Sunbathing Quails!
Category Archives: Primary 4
Quail Update
Settling in to their new home. You can see they look a bit scraggly as their adult feathers are slowly growing in.
In P4 This Week…
Hurrah, the Quail chicks hatched on Tuesday and the children were so excited (the staff more so!). P4 had done a great job caring for the eggs, turning them 4 times a day, checking temperature and humidity and taking care not to drop any! On Tuesday we arrived to find four hatched and two on their way, over the day, another three arrived giving a grand total of 9 chicks. So, even if Mrs Smith is missing p4 she now has plenty of ‘children’ to be looking after in the holidays! All the classes had the opportunity to come and see them and watch them hatch on the incubator webcam.
I think you’ll agree they are just so cute.
To finish off the end of term and our flight topic we have been making rockets. On Tuesday we had an experimental lesson where we revisited our knowledge of how things fly and thought about what was important to make the rockets successful. On Friday we took this further and tested the rockets with a pressured rocket launcher! What great fun trying to get the rockets as far as possible (one or two may still be on the school roof!).
Well done to those children who were brave enough to perform in the talent show, you were fantastic.
Thank you for all your support over the year and I hope you all have a great summer break.
This week in P4
We have been hearing the last of our class talks, some independently prepared power point presentations and auditions for the class show. What enthusiastic and busy children we have in P4! Fitness fortnight has been great fun so far , we have had some training in Basketball, football and a fun run (well some were running) too. Our pyjama day was relaxing and was great way to enjoy our sports assembly and golden ticket movie award.
We are looking forward to Monday when our eggs are due to hatch…
This Week in P4
This week we have been listening to our class talks. The children have impressed me with their confidence to stand up and speak out. They have all spoken clearly and have made good choices in their flight linked topic. I am much better informed about Concorde and pleased to hear that it might be bought back in the future. Most children have made good use of the resources they have created, some have shared power points, others posters, 3D models, and even items to illustrate their talk such as feathers and kites. I am looking forward to hearing the rest of the class next week.
All the children have made a Swiss roll this week with Mrs Findlay, even sharing a sample with Mrs Mill and Mr McCallum-McKay who were very appreciative of their hard work and learning. By the look of the sticky faces they all loved it!
The children have been taking turns to turn the eggs in the incubator and cross off the days, one more full week to go…
Learning in P4 This Week. – things are hotting up in the classroom for some!
This week we have been exploring our art skills further looking at landscapes, perspective and line. The children seem to have an appetite for creating power point presentations so despite preparing a class talk for home work, they have set off independently, and are creating a presentation in class on a topic of their choice. We are continuing to explore the work of the Wright brothers and their introduction of wing warping with some flight trials of our own.
On Wednesday, The children had to problem solve the mystery of the eggs – What type of eggs were we going to incubate and how long was the incubation period? It took some time for them to work out what question/s to put in the search engines as they worked through the thinking process and the clues. We had many suggestions such as chickens, crocodiles, turkeys, peacocks, choughs and ducks. Each one was crossed off as they found the incubation was took too long, that they were definitely bird eggs, they could be bought in shops for eating, and no, Mrs Smith was not going to take home snakes or an emu once they had hatched!
This is what the Quail eggs look like.
The children are charged with monitoring and turning the eggs, they go in the incubator today and should hatch on Mon 25th June (fingers crossed).
This Week in P4
The children have been revising maths and completing some check-up tasks and activities. They have been exploring measure further and are developing further understanding of numberlines when reading scales. We have made opportunities to practice our writing inspired by our outdoor learning walk this week. The weather was kind to us and we were able to have another go at drawing detailed pictures of leaves etc. with the aid of magnifying glasses, and closer inspection of the bark!
Over the week the children have also been challenged to complete some team tasks in silence to extend there observation skills, challenge their communication skills and their consideration of others. They found this hard at the start of the week but are showing signs of improvement as the week went on. I will continue to challenge them next week too.
Science Club
There was lots of excitement in science club this week. The children discovered that there has been a theft; a locked treasure chest has been stolen from the science lab! The children are all now forensic investigators and have been very busy finding clues and collecting evidence. Mrs Smith & Ms King are sure that the LVPS forensics team will soon solve the crime!
Sophia – We are solving a crime. We put on gloves and shoe covers, so we don’t leave foot marks or prints at the crime scene. We found clues, there was a note and chocolate that has a bite out, so maybe the person was hungry. There was a glass with a finger mark, and we also found a pen and a spider. The treasure chest and the key have been stolen. We looked at our finger prints and two of mine has stripes and swirly patterns on them. I like science club because we are solving a crime.
This Week in P4
Play has been our theme this week as the children have explored construction kits, Cuisenaire rods, and measure.
The children had mixed results with their construction of a plane but their teamwork, collaboration, reasoning, questioning, imagining, planning, listening and talking skills have all been stretched.
This week the children have begun to explore measure. They have been marking out the wingspans of some airplanes in the playground or the field when the playground was not big enough. The children had to first recognise how to measure out 12m with only a 1m tape and chalk. Once they found their way and shared roles in the group, they were measuring up to 60m in the field.
In class the children had the chance to ‘play’ with measuring tapes, weighing scales and measuring cylinders to explore their use and reading scales/number lines. Many of the children need to work on their pouring skills however, they were very good at mopping up! (I think this will be a good excuse for measuring outdoors one sunny day.)
We have also looked at the story of the Wright brothers and noted their perseverence to achieve their goal. The class is continuing to learn about uplevelling writing through proof reading and editing, all are working on their final draft of their flight linked story.
P4 Learning Week Ending 18.5.18
This week we had a go at sketching outside, the children were challenged to draw things in the smallest detail. This is a difficult concept for the children as many want to draw landscapes with each picture including the sun and ground level. With encouragement they began to get the idea.
What a great time we had at the Flight Museum and the sunshine meant we had lunch outside too. The children had a work shop where they explored the forces of gravity, lift and thrust. As scientists they learnt to repeat experiments to check that things really did work or to make changes and try again. They had a go at making simple rockets and paper planes.
After lunch, they children went in groups around the museum exploring the Fantastic Forces ‘play’ zone and some of the other planes on display including Concorde.
My favourite things about the trip:
CL, AS, MS, – gift shop,
AM, AP, OC, KF – going in the planes,
EH, NS, AB, PM, – the Fantastic forces zone,
LM – all of it,
GS, LRB, AR, MV – Concorde
I learned:
EH, GS – how to make a rocket
PM, CW – about Concorde the fast plane
NS – that planes need to be made carefully or it could all go wrong!
PH – there are so many interesting planes
I want to know:
LM, OC, PH, KF, – more about Concorde
MV – what was the first passenger plane?
NS – can we go again next Thursday?
I didn’t like:
The bus journey was too long.
I would have like to sit in the cockpit of a plane.
That it was spread out and we had a two minute walk between buildings!
I would like it to have been bigger
It doesn’t need to be better – I loved
