We’ve had a busy few weeks in the school garden – parent volunteers harvested all the plums on our trees and all the children in the school received a couple each – a bumper harvest!
Our harvesting of apples continues – we are holding an apple day on October 5 when we will (hopefully if we can figure out how it works!) be using an apple press borrowed from Transition Linlithgow to make apple juice for the children to try. This week children from P1 helped to harvest apples – joined by some of their buddies from P7 on a detour from their smile mile.
And the P7s who have been creating a physic garden helped to plant a liquorice plant. This was one of the plants they researched and suggested for the garden. Unfortunately liquorice root only becomes ready to eat after five years and the oldest plant we could get was a two-year-old one – so very kindly Brandy Carr Nurseries in Yorkshire sent us some fresh roots for the children to try. Liquorice root is botanically sweeter than sugar and the nursery reckons their root tastes “out of this world” – although only one of our P7s agreed!
Pics attached of P1s harvesting apples – pic of the liquorice plant and children trying the root to come in separate emai
In Maths, we have been working on adding several numbers within the same sum. We know to look for our number bonds to 10 first to help us and then we add the remaining number.
In Literacy we have been learning all about the ‘oa’ ‘ow’ sound. We have been doing lots of activities to help us practice this. In grammar we are beginning to learn when and how to learn to use connectives properly.
This week we wrote a story all about the characters from Toy Story and an adventure that they went on. We also met Miss McCormack’s invisible friend who helps us to be super writers. We practiced Kung Fu punctuation and had a handwriting disco.
We were also practicing words from our reading books, to help us with our fluency and accuracy (keep this up at home!)
In our topic this week, we have been comparing toys from today with toys from the past. We chose our favourite toy and compared them to our parents’ favourite toys. We were trying to work out what was the same and what was different about them.
We also got to go outside this week and pick some apples and pears from the trees in the playground. We enjoyed it a lot and also got to take some yummy fruit home with us.
Welcome back to P7, this has been a short week but we’ve been busy… We’ve had great fun creating 3D perspective pencil drawings of the Titanic. We’ve also used our engineering skills to start working on 3D models . We used design skills to create 3D cabins. In Maths we revised 2D shapes and worked on multiplication of 4 and 5 digit numbers by multiples of 10,100 and 1,000. In Literacy we completed our Fact Files on the crew and passengers of the Titanic. We had our first shiny Friday. Some of us helped younger pupils develop their coding skills.
This week began with a visit from a theatre group who introduced us to lots of fun games that help us to work better in teams. We learnt a simple dance routine that we enjoyed performing.
We have been continued to discover more and more about King Alexander III and why his death was so important for Scotland. We are close to writing a newspaper report about his sudden and dramatic death.
Through our maths this week we have continued to build up our skills in addition, subtraction and also our times tables.
Mr Reed was delighted to meet so many of the parents on Thursday and to give an overview of how our time in Primary 5 will look. If there were any parents who were unable to come along then Mr Reed is happy to arrange a time to share with you some of the messages you missed.
Our apples are ripening beautifully and looking magnificent – some young pickers got to work on those that are already ripe this week and managed a fantastic harvest, they’ll be stored for a few weeks ready for our Apple Day.
And many thanks to Ian, a farmer from Tranent who came to the rescue when we lost some of the wheat that the P7s had been growing to disease. The Royal Highland Education Trust, who provided the original seeds, put out a call to local farmers and Ian offered us some wheat which was too near a hedge for his combine harvester. It was delivered to school this week and is now drying out with the rest of the pupils’ wheat in school.
Friday saw the children who planted wheat seeds in the spring harvest their wheat. Sadly one bed of wheat had been infected with a funghal infection and we were advised not use it but we harvested the other bed and the wheat is now drying in a classroom, waiting to be threshed and winnowed.
And some children from P5 and P6, including some who helped with the planting, harvested our carrots, giant courgettes – now marrows! – and spring onions.
And big thanks to the parents who have helped prune the apple and pear cordons along the back fence and put up some meshing. This was because children (not from St Joe’s!) were seen taking fruit from through the fence and using it as footballs and missiles so the meshing is an effort to save the wonderful crop that is ripening and which we’re hoping to harvest with the children in the coming weeks.
Huge thanks to parent Mike (Katie, P6) for strimming all along the cordons and the back fence along the raspberries meaning it’s no longer a jungle but we haven’t had to use weed killer. Also huge thanks to those who have offered to water over the summer to keep everything the children have planted alive!
The P3s have completed planting in their competition tyre – we will be judged in September when Burgh Beautiful visits the school. The P6’s wheat is huge and is starting to grow ears of wheat. Our last physic garden session saw the group make iced mint tea from mint in the garden (four liked, four didn’t) and sage toothpaste from the herb.
Our whole garden is looking beautiful so a big thanks to everyone who has contributed over the last academic year !
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