We have been reading and listening to  the story of Jack and the Beanstalk.
As part of our science learning  we also read a book about how beanstalks grow.
We each planted our own beanstalks seeds as you can see in the photographs.
And we have been amazed at how quickly they have grown!
As part of British Science Week we have been revisiting our learning about engineers. We love to build things but this week we have also been learning about designing things too.
Along with lots of other classes in school we are taking part in the Primary Engineers competition which is quite tricky for P1! We have been reading lots of robot stories to help us get some ideas for designing and making our own robots and also thinking about jobs that robots could do to help people.
We worked with a partner to make our robots and could choose whether to use construction materials or junk. Everyone’s model had to include a “button” to turn it on and off!
We drew pictures of our robots and labelled them for the competition. We also had to write a sentence explaining what our robot could do. Here are just a few of them.
Sophia’s mum came into class to tell us all about her job as a civil engineer.  We enjoyed looking at the fantastic photos of the Queensferry Crossing as it was being built and also seeing some real engineers’ plans. We asked lots of questions.
Thank you very much to Sophia’s mum for leaving her special Health and Safety clothing for us to try on too!
This term we will be learning all about famous artists and we started this week by learning about Picasso. We read a story about Picasso and then we looked at some of his famous works including paintings and sculptures and talked about what we liked and disliked.
Then we created some our of own Picasso style faces as you can see below!
We learned that when Picasso was sad he painted using lots of shades of blue. We mixed different shades of blue paint and created our own “Blue Period” Picasso art gallery.
In Science we are still learning about forces so as the weather was nice we went outside to do an investigation. We worked in teams to find out which ball would travel the furthest down the ramp but first of all we had to make sure we were doing a “fair test”. All of the teams predicted a different ball but in the end we found out the same result and the tennis ball was the winner!
Since we started in P1 we have been practising our fine motor skills to make the muscles in our hands and fingers stronger. We do this in lots of different ways and in lots of different curricular areas. For example – using scissors for cutting, using the tweezers for picking things up, finger painting, threading things such as beads etc. The photos below show just some of these and the results of all this practice – look at how fantastic we are getting at handwriting!
In maths we are continuing to add and subtract numbers within 10 and one of our favourite activities at the moment is a Lego game where we have to add or take away bricks. The winner is the person with the largest tower.
Miss McDermott had bought a new book about Paddington Bear in London when she was there at the February weekend. We enjoyed listening to the story but lots of us hadn’t tried Paddington’s favourite snack – marmalade sandwiches.
With Mrs Smith’s help, we made a selection of different marmalade sandwiches and had a little tasting session. You will see from the photographs we had a visitor in the middle of the tasting session!  We then collected the data about our favourites and used this to create a chart. Miss McDermott also showed us how you can do this on the computer – much quicker!
This week was British Science Week and our focus was on different things that can be pushed and pulled. We linked this to our reading as we used a non fiction book to follow instructions and make a “bug” that worked by pulling the strings to make it move. We also practised our fine motor skills as we had to cut and thread.
It has been another very busy week in P1a!
This week as part of our health and wellbeing curriculum we learned all about germs and the importance of washing our hands properly. Here is the video we watched and discussed in class – it’s got quite a catchy little song at the end too!
We practised washing our hands and singing the song and now that we are “germbusters” hopefully we will all stay healthy.
Well done to the boys and girls who sang the handwashing song as they washed their hands!
This week’s team challenge had a winter theme, At nursery, we had learned how water changed into ice when the temperature was really cold. Our challenge was to free a little dolphin from a block of ice without damaging it. We were not allowed to smash or chip the ice but we had lots of other good ideas as you will see from the photos. It was not quite as easy as we first thought!
And here is the winning team!
This term in PE we are practising throwing and catching. Our PE day is now Wednesday, however over the next 2 weeks we may need to use some of our hall time to practise for our assembly. Miss McDermott was very impressed with our throwing and catching skills already! If the weather is not too cold or wet we can hopefully practise this outside too.
We have been learning all about Scotland this week and have enjoyed lots of Scots stories, poems and songs. We made Saltire flags for our special Scottish celebration on Thursday.
This week in P4 we have been learning about Electricity and creating our own circuits.
We found out about James Bowman Lindsay (1799-1862). A Scottish Scientist who was said to be one of the earlier inventors of the incandescent lamp.
Here we are creating our own circuits to light our lamps and trying to match electrical symbols to their names. Did you know that electrical symbols are universal symbols, recognised Worldwide?
Today P2b shared their fantastic learning about their recent Minibeast project.
Some amazing stories, dancing, singing, drama and artwork.
Well done P2b.
Primary 2b have been learning about different minibeasts. Yesterday they were finding out all about bees. Â They found out lots of interesting facts about bees and how important they are. Today Mr Taylor brought in a Bee suit and gloves that a bee keeper would use to check a hive.
There were lots of unanswered questions that they still need to find out. Â – How fast can Bees fly? Do Bees sleep? What do Bees eat in the Winter? Does all honey taste the same?
P7 are in the middle of working towards the Primary Engineer’s Young Leader award. Â The classes have been researching engineering and finding out about all the different areas of engineering that are around.
They’ve also been finding out about inspiring engineers (especially famous Scottish engineers like Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Telford, John Logie Baird and James Watt) and this week they have been lucky enough to have a visit from two engineers, Angus and Will, from the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh to talk about their work.
The classes had a chance to take part in activities that gave them experience of some of the skills the engineers use in their work, including robotics, optics, programming and working with lasers.
Today’s challenge was to build a house for the three little pigs. We made sure that all of the teams had exactly the same resources even though our finished houses looked quite different.
The three toy pigs had to fit inside the house and then Miss McDermott tried to blow it down with the big bad wolf hairdryer! Great fun and lots of great designs today!
This morning we were very fortunate to have Mrs Lowe, one of our parent helpers, in class. She helped us plant nasturtium seeds whilst Miss McDermott worked with the maths groups. We learned that nasturtiums are unusual because you can eat their flowers! We know from Mr Hogg that we will need to water our seeds carefully and we are going to have a rota for doing this.
After break we wrote instructions for planting seeds and discussed how instructions are another kind of non fiction text.
In the afternoon, we learned about another Scottish inventor. Here are a few of the pictures that we have drawn so far.
Then we worked with a partner for today’s challenge – to try and make a cow jump over the moon! We had lots of fun trying to make catapults and pinging toy farm animals all over the classroom! Like many of the challenges we do it was not easy but we are getting much better are not giving up and helping each other to do our best.
