Author: Miss McLaughlin

This week, Primary 4 began to sort the data collected from their questionnaires. We are very interested in improving both Pumpherston and Uphall Station for young people. Thank you to all children who gave their opinions and participated.

The results are in…

Improving parks – better toys and more age-appropriate things to play on     72 votes
Community garden    48 votes
Safer road crossings    40 votes
More clubs/things to do    70 votes

It was very close, but improving parks won by a fraction! Our next step is to plan a proposal to pitch to the community council. We need to consider which toys need improving/included and where a suitable location would be.

Stay tuned to see what we come up with!

Until then…
Primary 4 🙂

Things that Primary 4 felt good about this week…

‘I was good at finding directions using compass points.’ Matthew

‘I enjoyed learning how to make our Christmas Fayre products.’ Jed

‘I was good at writing in first person.’ Miai

‘I was also good at writing in first person.’ Jess

‘I finished Code Cracker level 2 this week.’ Andrew

Things the we found tricky this week…

‘I found compass points hard because it was tricky to work out which way was East and West.’ Freya

‘I found French tricky because some of the words confused me.’ Lauren

Catch up with us again next week!

Primary 4 🙂

This week, Primary 4 were let loose in the local area!

Our current topic is land use and we wanted to find out how the land around the school had been used. We had a very handy tour guide in Mrs Stanton (who loved using the line ‘When I was a wee girl…’) and found out a lot about how the area had changed in the not so distant past!

We found lots of different land uses in the local area:

• Housing (old and new)
• Recreation (the golf course, parks, the bowling club, football park)
• Development (site of the old school)
• Country park/woodland
• Shops and services (newsagents, hairdresser’s, pubs and restaurants, dentist, Scotmid, car garages)
• Houses of local celebrities (Mrs Stanton, Mrs Adie)
• Industry (Houston Industrial Estate, Dobie’s)
• Education (the school)

Time for a little update on the roundhouse…

P4 have been very busy this term constructing our very own Celtic roundhouse! With the help of Tom and Sarah-Jane (Murron’s parents, who are also archaeologists!) we were able to make a life-size (for us anyway) version of a roundhouse. It has been hard work, involving lots of digging, hunting for mud, stripping and weaving willow and building the overall structure. We are very proud of how it looks and have been surprised at how much learning has come from this project! We have had a first-hand experience of how ancient Celts would have built their own homes and how difficult it could be, we have learned about joins and structures and also about how to use different tools. Keep posted or pop in and visit to see how it is coming along!

Until next time…

Primary 4 🙂

This week, Primary 4 started work on poetry.

We have been learning about special types of words called calligrams. They are words which look like what they mean.

We read a poem by Gina Douthwaite called ‘Circus of Shapes’ and we worked in groups to find examples of calligrams. We found letters that looked like jumping acrobats and others that looked like rings and a tightrope. Then, we tried to create our own for an ‘under the sea’ shape poem. We found this a little tricky, especially getting our letters to look like sea life! We are going to practise writing calligrams more next week. Look out to see how we improve!

Well done to Jessica McLean who is our star writer this week – Miss McLaughlin is going to challenge her to write some more interesting calligrams!

Challenge..

We found writing calligrams for sea life really tricky! Can you think of how we could make the word ‘starfish’ look like a starfish?

Until next week..

Primary 4 & Miss M 🙂

This week, Primary 1 and Primary 1/2 have turned into little chefs! We had a very busy afternoon on Monday – making soup, butter and bread!

We used cutting and chopping skills to help make four different soups from ingredients we had chosen ourselves – Leek & Potato, Lentil & Vegetable, Tomato & Sweet Potato and Borsch. We also made four different flavours of bread – Plain, Rosemary, Cheese & Chive and Seeded. We used our data handling skills to find the most popular choices for each, which were Tomato & Sweet Potato soup and Plain soda bread. We plan to make them again to let other people try!

We have also started preparing for our assembly, which will take place on Thursday 12th June at 1.15pm. Put it in your diaries :)!

Until next time..

Primary 1 & Primary 1/2

This week, Primary 1 & Primary 1/2 had a challenge!

Porky the Pig needed a new house! But after seeing what had happened to his three pig cousins, he was very confused about what to make it from! So we offered to help!

We talked about what real houses were made from and why they were good materials to use. Then, we chose our own materials (from a choice of art straws, wooden blocks, stickle bricks, Lego bricks, cardboard and foam squares) to make our own houses for Porky to live in. We discussed why some materials were better than others and wrote Porky a letter telling him all about the best materials. We hope we have solved his problem!

Til next time.. (we’ll huff and we’ll puff..)

P1 & P1/2