Happy New Year! We have had a busy start to the year already!

We are taking part in a project to rear Brown Trout. This project is in partnership with Forth Fisheries and Murieston Environmental Group. This week our tank was delivered and set up by Amy and we are now awaiting the arrival of the fish eggs in a couple of weeks. Amy from Forth Fisheries also gave a talk on Brown Trout and how to look after them.

In Maths, our new number topic is multiplication and division. We have been making array patterns and using concrete materials to help us understand these processes further. We should practise our times tables at home so that we have quick recall of times table facts. We will be multiplying and dividing bigger numbers soon and solving problems. Our new maths topic is time and we have started by learning about the calendar – days, months etc.

In Health and Wellbeing, we have started a new project on yoga, meditation and mindfulness. We will be working on this over the next few weeks – to try to improve our focus on learning and to help us relax more. We have also revised the SHANARRI indicators and are making a display about these. SHANARRI helps us to think about our physical and mental health and wellbeing.

We enjoyed sharing our Ziggy road safety storybooks with our P1 friends recently. We also played the road safety board games that we had made with them.

We are still working on our water topic. We are making posters and presentations about saving water that we hope to share these with our partner school in India. Also, we are learning about causes of water problems around the world. We are realising how precious water is and how lucky we are to have running water in our homes and school in Scotland!

In French, we have begun covering pets and how to say if we have one or not and also how to say whether we like something or not. In Science, with Mrs Cameron, we are conducting water experiments. This week we looked at filtration in more detail. We also started lessons with Miss Trotter this week – she will be teaching us art and design this term.

We have a new pet called Flash who is a little puppy. He is helping us to think about how to be caring and kind to others. We are looking forward to moving seats soon….

This week in P7a, we’ve been doing lots of different things!

In our WW2 topic, we learned about aircraft during the war and made spitfire planes. We finished off our Anderson shelters and our gas masks. We created ‘London Blitz’ scenes using oil pastels and water paints.

We learned about Martin Luther King during our assembly with Mrs Dare.

We revised our learning in multiplication and division. We also enjoyed using SumDog to further our learning.

We chose Scottish poems to learn for our school poem competition/Scottish evening.

We did some writing using a WW2 based lesson on ‘The Piano Man’, which we had to use our 5 senses to help us.

In P.E we started our gymnastics’ lessons.

P7a & Miss G 🙂

P4a have been busy with lots of fun and exciting Christmas activities. We really enjoyed watching the P1 Nativity dress rehearsal – we thought they were fabulous! We are nearly finished making our Christmas cards which feature a symmetrical Christmas tree. This was the second time we did this activity – some of us found it tricky before – so we did it again to help grow our brains and learn from our mistakes! Thank you to the PSA for treating us to the cinema trip to see Moana – we thought it was great, amazing and exciting – we give it 5 stars! We have been learning more about Christmas in France and some French Christmas words. We have made French Christmas cards too.

In RME, we have enjoyed making video dramas of parts of the Christian Christmas story. These were in the form of news reports. We did such a good job that one will be shown in the school Christmas Service. We have also been thinking about Christmas traditions and customs and identifying which are religious and which are non-religious. We have also been learning about Christmas songs and films and the values that they show. We created surveys to find out everyone’s favourite Christmas song and film – Jingle Bells was our top song and Elf was our top film.

In Language, we have finished transforming our Ziggy road safety stories into books and we look forward to sharing these with our P1 friends in the new year. We have read some more of The BFG and completed character descriptions and comparisons of Sophie and the BFG for our I-JournAL folders.

In Maths, we are getting more confident with identifying and naming 2D and 3D shapes. We have created a shape table with objects we have brought in from home. We have also been practising subtraction strategies and sharing how we solve problems.

Well done to those who received Achievement Certificates – Ross, Josh, Aiden and Kyle.  It has been a great term  in P4a! We hope you have a lovely holiday and we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Primary 5a had a fantastic trip to the Museum on the Mound in Edinburgh last week where we learnt about the security features on notes and how anything could be used as money as long as its value had been agreed. We also learnt about the history of coins and how they were made. We even got to see Roman coins and the first Scottish coins ever used. During our visit we got to strike our very own coin and take it home.  We also learnt that next year there will be a new pound coin brought into circulation and we got to see what it will look like, so keep you’re eyes peeled for its appearance.

We hope Primary 5b have as great a time as we did on this trip today.