What a hectic week Primary 7 have had, and it started before school did, on Sunday afternoon. Our choir were singing as the Christmas tree lights were turned on at the village tree as part of the Santa Parade! It was a freezing cold afternoon but our singing warmed everyone up!

On Monday evening we had a repeat performance when we sang again, this time for pensioners at their special Christmas dinner in the Community Centre. This time we sang all of our songs. All the pensioners were pleased to see us and clapped and sang along with the songs they knew.

Tuesday was the infants nativity play, some of us were helping them being the hosts,  stage hands and even sound engineers! The rest of us sang our class song “Somewhere only we know”. At the evening performance our choir sang all our pieces again (except for “Somewhere only we know”). It was an amazing evening. The wee ones were brilliant in “Lights, Camel, Action!”

We sang as a choir one more time when a cameraman came from the council to film us singing two of our songs. We chose “Unto us a child is born” and “Away in a manger”. Then we all had to shout out Christmas greetings to everyone! Our performance can be seen on the council website.

As well as all of this, we continued with our class work. Our Maths took on a Christmassy  theme, with timetables to be completed for feeding Santa’s reindeer, and problems to be solved using a grid to arrange baubles is a certain way, and working from a given budget to arrange Christmas. We managed in amongst all of the busyness to continue with our reading and do some vocabulary work.

On Wednesday we all visited the panto in the Regal Theatre in Bathgate and had a great time..Wow! What a busy week we have had!!

“I really enjoyed performing with the choir in all the places. I had a solo to sing so I was nervous but excited too!” – Erin

“It was great seeing everyone in their Christmas jumpers on Friday!” – Brad

“I got a shout out at the Panto because my Mum’s friend’s daughter was the magic mirror” – Leah

“I loved the panto, it was great, really funny with good actors, dancing and singing” – Kieran Mc

“My favourite part of the panto was the last song “I’m a Believer”, when we were all up joining in the singing and dancing!” – Katie

“I thought the wee ones nativity was brilliant, it’s the best one there’s been” – Sarah

“I really liked helping at the nativity, I was in charge of the sound!” – Brad

“I liked singing at the pensioners’ dinner. They were all smiling and enjoying our singing!” – Matthew

“Even with all the singing we had already done, I liked singing our own song in front of the parents at the nativity” – Sarah

“I really enjoyed helping the wee ones with their nativity and watching it all come together!” – Natasha

“I liked singing at the Santa parade when the tree lights were turned on, and the Chinese lanterns lit and let go!” – Robbie G

“Gym with Mr Tennant is really fun just now. Today we were learning how to do “Strip the Willow!” it was exhausting but fun!”-  Leah

It really has been hectic these past couple of weeks, so much to do already and so little time to do it! As well as our Christmas enterprise stuff, we have been continuing with our ordinary everyday things like, Maths, Reading, Writing, Music and gym!

Our business and craft skills were put to full use when we were designing and creating the items that we were going to sell at our stall at the Christmas Fayre.

In Maths we continued to work with equations, but we also began to work with money leading up to our selling.  We had to work to a budget for different reasons. The best one was designing the Brown Family’s Christmas, as well as the presents to buy , we had to budget for their christmas dinner!

We also tried something completely new and  had ‘fun’ working with the Japanese Line method for multiplication!!

In our creative writing, we used a short film for inspiration in writing a thrilling story with a cliff hanger ending. This week we moved onto lighter themes and began writing a Christmas story for P1!

It has really been busy and we think its just going to get busier with rehearsals for Nativity, choir performances,  Christmas church service and of course end of term parties! It really is beginning to look a lot like Christmas!!  Here are our thoughts from the last two weeks (no internet last week!)

“I like moving onto the next step of our equations – they are challenging, but fun”- Kieran McG

“I really enjoy singing with the choir we are getting more and more confident! I am  looking forward to performing at the Santa Parade and at the pensioners dinner” – Erin

“I thought using the short film for inspiration for our writing was brilliant!”- Sarah

“I enjoyed making the snowmen for our Christmas fayre” – Leon

“The angels made out of lollipop sticks were fun to make, and they looked good when they were finished”- Madyson

“Making the snowmen was fun. When we had finished them, they looked nothing like how they started out and you wouldn’t be able to guess what they started from!” – Kuba

“It is really great doing the Nativity with the younger ones, it is good to see it all coming together!” – Katie

“I liked writing the thriller last week, but this week we were writing a Christmas story for P1 and I enjoyed that even more! I’m looking forward to reading my story to them!” – Natasha

“I enjoyed meeting our new gym teacher Mrs Howard on Monday. We will be working with her on a Monday now instead of Mrs Warden on a Wednesday” – Kuba

“When we sang our song to the school at the Nativity rehearsal, everyone got emotional. I’m glad they like our singing” – Shayne

“Selling our snowmen at the fayre was fun, it was good to work behind the counter” – Erin

“We got to watch the movie Percy Jackson and the lightning thief because we have been reading that as our class novel. I liked it” – Robbie G

“The Percy Jackson film was good, I enjoyed watching it, but the film is very different from the book!” – Sarah

“Taking part in the netball tournament was fun. I think I defended well!” – Leon

“I got a shout out on the school blog for being a good goal shooter at the netball tournament” – Leah

” We had fun trying the Japanese line method for multiplying! It looked easy but it was a bit tricky, but we managed it” – Kieran McG

We actually got a letter from santa and he asked for our help.  His elves mixed up all of his post and he didn’t know what the children of Stoneyburn would like.  So we have been very busy writing a letter to him to let him know what we would like.

“I loved drawing my pictures of what I have asked for.” said Jaden

“It was really tricky but we did a plan first.” Lillie said.

“I had to use capital letters, full stops and connectives in my writing.” said Lewis.

Our nativity acting and singing has been going great.  We did it in front of the whole school which was a great success.

Layla said,” I was really happy and nervous.”

Alexander said ” I was really nervous.”

Adam said ” It was a brilliant opportunity to perform infront of a real audience.”

We got new colouring in books to help us to stay in the lines.  Corey did a fantastic job of this. Well done Corey.

Calum loved the winter wonderland art work we did this week.

“We had to use cold colours.” said Calum.

The Monster Hive children would like to say thank you to all of the people who came to our fair.  We made money that will go towards buying new things for the classroom.  Thanks again.

Well done to our Stoneyburn netball team, playing against other primary schools in our cluster today. The team did really well and are definitely showing improvements from our last festival. Leah Hunter (P7) was a star shooter scoring in 3 out of 4 games🌟🌟🌟

Numeracy

This week, we’ve been continuing our work on subtraction and have been trying to use number line jumps more independently to show our working.

Some of us were learning the ‘friendly 10’ strategy, where we jump to the nearest ‘friendly 10’ number then jump the rest, to cross the boundary, rather than counting in ones.  We loved the challenge of doing this with bigger numbers too!

Number Talks

We did a ‘Target Number’ challenge where we had to think up with lots of different ways of making the number 9, using subtraction.  Here’s some of our ideas:

Literacy

We’ve been focusing on reading with expression to help bring stories to life and make them sound interesting.  We tried to read to a partner using as much expression as we could.

This week we’ve also been identifying WOW words in different book.  We tried to find some from our reading book and also from the books in our class library.  If a page didn’t have a WOW word, we found a boring or everyday word and tried to think of a WOW word that the author could’ve used to make it sound more interesting.  Here’s some of our ideas:

Christmas is Coming!

It won’t be long now until our Christmas Fayre and Christmas Concert, so we’ve taken a break from our ‘Castles’ work this week to start making the products we will be selling at our Fayre and to paint some scenery for our Christmas Nativity:

Thanks for another great week Primary 3/2 – hopefully you’ll be able to welcome Mrs Campbell back on Monday.

We have had a very busy couple of weeks, lots of different things have been happening, and although we have had lots of time when we have been out of our own classroom, we are still working hard with our Numeracy and Literacy and the other areas of the curriculum as well.

Last week was the first of our transition days. We went to Greenrigg and worked with Mrs Monahan and the P7’s there. Our topic is Sustainability. We are looking at the World’s Oceans and the damage that is being done to them, and what we could be doing to improve the situation. It was good meeting up with our friends at Greenrigg, having worked with them before during previous transition days, and we are all looking forward to our next visits.

It was our last time working with the Forest Schools’ Rangers, our shelters are finally finished and this time we were learning how to make fires and how to keep them (and us)  safe. We tried using the sticks method to try and start a fire the way they would have done years ago, but unfortunately although many of us managed to get our sticks really warm, none of us managed to get a spark! The Ranger did though, she showed us how to gather kindling, what would make the best kind of kindling , then how to build up the fire and how to light it. We  finally had a lovely fire that we could sit around and toast marshmallows and bread on! After we had eaten our fill, we were shown how to put the fire out safely, and cover it up so it looked like there had never been a fire there at all. The Forest Schools has been an amazing experience and we all loved every bit of it!

We were lucky enough to have a trip to Lady Haig’s Poppy Factory in Edinburgh. We didn’t know what to expect, but we had a great day! We met veterans who shared a lesson on wars with us. Sargent Major Joe, told us all about both WW1 and WW2. He had lots to show us, and explained lots of different things. Madyson and Shayne were chosen to be dressed up in uniforms, Madyson as a regular soldier and Shayne as a commando, ans each bit of the kit  they put on was explained to us. The Sargent Major kept shouting at Madyson, like he would do with regular soldiers, to keep still (using his Sargent Major voice,) even though she wasn’t even moving! Miss Smith got dressed up as a spy and all her uniform and gadgets were explained too, the women who were spies were very brave but sadly most of  them were captured, tortured and killed.

After our lesson we were shown around the factory, and saw lots of veterans making poppies and wreaths. Lady Haig’s Factory gives work to veterans of the armed forces, any branch, who have been injured in any conflict fighting for their country. We also saw different types of poppies, because each country has their own design. The Scottish poppy has four petals but no leaf. The English, Welsh and Northern Irish Poppy has 3 petals and a leaf.  We all had our own favourites, but the Scottish Poppy was the most popular! To finish our visit we all got making our own poppy to take home with us. We also made lots of others, which will be used to make poppy wreaths. It was a great day, and one of the best trips we have ever been on.

The end of our busy two weeks, was Children in Need Friday. We have been selling pin badges, key rings and wrist bands all week to raise money. We sold out of everything except for some wrist bands. On the Friday itself we all got dressed to “Be what you want to be” and paid a pound fine for the charity. It was funny seeing so many Pudseys coming to school, even funnier seeing some of them trying to do Scottish Dancing with Mr Tennant! We don’t know the total amount we have raised yet, but we hope it is a lot. When the total is finalized, everyone will be told.

“It’s a shame it is the last Forest School! I had great fun and the marshmallows we toasted on the fire were very tasty!” – Erin

“I enjoy doing traditional Scottish Dances to modern sons with Mr Tennant” – Matthew

“I really liked making poppies and learning more about World War 1 and 2” – Kieran Mc

“I liked the challenge of using appropriate and specialist vocabulary, to  write a letter of thanks to the Veterans and the Poppy Factory for our visit” – Natasha

“Singing in the choir with children from Our Ladies is amazing. We missed it last week because of our Poppy Factory visit, but this week we got to audition to sing solos or duets. I am singing a duet with Robbie Mc.” – Sarah

“I liked meeting Sargent Major Joe, and getting dressed up as a commando! I was given a machine gun to hold and I had to charge at Mrs Loosemore yelling to try and frighten her, like a command would do to an enemy!” – Shayne

“I was dressed as a soldier, first of all the Sargent Major told me I needed a hair cut because soldiers didn’t have long hair, then he kept shouting at me to keep still! All I was doing was breathing!” Madyson

” It was funny seeing Miss Smith dressed as a spy. Sargent Major called her James Bond’s Granny and 0071/2″ – Katie

“The Sargent Major used me as a puppet and made me move my arms to point to all the girls and say they were useless during the war. Then he explained they weren’t, and all the jobs they actually did!” – Robbie Mc

“I liked learning about the oceans, but I really liked when Mrs Monahan explained the difference between using the words Pacific and specific!” Jay

“It was fun meeting and working with our friends at Greenrigg again” – Leah

I liked trying to make a spark using two sticks, the sticks got hot, but we didn’t get a spark” – Alexandra

Numeracy

We have been doing some subtraction work this week.  We know how to do this using Rekenreks and we have now moved on to drawing number lines and counting backwards.  Here are some pictures of us at work below.

Rekenreks:

Number Lines:

Literacy

We have been focusing on nouns, verbs and adjectives and have been trying to identify these in different books this week.  We’ve added some examples to our class wall:

Today we were challenged to create and write our own sentences which had to have at least one noun, one verb and one adjective in them.  Here’s some examples of what we came up with:

Castle Collages

As part of our class topic on Castles, we have been busy making ‘Castle Collages’.  First we had to draw our own castle by copying the main shapes from a picture of one.  This part was quite tricky because we had to try to make it the correct shape and size.

Next, we have started to add brown paper to it to make it look like brick or stone.  We left little spaces in between each one so that the other paper shining through looked like the cement.

We have still to add more detail, like the windows, the portcullis and the moat.

We hope Mrs Campbell feels better soon as we are missing her lots and looking forward to seeing her again.