Please scan the QR codes or follow the links below to access our Learning Across the Curriculum and STEM SWAY for term 1.
Learning across the Curriculum:
https://sway.office.com/1DXjD22RI8pAkILY?ref=Link
STEM:
https://sway.office.com/mhnCmHRFrRWi62QA?ref=Link
A huge thank you from the PSA to all the children who came to the Movie Night last week, you were all fantastic. Your support raised £230.72 for the school, well done. Thank you also to the parent and carer helpers, your help is really appreciated and you all did a great job.
In Primary 3, we have been learning all about the incredible creatures that live in our oceans through our IDL, Save Our Seas. Unfortunately, we have also been learning that, sadly, these creature’s lives are under serious threat from pollution, especially plastic pollution. To spread the message and help the staff and children at Mid Calder Primary School to become #oceanheroes, we created an informative video to encourage everyone to play their part in stopping the oceans from drowning in plastic.
We then asked each class to make a Promise to Our Planet: a promise of something that they can do to help to Save Our Seas. These promises were then added to a sculpture of a sea turtle that Primary 3 had made using plastic bottles that we had collected from our lunch hall.
If we don’t stop plastic pollution, there could be more plastic in the sea than fish by 2050. Can you help to reduce plastic use in Mid Calder Primary? We would like every child to bring a reusable water bottle to school, avoiding bringing a new plastic bottle each day. We would also like you to be considerate of using recyclable products in packed lunch boxes. These are small and easy steps that we can take towards stopping single-use plastic in Mid Calder. Together, we can Save Our Seas.
On Friday, we presented a fabulous ‘World War Two Assembly’ to our parents and to the rest of the school. We included scenes from the army including forcing people to sign up and conversations between major leaders in the war (Adolf Hilter, Winston Churchill, Josef Stalin and President Roosevelt). Additionally, we included drama scenes which included surviving an attack in an Anderson Shelter and what it would of felt like to have been an evacuee. At the end of our assembly, just to make sure our audience had been listening, we included a quiz about some aspects of war time.
We worked incredibly hard on assembly by recalling accurate major historical events throughout the war, dressing and acting like people would have done back then, with real items such as gas masks and clothing. We are tremendously proud of ourselves for putting in such a super effort to make our assembly amazing.
Thank you for coming to our assembly and making it such a memorable occasion. We were delighted with such positive feedback and we will continue to share our learning with you about World War Two.
Hi everybody, hope you all enjoyed your long weekend.
Thank you so much to everybody who took part in the dress down day on Friday 14th September. You helped raise a fantastic £161.52!
Well done to everybody
Emma 😊
PSA
The P5s, Mr Renshaw, Miss Brolls and four parent helpers went to the Scottish National Modern Art Galleries (MOD1 and MOD2) off Belford Road in Edinburgh on the 13th of September to take part in an Art Workshop and a tour around our national collections of modern art and enamelled and bejewelled works by the artist Raqib Shaw.
We split into two groups with Art Educators Poppy and Heather
and headed
outdoors to explore the sculptures and question, “What is Art?” We went onto the Charles Jencks’ landform, looked at Reclining Figure by Henry Moore and touched Conversation with Magic Stones by Barbara Hepworth.
The childrens’ responses were fascinating. What interested them was very different and they recorded their focus of interest with our i-pads. They then selected from these and used Pic-collage and Book Creator apps to make photo-journals of the day.
Then we took part in using our imaginations and making sculptures ranging from wind turbines, a fox linked to a carving in the artscape, faces within faces, castles, and other ideas based on conversations, digital images or their imaginations. It was fantastic to see them so immersed in the creative task that some children didn’t want to leave to go for a sneak tour at the Emil Nolde colourful paintings exhibition.
Lunch was outside amongst the artworks and a temporary art playground where you are encouraged to touch the works. The Sun Gods were kind and we enjoyed our picnics on the benches.
Then it was inside to see the Tesco Bank Competition winners to give us inspiration for next year and a look at the incredibly detailed artworks by Raqib Shaw. Utterly mesmerising but don’t just take my word for it. Ask your child what inspired them the most from the day and what was their favourite artwork and why.
Most of the two modern a
rt galleries are free and you are welcome to picnic in the Resource Room there or outside on the picnic benches. They invite you to Walk, Talk, Move and Make. See nationalgalleries.org. or sign up for their newsletter at nationalgalleries.org/ebulletin. They are always looking for volunteers!
Other outdoor family fun ideas at RSPB.org.uk/families.
This week Primary 4 have been exploring place value through Maths. The boys and girls have enjoyed using concrete materials and netbook games to support and develop their understanding of identifying, comparing and ordering 2,3 and 4 digit numbers.
Have a look at the boys and girls having fun with Maths!
