All posts by M Gaffney

October RE in Primary 4


 

The month of October is dedicated to the Holy Rosary, one of the best known of all Catholic devotions. October includes the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary (October 7). The best way to celebrate the month is, of course, to pray the Rosary.

We have spent some time praying the Rosary and we have enough Rosary beads to use whilst saying the prayers.

Artist Study in P4


As part of our IDL topic of Europe we will look at some famous people from across Europe. This week we started with France and the famous painter Claude Monet. We learned he was born in Paris and was an artist from a young age. He is famous for his impressionist style and we started to study his techniques. We focused on watercolours and we learned 4 techniques which can be used with watercolour paint. Next week we will use those techniques to create a ‘Water Lillies’ picture just like Claude Monet.

Maths week in P4


To celebrate maths week we have been having some fun with numbers. We have enjoyed playing Sumdog and completing the challenges. We went on a litter pick and as we collected the litter we completed a tally mark sheet to record the different types of litter we found. We then added up each total to see which type of litter was the most common. It was great to see how maths can be used in practical every day situations and tasks.

 

A welcome return to P4

 


We are delighted to have our class back, we missed you all!

P4 have made a positive start to the new school year. We have spent lots of time reviewing our school values and ensuring we are following these and trying our best. We have settled into our new routines and working very hard already.

We have begun our new maths topic of place value. This year we are working with Hundreds, Tens and Ones, learning how to partition and  recognise greater and less than.

In RE we have been studying the incredible lives of some Saints who have their feast days in August. We were very interested to learn of St. Bernard and St. Rose of Lima.

We also made a start on our new IDL topic of Europe and we are looking forward to using maps and atlases to learn about the physical  continent  and to learn about the cultures  of some of the countries.

P3 at the Safari Park

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today we had a fantastic day at Blair Drummond Safari Park. We loved playing in the adventure playground and sliding down the big bumpy slide. It was so much fun and some of us found it a bit too fast.
We made sure we saw most of the animals. We saw elephants, camels, giraffes, lions, tigers, lemurs, penguins, rhinos, an ostrich, prairie dogs and newly born baby frogs!
We then walked through the Jurassic Park area where we encountered lots of moving, roaring dinosaurs. We had fun humming the theme tune on our way round.

We loved it. We were so well behaved and stayed together as a group,  we were a credit to St Mary’s, Well done primary 3.

P3 day 3 of Health week

To start day 3 of Health week we had a football session with Davie. He taught us that there is 4 parts of the foot you can use to kick the ball. We played lots of fun games where we had to dribble the ball and try to get the ball off of each other.

We then completed the Daily Mile. Some of us managed to do more than a mile today.

We learned that in Guatemala children make Worry Dolls. They tell these handmade dolls their worries and then put the doll under their pillow. When they wake in the morning the doll has taken away all their worries. We decided to make our own worry dolls out of wooden pegs. We used fabric, wool and pipe cleaners to make our Worry Dolls.

We are really looking forward to sports day this afternoon!

P3 day 2 health week

We have had another, busy, fun and healthy day. It was lovely to start our day with a fruity smoothie which we made ourselves. We peeled and chopped the fruit and we then cycled the smoothie bike to blend the fruit together to make our smoothie. They were delicious.

We then went outside to the garden. We have our own planter to look after. We emptied all the weeds out first and then added fresh compost. We then planted some cucumber seeds and Chinese Lantern flower seeds. We will keep an eye on the planter and weed it when needed.

We then did some yoga in class.

 

 

P3 Health Week Fun

What a fantastic start Primary 3 had to Health Week. Our first activity was with Destination Judo. We had fun trying to escape from our partner and using our strength to hold each other down.

After break we had an interesting talk from Nicole who plays, coaches and referees football. She talked to us about the rules of football and showed us her yellow and red cards. We enjoyed chatting to her and asking her lots of questions.

We then walked over to the Community Garden where we had a colour wheel and we walked around the garden and through the woods looking for these colours in nature. We added little pieces to our wheel to complete it. We found flowers, leaves, petals and grasses. We had the chance to smell some herbs and flowers. one smelled like toothpaste.

In the afternoon we played some table top games. Whilst playing these games we were learning to take turns, show consideration for others, understand that we can’t always be the winner and to be happy for our friends when they win. It was a relaxing, calm time in class.

We also spent some time out in the trim trail. The weather was perfect. We climbed, shuffled, balanced, ran and took turns.  We have had a great day. can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings.

History Detectives in P3

We have made an interesting start to our new IDL topic of Ancient Egypt. We were given an ancient artefact to study and investigate . We used our skills of observation to discuss with our talk partners what we thought our artefact was, what it is made of and how it is decorated. We then visited some websites to find out more information about our artefacts. Some of us had a pyramid, a Mummy, an Egyptian God, a sphinx and a sarcophagus.

P3 pupil leading our learning

As our IDL topic this term is The Human Body we are looking at the  skeleton and internal organs. Bonnie taught us about 1 major organ, the pancreas. Bonnie had some books which taught  us all about the pancreas and diabetes. She had her little teddy, Ruffles who has diabetes and she used him to show where he can have his injections and blood checked. We were very interested and enjoyed learning from Bonnie, we asked lots of great questions.  Thank you Bonnie.