This week, as part of our topic, we have been learning about Queen Victoria and life during her reign.  We couldn’t believe how many of our everyday items were invented during this era – from cars to ice-cream cones, and postage stamps to telephones!  We learned about Victoria’s life and worked in pairs to write quizzes for others in our class – it was quite tricky but we soon found out that writing the questions and finding out the answers helped us to answer other people’s questions!  We were surprised at how tough life was for poor Victorian people, especially children.  We were sad to find out that many children did not have anyone to look after their rights like we do today, and many had to put up with some horrific working conditions – no health and safety or risk assessments in those days!  We were also shocked to find out that most of us, and some of our younger brothers and sisters, would already be out working.  We used our learning in our writing this week, to describe a day in the life of a working Victorian child.  Some jobs we chose to write about were chimney sweeps, domestic servants (maids), mine workers, factory workers, mill workers and farm hands.

In maths, we are continuing to work on time.  We are getting much better at this and we are using the class clock more independently to find out the time for ourselves.  We also practised our addition – both written and mental.  Some of us had to find missing numbers mentally, which was quite tricky as we had to use our memory to hold a lot of numbers in our heads!  Some of us practised strategies on the 100 square to help us – such as to add on ten, you move down one row.

This week, a fitness instructor called the Body Coach held live workouts for schools on You Tube each day at 10am.  These were all HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) workouts and were really tough – but we worked hard and completed all 5 workouts.  Lots of the other classes decided to join in too, which was great – some of us are feeling much fitter already!  As the weather (hopefully!) becomes more friendly, we will go outside each day for some running/walking and build up to a Daily Mile.

We were lucky to enjoy a performance from our senior school choir this week – who showed us their winning routine from the West Lothian heats of the Glee competition.  They were awesome!  Well done to all the choir members and Mrs Smith for such an amazing performance.

To finish off the week, we had an assembly from P2/1 and P6/5 who told us all about Sports Relief and the work they do throughout the world.  At Kirkhill, we hope to raise money to support them by selling bands etc next week – these will cost £1.  Please bring in money if you wish to purchase any of the items.

I hope you have a lovely weekend! 🙂