Roll up, Roll up and welcome to the circus!
In drama Glendevon, Lomond, Lammermuir and Thea and Indiana from Hopetoun have been at the circus developing their independence skills over the past few months.
They have been exploring the big top tent, helping the rocket man zoom up high, taking a risk on the tightrope and taking part in a wonderful light show. Well done everyone!
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.
Another wonderful term for The Glendevon Class. We have all been learning, exploring, playing and experiencing lots of exciting things this term and as always we have been absolutely amazing!
We have loved getting out to Horse Riding this term and we all love our horses so much. We have increased in our confidence and strength when riding the horses and will miss them next term.
We also really enjoyed some cross class groups this term including story telling week and PE groups. It has been nice seeing all of our friends from across the school and visiting some new classes.
In class we have had our weekly visits from the Clown Doctors, baking, arts and crafts, attention and listening games, messy play, singing, stories and games – we have had a ball and continue to succeed in all we do.
Well Spring is here (hopefully when the rain stops!) And what a quick term it has been in the senior class. We have all been busy working on our individual SQA awards including completing a charity upcycle project as well as S6 finishing bronze Duke of Edinburgh volunteering to organise and run a coffee morning.
We have particularly enjoyed opportunities to experience and participate in lots of different groups this term. Just check out our photos:
We hope you have a wonderful Easter break and are well rested for a busy last 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)
What a busy term we have had! some of our highlights have been swimming for some of our children as well as continuing to explore our new school and gardens. The new willow sculptures are very exciting.
We have continued to enjoy activities like visiting the multi-sensory room and some of us are getting very good at activating the interactive floor. We have enjoyed activities like our Burns day ceilidh and having two cafes this term has meant plenty of opportunities for cooking and baking as well as seeing lots of people coming into the school.
We continue to enjoy a weekly visit from the clown doctors and our cross class PE groups have been a big success. It’s always nice to be able to see friends from other classes.
We are looking forward to the summer term when hopefully the weather will be a bit nicer and we will be able to get out a bit more.
Have a lovely Easter holiday and we look forward to seeing you in a couple of weeks.
This term has been absolutely jam packed with fun, it’s been lovely to welcome so many family and friends into school to celebrate different events with us and we’ve been enjoying lots of opportunities to get out and about. Some of our favourites events this term have been the Burn’s ceilidh, Science week and Storytelling week where we’ve had the best time joining all our friends from across the whole school to take part in lots of different activities, anything that involves music and dance is a definite hit for Hopetoun!! We’ve also been doing lots of work exploring and promoting our Rights Respecting and Global Goals work, here’s just a small selection of what we’ve been up to!
Hope you all have a lovely Easter break, none of us can quite believe that we’ve reached this time of year already!!
Spring is here!
Still cannot believe we have worked through another term – time has flown by with all the activities we have been up to this term.
Ochiltree have been out and about enjoying horseriding, swimming and creating at Potter Around and the Ochiltree team have loved every minute of it!
We have also been travelling around the World with Susan visiting an array of countries and experiencing the different cultures through sensory experiences, arts and crafts building well known tourist attractions and cooking snacks and meals to get a taste of where we visit – even snails!
The team have also been building on their skills using TD Snap for communication, rebound and PE cross class for their physical wellbeing as well as their favourites such as going out on the bike, drive deck or choosing from the choice box.
It has been fun participating in whole school events and seeing everyone at our cafe as well as learning for sustainability through litter picking and our Spring Clean.
Next term we look forward to getting outside more to participate in walking month, our topic of Forest Trails, Teddy Bear Picnic and of course Sports Day.
Thank you to everyone for another fantastic term!
It’s been another busy term, but our highlight has definitely been getting out and about in the local community visiting the library, café and shop. This has been a great opportunity to cover different areas of the curriculum and develop a variety of skills.
On the walk we have been developing our stamina, working on going up and down steps and developing awareness of personal safety when near roads. We have also experienced engineering in the world around us and loved making echoes under the bridges!
At the library we worked on literacy skills including handling books, enjoying different stories and choosing a story to take back to school to share with our friends.
At the café we have been developing our interaction and communication skills through ordering and asking for the bill. We have also experienced handling money which is part of numeracy and developed life skills of eating and intimate care in a different environment.
At the shop we again experienced using money to pay for an item, as well as selecting an item from a choice and waiting our turn in a queue.
Finally, we experienced computing devices in the local environment, such as automatic doors, book scan in the library and self-scan in the shop.
Most importantly it is has been lots of fun!!
