Category Archives: Learning Stories

Nursery Outdoor Adventures!

Have a look at the adventures our nursery children are having in the outdoors and in the local community. We regularly visit our school wilderness area, where we use our senses to spot the changes in season, identify mini beasts and also use our numeracy skills to count the daffodils! We are also gaining confidence when climbing, balancing and jumping and we know how to keep ourselves safe.

We visit our community to sing to the residents at Cunnigar House, visit the local cafe, and look at the interesting buildings on the way.

We have been very excited to welcome tadpoles to our nursery and have enjoyed caring for them. We have dug out a pond for them in our nursery garden and we are looking forward to seeing how the grow and change over the next few weeks.

Take a look…….

Curious and Curiouser at The National Museum and P5s

Curious and Curiouser
The P5s and 6 parent helpers went on a STEAM outing to The National Museum of Scotland on the 23rd of April 2018. We were met by the two Ruths – Ruth the Enabler and Ruth the Director of Public Programmes (and a parent of Theo) and were introduced to the curious world of possibilities that are our National Museums. Ruth told us about the 25000 objects on display and roused our interest in how we might explore further the excess of 1 million artefacts across all their museums. We were told we might see only 100 in 1 day! Lots to spark the imagination…
We started in the Wildlife Photography exhibit with the finalists in a worldwide annual competition and some very young entrants under 10 years. We then had the challenge to find interesting ways to digitally photograph some of the animals in the Natural World galleries. We are going to select and edit from these to have our very own wildlife photography competition. Our next creative challenge was to sketch in some of the other galleries. Theo suggested the diorama of Scottish wildlife in the basement and we started to draw in our artists ‘sketchbooks’ and did quick drawings as well as more detailed studies with notes. These will be used in creating an artwork back in class.
Finally, we went to the Science and Technology galleries where there is a lot of fun stuff in their great new exhibition spaces – highlights were:
My favourite part of the museum was the Energy exhibition because of the Fun activities:Matthew C

My favourite part was the basement because I saw all the fossils and I also liked the exhibition Oliver doak
My favourite bit is when we got to do free time I loved the hamster wheel. And the exhibition the pictures were cool: Sophie G
I loved playing with the plasma ball and I loved looking and at the pictures though some were really sad . Charlotte C
I had a good time at the museum my favourite part was seeing what we weigh as an animal : Kaylie P
My favourite bit was all of it especially the exhibition we saw weird crazy funny happy and sad things it was a really good experience I had a amazing time me and primary 5 had a great time and I deffinetly go back : Freiah T
The museum was very big and packed with enormous adventures it was also extremely fun one team which was my team lost track of time and almost missed the coach until Miss Anderson found us. We got lost because we were so amused by the wonders of the museum. My favourite area was the animal area because it was very interesting and mesmerising (did you know most of the stuffed animal skin is real!) I also had fun designing a bike but I only got 1/5 stars my star was for her position apparently she could see well. I would go back to visit the museum again to see the art exhibition again and to see Tim Peakes space craft. I HAD AN AMAZING TIME! :Joni Rafferty 

I loved when we went to the energy bit it was my fav bit I liked the hamster ball it was fun :katy 

It was very fun when we sketched the animals .My fav part was the dinosaur bones and the stuffed animals .I found the Viking grave cool because it was a skeleton bones.Emme E

I HAD to then take Miss Anderson’s class to visit my favourite secret part but I’m going to keep that a secret and you will have to discover it for yourself. The only clue that I can divulge is that it is watched over by a mysterious Bog Lady?! AND I didn’t even get to take the pupils to the rooftop for a great view of Edinburgh. A million or more reasons to return. Miss Brolls and P5A

Look out for P5C blogpost of their recount of the visit and for our photography exhibition!

A Special Visitor

This morning the nursery had a very special visitor…Charlie Dog. Charlie is a therapy dog who works with lots of children and used to be a regular visitor in our school. The children were very excited and asked lots of questions…

“Why is he deaf?” Daisy

“Why does his tail wag?” Liam

“How old is Charlie?” Molly

Carol told us that Charlie was 14 and went to hydro therapy to  help his legs and because he was old he had lost his hearing. Erin told us that Charlie wags his tail when he is happy. We really enjoyed our visit and look forward to  Charlie coming back to visit the afternoon children.

Our New Friends in the Nursery

To help us remember our well being indicators we decided to give them names, SAFE Sophie, RESPONSIBLE Nina and Flynn the dog, ACTIVE Alfie, INCLUDED Pom Poms, Achieving Alex, RESPECTFUL Rookies and NURTURED Cookie. The children shared how the indicators helped them and decided to create a book to help them remember what the indicators were. Anyone who visits our nursery can have a look through our fantastic book to see our wonderful drawings and read what the children have written.

P7s Health and Well Being

Primary 7s enjoyed their first session today with Michelle from the West Lothian Drug and Alcohol Service.

Together, we created Ciggy Simon to record the impact tobacco can have on a person.

Michelle recommended websites for us to look at:

www.bbc.co.uk  What’s in a cigarette?

www.landed.info

www.ashscotland.org.uk

Our Homework is to give something up for a week and replace it with a healthy alternative.  We will record our progress daily and discuss this next time.

We discussed the chemicals in cigarettes – we learned that tar is in cigarettes and it is also found on road surfaces.  It kills cilia, the small hairs that protect the lungs.  It causes breathing problems and stains fingers and teeth.  We also learned that it’s in a cigarette because tar is created when you burn two or more chemicals together.

Michelle will be with us again next week and we have more questions for her.  We look forward to seeing her.

Term 3 Celebration Assembly

Today we welcomed parents and friends along to our Celebration Assembly so that pupils could receive their STEM Super Star and Successful Speller awards.

Certificates and prizes were also given to the children who won our Bookworm, STEM and Fairtrade Junior Leadership Team’s challenges and competitions, and to the 5 pupils who represented our school at the West Lothian Burns Contest. We also announced the Top Scorers for each house, along with our house winner.

A big thank you to Hannah Rarity for inspiring us by sharing her interpretation of our school motto, Believe, Achieve, Succeed, and for sharing her journey of hard work and determination to become the successful singer she is today. Thank you also to Leah, P6, who impressed us with her own musical talents and played ‘Clowns’ for us on the piano.

Well done to all of our award winners!

Ready, Steady, Spread with P1P!

LI: We are learning about preparing and handling food.
We are learning to follow a recipe.

SC: I can help prepare some foods as part of our food tasting afternoon.
I can taste some farm products, for example milk, cheese and vegetables.
I enjoy working with others as I prepare food.
I can work as an effective part of group.

P1P were learning all about sandwich making in class yesterday. To begin with we discussed the different ingredients we would need to make a simple ham and cheese sandwich and where these ingredients came from on the farm.
We worked together in small groups to make our delicious ham and cheese sandwiches. Some of us tried a bit of our sandwiches in class, and others took it home to show to and eat with their families.
The were super tasty!

The Nursery Bake Off!

The boys and girls have been taking part in bake off sessions in the nursery. So far they have made crispie cakes, scones, top hats and shortbread. They have enjoyed learning how chocolate melts, how to measure ingredients, the feeling and smells they experience while baking. We have all enjoyed this learning experience…including the staff! Keep watching for more bake off updates.

Primary 1’s trip to Almond Valley Farm

As part of our ‘On the Farm’ IDL context, today Primary 1 visited Almond Valley Farm. Although the weather was not the best we didn’t let that stop us having a FANTASTIC day! We were given a super session on ‘Farm Life’ where we were introduced to some of the very interesting and cute animals that live on the Farm. We learnt lots of new facts about life on the farm and were also able to share what we had been learning in class. We then spent the afternoon exploring the Farm and playing in the Adventure Playground.

We would like to thank our amazing parent volunteers, Mrs Combe, Miss Anderson and Nikki for their help on the trip, we couldn’t have done it without you!

Have a look at our Sway below with all our pictures from the trip.