assembly. Everyone has worked really hard to learn their parts and show an understanding of the Scottish language. We can’t wait to demonstrate this on Friday and look forward to seeing you all!
Get Well Soon Mrs Mooney :)
P1m are missing Mrs Mooney and wish her a speedy recovery.
This afternoon, we looked at examples of Get Well Soon cards, and then we created our own cards for Mrs Mooney.
Firstly we designed our cards, and then we added messages to Mrs Mooney inside the cards. Our emergent writing skills are developing very well, and the children were able to use lots of the sounds and words that we have been leaning in their writing. We are hoping that postman Welsh will deliver them for us tomorrow. 🙂
Thank you to all of the parents who have handed cards in for Mrs Mooney. She is touched to have so many people thinking about her.
Class 2’s first week of 2014
Happy New year!
We listened to a song called “Time for another year”. http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/songs/time-another-year Then we talked about how a year can be divided up.
Aiden: seasons (4), Cody:months (12), Liam: weeks (52) and Dylan: days (365 or 366 ). Jamie named the 4 seasons and the 12 months. Can you name the seasons and months? Do you know why Dylan gave two answers?
P.E time has moved to a Tuesday morning. This week we played The Clapping Game, Captains Coming, and Cat and Mouse.
Caitlin returned to school this week and on Friday we had a birthday party in Class 2 to celebrate her birthday. This was our second birthday party of the week. Aiden also had a birthday party. Aiden’s party was on Tuesday because his birthday was during the Christmas holidays. We had party games, dancing and party food.
This week Class 2 were looking at commas in lists. Can you find any commas in our blog?
Look at the picture of our party food. You could write a sentence, please include a comma.
Broons Aroon Scotland by P4g
We started off the New Year creating a class Promise Tree of our New Year Resolutions. Some of them was to be nicer to brother/sisters, cut out chocolate and fizzy drinks and switching the TV off and doing more exercising.
We enjoyed learning about Scotland this week. We liked drawing Edinburgh Castle using charcoal, writing postcards from Scottish destinations and reading The Broons comics. We were asked to research famous Scottish landmarks and make a 3D model of it and locate it on the map. Please visit our class to see our 3D map if your are passing.
Next week we are going to choreograph a dance to the Scottish artist Calvin Harris and learn Traditional Scottish Country dances to teach to the Primary 1s in Miss Bollen’s class.
This week’s Special Person is Ben because:
- He is very kind to everyone
- He is a very good friend
- He is playful
- He is funny!
- He is very clever
- He is very very very good at origami
- He is a great playtime buddy
- He is a good cuddle monster!
- He is thoughtful
- He is fascinated with dinosaurs and knows a lot of facts
- He has a big lovely smile
- He has many great talents including magic tricks
- He is my best friend ever (Ramsay)
- He is good at making interesting lego models
- He shows outstanding behaviour!
- He has a good sense of humour
- He is great at cheering people up!!!
What a good first week back and we are having fantastic time in P4g!
Jessie, Louisa and Kiera B
P1l Back to School
Happy New Year from P1l
It is great to be back at school and hear about what everyone has been doing in the holidays and it seems that Santa Claus visited everyone’s house 🙂
We started the year with a new topic looking at the Katie Morag stories. We began with a task called I see, l think, l wonder where we looked at some pictures of a Scottish Island and shared our thoughts. Some people wondered things about the island like what kind of animals live there, which we will try and answer during the topic.
We also drew pictures of Katie Morag and we had to work on including lots of detail. We took our time to look at a picture from a book and then tried to put all the things we could see in our own drawings. Our pictures were amazing, Mrs Leamy couldn’t believe how much our drawing skills have developed already.
With Miss Henderson in R.M.E we looked at the story of Noah’s Ark and we are going to be working on the story for a few weeks, ending with our assembly on the 7th February. Please put this date in your diary as it would be great to see lots of mums, dads and family there.
In maths we are continuing with addition and this week we look at the number facts for 6. We found out there are 7 different ways you can make 2 numbers add up to 6.
We had lots of fun outside on Thursday for our P.E slot, it was a lovely afternoon and some of us even took our jumpers off! We were practising travelling around obstacles, following people and stopping really quickly. Let’s hope the weather stays as good for next week.
Bye for now p1l
P4b
Happy New Year!
We are rearing to go again!
This week we have been busy looking at 3D maps and are in the process of creating a 3D UK map. It took patience and teamwork!
We have also been working hard in maths learning our times tables and subtraction facts. These will help us in our Big Maths Beat That tests.
We have also started looking at who Robert Burns was and why he is important to Scots as part of our Scotland Topic. We painted a portrait of Robert Burns using skills taught by Mrs Laidlaw. We were only allowed black and white paint and had to mix and blend to create other shades of grey. They look very good. We hope Mrs Laidlaw is as impressed as Mrs Ghafoor is by our effort.
Have a great weekend.
P5d
….and we’re back!
We have started our new topic about the Victorians. We have been learning about the reign of Queen Victoria and why it is called the Victorian era.
She was on the throne from 1837 to 1901 – Lucy M
She was Queen for 63 years 7 months and 2 days – Sam D
After her husband Albert died she always wore black – Lily M
We used the Djembe drums to make up rhythms to help us remember key dates – Ray J
We are really enjoying our new class novel The Boy in the Dress. It’s helping us to learn about the importance of being tolerant and understanding when people seem different to us.
We have been learning about social norms after reading a few chapters of the book and I think it’s really interesting – Shaun B
We had a great discussion about how people are ‘supposed’ to behave depending on their gender. We agree that people should be able to wear what they want and play with what they want whether they are a boy or a girl.
We are all looking forward to an exciting term!
Hello from P1b
We have had a busy first week back at school! On Monday we started our new Katie Morag topic. In Katie Morag and the New Pier there is a storm. We discussed storms and wrote our own story to describe one. We also watched half of the story Katie Morag Delivers the Mail then drew pictures to predict what would happen next. Most of us guessed correctly that Katie Morag would deliver the parcels to the wrong people.
We have learned that Katie Morag lives on an island in Scotland. During our shared start this week, we completed different Scottish activities. We painted a Scottish flag, made a thistle collage and designed a tartan piece of clothing for a teddy bear.
This week we explored syllables. Isaac explained that a syllable is ‘when a word is broken into chunks.’ We completed lots of fun tasks to count syllables in words. For example, we played a game on Education city, clapped the number of syllables in our name, completed a cut and stick and went fishing for pictures then counted the number of syllables. We will complete more syllable activities next week.
Bye for now,
P1b
