Category Archives: Primary 5

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!

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:

Sum Dog

Purple Mash

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’

Sumdog’s West Lothian Maths Contest

A huge well done to all the children in Primary 5-7 that took part in Sumdog’s West Lothian Maths Contest last week. Each person that contributed was to answer 1000 questions on a variety of topics within maths and were then ranked based on how many questions they answered correctly. Out of the 743 children that took part, Mid Calder had 10 pupils in the top 50! A fantastic achievement, and a brilliant opportunity to build upon your mental maths skills. Congratulations! 

Creating Confectionery in Primary 5

Learning Intention: We are learning to use our market research to create our own confectionery product

A successful product name will be:

  • Catchy and memorable

Successful packaging will be:

  • Eye catching
  • Memorable
  • Neatly designed
  • An appropriate shape for your product

This week, Primary 5 received another one of our mysterious golden envelopes from Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Children’s Charity. It contained our third challenge that asked us to design our own confectionery product and packaging. We had to think a bit more about what ingredients would be in our product, and we used our market research questionnaires to help us. We had asked Primary 5/4 about whether they prefer sweets or chocolate, what flavours they like, what packaging designs they like and if they have any allergies. We looked at their answers and then we based our sweet on that. We had to give our product a catchy and memorable name and design an eye catching packet for it to go in. We were developing our listening skills by listening to our team mate’s ideas, as well as our team work skills by each having a job to do and sharing the work equally.

“We looked at our questionnaires and we decided to go for chocolate because that was the most popular. With the other flavours, we decided we were going to make a mix of flavours in one bar so that everyone could enjoy it,” commented Katie.

“I had fun deciding what we were going to put inside our chocolate tube. We put lots of sour and hot sweets because lots of people like to trick people with sweets. We also put game cards inside for people to collect,” said Jamie.

“I liked deciding what we were going to put on the wrapper and we made it nice and bold. We all enjoyed saying what we wanted to put in it and what the flavours would be, and I really like working with my group,” added Erin.

P5/4’s Confectionery Creations

Inspired by Roald Dahl’s book ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’, P5/4 have been inventing their own confectionery products.

Learning intention – We are learning to use our market research create our own confectionery product.

Success Criteria – A successful product will reflect the findings of our market research.

A successful product name will be catchy and memorable.

Firstly, we created our own market research questionnaires about the choices that other children in the school make about confectionery (e.g. Are you allergic to anything? What colour of packaging would you prefer? Do you like chocolate/sweets?). We sent these questionnaires to Miss Sherlow’s class and they answered them for us.

Next, we studied the responses carefully and collected information from the questionnaires. We used this to invent our own confectionery product.

Soon we will be designing logos and packaging for our products.

Fraser: ‘This is a fun and exciting task!’

Freya: ‘I am excited about the challenge.’

Ryan: ‘I think the challenges will be fun and I am looking forward to building my skills from P4.’

Mhari: ‘I enjoyed coming up with a product name.’

Lewis: ‘We used the research to figure out what we were going to do.’

Natalie: ‘I enjoyed making the questionnaire because we got to create lots of questions to help us make our product.’

Linhouse Movie Star Party

Today Linhouse celebrated winning the Term 1 house cup by organising a movie themed party. Everyone in the house dressed up as a character from the movie and had a celebration in the hall, which included games, dancing, a chocolate fountain and crushed ice drinks. A big well done to Callum and Romany for organising the party, and to the P7 helpers who helped served the food and organise the games. Also a big thank you to Mrs Bokhari who helped serve the food tidy up after.

Congratulations to Linhouse!

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