What a busy and hectic month we have had, the children have been in high spirits with the festive season in full swing now and have been doing an excellent job preparing for their Nativity. We have been doing lots of Christmas arts and crafts but have also been working hard on our reading, writing, new sounds and maths. In November we were lucky enough to get an author visit from Corrina Campbell who read us The Girl Who Stole the Stars. The children loved it and we have done some writing and art themed on the story. We made a gorgeous thank you card for Corrina with our versions of Chris mouse. We are very excited for the last full week of the term and filming our Nativity play for you to enjoy.
Over the last 2 weeks we have been studying the artist Wassily Kandinsky. We learnt all about him and how he liked to paint. We looked at his painting and then had great fun drawing to music to express how it made us feel. We then looked at colour and explored the using opposite colours of the colour wheel in our work. This finished with us recreating Kandinsky’s circle painting, using all of the things we had learned.
Wednesday was Happiness Day. We all had an amazing day consisting of a happiness circle time, having an extra 30 minutes free play on the field and a long arts and crafts session. In the afternoon we designed machines to do the jobs we don’t like and a toy that we would love to have for Christmas. There were lots of smiles all round.
We have also been having lots of fun in the gym trying out lots of different activities created by the children themselves. 
Happiness Day was such a fun day in Primary 1. We started with an online quiz created by Mrs McPherson with questions all about happiness and Christmas. All the classes with children in primaries 1, 2 and 3 took part and after being in 3rd or 4th place throughout the quiz, after the final question P1 were just delighted to find out that they had won the quiz! The rest of the day consisted of games, art activities, a circle time with Miss Allison and a long play session on the field. It really was lots of fun and the children certainly looked and sounded very happy all day.
P3/4 had an amazing week trying their hand at becoming authors and illustrators like Corinna Campbell! We watched her workshops and listened to all the tips and advice she gave us. Our first job was to choose an inanimate object from the classroom, then bring it to life in our chats and our writing. We finished the week off by drawing Chris Mouse, just like Corrina’s! Thank you Corrina for a great week!
Primary 1 have had a really lovely week of activities based around books to celebrate Book Week Scotland. On Monday, they were delighted to hear the lovely story of “The Girl Who Stole the Stars” being read to them by the author and illustrator, Corrina Campbell. Thank you Corrina for coming to our school to read your story and especially for letting us join in with actions while you were reading the book.
During the week Miss Allison has based lots of activities around the non-fiction book, “My First Book of Birds” and the children have thoroughly enjoyed them. They went on a bird hunt, made some bird feeders to hang up on trees around the school, created a beautiful collage bird, wrote amazing imaginative stories about bird adventures and built some super birds’ nests. They have also listened to the other stories from the Bookbug bag; “Brenda the Sheep” and “This is a Dog”, both of which they enjoyed very much. They listened to the Gaelic version of “This is a Dog” too and were delighted to learn some new words. It has been a super busy week but has been such fun too!
Over the last 2 weeks we have taken part in lots of activities relating to Children in Need and Book Week Scotland.
Last week we did a Joe Wicks workout every day and completed his daily challenges. This involved drawing a turtle using step by step instructions, creating a tan gram picture using shapes, going on a 5 senses scavenger hunt as well as lots of maths tasks.
In between these we learnt a lot about Remembrance Day through watching videos and listening to stories. We then wrote our own reports and drew poppy pictures.
This week has been Book Week Scotland and the children have loved taking part in the workshops provided by the children’s author Corrina Campbell. We listened to her story The Girl who Stole the Stars and then wrote our own creative pieces which were amazing!
Finally, the children have loved getting back in the gym and have been both leading and participating in circuit trading activities. They really are all stars!
There has been a lot happening in the Rainbow and Sparkle Rooms this week. The children enjoyed an afternoon of exploring and experimenting on Tuesday, with the Sparkle pupils attempting to make solid structures using dry spaghetti and marshmallows while the Rainbow children had great fun with water.
We’ve really enjoyed getting back in the gym and have had loads of fun playing games and making use of our class gym bag.
We’ve also spent a lot of time reading books this week and have thoroughly enjoyed Book Week Scotland 2020. A big thank you to Corrina Campbell for sharing your book and videos with the school; Sparkle Room really enjoyed following your instructions for drawing a mouse and the end products were fantastic.
It has been a busy few weeks in P5, here are some of the things we have been up to.
In literacy we have had a little reminder, and a focus, on writing in sentences. We all need to make sure that we are answering comprehension questions fully in sentences as well as in our writing. We looked at what makes a sentence and how we could tell when to end one. Some of us then looked at using connectives to bridge two sentences together.
In writing we looked at non-chronological reports. We had great fun coming up with our own made up creatures (such as caramel snakes and milkyway unicorns) and writing detailed descriptions of their appearance, habitat and diet. As part of Book Week Scotland we watched a video by local author Corrina Campbell showing how she plans story books. We created plans for our own stories about inanimate classroom objects (such as pens, cones and rubbers) and will use these to create interesting stories that show the character overcoming a problem.
In maths and numeracy we have been looking at division and different mental and written strategies that we can use to solve division problems, such as short division. We have also explored using the RUCSAC method to help us solve written and out of context problems. RUCSAC reminds us to Read the question, Underline the important information, Chose the correct way to solve (+, – etc), Solve the sum, Answer the question then Check your answer. We have started to look at what we know about fractions and will be focusing on this, along with decimals and percentages, as we go forward.
In art we looked at using watercolours to create our own versions of Gustav Klimt’s tree paintings. We had to think about an Autumnal colour pallet and blending together colours to achieve a fallen leaf background. We also created collaborative poppy pictures for remembrance. For this we used oil pastels and worked on blending the pastels to create blocks of solid colours. Finally, we created a remembrance silhouette picture. We could chose either watercolours or oil pastels to create a blended sunset background which allowed us to develop what we had learned.
We have also worked on our own personal projects. This allowed us to research a subject we were interested in an put together a short presentation on this to show the rest of the class. Most people used Google Slides to support their presentations. Everyone did a fantastic job of presenting to the rest of the class, even when slightly nervous. Well done everyone!
In ICT we have looked at using Google Sites to create our own websites. We enjoyed doing this and will use this in future as a way to present our learning.
Here are a few pictures of our lovely artwork, enjoy!
The children have been learning about Diwali over the last week. They learnt that it is the Hindu festival of lights and is celebrated each year because of the ancient story of Rama and Sita. The children listened to the story and then made some beautiful rangoli patterns. They also made some diva lamps from clay which we decorated. They have taken them home with a small tealight which they can light to celebrate the festival of lights.
The weeks since the October holidays have just flown in! We have had Halloween where the children made their own fun fair with a ring toss, pull the nail out of the bale, hook a pumpkin and a lucky dip. The children all worked hard on their stalls, both making their game and then manning their stall during the fair! We have also had bonfire night where they finger painted fabulous fires and added glittery fireworks and also Remembrance day and Children in need. We are currently working on a surprise for the families, all will be revealed shortly…! As this week is book week Scotland we have been looking at the jobs of authors and illustrators and having a go at planning and writing a story. Even though we have been very busy we took the time to give ourselves some fabulous new hairstyles with leaves and twigs!
