The children have enjoyed the Christmas themed work this week and have very much earned their holidays.

This week we have been playing drama games to develop our voice and dialogue.  What fun we had seeing the expressions on people’s faces as we demonstrated different emotions.

We also took part in a game where we developed our understanding of needs and wants.  We were told by the Prime Minister that we had 30mins to gather our stuff as we would be leaving to go and live on another planet.  We worked in groups to choose things we would take with us to help us survive.  Mrs Clyne hopes she is never stranded with us because mobile phones and games consoles would not be good choices!

During this week’s work on The Power of Kindness Calendar we learned what a refugee is and Mrs Clyne read the story “There’s a Boy Just Like Me” which we were surprised to know was written by 9 year old Frasier Cox when he won a writing competition.  Maybe next year one of us might win the competition?

On Thursday we celebrated the end of term with our Christmas party and this was the highlight of the week for most children.  Here’s what they said:

Elisha “I enjoyed the party.”

William “I enjoyed the Grand Old Duke of York.”

Jarrad “I liked the balloon game.”

Finn “I enjoyed learning the first aid skills.”

Luke C “I enjoyed Pass the Parcel.”

Kayden “I enjoyed the dancing competition.”

Well done to the children for all their hard work this term.  I hope that Santa is good to them all and I wish you all a very happy and relaxing Christmas break.  See you in January.

What a busy week to begin putting us in the festive spirit!  On Monday we were delighted to watch the dress rehearsal of the P2/1 Nativity which was fantastic, well done to all the boys and girls and the staff for their hard work.

On Tuesday we learnt about Christmas Around the World during our reading session and we will continue to learn about how Christmas is celebrated in different countries next week.  We have also been learning about different Christmas traditions every day as part of our interactive advent calendar.  This week we have been learning about the traditions of the Yule Log, Stockings, Carols, Mince Pies and Candy Canes.

On Wednesday we had a very interesting and informative chat from the PC Michael regarding safety around the railways.  Did you know a train weighs the same as 93 elephants and takes the length of 20 football pitches to come to a halt!  We’d better stay well clear!

On Wednesday we had some good discussions around simple steps to take in different first aid situations.  We considered how to help when someone is choking, someone gets burnt, someone is bleeding, someone is breathing but unresponsive, someone has an asthma attack and when someone has a broken bone.  The children have been given an information sheet home about this so perhaps you can use it to discuss each situation at home to make sure everyone knows what to do should a situation arise.

One Thursday we had great fun watching this year’s panto by M&M Productions, Dick Whittington.  Most of the children said one of their highlights was seeing Mrs Clyne take part in the dancing!  We also joined up with Primary 2 to begin practising our dancing for our Christmas Party.  We had great fun learning the Grand Old Duke of York and are very much looking forward to our party next Wednesday – remember to send in party clothes and dancing shoes with your children.

Today we learnt about Antarctica from Primary 6’s assembly.  One important fact to remember is that polar bears and penguins do not live at the same pole!

Have lovely weekend.

What an exciting week we have had.  The children have worked really hard to practise their assembly lines and were amazing this morning when sharing their learning with the whole school.  It was lovely to see so many grown-ups there to support the children and we appreciate your lovely feedback.

As well as our own assembly, we attended a whole school assembly led by Mrs Mill on Resilience.  We will be working hard to learn the skills needed to be more resilient in tougher times.  Anna reminded us that the main character who will help us to learn about Resilience is called Skipper and he will be teaching  us to navigate our boats along the river of life.

This week’s highlights from the children:-

Olly “I enjoyed getting ready for the assembly.”

Kalista “I enjoyed the fact that so many parents could come to see our assembly.”

Joe “I liked the parents’ feedback from our assembly.”

Luke N “I enjoyed practising the assembly.”

Finn “I enjoyed the assembly too.”

Ethan “I enjoyed when we got to go up on the stage and read our stuff.  It was scary and I got butterflies in my tummy but it was fun.  I think we should film the assemblies for the parents who can’t make it.”

Have a lovely weekend and remember the Christmas Lights will be switched on this evening in the village at 6pm.  Look forward to seeing you there.

This has been a very busy but enjoyable week.  Thanks to all the parents who attended our PATPAL session on Tuesday, the children were so excited to be able to share their learning with you.  The children will be sharing more of their learning during our assembly next Friday (7^th December), we hope to see as many of you as possible.  Jarrad said he enjoyed talking to the parents about our Wellbeing Wheel and was pleased that the parents enjoyed their visit.  Mrs Mill complimented both Jarrad and Leo on how confidently they were able to talk about the Wellbeing Wheel – well done boys!

Tomorrow sees this year’s Christmas Fair and we look forward to seeing you all there between 10am and 12:30pm.  The children have been busy making some snowmen and penguin cards to sell, these will be on sale for £1 each.  Joe and Lakshya said creating their Christmas cards was the highlight of their week.

William said he was pleased to receive his flu vaccination this week.  Hopefully this will help to keep the children fighting fit during the winter months.  As we approach the season of colds and coughs, the children and I would very much appreciate donations of tissues to help keep the bugs at bay!

Finn said his highlight this week was watching the P4 assembly about Advent.  Emma M reminded us that advent is about counting down to something and we learned that Christians use advent wreaths and candles to count down to the birth of Jesus.  Some of the children found it hard to believe that we used to have advent calendars with only pictures in them!

In maths this week we have been developing our understanding of money.  We have been learning to recognise all coins and notes to £5 and have been working out combinations of coins that can be used to pay for different amounts.  We will continue to develop our understanding of money with various Christmas themed tasks in the coming weeks.

Looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow at the Christmas Fair.

This week we have been having discussions about presenting a positive attitude to our learning.  We have been talking about why it is important that we come to school ready to learn and why we need to learn to manage distractions so we can focus on our tasks.  Next week in class we will have the target ‘To follow instructions first time’ so that we are ready for learning and not wasting precious time.

Lakshya enjoyed writing counting poems this week.  We had to think of rhyming words and try to use these in our poems, it was not as easy as you might think.

Anna liked watching the film clip about Joseph Lister when he invented antiseptic.  It is thanks to him that we can go in for operations and come out without infections.

Kayden enjoyed science with Mrs Fraser.  The children are learning about energy and the effect of cutting down lots of trees.  Some great discussion was had.

We enjoyed ending our week on a high by watching the Primary 5 assembly on Harry Potter, what an amazing effort from the children in P5.

Have a lovely weekend.

What a busy week it has been, with lots of excitement for Halloween.

Our literacy has had a focus on Halloween as we read some stories about The Clever Cat and The Bubbling Cauldron and wrote our own fictional stories by rolling a dice to choose the setting, character and prop. The children wrote fantastic stories using very creative ideas.

Darcy enjoyed our art activity this week where we were tearing pieces of paper and sticking them onto a Halloween themed shape.

Kayden reminded us about M. C. Escher who we learned about in Maths when we were thinking about tiling patterns.  We created our own tessellations using Tessellation Creator on Topmarks website, perhaps you can have your own go?

This week we started our new class topic, Inventors.  We learned about the Wright Brothers, Ruth Handler, Alexander Graham Bell, Steve Jobs and Mary Anderson.  Do you know what these people invented?  Jarrad particularly enjoyed watching the film about Alexander Graham Bell ‘accidentally’ inventing the telephone.  Over the coming weeks we will be working together in groups to research some other inventors who have been influential in Scottish history.

Kaitlyn said she enjoyed singing and dancing to The Skeleton Dance in music.  We had to listen to the lyrics and fill in the missing words on our activity sheet.  It was a very catchy song.  Rohan preferred listening to The Monster Mash.  Lakshya also enjoyed The Monster Mash and liked listening to spot the rhyming words.

Joe said he enjoyed having fun with his friends at the disco.

Wishing you all a relaxing weekend!

This week saw the children enjoying their new reading area, we hope we can use this area to increase personal enjoyment in reading.  We also started our Book of the Week presentations and Darcy shared Diary of a Wimpy Kid Double Down by Jeff Kinney.  She thought this was a good choice as it is a book that is funny and will appeal to everyone.

Kayden enjoyed number work this week. Luke N enjoyed learning about the Wellbeing Indicators and having to thinking of his own images to represent these.  The children will be learning more about the Wellbeing Wheel over the coming weeks.  Finn says an easy way to remember it is by remembering the word SHANARRI which stands for Safe, Healthy, Achieving, Nurtured, Active, Respected, Responsible and Included.

Joe said his highlight was when we wrote summaries of our learning about the Food and Farming topic.  All of the children were impressed by how much we had could remember.

Lakshya particularly enjoyed our spelling task this week when we worked with a partner to practise our words using beanbags.  The children had to pass the beanbag as they said a letter to spell out the word.  This week we have been revising rules about plurals.

Next week we will begin our new topic on Inventors and we will be thinking about some spooky writing for Halloween.

Have a lovely weekend.