We just want to give a huge thanks to the West Lothian Council Community Payback Team. They donated us a beautiful Christmas garden that they made themselves from scratch. We are so grateful and appreciative of the amount of work that went into this.
This has made our lovely outdoor grounds even more special this Christmas!
We have had a great time in drama this term, especially with our horse riding sessions. Thanks to all our parents for getting involved and helping to think of names for the children’s horses.
Clopper, Sir Trot a lot, Shug, Stumpie and Bam Bam!
We all had fun trying to control these naughty horses. They would try and run away and we would have to try and tie them up. Freya had to tie Shug the Thug to her leg one week!!
Jackson had a hard time with Bam Bam throwing the hay everywhere. He made such a mess. Indianna’s horse was very greedy and tried to eat all the carrots and apples. Then Thea’s horse would not let her brush his mane. She found this very funny. Lewis loved switching the angry farmer who shouted at the horses for the mess they made of his field. Everyone enjoy racing each other too. Lots of hilarity, wonderful focus and fabulous interaction from our amazing children in Hopetoun with their horses and staff.
Will keep you all posted about our next drama sessions!
A big group from Ochiltree and Duntarvie has focused on following musical instruction and instrument types. We have taken turns to wear a crown and conduct an orchestra of Tappers, Scrapers and Shakers, the musicians playing instruments in different ways. The group also explored volume control and followed instructions from the monarch to be loud or quiet.
Have a great break and I look forward to making more music together after the holiday.
Last week we celebrated harvest time by hosting a cafe for all our friends and families. There were lots of visitors. The pupils made some delicious autumn treats to share with everyone. There was also a collection for the foodbank and a raffle. In total we made £134 and also had lots of donations of tins and packets of food. The secondary pupils are looking forward to visiting the shops to spend the money buying other essential items for the foodbank. Great work everyone!
Global Goal 3: Good Health and Wellbeing
Global Goal 12: Responsible Consumption and Production
Global Goals Week is an annual week of action, awareness, and accountability for the Sustainable Development Goals.
What are the Sustainable Development Goals?
The Sustainable Development Goals are a set of global priorities for ensuring that economic, environmental, social and cultural wellbeing is achieved for everyone around the world. They are ambitious goals for governments across the world to achieve, but there is a lot we can do at school and at home to support them.
The goals aim to end poverty, protect the planet and try to make sure that everyone around the world is living comfortably. All very important and worthwhile goals to work towards! Each goal has specific targets for governments to achieve over the next 14 years. In schools, we can help to support the meeting of these targets.
In our school we already do lots of excellent work to make the world clean, green and more sustainable! We have also made links between our Climate Action Schools projects and the Sustainable Development Goals so we will be able to record, monitor and evaluate our progress in helping achieve these goals.
This year we will be highlighting the following goals and this week was an introduction to these goals:
Global Goal 3: Daily Walking Club, Joint Healthy Snack
Global Goal 12: Paper recycing projects
Global Goal 15: Natural Art projects, Outdoor Music
Beatlie have had a fantastic Fairtrade Fortnight.
I know we did not have our traditional cafe but hope you all managed to enjoy some of our fab baking at your meet the team events or at home.
All classes participated in several different activities over the week including making a 30th Birthday card for Fairtrade, Story Massage, Cooking, Messy Play and Art making bunting.
Enjoy looking through the videos of all the classes enjoying Fairtrade Fortnight 2024
Duntarvie
Glendevon
Lammermuir
Lomond
Ochiltree
Pentland
Hopetoun
What a lovely day we had for our teddy bears picnic, thankfully the rain stayed off and we were able to enjoy some fun and games in the garden with our furry friends!
Earth Day 2024 Happy Earth Day 2024! Every year on April 22, we celebrate Earth Day. This annual event is a time to focus on the environmental issues we have across the planet and highlight the efforts being made so we can continue to protect it.
Earth Day is a reminder of the importance of environmental conservation and sustainability, encouraging us to come together and take action for a healthier planet and brighter future.
This term the children have enjoyed experiencing seasonal and Scottish music through songs and games.
In our Scottish topic, we focused on the Three Craws, with body percussion and sensory input for the calls of the birds. When the opportunity arose, we transferred the body percussion to hand held instruments to accompany the song. We used the giant scrunchie to help us move to ceilidh music and had great fun using the Circassian Circle as inspiration for our movement, passing it around and moving it in and out, up and down to the beat and where the music changed.
Across the school, Primary classes continued to build on choosing Nursery Rhymes to sing together, always a favourite activity, with the rhymes changing regularly to expand the choices.
In January, everyone sang All the Snow is Falling Down, using story massage techniques to reinforce the structure of the song and meaning in the words, in a relaxing and calming way.
As we moved into Spring, we played drums, and learned to hold beaters and keep time to When the Band Comes Marching In. The soft beaters provided a safe way to feel the beat by tapping on the arms, feet and tables.
Duntarvie and Ochiltree worked towards creating music to accompany the story of Tam Lin, choosing different instruments to play along to the Border Ballad. It’s all beginning to take shape and there will be more news on it next term.
I can’t believe that we are approaching the last term in our brand new Beatlie building. This year has been a whirlwind!
I want to thank our amazing staff who have embraced all sorts of new training and different ways of working in order to ensure we are maximising the use of all the new resources and learning environments we have available to us.
In terms of using all the technology we have, there has been a great deal of work and collaboration with trying to get this all up and running. What we have achieved so far:
We also had a visit this week from an inspector as we were selected to be part of the national thematic inspection by Education Scotland looking at provision of mathematics. This went well and the lead inspector cited very positive relationships between staff and pupils that is leading to high quality, motivating learning opportunities for all pupils across the setting from ELC to senior phase.
I would like to wish you all a very happy Easter and look forward to the summer term when we can really make use of our fabulous outdoor spaces.
Debbie Green(Head Teacher)
