Group 4 YPI winners 2024 😊

Group 4 were delighted to win our YPI competition yesterday with £3000 being awarded to our charity OPAL Cyrenians. The charity supports older people in the community by running a range of groups and activities. The charity are going to use the money to create a hub area where they can have coffee mornings and other events at their offices in Bathgate.

It was a fantastic afternoon with some great presentations from all the groups involved. Well done everyone!

Group 1 Spring Activities

Group 1 have been busy completing Spring activities during their IDL time. We enjoyed observing and recording all the signs of Spring outdoors. We have been pairing baby animals with their parents and learned about the life cycle of a frog. Following instructions group 1 made their own paper frogs. We enjoyed acting out the Easter story and making our own story boards. Group 1 made Easter eggs and put their favourite things inside. We also explored symmetry in nature, made our own symmetrical butterflies using paint and completed some symmetrical patterns in class.

Making Patterns in Maths

In Silver Class this week we have been looking at making our own patterns! We really had to focus and work out what we wanted in our patterns.

Gordon’s Spring Term Music

This term the children have enjoyed experiencing seasonal and Scottish music through songs and games.

In our Scottish topic, we focused on the Three Craws, with body percussion and sensory input for the calls of the birds. When the opportunity arose, we transferred the body percussion to hand held instruments to accompany the song. We used the giant scrunchie to help us move to ceilidh music and had great fun using the Circassian Circle as inspiration for our movement, passing it around and moving it in and out, up and down to the beat and where the music changed.

Where possible, some classes also used Fischy Music Scottish songs and music, having some great fun dancing to the performance videos.

Some classes continued to build on choosing Nursery Rhymes to sing together, always a favourite activity, with the rhymes changing regularly to expand the choices.

We sang All the Snow is Falling Down, using story massage techniques to reinforce the structure of the song and meaning in the words, in a relaxing and calming way.

As we moved into Spring, we played drums, and learned to hold beaters and keep time to When the Band Comes Marching In. The soft beaters provided a safe way to feel the beat by tapping on the arms, feet and tables.

Group 1 Science Electricity

Group 1 have been learning about things that use electricity. They have also learned about circuits, made a circuit clown with a light up nose and spinning bow. Next they used the circuit to explore whether different items in the class were conductors or insulators. We also added a switch to our circuit and explored adding more batteries to get a brighter bulb! They also explored electricity and it’s history to understand how life has changed because of electricity

 

 

Visit to West Lothian College – Sustainability week

On 6th March, some members of the Eco-Committee and senior pupils from the Looking After Our Environment group had a fantastic time on their visit to West Lothian College.

As part of  ‘Sustainability Week’ project, the group enjoyed taking part in a workshop on wind chime and mobile making, led by Lesley Hossack and supported by Childhood Practice students. They had a brilliant time in the wellbeing garden and left some wind chimes made with natural and recyclable materials, along with painted stones, to decorate the garden. They also visited the Eco House to see how it looked like.

We look forward to more opportunities like this in the future because it was a great experience for everyone involved.

Visitor in Silver Class

We got to meet Bessie who is a trained guide dog! We enjoyed meeting Bessie.