Well done to all the P7 pupils who took part in their mock trials this evening. They were confident, well-prepared, well-behaved and enthusiastic. We were impressed by their persuasive arguments and their cool, calm and collected approach under pressure. Here are a few snaps of P7A in their case against St Mary’s (Leith). JP
As you may or may not know this year is the 40th Anniversary of Palace Guiding here at Linlithgow Primary School. I just wanted to let you know that we have just had some social media coverage about the 40th anniversary of the guides. There’s a tweet on Twitter
https://twitter.com/histenvscot
 a Facebook post on:
https://www.facebook.com/HistoricEnvScotland/Â and a news story on the Historic Environment Scotland (HES) website:
Historic Scotland ran a competition with our up coming guides to design a 40th Anniversary Logo. The competition was won by Charlotte Casey and Ellie McDonald.
The logo by Charlotte and Ellie is featured in the web news story. A press release has gone out too and STV are interested as well as local and national press. The 40th anniversary event tickets are on Eventbrite. The event will take place at Linlithgow Burgh Halls on Sunday 13th August. All welcome.
Details are at:-
Last month P7 and P2 and P2/1 were learning all about engineers and engineering skills. We found out about what engineers do and the process they use to solve problems and design solutions. Â As part of this, the pupils identified a problem in today’s world that they wanted to solve and designed a machine to solve it. Â These designs were entered into the Primary Engineers Young Leader Award.
After sorting through over 20,000 entries, the experts at Primary Engineers selected Aimee from P7A as a prize winner for her design for a rubbish bin! Â She is now on the shortlist for the overall winner from each age group.
The shortlisted entries go on show at Barony Hall, Glasgow on Saturday 3rd and Sunday 4th June 2017.  Good Luck Aimee!
https://universeofengineering.com/primary-engineer-leaders-award/
Our new film club has been up and running for a few weeks now and we’ve watched 3 very different film so far!
Our first was Beauty and the Beast, and it was interesting to compare it to the new version in cinemas. Â Our second was The Lego Movie – a very different type of animation. Â Our third movie was The Red Balloon – a French film from 1956. Â For many of us, it was the first time we had watched a foreign film, and one that was so old. Â It was really popular!
On Monday night at Howden Park Centre, Livingston, our P4A class performed an amazing demonstration of their new skills. For the last 8 weeks P4A have been working with a project called Voice Beats which gives children an opportunity for innovation and creativity combining Japanese Taiko drumming and vocals. Please see a snap shot of their performance below.
They combined their talents with Linlithgow Bridge Primary School who were also part of the project for a joint finale mass drumming performance.
On Monday, P5A opened a box, which contained a small Mexican hat called a Sombrero.
This week, we have been doing various tasks, including research, project work and activities on where we think it has come from and who sent it.
On Tuesday, some pupils from P5A were researching various aspects of Mexico, such as the Aztecs, Mexican clothing, Mexican food and lots of other things. Using this research they created a class book.
On Wednesday, P5A designed some sombreros of our own. There were many different designs ranging from sunshine yellow ones to ocean blue ones.
On Thursday, P5A brought their fantastic designs to life by using many different and unusual resources such as pipe cleaners, buttons, the lot! Some of us could not stick to our designs, due to the intricate detail and lack of time.
So, as you can see, we had an amazing time investigating this mysterious hat!
Grace and Halle, P5A
This morning P2/1 were delighted to welcome some authors from P5b who had written and illustrated their own rainforest stories. As well as reading their stories to the boys and girls they had made some super props too! Thank you very much P5b – you have obviously been working very hard and had lots of good ideas – we enjoyed your listening to your stories.
P7AÂ were inspired by the ship’s crest we were given in our mystery box and created a huge variety of art, drama, songs, and technological design. Â Here are some of the final presentations…
P7A have been looking after a mysterious box for the last few days. Â Today was the day to open it…
Inside was a crest wrapped in a blanket – we brainstormed some ideas of what the crest might mean, where it was from, what is was and what the symbols meant. Â After a bit of research we came up with some ideas…
Then we worked to think of creative things we could do – we had loads of different ideas.
Right now, we’re working on some of the suggestions we cameup with. Â We’ll post up some of the final creative activities!
On Friday morning, P5A received an intriguing package, wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string.
We spent some time handling our mystery parcel and discussing it. We wondered where it had come from, why it had been sent to us and, most importantly, what might be inside.
After waiting and wondering for three long days, we finally opened our parcel this afternoon. There was great excitement, lots of speculation, and some worry (from Mrs Paton) that Robert might cut his fingers on the scissors!
At last, the box was open. Buried inside layers of tissue, we pulled out…a tiny felt hat, covered in sequins and embriodery.
Most excited of all was our Circle Time pet, Happy Lion. He was delighted to find that the hat was a perfect fit!
We quickly set about writing down all of our big questions about this unusual hat. Where did it come from? Who sent it to us? What sort of hat was it? Which culture did it belong to? What could we learn from it?
We visited the school library and consulted Dr Google. Our suspicions were confirmed. We had received a tiny sombrero all the way from Mexico. We discovered that the name ‘sombrero’ comes from the Spanish word for shade. This wide brimmed hat was originally designed to offer protection from the sun.
Next, we discussed where we could take our learning from here. Would we design and make our own hats? Would we find out more about the traditions, customs and traditional dress of Mexico? Would we explore politics, religion or culture? Could we write our own music, or find out about traditional Mexican musical instruments? Could we explore different types of hats? Perhaps we could write our own poetry, adventure stories or factual reports about hats. We even discussed the possibility of learning a new language or writing to new pen pals.
So, where to begin? P5A, it’s over to you!
JP
This week we are focusing on non fiction texts in literacy and the children are choosing their own reading books to share at home.
In the morning we learned about different types of non fiction texts and we have a lovely selection of magazines in class which all the groups will have time to read over the week. Some of the children have suggested we link this to our data handling learning and do a survey of our favourite magazines at the end of the week. Watch this space!
A few of the children searched the newspapers to look for things that might interest children. As you can see from these photos, they did not like getting their hands covered in newsprint!
To celebrate British Science Week, we are learning about a different Scottish inventor each day.  As you will know if you read our blog regularly, we love designing and making things in P2/1 and this week we will be doing some team challenges that have both a design and a farm animal theme.
We have read the story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff and acted it out using puppets and masks. Today the challenge was to design and make a raft or boat to carry the three Billy Goats Gruff safely across our water tray.  This was not as easy as it might look as some of the containers that Miss McDermott gave us had holes in them!
This morning P2/1 headed off in the sunshine to visit Linlithgow Library. Some boys and girls were already members and some children joined for the first time.
We enjoyed looking at the lovely books and lots of children chose books to take home. We used the self scanning machines which are quite similar to the new scanner in our school library.
Thank you very much to Mrs Crook and Mrs Simcox for coming along with us and helping us to stay safe when crossing the very busy roads in Linlithgow (and thank you also to Mrs Smith who gave up her tea break this morning to come with us too!)
Look at our super new displays in the library.
Take a look at the wonderful characters our ‘We Love to Read’ Club have created and shared around the school. How many have you seen…?
P7A are looking at poetry this month. Â We’ve talked about the different types of poems that we’ve come across – haiku, acrostic, diamante, rhyming poems and free poetry. Â We looked at a new way of making peotry – book spine poems. Â We gathered a selection of random books and selected and ordered them to create a short poem. Â Here are some of them…
Going On Holiday,
By The Shores of Silver Lake,
Harper and the Sea of Secrets.
The House of Windjammer,
Blood Fever,
A Series of Unfortunate Events,
Cliffhangers!
The Diary of a Wimpy Kid
The Master of Secrets:
The Demon Headmaster.
Natasha’s Will,
Race the Wind.
The Witches,
The Trouble with Mummies…
Mouths
