eco – Springfield Primary School and Bonnytoun Nursery School

May 18, 2018

P5A Week ending 18.5.18

On Wednesday , “National Numeracy Day”, we had a visit from Mr Turtle who is a structural engineer. He did a lesson on structures and how to make them stronger after his daughter had told him about our visit to the Queensferry Crossing Bridge. This activity involved measuring to the nearest millimetre. We had to be very accurate in our measuring. We used a strip of paper, which represented an I beam, and measured, cut and glued balsa wood to the top and bottom on both sides. We predicted and then tested what would happen when you added weights to the middle. It took 100gm before the paper bent at both ends. So next we added strips of balsa to either end to make it stronger and then retested. This time it took 200gm and it bent in the middle. So we added balsa to the middle and retested. This time it took 400gm. This time it bent between the wood strengthening it so we glued wood between the middle and end. It took 700gm. Then we all tested our own and Finlay, Angus and Daniel won, as their I beam was able to take 1500gm. It was a great afternoon putting real measuring into practise. Thank you very much Mr Turtle.

In maths we are learning about capacity and volume and in number we have completed our fractions focus and started work on decimal. We are looking at the relationship between them.

In literacy we have been learning about the difference between possessive s and plural s. In pairs we worked to find out the difference and now it is much clearer. We will continue with this on Monday. Within our literacy circle groups we are starting to familiarise ourselves with the different roles and there was super dialogue about the different main characters.

We started the Big Writing Adventure and were looking at what makes a superhero. Now we are using interesting vocabulary to develop our own characters.

Half the class went to the triathlon on Thursday. The pupils were a credit to the school and performed very well at the different sports. The weather was perfect and it ended with a potted highland games. Mr Logan is going to post the photographs taken.

The rest of the class continued with Scratch and helped Mr Ritchie’s class. They designed posters for Transition Linlithgow with regard to the use of plastics.

March 31, 2017

Learning through play

What a lot of fun we’ve had outdoors this week. Edward’s dad has made a new water resource for us and we’ve been learning about the flow of water as we play. We’ve also been finding out how we can recycle water and we’ve been using mathematical language such as full and empty. We’ve shown good problem-solving skills outdoors when using our outdoor scales and when making a great selection of meals in our muddy kitchen. Can you see Matthew is writing his recipe for his muddy soup.

This week many of our nursery children also visited P1. They had an opportunity to listen to a story read by the P1 teachers and then had a chance to play in a P1 classroom. Many of our children had made Easter hats which they wore during their visit.Thank you to the teachers who really welcomed all our children and to the boys and girls in P1 who were so kind and helpful.

January 25, 2017

Learning about birds

Over the last few weeks we have been setting up a bird-watching area in nursery. We have left only a small viewing area as we didn’t want the birds to fly away when they saw a sudden movement in nursery. We’ve been putting out bird food daily and have even made food kebabs and bird cake for the birds. They seem to prefer the bird cake which is made from fat, bird-seed, raisins and bread. We have been making marks on our bird identification chart to show the birds visiting our garden. We have already observed lots of wood pigeons and magpies as well as a robin, blue tit and a great tit. At our games table we’ve been playing a bird matching game and this is already helping us to identify some common garden birds. In the art area we have been looking at a bird identification book and using this to help create our own birds. In our construction area, we have even seen a bird hotel being built. We’ve been asking parents and children for ideas on what we would now like to learn about birds and have already received some great ideas. Over the next few weeks we hope to learn about how to build nests, migration, different bird sounds and eggs.

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November 7, 2016

Looking at Autumn

We all went on a walk in the school grounds to look for signs of Autumn. We found lots of leaves and sorted these using our own criteria. Some children sorted them by size, some by colour and one child even sorted them in groups depending which ones had spots and which ones didn’t.
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After our walk we discussed what we now wanted to learn about Autumn. Hibernation and being seen in the dark were very popular ideas. We have now set up an area for animals to hibernate in our outside area.

When we were on our Autumn walk, we spotted lots of litter. Next day we decided to go and collect litter. We hope the outdoor area stays free from litter for a long time now.

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