This afternoon the Nursery PM group had a very successful performance of The Very Grumpy Sheep. A big thank you to everyone who joined us to support the pupils.
Nursery PM Nativity
Category Archives: Learning Stories
Nursery Nativity AM
This morning the Nursery AM group had a very successful performance of The Very Grumpy Sheep. A big thank you to everyone who joined us to support the pupils.
Primary 1 Explored Old Toys
LI: We are learning about primary sources of evidence.
SC: I can describe some ways that we find out about life in the past.
LI: We are learning to compare toys in the past to toys in the present.
SC: I can identify things which are the same and things which are different about toys in the past compared to toys in the present using primary sources.
Today, both Primary 1 classes enjoyed a visit from a member of West Lothian’s Museum Services. She brought a range of old baby and children’s toys for us to analyse, including a teddy bear, a humming top, a whip and peerie and a rolling hoop. As we learned about the old toys, we compared them to the toys which we like to play with today in order to identify similarities and differences. For example, we identified that some of the very old toys were made from metal, wood and paper mache, and weren’t very colourful. However, most of our toys are made from colourful plastic. One similarity that we all agreed on was that all of the old toys and our own toys are great fun! We especially enjoyed playing with the cup and ball, whizzer and wooden acrobat.
Square Numbers
We are learning to investigate and re-created well-known number patterns involving square numbers.
- I can create different representations of square numbers.
- I can create a square number by multiplying a number by itself.
- I am beginning to recognise square numbers up to 100.
Today in Maths we investigated square numbers. We first of all used counters to represent square numbers and patterns, then we had to work out the calculation we would need to use to calculate square numbers. For example, 2² is 2 x 2. The we played a game were we had to calculate square numbers and we completed a written activity.
Support at home: You can support your child at home by helping them learn square numbers for example; 1×1, 2×2, 3×3, 4×4, 5×5, 6×6, 7×7, 8×8, 9×9, 10×10
Scrapbooking Club
We have spent the last 5 weeks making some decorative memory pages for our own scrapbooks. We have included baby photos, pets, friends and family, holidays, birthdays and lots of other exciting experiences.
Here is a photo of us with all of our fabulous scrapbooking pages.
Here are some comments from our scrapbooking team:
“This has been a fun experience . Try it out!”
“Scrapbooking rules!”
“I didn’t realise how much I loved scrapbooking!”
“Scrapbooking is the best!”
Ms.Snobel
Dahlicious Dress Up Day
If you wandered into Mid Calder Primary School this morning, you might have seen some slightly unusual sights. Mr Willy Wonka, for example, taking the register to the office. Or Violet Beauregarde, Fantastic Mr Fox and Matilda playing spelling games. Or even an Oompa Loompa lighting a candle to celebrate advent! But, it was all for a very good cause. As Primary 5, Primary 5/4 and Primary 4 have been learning all about the life and work of Roald Dahl through their IDL context of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, we decided to hold a ‘Dahlicious Dress Up Day’ to commemorate 25 years since his death. We dressed up as our favourite characters from his many fantastic novels and made a donation which will go to Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Children’s Charity. We raised £53.10 and we had a fantastic day full of fun and laughter.
A big well done to all those who made such a Wonkatastic effort for a very worthy and relevant cause!
P3 and P3/2 visit Linlithgow Palace and surrounding area.
What a great day and fun was had by all…
As part of our IDL topic we have been exploring aspects of these Experiences & Outcomes:
By exploring places, investigating artefacts and locating them in time, I have developed an awareness of the ways we remember and preserve Scotland’s history.
SOC 1-02a
I can use evidence to recreate the story of a place or individual of local historical interest.
SOC 1-03a
I can compare aspects of people’s daily lives in the past with my own by using historical evidence or the experience of recreating an historical setting.
SOC 1-04a
By exploring my community and the groups within it, I can identify and consider different types of housing and how they meet needs.
Key Questions to be explored
- What do we think we know and what do we want to find out?
- Who might have lived here and why?
- How were these buildings built and who for?
We were also able to use the experience to make links with our functional writing. We are learning to select relevant ideas, order our writing, use connectives and adjectives to make our writing interesting.
My Personal Response
Yesterday we went to visit Linlithgow Palace because we have been learning about People and Places in the past.
We organised ourselves ready to leave at 10 o’clock.
We wore our welly boots and waterproof coats so we were prepared for the cold, windy weather.
When we arrived at the palace we met our tour guides then we went off in our groups to the first room and learned lots of interesting facts.
My favourite room was the Vomitorium as it was very interesting to hear about, it also made me laugh.
We ate our lunch altogether in the Palace Hall and then went to meet the Rangers.
When we were outside we had to imagine we were peasants, think about what their life was like. I got to carry the bundle of sticks as well as throw a mud mixture as if I was building my own hut!
We had a great day at Linlithgow Palace even though the weather was rather wet and cold.
Please enjoy a few visuals from our experience.
P1a Toyshop
This week we have been shopping in the Toyshop.
LI We are learning to use coins to buy things
SC I can say how much each item costs I can choose the correct coins to pay for the things I buy
There are lots of things to buy in the toyshop. We choose what we would like and put it into our
shopping basket.
The shopkeeper checks the price and tells us how much we need to pay. We look in the purse and choose the coins we need. The shopkeeper puts the money in the till. We are using real coins to do our shopping!
Einartas – ‘You need money to buy the car. That’s my favourite.’
Aidan – ‘At the shop I bought an aeroplane and a car. The shopkeeper said it was 6p, so I counted out six 1p coins.’
Naomi – ‘You need 10p to buy the doll and the dinosaur.’
Daisy – ‘I went to the shop and I bought a dolly and a toy giraffe. It cost 2p and 3p, so that was 5p altogether.’
P4-7 Parent Drop In: Using ICT to Support Homework
Thank you to all of you who attended the 4-7 parent drop in session, looking at how to use ICT to support learning at home.
If you were unavailable to attend you will find out more information by clicking below:
Here is the feedback from those who attended:
Tickled Pink:
- It was excellent to see SumDog and to know more about Purple Mash. Both will be good learning tools made fun for the children.
- Sum Dog and Purple Mash both look like fun programmes for learning.
Sum Dog:
- My child loves it can use it independently.
- They have never been so keen to do maths homework before this.
- Likes to compete with friends.
- Quick, fast, keeps the mind ticking.
- Feels like a game.
- Can do it on their own, therefore it doesn’t seem like homework.
- Instructions really clear and formative.
- I now understand what Sum Dog does.
- Excellent way for them to learn in a fun way.
Purple Mash:
- Really caught their imagination.
- My child loves it.
- Great that they can use it independently.
- Looks like a great tool. Many thanks to Anna for her clear explanation.
Green for Growth:
- Purple Mash can have some aspects that are quite difficult
- Would be good to have written work to back up Sum Dog
- Clearer instructions of what homework is and what is ‘nice to do’
P1b Information Handling
LI: We are learning how to display information on a bar graph.
SC: I can identify the title, x axis, y axis and labels on a bar graph.
LI: We are learning a how to interpret information on a bar graph.
SC: I can analyse information on a bar graph using the y axis to help me.
Through the context of our Toys topic, Primary 1b have been learning about different ways to collect, sort and display information.
We have:
– Carried out surveys, recording our results with tally marks;
– Sorted our toys and other information on Venn Diagrams using our own and given criteria; and
– Displayed information about our favourite toys on a block graph.
On Friday, we learned about bar graphs. We created a copy of the block graph which we made on Monday, to allow us to transform it into a bar graph. First we drew around the outline of each tower of blocks, and imagined that we were melting blocks of chocolate into long bars of chocolate.
Then we realised that we could no longer count how many people voted for each toy. After some brainstorming, Oscar suggested that we needed to put numbers on our graph. That’s when we learned about the purpose of the y axis.
We used our bar graph to answer interpretation questions. Amorie analysed the bar graph and told everyone that dolls were the most popular toy, and Isla MacKinnon told everyone that construction toys were the least popular.
Finally we applied what we had learned in order to interpret a variety of other bar graphs online.
