Category Archives: Primary 2

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!

Fairtrade Fortnight 2018 at Mid Calder Primary School

Over the last two weeks we have been celebrating Fairtrade Fortnight by taking part in various activities, competitions and experiences. The children have embraced learning about Fairtrade and enjoyed sharing their learning.

Each class was assigned a Fairtrade product to find out about. Have a look at what each class got up to!

Nursery

We have included a picture of our floorbook, comic life and pictures of the children exploring the fairtrade items Mrs Murphy had brought in from the Fair Tradewind shop in Linlithgow. After seeing the worry dolls the children asked if they could make their own worry dolls.

Primary 1: Bananas

P1 learned about Pablo the Banana. He taught the P1’s about what Fairtrade means and also about the journey of the banana. We then designed our board games for the competition.

Primary 2 and 3: Coffee

P2 learned about coffee and other Fairtrade products. They were able to colour and label Fairtrade products from around the world and then draw a Fairtrade product that they have seen or tried.

Primary 3 learned about what Fairtrade is and why it important before researching their Fairtrade product, coffee. We used the netbooks to find out interesting facts and shared them with a partner. As we have been learning about fact and opinions in our reading lessons, we then using the Glow tool Forms to create a fact and opinion quiz about Fairtrade.

Primary 4 and 5: Brazil Nuts

P4 and P5 learned about the Brazil Nut. We found out about the story of the Brazil nuts by:

  • Finding out where and how Brazil nuts are grown and gathered
  • Looking at the rainforest and the factors needed to grow Brazil nuts
  • Talking about Fairtrade and how it can help Brazil nut gatherers to get a better deal

Primary 6: Tea

P6 had a great time  looking at a tea planting community in Malawi as part of Fairtrade Fortnight. We learned about how Fairtrade pays their workers fairly and also provides money to benefit the whole community. Pupils worked in groups to decide how money should be spent within a community (e.g. Food, water, healthcare, education etc). They had to decide which needs were most important- a difficult decision!

Primary 6/7: Footballs

Primary 6/7 took part in their own competition to ‘Design a Fairtrade football’. The Fairtrade Junior Leadership Team had a look at the fantastic designs and picked 1st, 2nd and 3rd place! Have a look at some of the designs:

 

There was lots of other fun things happening around the school too!

Nurture group: Baking with Fairtrade products

The nurture group worked with Mrs Kellner to make a Fairtrade banana loaf. They had lots of fun following the recipe, measuring the ingredients and mixing everything together! A delicious smell filled the corridors of the school and it tasted delicious!

 

Fairtrade breakfast: Bananas and Chocolate!

This week during breakfast club the children had the opportunity to taste Fairtrade bananas and chocolate. The boys and girls enjoyed dipping their bananas in the rich dark chocolate and it was smiles all round!

 

Fairtrade competition

The Fairtrade Junior Leadership Team launched a competition to design a Fairtrade board game. Lots of children across the school entered the competition and the JLT had a difficult decision trying to pick a P1-3 and P4-7 winner. They played some of the games to help make their decision. Winners will be announced next week! Have a look at some of the fantastic competition entries!

Visit from Lush Livingston

Lush in Livingston kindly offered to hold an assembly for the school to talk about their fresh handmade cosmetic products and give pupils the opportunity to purchase some of their fantastic range! However, due to the untimely Spring snow the visit has been re-scheduled. We will update you with this visit soon!

Tidy Toilets!!

Our House Captains and Vice Captains were keen to improve the school toilets for everyone and they’ve been working with other members of the school community to improve things and ensure they are a nicer place to be!  After discussions at House Meetings, they decided on rotas and rewards and put this in place a couple of weeks ago.  After counting up the scores today, they announced that the Upper Girls Toilets and the Infant Boys Toilets had the highest points.  They will have ‘fancy’ toilet paper and hand wash in their toilets next week.  A very big well done to everyone for trying hard and leaving the toilets as they would like to find them! 

P2 Winter Ready Activities

Good Morning Primary 2

I hope you are all having lots of fun in the snow with your friends and family.  Here are some activities for you to try today.

Literacy

  • Write a story about your adventures in the snow. Illustrate your story with some pictures, or take some photos.
  • Can you invent a fantastic new machine to clear all the snow away now? What does it look like? How does it work? What special features does it have? Draw a detailed picture and label it neatly and accurately.
  • Read your favourite story. Draw and describe the main character, or even make a puppet of the character using an old sock, or a wooden spoon or a .  .  .
  • Why not visit the World Book Day website and watch the Biggest Book Show On Earth (Illustrator Extravaganza)

http://www.worldbookday.com/biggest-book-show/

http://www.worldbookday.com/

  • Or perhaps you would enjoy a Reading Challenge?

Share-a-Story-Reach-for-the-Stars-Reading-Challenge-1 (1)

 

Maths and Numeracy

  • Play a number game such as Guess My Number e.g. my number is an odd number, it is a teen number, it is more than/less than etc.
  • Go on a 2D and 3D shape hunt around the house and see how many of each shape you can find. Can you make some 3D shapes from snow?
  • Play a game like Snakes & Ladders, Dominoes or Ludo
  • Log in to Sumdog and take part in our Primary 2 Snow Day Competition

 

IDL

This week we started to look at life in Roman times.

Use your research skills to find out more about Roman homes. What materials were used to build houses? How were the walls and floors decorated? Were the homes heated?

Next week we will be investigating the clothes they wore and the food they ate. Perhaps you can find something out and be ready to share it with the class.

School Closure

Good morning everyone,

I know you will have had a group call to say the school is closed tomorrow and that we will miss both the ‘P7 Assembly’ and the ‘Bingo Night’.

We will reschedule the P7 assembly for later in the session, I know they have put a lot of work into their presentations and it would be a shame if they did not get to showcase them. I am sure the PSA will be in touch to let everyone know the new arrangements for the bingo night.

The conditions are not ideal but it is lovely to look out and for children to venture out and have fun. I was out yesterday for a short while to clear garden paths and it was bitter cold, this morning you would not know where these paths are!

Boys and girls if you are outside keep wrapped up cosy and keep yourself safe. I look forward to seeing you all back with lots of stories on Monday.   Mrs McKenzie

Snow Snow Snow

Good morning everyone,

Here we are all stuck at home and wondering what we can do!

I do not imagine that is the situation at all and you are already very busy. However, boys and girls you could catch up on your spelling homework, read an extra few pages of your reading book or use your Sum-dog log in to complete some maths challenges OR you could get outside build an amazing snow structure, take a picture and e-mail the school with them. I am sure your teacher would love to see what you did on your day off. Take care and keep safe when you are outside, hope to see you tomorrow.                                                     Mrs McKenzie

 

P2: Term 3 Learning Letter

Learning Letter P2 T3

Dear Parent/Carer,

Welcome to Term 3 in Primary 2. We are certainly looking forward to a very busy term, and the children have already settled back into classroom routines.

The highlights of last term included our Sharing the Learning Afternoon. P2 enjoyed opening their own shop and selling the goods they had made. It was a great opportunity to handle money in a real life context. Thank you to everyone who also came along to our Open Afternoon during Scottish Book Week. The children very much enjoyed exploring the contents of their Read, Write, Count Bag with you. We have now started our new IDL context for learning – Homeward Bound. We are looking forward to helping our giraffe find his way back home to Africa.

Mrs Smith

Term 2 Celebration Assembly

On December 22nd, we welcomed parents and friends along to our Celebration Assembly so that pupils could receive their STEM Super Star and Successful Speller awards. We also announced the Top Scorers for each house.

A big thank you to Mr Welsh for inspiring us by sharing his interpretation of our school motto, Believe, Achieve, Succeed, and for presenting our Primary 3 pupils with their certificate for coming first in West Lothian’s Sumdog Maths Contest. Certificates were also awarded to our pupils who came in the top 50 in the competition.

Well done to all of our award winners!

P2 Christmas Party

This morning Primary 2 were ready to party!

The children all looked amazing, and had such enthusiasm for taking part in the games and activities, which they planned themselves yesterday. They did this by first of all gathering lots of ideas for party games, then they used tally marks to record votes and eventually they discovered that the favourites were Pass the Parcel, Musical Statues, Christmas Corners and Duck, Duck, Goose (which we changed to Santa, Santa, Elf since it was Christmas!)

We also had time to dance and show off all our wonderful moves. We even had a dancing competition. What terrific dancers we have in P2!

In between all these activities we  stopped to enjoy a short break and to have some food and drink.

The party was a lot of fun and a great way to start our day.

Book Week in P2

Last week the children in Primary 2  were very excited to receive their Read, Write,  Count bags as part of  the Book Week Scotland event.

First, Primary 5 children were welcomed into the classroom to  present the bags to the younger boys and girls. They explored the contents of the bag together, and spent a little time choosing and reading one of the books.

We were then joined by family and friends later in the afternoon, and had lots of fun playing some of the suggested number games using the resources in the bag, as well as completing some of the tasks related to the book ‘Mr Tiger Goes Wild’ by Peter Brown.

At the end of the afternoon we listened to author Kes Gray read his story of Quick Quack Quentin which was the other book in our Read, Write, Count bag. There was lots of fun and laughter as we worked out what our names would sound like if the letter A was missing!

Kes Gray is one of our favourite authors in Primary 2, so please ask us about some of the other books we have read that were also written by him.

Thank you to everyone to came to visit. We hope you enjoyed exploring the Read, Write, Count bags as much as we did.