Despite the snowy weather, we’ve had a wonderful first week back in Primary 1-3. The class has been hard at work on a book study which has combined reading, creativity and hands-on learning. Our book study is focused on the book, ‘The Ugly Five’ by Julia Donaldson which explores five animals in the African savannah who are often called “ugly” by others.

After reading the book and making predictions on Wednesday, we explored the animals in the book in more detail and created fun character descriptions. We began by looking at real-life images of each animal using iPads, then we looked through the story to create our own descriptions which can be seen below. This activity helped us better understand the story and sparked our imaginations.





Our curiosity about the animals in the story and their environment led us to design and build our own habitats. Using a variety of materials such as LEGO and building blocks, we created models of environments such as a rainforest, a polar habitat, a garden and a city. We learned about the varying needs of animals and plants within different habitats, which then led to a discussion about the unique needs of the animals and how their habitats help them survive.




Creating Games with Micro:bits!
On Friday, we continued to explore coding through Micro:bits during Creativity Hour and had an exciting time putting our skills to use! We learned how to programme the Micro:bits to function as dice – by shaking the device, a random number would appear on the screen! Once we completed this, we used our Micro:bit to create our own games.


Some of us incorporated the Micro:bit dice into board games we had in the class such as Connect 4. In this game, the children would shake the device to generate a number, which determined the number of tokens they could use to play for that round. Others, made up fun challenges where the dice decided different movements. It was a great way to combine problem-solving and teamwork while learning more about technology and coding.

