It has been another very productive week in P3. Nativity rehearsals are well and truly underway. We have been on the stage, learning our lines and singing the songs. We have all worked very hard.
We have also made a Christmas poster which will be displayed on the wall in the dinner hall.
Ellie – I made winter trees for the poster
Luke – I made a snowflake
Cody – I used paint to make the snowy mountains
Karlie – I made the golden ticket
Iza and Bella – we made glittery snowflakes
This week P3 were very inspired by the P6 class and their assembly all about Remembrance Day. We really enjoyed learning all about the Poppies that people wear as a symbol for all the soldiers who fought in the war to keep us safe. We decided to make our own wall display. We wrote acrostic poems for the word POPPY and we thought of some very interesting and moving vocabulary. We also made some pinwheel Poppies and added this altogether to make a beautiful display.
Continuing with our IDL topic of Homes and Castles we looked at ways in which a castle was built for defence. The battlements, portcullis, drawbridhe and moat were all important in keeping those inside the castle safe. We made our own catapults using lolly sticks and elastic bands. We could fire a Pom Pom half way across the classroom.
This term we have had a big focus on our use of IT to support our learning. Most of us are very confident in logging on and getting started independently. We have been using our skills to search for information. We investigated the different jobs people did whilst living in a castle. Our favourite is the Gong Farmer. Ask us what he does. We have also got our sumdog logins working and we enjoyed completing numeracy tasks on the iPads and laptops.
This week we have studied the work of the artist Paul Klee. We were particularly interested in his painting called Castle and Sun. We noticed that he used 2D shapes to create this picture and we discussed the colours he used. We then made a picture of our own. We used oil pastels and water coloured paint.
Our IDL topic this term is houses, homes and castles. We have enjoyed learning about the different parts of a castle and the significance of these different parts.
Stella – Arrow loops are very thin so no one can see them shooting the arrows.
Kiera – Drawbridge – it can be pulled up when the enemy is coming and it lets people out of the castle.
Jessica – The Portcullis is metal and it stops people getting in the castle when the drawbridge is down.
Scarlette – The moat stops the enemy from getting into the castle.
karlie – The battlements are at the top of the castle walls and they are special because the soldiers can hide behind them and then look out and shoot out if enemies are coming.
Annalee – The Bailey is inside the castle.
Bonnie – People do different jobs in the Bailey. The animal stables are in the Bailey.
Peter – The turrets are on the top of the castle.
Ellie – The Keep is the safest part of the castle and the King and Queen can hide there if the castle is attacked.
We decided we wanted to make a castle in our classroom. We discussed how we could do this and what materials we could use. Mrs Gaffney managed to find a very large cardboard box and we got to work. To begin, we looked at castles other people had made which gave us ideas and inspiration. Some of us then drew out a design on the board and we decided what we wanted to include with our castle. One of the main parts we wanted was a drawbridge. We had a great discussion trying to work out how we could make the drawbridge go up and down. Some of us used measuring tapes to work out how big we needed to make the castle to fit along the wall. This week we drew out our design and painted parts of the castle.
Welcome to Primary 3!
What a fantastic first day we had. It was great to see everyone so smart and ready to learn. We were excited to explore our new classroom which is upstairs this year. It was great to see our friends and have time to play and chat together and catch up after the holidays.
It is the Feast of the Assumption today and we said some prayers and sang one of our favourite hymns for Mary. Today we celebrated when Mary ascended, body and soul into heaven. We made some prayers and pictures to add to our wall display.
We have had a great week spending lots of time outdoors. On Monday we began our new section of measure with our focus on weight. We estimated and weighted different objects around the classroom using balance scales. We tried to estimate how many cubes each object weighed and we then tested our answers by weighing the objects.
We really enjoyed our walk to West Calder library on a beautiful sunny Tuesday. We loved exploring the choice of books and reading them. We were lucky to get to check out our own books which we will read in class. Thanks to Ann who works in the library for helping us and making our visit so enjoyable.
During our outdoor education we said goodbye to our fully grown butterflies. We have enjoyed watching them go through their life cycle and learning all about them.
We had another amazing group of P1 pupils delivering their class talks today. All 4 children were very well prepared and had brought in their favourite fairytale and had made a fantastic poster to support their talk. Macie ‘s favourite was Dumbo, Evan loves Toy Story, Ariana’s favourite story is the Plum Fairy and Grace read Rapunzel to us. Well done everyone.
To celebrate Numeracy Day we went outside to see that maths and numeracy can be fun. We realised that we use numbers regularly when we are playing. We counted how many passes we could make with the ball before dropping it. We drew shapes on the ground using chalk. We wrote numbers, some of us wrote all the way up to 40. We also played hopscotch where we had to read numbers and count.
Primary 1 have had a fantastic start to Health week.
We started the morning with smoothies. We chopped the different fruit and added it to the blender. This wasn’t just any normal blender. We had to cycle to make the blender work. It was quite tough but we managed it and the smoothies were delicious.
Today we also had a fantastic session with Destination Judo. We worked in pairs on the mat trying to hold each other and trying to escape. It was great fun.
The day was ended cheering on the staff V the P6/7 pupils during a game of netball. We loved watching our buddies and teachers playing against each other.
