What an amazing year we have had in Primary 2/3!

The class have been fantastic. We have had great fun and each and every member of P2/3 has worked incredibly hard and made lots of progress this year, well done to you all.

We hope all of our pupils and families have a fantastic summer holiday and a well deserved rest.

Thank you all very much for your support throughout the year and also for the holiday good wishes and generous cards and gifts.

Best Wishes.

Laura Mercer and Helen McKerron

Only one week to go in P2/3!

We have been so busy this week with completing our Multiplication and Division games in Numeracy. We managed to complete them all and then we had a go at trying out each others games. It was great fun to see all of the different games in action and we had to think hard to answer some of the questions correctly too!

We also worked hard on our observational drawings this week. Everyone created some lovely line drawings of flowers, leaves, trees and other things that we found outside which had interesting shapes and patterns. Rory tried to draw a bird but it flew away just as he did the beak!

We have also spent a lot of time rehearsing for our Youth Music Initiative Project – The River Path. We performed this twice this morning: a dress rehearsal in front of the school and then a performance for our families. It was wonderful to see so many of you at our performance. Thank you for making the effort to come. We made our own headbands and learnt the songs and actions with the help of Moira from YMI. Here are some photos of us:
The River Path on PhotoPeach

Today we tried lots of different fruits and vegetables. Debbie and the kitchen staff produced carrot and coriander soup, potato wedges, roasted parsnip, yoghurt and chive dip, mayonnaise and coriander dip and potato salad. For pudding we even had rhubarb crumble and berries!! All these things can be grown in our own gardens.

Lorna – My favourite was the raspberries.

Darah – I loved the soup – it was very tasty.

Drew – I liked the soup too.

Helen – I tried the rhubarb crumble and the coriander and mayonnaise dip. Everything was tasty.

Healthy Eating! on PhotoPeach

At the start of the week the class created some beautiful tessellation art with Mrs McKerron.

Everyone worked very hard on their computer coding in ICT.

In our Numeracy work we have re-capped all of the amazing work we have done since the end on October. We have started to create muliplication and division games. We had to create games that were fun to play, looked good and used our multiplication and division facts. Next week when they are complete we will have a go at playing and evaluating them all.

Doing the Numeracy games with Phoebe, Nina and Ben was fun and I thought we made a good team. By Honor

When we did the numeracy games it was very complicated! By Nina

It was fun doing the numeracy games. By Phoebe

I liked doing the numeracy games and I want to do it again. By Jasmine

I really enjoyed making the numeracy games. By Oscar

This week we also had 2 workshops with Moira from Youth Music Initiative for out ‘River Path’ performance. We have developed our stories further, learnt a new song and also pracitsed using some instruments. We hope you will be able to attend next Friday to see and hear what we have created.

I really enjoyed learning all of the songs for ‘The River Path’. By Isobel

It was very fun doing the music. By Jamie

It was fun doing the music class because I liked being an owl and I like the grey top I chose. By Sam

Also this week we have been learning about the Muslim celebration of Ramadan. The children were interested to learn about how and why Muslims fast and also about what else Muslims do and give special consideration and thought to during this 30 day festival.  We made Ramadan factfiles and Ramadan paper chains with 30 good deeds: one for each day.

I really enjoyed learning new things about Ramadan. By Erin

During the Ramadan chains was fun, we had to do 30, it took a long time! By Darah

Learning about Ramadan was fun, I never kew it went on for 30 days! By Ruairi

Our cress experiements have been very successful and have proved to us that plants need both water and light in order to grow properly.

What a lovely week it has been, the sun has been shining on us here in Gifford!

Sports day was a huge success and everyone had a great day. Well done everyone!
I had a lot of fun on sports day. By Helen
Doing sports day was very fun, I enjoyed it. By Darah
Sports day was very very fun. By Ben

At the start of the week, P2/3 continued their work on speech marks with Mrs McKerron.

The class also found right, acute and obtuse angles in their maths work.

In our Numeracy work we are continuing to improve our times tables to help us with our multiplications and divisions.
I like doing Numeracy. By Jasmine

In P.E. we had a great game of rounders. Everyone is working hard on improving their bowling, hitting and fielding. Callum was doing some amazing over-arm throws!
I enjoyed playing rounders. By Phoebe

On Thursday we had our first YMI (Youth Music Initiative) workshop with Moira Morrison. We are creating a musical piece called ‘The River Path’ along with Moira, P1/2 and P1. We have 2 more worksops next week which we are looking forward to.
I really enjoyed our first workshop. By Isobel
I liked the music and I liked the song. By Nina
I’m really looking forward to our next music session next week. By Oscar.

In our Gardening work we all set up an experiment using cress seeds to investigate the best conditions for growing. We will be checking on our experiments over the next couple of weeks and reporting back our findings. Here we are working out how to set up our experiemnts to get the best results.

Growing Experiment on PhotoPeach

We also moved into new Home Teams this week so we created our names and celebrators. We are looking forward to working in our new teams for the remainder of P2/3.

I like working in my new home team with Nina, Erin and Ben. By Honor

Wow we can’t believe it is June already. Term is flying by in a flash!

Please remember that it is sports day on Tuesday. If it is a hot day please can you put suncream on your child and make sure they have a sunhat and water bottle with them. Thank you.

Well, we have had yet another busy week in P2/3.

At the start of the week the class planted out some more of the vegetables that we have been growing, these included beans, peas and carrots.

We checked on our outdoor transpiration experiments and all found evidence of transpiration inside the plastic bags. Both of our transpiration experiments have been very successful.

We are coming to the end of our Water topic and this week we looked at water artwork by Claude Monet. We used paint to create water artwork in an impressionist style similar to that of Monet. The results were fantastic, we have many budding artists in our class!

Creating Monet-inspired artwork on PhotoPeach

Doing the Monet pictures was very fun I liked it. By Jasmine

Doing the Claude Monet pictures was very fun. By Oscar

It was really fun doing the paintings but it was hard trying not to brush! By Honor

I really enjoyed painting the Monet pictures. By Isobel

We practised our spelling words outside again this week and just managed to miss the rain!

Doing the spelling outside was fun but my paper blew away and I had to catch it! By Darah

For our handwriting we have been practising all of our joins by writing fun song lyrics such as those from ‘Happy’ and Everything is ‘Awesome.’

We are going to be working on our observational drawing over the next few weeks. Today we went outside with P6 and chose wildlife items to study and draw such as trees, nettles, flowers and leaves. Everyone managed to create some detailed observational drawings.

When we went outside drawing it was hard but very fun. By Toby

I liked doing the observational drawing outside becuase it felt like we were real artists! By Nina

Doing the observational drawing was really fun. By Alasdair

Doing the observational drawing was fun and I might do it at home. By Ruairi

It was fun doing the observational pictures with the P6s. By Sam

I really enjoyed the observational drawings outisde. By Erin

The observational pictures were fun. By Lucas

We were very lucky earlier in the week to have a rugby lesson with a professional coach, Fergus. Everyone enjoyed all of the games and activities and had lots of exercise and fun!

P2/3 Rugby on PhotoPeach

Rugby was so fun. By Ben

Doing the rugby was fun and I do it outisde of school as well. By Ruairi

Ollie, Darah, Jasmine and Alasdair were all awarded Children’s University Certificates this morning. Well done to all of you!

This morning Lucas’s dad came in to talk to us all about his job. He works for Scottish Water and he helps to clean the water that goes into our homes for us to use. We learnt lots of interesting facts and got to watch some videos of dams and reservoirs.

When Lucas’s dad came in he answered all of our questions. By Toby

I enjoyed listening to Lucas’s dad. By Jamie

It was fun listening to Lucas’s dad and looking at the pictures on his phone. By Sam

It was fun when my dad came in and talked about what his job was. By Lucas

The class continued their learning about shapes and all made 3D shapes from straws this week.

We also started to learn about speech marks and will be continuing to work on these.

In our writing work we carried on making our gardening leaflets. These are looking really good and will hopefully be complete next week.

I enjoyed doing the leaflets. I also did one at home. By Darah

In one of our Numeracy sessions we used the lapops to play multiplication and division games. We will continue to work on multiplication and division and please keep practising at home! Everyone’s mental maths is getting much better.

This week in our Water Topic we have been learning about transpiration in plants. We have carried out 2 experiments to see transipration in action.

Here we are tying bags around plants in the wildlife garden so that we can check the inside of the bags for water droplets. This will tell us if the plants are transpiring.

Transpiration Experiment on PhotoPeach

Here are the results from our other transpiration experiment. We put a white flower in coloured water and left it overnight. The flowers changed colour which showed us that the water was travelling up the stem and to all parts of the flower.

I was shocked when the flowers changed colour. By Nina

Dying the flowers was fun. By Jasmine

It was really fun watching the flowers change colour. By Helen

When the flowers changed colour the edges of the petals were darker than the other parts of the petals. By Lorna

I really enjoyed dying the flowers. By Isobel

It was a little bit windy and a few jotters were blowing away, but we still managed to do our spelling outside with the big chalk!

Outdoor Spelling! on PhotoPeach

We have had a very busy week preparing for our sharing assembly which we performed to the school this morning.

We told everyone about our water topic. We included information about: solids, liquids and gases, solutions and mixture, the water cycle, how we use water and hydropower. We even included a quiz at the end to make sure everyone had been listening well.

We gave everyone a shock when Thomas, Honor, Alasdair and Rory threw buckets of pretend water over everyone. Luckily it was just strips of blue paper!

Everyone enjoyed joining in with the water cycle song and watching our molecule dance.

I liked doing our assembly, especially when people thought they were going to get wet! By Helen

Doing the assembly was very fun but I was nervous. By Darah

I was scared at first but then I got used to doing the assembly. By Nina

Doing assembly was fun and I wasn’t nervous. I saw my sister. By Sam

At the start of the week the class did a survey around all of the other classes and made a graph to show their results.

They also carried out some interesting dissolving experiments.

On Wednesday we made faces out of vegetables as part of our writing work. After we had made our vegetable faces, we wrote instructions on how to make them using clear language and numbered points. Then we were able to eat the, yummyfaces !

Here are some pictures, look out for Lorna’s amazing elephant face!

Vegetable Faces! on PhotoPeach

In our numeracy work we are now all really quick at number bonds to 10 and we are trying to get faster at number bonds to 20. We are improving our speed in mental maths and some of the class were very quick when we played the dice game. We are all doing well with our 2 and 3 times tables and have moved on to our 5 times table. Here we are making and learning our 5 times table.

Making and learning 5 times tables on PhotoPeach

Primary 1/2 came to visit us in P2/3 this week as we had invited them in for a lesson on the water cycle. Every home team spent time preparing a lesson and resources so that they would be able to teach Primary 1/2 all about the water cycle. This was very successful. The class came up with some innovative games and activities that made their lessons fun and interesting. Mrs Kemp and Primary 1/2 really enjoyed their visit!

Teaching the water cycle to P1/2 on PhotoPeach

This morning we went outside and planted leeks, onions and carrots in the vegetable beds. Before we could do the planting there was a lot of weeding to do! Everyone did a really good job.

P2/3 Gardening fun! on PhotoPeach

I really enjoyed doing the gardening. By Honor

I liked doing the planting beucase it was fun! By Sam