St John Ogilvie Primary School

Hello P3 families!

I hope you are enjoying the lovely sunshine this weekend!  I cannot believe it will be the last day of term next week!  How this school year is passing so quickly!  I like to go back and look at blog posts from earlier in the year at times.  It is lovely to reminisce and also to see how much the children have grown in more ways than one! ☺️

This week’s highlights come from ‘Broxburn’:

Maks has enjoyed making recycled paper as part of our Sustainability topic.  The children loved the steps of ripping up paper from the blue bins in to tiny pieces, steeping it overnight, blending it in to pulp and removing the water using a pressing technique.  They were very proud of the outcome and we hope the paper will be dry come Monday! 🤞

Danvith enjoyed finishing his narrative story that he called ‘The Lost Watch’.  Ask your child how they concluded their narrative stories.  I know you will be impressed!

Maja and Daniel both thoroughly enjoyed our St Patrick’s Day celebrations!  I hope you liked their collage shamrocks they took home.  Maja liked the Irish dancing demonstration.  (A big thank you to Mrs Carlyle, Martha, Faye and Reesa for the fantastic performances.  No doubt you will have inspired some of the pupils watching to want to join up and learn Irish dancing in the future!). Daniel loved the green mint chocolate chip ice cream. ☘️

Tyler F said his highlight was playing relay races during PE.

Vihaan enjoyed Easter themed Spanish with Miss Stonehouse.

Amelia said the best part of her week was the mini beast hunt the children went on.  Our school is hoping to achieve the Platinum Award with the Woodland Trust, already having achieved Bronze, Silver and Gold in the past in recognition of the outdoor learning experiences the children in SJO have had over the years.  This activity was linked to this award.  The children had to hunt for specific mini beasts, count and then record their number in tally marks.  We will repeat this activity next week again in a different location for comparison purposes.  The children will decided where this local location will be so watch this space!

My highlight was of course, our St Patrick’s Day celebrations; commemorating St Patrick’s role in bringing Christianity to Ireland.

I also want to thank Mrs Robson for bringing her new baby to our school and teaching us about how to take care of a baby.  We look forward to P3 delivering their ‘When I was a Baby’ personal talk next week! 👶🍼

Just a reminder that P3 will be attending a sport’s festival at Deans High on Thursday (see message from the office for further information).

Best wishes

Mrs Brown

This week we have been learning all about snails. We made our very own snails using coloured card and they even move. We wrote information reports and all the staff agreed that we put a lot of effort into these. We also learned about spiders. We made a web on a paper plate and then used magnets and lolly sticks to make our spiders move. It was very exciting!

In Maths, we have been learning all about half past on digital clocks. We know to look for the number 30. We also made block graphs to show our favourite minibeasts.

In Literacy, we have been learning the sounds ‘ai’ and ‘oa’. We were able to come up with lots of words with these sounds.

On Tuesday, we celebrated St Patrick’s Day. We read the book ‘How to Catch a Leprechaun’. We made our own leprechaun traps and left them out over lunch. When we got back the Leprechaun had left us a note and some gold coins.

This week we also learned about Eid and we made cards, a lantern and drew our own henna designs.

On Friday, we went to Church with P1A and we had several comments on how respectful we were.

Here are some of our personal highlights this week:

Ignacy – I enjoyed making spiders.

Hanna – I enjoyed doing Topic.

Amelia – I enjoyed learning about bugs.

Sebastian – I enjoyed doing maths.

Mikayla – I enjoyed learning about snails.

Hello P3 families!

Apologies for delay in posting the blog.  I hope all the mums had a very special Mother’s Day and enjoyed your card and gift.  The children worked extra hard on these to make them special.

Here are the highlights from ‘Livingston’:

Izhaan liked our outdoor learning where the children had the task of working as part of a team to create the Highway Rat (our Word Boost story) using natural materials.  They had to meet a success criteria.

Navami loved when we celebrated the life of our school patron saint, St John Ogilvie.  Mrs McKissack kindly bought the whole school some crisps and juice!  The children attended a lovely service led by Fr Kevin.  The infant classes joined virtually and the singing was so beautiful!

Ollie and Joseph both report that they enjoyed Rounders during PE.  The children also have been continuing to practise their balance control by bouncing a ball and moving along a bench with a beanbag on their head.

Alex said the highlight of his week was Spanish on Friday.  I wonder why that was Alex?  Might it be because mummy was your teacher for that lesson? 🙂

Oscar, Eliza and Mrs Brown’s highlight was making the Mother’s Day gifts.  Each child wrote very personal things about their mum.  It was so lovely to read what made them laugh, their favourite colour etc.

Congratulations to Joseph, our Hot Chocolate champ!

Mrs Brown

This week we have been learning the sounds ‘ng’ and ‘ee’. We can recall lots of words that have these sounds.  We have been practising writing these sounds.

In Topic, we have been learning all about Fireflies and Bee. We learned about the life cycle of a Firefly and listened to lots of interesting facts about them.  We made our own Bee which we have displayed on our topic wall.

In Maths we have continued learning about o’clock using digital and analogue clocks.

In PE, we have been practising our catching and throwing skills.  We are getting very good at this.

On Tuesday, we celebrated the Feast Day of St John Ogilvie.  We learned about he life of St John Ogilvie and we practised the chorus of the hymn ‘St John Ogilvie’.  We got a special treat as well.

On Wednesday, we had a session with the school nursing team all about handwashing. We got to put special ‘germs’ on our hands and look at them under a special light. We then had to wash our hands and look under the light again to see if we had done it properly.

Our Weekly Highlights

Ini ‘I loved learning about Fireflies’

Mashal ‘I enjoyed playing at the craft table’

Marcel ‘I liked making the bee’

Amelia ‘I liked playing’

Willow ‘I liked learning about handwashing’

Congratulations to Monika our Hot Chocolate winner this week. Well done to Ini, who is our Reading Champion this week. She has been trying hard to read her reading book.

Have a lovely weekend everyone.

This week we have been learning the sounds ‘ng’ and ‘ee’. We have been practising putting sentences in the correct order and we then had to draw a picture to match the sentence.

In Topic, we have been learning all about butterflies. We found out lots of interesting facts about them and wrote our own information reports. As we were learning about symmetry in maths, we made symmetrical butterflies using paint and black paper.

In PE, we have been practising throwing and catching with a partner. Miss Stebbing was very impressed with our skills!

On Tuesday, we celebrated the Feast Day of St John Ogilvie. We even got a special treat.

On Wednesday, we had a session with the school nursing team all about handwashing. We got to put special ‘germs’ on our hands and look at them under a special light. We then had to wash our hands and look under the light again to see if we had done it properly.

Here are some of our personal highlights this week:

Victoria – I enjoyed sounding out words.

Freya – I enjoyed learning about butterflies.

Grace – I enjoyed writing about butterflies.

Aria – I enjoyed reading words.

Niall – I enjoyed learning about ‘ng’.

Oliver – I enjoyed doing my writing.

Congratulations to Oliver who is our Hot Chocolate winner this week. He has been trying hard to read and write CVC words. Well done to Grace, who is our Reading Champion this week. She has been trying hard to read her reading book.

Pupil Highlights:

Bodhini: ‘ I liked going with Jacks and Rob to Dechmont Law because it was fun to be out in the fresh air and play with my friends.’

Linda:  ‘I liked going outside for Kids Gone Wild because I was able to climb trees and push myself to li climb very high.’

Deveena: ‘ I like making our Food Group Power points  because I love making power points and working on them at home.’

Skyler:  ‘ I liked going outside with Jacks the dog because it made me face my fears of large dogs.’

Chahiti: ‘ I liked running down the steep hill because it was a bit scary but also extremely fun.’

Aadya:’ I liked rolling down the hill.’

Angel: ‘ I liked going the maths challlenge place value task.’

Grace: ‘ I liked going up the hill and I know I was scared but I faced  my fear of heights.’

Alicja: ‘ I really liked sliding down the hill.’

Hot Chocolate Winner this week:  Congratulations to Linda for winning Hot Chocolate  this week for consistently being kind, helpful and mature in their  learning. Linda is always lovely to others and is willing to help others too. We were all impressed by your climbing skills outside.

Hello P3 families!

Great news!  We got our class ipad returned on Wednesday so I was able to capture some of the learning experiences for you to enjoy browsing and discuss with your child for this blog post.  Apparently it will take a number of weeks for apps to be added so I will not be able to display multiple photos through the PicCollage app as usual.  Hopefully it won’t take too long!

Here are this week’s highlights according to ‘Bathgate’ (due to a large number of absences on Friday, only 3 people could recount their highlight for our blog post, so each person told of 2 highlights each):

Daisy has enjoyed writing her own narrative piece of writing now that our class effort is finished.  The children have so far written and then edited their orientation and complication.  On Monday we hope to finish our resolution.

Daisy also liked making a start on her tote bag (those who brought their pillowcase in early have made a start).  Some of the children have stuck with their original design and some have decided on something different.  We hope these bags for life can in some small way, go towards helping our planet.

Viaan said the best part of his week was a fractions game we played with a dice.  The children had to roll a dice and follow instructions such as ‘colour ¾ of this shape or colour 5/6 of this shape’.

Viaan also liked leaning about our soft g sound.  The children practised some of the active spelling activities for March’s homework using these words.

Matteo said he enjoyed learning how wind turbines work to produce electricity and the walk we went to spot some in the distance.  We went to the foot of Dechmont Law (unfortunately we ran out of time to climb it but will visit there again another day in the future).  We talked about appropriate and inappropriate places to put wind turbines.

Matteo has also loved practising our hymns for our upcoming St John Ogilive Feast Day mass on Tuesday.  I will include some links below if they wish to listen and practise them again:

Be not afraid I go before you always lyrics.

All that I am | Sebastian Temple | Hymns Old and New | Emmaus Music

City of God (Awake from your slumber)

My highlight was attending our class mass on Friday at St Peter’s Church.  The children behaved very respectfully and Fr Kevin was impressed with how well the children knew The Confiteor prayer.  I had told him that we have been practising it everyday as part of our daily prayers.

I hope you enjoy the rest of the weekend.  It is great to see some sunshine and signs of Spring coming through.

Mrs Brown

This week we have been very busy celebrating World Book Day. We have taken part in 3 read and draw along activities. We had great fun listening to the stories and drawing the different characters. We also designed bookmarks for the Reader Leader Competition and spent some time with our P7 Buddies doing a Book Scavenger Hunt.

In Literacy, we have been learning the sounds ‘wh’ and ‘th’. Ask us why ‘th’ is a cheeky sound!

In Maths, we have been learning doubles facts. We used the spots on the ladybirds to help us.

For Topic, we learned all about Ladybirds. We found out lots of facts when we were listening to ‘Betty Buglove and the Lucky Ladybirds’ during one of our Read and Draw along activities. We also learned about the parts of a plant and had to label a daffodil diagram correctly.

In PE, we have been practising our throwing and catching skills.

We all agreed that our highlight of the week was drawing the different characters from the books but we couldn’t agree on which one was our favourite!

Pupil Highlights:

Bodhini – I liked doing golf in P.E because it was something new and it was fun.

Hasika : I liked doing the co cola and mint experiment.

Deveena: I liked looking through food magazines and organising the foods I could see into different food groups.

Tiwa: I liked working with the primary 3 class for world book day, helping them design their front cover of their book.

Angel : I liked doing the missing addend, subtrahend and minuend within 10,000.

Chahiti: I liked helping others in class with their maths.

Hot Chocolate Winner this week : Congratulations to Ollie for winning this week. He has tried very hard to improve his attitude at school and his ability to focus on his work.

Hello P3 families!

It was so lovely to have met with you this week during our consultation evenings to discuss your precious children.  I hope you all enjoyed talking with me, looking through their jotters and noting how much progress they have made this year so far!

Our learning highlights this week come from ‘Broxburn’:

Amelia and Matteo both note how making unleavened bread was the highlight of their week.  We made this as part of our learning about Judaism (the faith Jesus was born into).  Ask your child to tell you about the Festival of the Passover and the Festival of Hanukkah.  I hope you enjoyed the lovely Menorah crafts that went home on Friday.  Here are links to the 2 videos we watched to support our learning, in the event that your child would like to watch them again:

KS1 Religious Studies: The Jewish Story of Moses – BBC Teach

The Jewish Story of Hanukkah – BBC Teach

Maks enjoyed playing a mental maths game to practise division skills.  2 children sat opposite of one another while I called out a division sum.  They had to write it in the bus stop method using a whiteboard and pen and the first person to get the answer squeaked the PE squeezy ball.

Rahim and Maja both report how they loved making their Menorah craft.  I hope the cleaners do not mind vacuuming up the gold glitter!  With the best will in the world, it is hard to contain glitter!

Sophia enjoyed our local walk where we spotted houses with solar panels.  This was part of our new learning about Sustainability.  We then went in to the playground with mini solar panels, an LED lightbulb and crocodile clips and watched solar panels creating electricity before our eyes!  Thank you to our P6 helpers who are Climate Smart warriors!

Danvith continues to enjoy playing Rounders for PE.

Vihaan said the best part of his week was listening to our new Word Boost story, ‘The Dragon Machine’ and we look forward to playing Word Boost Corners on Monday to practise our Word Boost words.

My highlight was our local walk to spot solar panels.  We also spotted some buds pushing their way out of branches!  It is lovely to see some signs of Spring and the brighter mornings.

A big congratulations to Matteo, our hot chocolate winner!  I believe his little brother was also the winner from his class this week too!  Also, congratulations to Joseph, our Reading Champ!

Just a reminder to send in your used pillowcase for our Tote bag making this term.  We hope to begin them week beginning 9th March.  Also, look out for this month’s homework (if you have opted-in) in your child’s homework pack on Tuesday.

Unfortunately our class ipad has still not been returned but I have a Plan B in place for photos, to capture some of our learning experiences next week, if it is not yet updated.

I hope you enjoy your weekend.

Mrs Brown