Category: Outdoor education

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Week Commencing 18.5.20 Primary 1

Hello everyone and welcome again to another week of distance learning.  I don’t know about you, but I’m absolutely buzzing with pride and enthusiasm from all your amazing learning last week and, with never a dull moment in Primary 1, I am sure you will continue to impress me as this week goes on.

So, you will see from the attached timetable that our learning this week steps away from toys and moves into the territory of a certain character who I believe is well known for having knobbly knees and turned out toes and there could even be a poisonous wart at the end of his nose!

I’ve had great fun pulling together the learning activities based on this much loved story and I hope you enjoy participating in them. Don’t forget though that they are there to support you, IF you want them, during this time when we are out of school.

Further to my lesson suggestions, there is lots more going on this week across the school.  Don’t forget that Mrs Mailor has her music classroom set up with lessons for P1 on a Wednesday, and on top of this we are now lucky enough to have Dave Trouton from the Youth Music Initiative with his weekly ‘Music and Me‘ sessions. Miss Gordon‘s classroom also has weekly PE lessons and this week sees her begin to set us weekly challenges to get us ready for our virtual sports day, so please remember to pop by and see how far you can challenge yourself.

Finally, this Thursday sees the return of Outdoor Classroom Day so there are lots of activities for you to choose from to help you make the most of the great outdoors and all it has to offer to support your learning.

Wow, what a lot we have going on. Pick and choose what suits you and when it’s right for you to do it.  All my lessons are uploaded at the start of the school week so you can scroll through the week and make your own timetable.

Stay home, stay safe and stay happy

Mrs McDonald

Primary 1 – Week Commencing 18th May

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P4 Getting Outdoors

P4 got outdoors today to take a look at the outdoor classroom we worked so hard on in P3.  Things are looking good if a little boggy with all the heavy rain this week.  We are needing to carry out some maintenance, remove dead plants, prune, weed, clean the pond, pick up the rubbish and top up the bug hotel.  We think we may have a hedgehog living in the hedgehog house, fingers crossed!  Lots to be done but we are keen to get out and maintain and improve this area.

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P3 make the news with our big project!

Another busy week in P3.   We had two visitors for World of Work Week, Andy told us all about being a  journalist and showed us his shorthand for taking notes accurately and Julie told us about being an illustrator and demonstrated her fabulous skills, thanks so much to you both.

We have also been busy making resources for our outdoor classroom and writing instruction so other classes have ideas for how to use them.

We were learning about the feeding needs of the birds at this time of year, we have been putting out seed every week and have seen a lot more birds coming to the playground so we made bird feeders using apple, raisins, grapes and cheese, we hope the birds enjoy them.

We also set up our pond this week, the water is still a bit murky but to our great surprise and delight we had a visitor this morning – a frog has appeared and we hope he continues to visit.

Our project made the news this week we are in the latest edition of the East Lothian courier.  Great work and great news for P3!

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Big Project continues in P3

P3 have been making great progress over the last few weeks to get their big project moving.  We have finished tidying the courtyard, it is looking great and is now much easier to get around in and use.  When we were cleaning up we found all the bits for a wormery so we have set this up and hope our worms will get to work and make us some compost.

Out in the playground we have spent lots of time clearing away the overgrown shrubs – a great big thank you to the parents who helped with this very hard work.  We can now see what space we have to work in.

Our library TARDIS arrived (thanks Mr Pentony) and is beginning to fill up with books.  We have also been painting pots to use in the garden and we are making resources to use outside too.  We will be encouraging wildlife by setting up a small pond, a bug hotel and a hedgehog box in the next few weeks.  Great work P3!

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Update from P3

We have had a busy start to the new term in P3.  We have been doing some work with 2D shapes and created some amazing tessellations.  Thanks to all the parents who gave us a Desert Island Disc playlist, we have been enjoying a few songs everyday.  The children are loving it, lots of singing and dancing going on.  We have had a great selection of music and will continue to play them everyday, if you haven’t given us your list of have thought of some more you would like to add let us know.

We have created our reading rivers and were quite amazed how much we are reading without really thinking of it as reading.  We have also been working on our repeated addition and skip counting, we had some messy maths when we were skip counting in 5s.

We have  been continuing our work in the courtyard and have made an amazing job of organising everything and finally got around to some planting, it looks great.     We have also had the first story stones arrive – looking forward to seeing the rest of them!

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Big New Project in P3 begins!!!

P3 have decided on their project for this term – we have been spending a lot of time outdoors and have been looking at the barked area next to our classroom and feel it could be so much better, therefore our project is to create an area which could be used as an outdoor classroom.  We are currently cleaning the courtyard area so we can use the green house to grow some plants.  We were also using our maths skills outdoors measuring different items and taking measurements of the outdoor area so we can draw plans to help us decide how best to use the area.  We also planted our first seeds today – ain’t no stopping us now!

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Story Sticks in P3

P3 have been continuing with their outdoor learning this week.  We have been keeping our feathered friends well fed.  We made story sticks today which told the story of all the things we had

seen when we were out walking around the field.  We collected different interesting things we found on our walk and hung them from sticks and shared the stories of our walks using the stick to help us.

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John Muir – Conserving Day!

We have had another wonderful day outdoors in our local community for the CONSERVE part of our John Muir award. First, we collected litter in the park and field next to our school to conserve the environment there. P5 couldn’t believe it when our litter weighed a stone! We were shocked and will now encourage other not to drop litter. Then, P5 returned to the river. While there, we learned about Native, Non-native and invasive species and their impact on habitat. We also learned how dangerous some plants can be.

P5 want to say a huge thanks to Sam, our ranger, for being so full of knowledge and enthusiasm. It has really helped  to focus on the importance of being kind to our world. P5 showed great respect outdoor and should be so incredibly proud of themselves…they have even managed to convince Miss McKay that the outdoors are not so scary after all.

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Blossoming in P3

P3 have been observing the blossom trees in the park for the last few weeks.  We have enjoyed watching them change from beautiful trees with masses of bright colourful blossom to trees which are almost bare with only some dark dying blossom left.

We have observed the shape and size of the trunks of the trees and how the branches spread out to create lovely structures.  We used our observations to create these stunning blossom tree paintings.

We completed our paintings in stages focusing first on the creating the trunk and branches and then we added our blossom using paint and tin foil instead of brushes.  The look beautiful on display in the corridor and are a lasting reminder of the stunning blossom trees in the park.