Today our literacy Mini Champs joined lots of other primary schools in West Lothian at our termly meeting. They very proudly represented St Mary’s in sharing what we do for writing in our school. Dominic, Olivia, Amelia and Jackson listened well and took notes of interesting ideas we could use in our school. I was very proud of you all.
What a lovely day we have had in P4 and we are very lucky to have 2 mums who work very hard in our local community. Mrs McFarlane (Luke’s mum) very kindly let us visit her at her work in the Polbeth Hub where she discussed with us all the ways the hub helps and supports people in the community. We were very jealous of the messy play which was set up for the baby sensory class. We visited the shop in the hub and learned that it is slightly cheaper than other shops and that nothing goes to waste, any leftover fresh food goes to a local farm to feed the animals. We got to choose a book to keep and take home. Thank you!
In the afternoon Miss Campbell (Kiera’s mum) came in to tell us all about her job in our local Scotmid. She explained that it is a very important resource for lots of local people in Polbeth who rely on the shop for lots of essentials and as we learned lots of children in the class regularly get a treat from Scotmid. Scotmid is also an important place where people can go and meet others and have a wee chat with the people who work there. It also advertises lots of information about local groups and things that are going on in the community. We were very interested to see all the keys that are needed to open the shop and the biggest key we have ever seen was for the safe! Miss Campbell very kindly brought us all a little sweet from her work, thank you and thank you for answering all our questions!
P4 had a great time at the Christmas party today. We all looked very smart and festive. We played musical bumps, pass the parcel, corners game and we had a best dancer competition. We all loved the party food and especially our treat of ice cream and strawberry sauce. We were so excited when we returned to our class to find a sack of gifts from Santa. We all got to choose our own book and take home to read and enjoy. Thank you Santa!
Today was one of our favourite days, Christmas lunch day! It really got us in the mood for Christmas. We all had our Christmas jumpers on and enjoyed the Christmas music. The food was delicious and it was very special for us all to be served by the P7s, thank you!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
