Author: Miss Taylor

Following the success of Limited Edition Christmas Forkies in the last few weeks of term “Crafty” business decided to send a donation of £52 to Childline (this allowed for a dolls’ house to be purchased and 1 hour of counselling over the Christmas period).

Looking forward to the new term, P6/7 have decided to focus efforts on our upcoming Spring Fayre and the types of craft packs and Spring items that we might sell. Miss Taylor attended the Parent Council meeting on Tuesday evening, to represent the business, and to offer that P6/7 will be keen to sell goods, and to help support by being the sales teams on stalls from 12.30 – 1.30 on the day of the event (Friday 3rd April).

We have since discussed the budget we have available, and started to look at materials  and resources we may need.

We also spent time looking at our individual skills on My World of Work website. This has a section particularly for Primary Children where pupils can create their own profile and check their skills by completing a questionnaire. This then categorises everyone as a type of animal, suggests jobs that may be suitable for the future and also ways to develop skills now. This proved very popular with everyone and also cause some amusement as we had a number of bears , panthers, koalas and even a clownfish! Despite the humour, the questions asked, give a good insight to personalities and I believe a few parents have already had a go on Thursday evening”! Children can access this website from home now that they have been registered.

 

Our Limited Edition Christmas Forkies have all sold out! We made 25 in total and gave each class a chance to win 2 per class. Both the reindeer and Santas were popular and we made £35 in total (thanks to some generous donations!)

We decided to use the money for Childline Christmas gifts ( a doll’s house for counselling,  and an hour for a counsellor to be available over Christmas) and wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone for your support!

As part of our ongoing Literacy Development with school, we are trialing  a resource called “PM Writing” which focuses mainly on Non- Fiction writing.  We have already been learning about Persuasive Writing, Recounts, Procedures and now we are learning about how to structure a Descriptive piece of writing.

This week our challenge  was to create a character and describe how they look, act,their  personality and any special talents or skills they have. We looked at our Elf names to start us off and created the characters from there. There was much hilarity as children identified their names and discussed their ideas with partners before beginning the writing process!!

Elves created showed great imagination and creativity on the part of the children. We had elves who helped Santa fit down the chimneys, elves who had glittery moustaches and even an elf who  had very good dress sense and only wore Gucci !

If children had completed their writing  they had the opportunity to draw their characters.

We look forward to continuing this in the week ahead by writing about an adventure on Christmas Eve!

If you want to be part of the fun find your elf name above!

     

On Friday morning P6/7 visited Howden Park Centre. This is part of our ongoing Developing Young Workforce and Participation Friday events – where we are linking with our Community.

We were met there by one of the artists who are exhibiting for the next year in the Exhibition space:

“Drawing on a wealth of photographs, illustrations and models, as well as historical artefacts from the museums and the archival collection of West Lothian, this exhibition explores the identity of Livingston as a thriving New Town – from its beginnings in the 1960s to today.”

We looked at photos and 3D models and discussed the planning that went into the housing areas and design to build communities in Livingston as  a new town. This linked in well with our previous discussions about the 1960s as part of our School’s 50th birthday celebrations ! 

   

We then looked at the Craft cabinets on display which were showcasing local Craft businesses. We discussed their products, prices and display techniques.

                       

We hope to incorporate some of these ideas in our own sales techniques and make use of ideas for our Spring Fayre!

The sharing shed itself is well stocked – please help yourself!

We have over 50 books for all ages in our sharing shed already!!

Thanks to everyone for contributions so far!

Please come and help yourself to something to read on the dark nights!

Our Reading Ambassadors group would like to add a book swop shop to our Sharing Shed area at the front of the school.

As we are in the run up to Christmas, this may be an ideal time for a tidy out of any books which children may have outgrown – just in time for Santa to bring some new ones!

Please bring any books into school and put them in the labelled boxes in the cloakroom areas throughout the school. These will then be collected and added to the area outside, and you can  then  help yourself to a book!

P6/7 “Crafty!” Company are making Limited Edition Christmas Forkies!

These will be for sale FOR ONE DAY ONLY – this THURSDAY, 5th December!

These cost £1.00 with part of the profits going to Childline.

Each class will be allocated 2 Forkies – everyone who has their £1 can put their name “in the hat” to win. 2 names will be chosen and given packs at the time and the other names and monies will be kept, and Forkie packs made up in the next week.

Children from P 2-7 have recently had the opportunity to apply for a post as a Deans Primary Reading Ambassador.If interested,  they had to complete an application form and informal interviews took place last week. Ten children were successful and will now have the exciting challenge of promoting Reading as a lifelong skill across the school.

Their first task was to visit Waterstones book shop in Livingston Centre to discuss various authors and to set up an account there. Each class is being given a sum of money to spend for their class library and can order books online or create a list that the class teacher can go and collect in person.

On Friday, the children involved, showed off the books they had each chosen on their visit for their respective classes, and reminded everyone to start spending!

Chris Duke -the author of “Lucy’s Blue Day” has been very busy recently taking part in “This Morning Live” exhibition. 

TONIGHT is the last chance to order  “Lucy’s Blue Day” before the author Chris Duke visits school tomorrow ( www.lucysblueday.com – and use code DEANS at the checkout)

The pack is made up of a bag, the book, 2 letters from Lucy and colouring pencils. The cost is £10 (without postage and packaging).