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60 second update 12 October

The whole school outdoor week was windy and wonderful! Thanks to all the parents and carers who joined us on our walk to Ormiston Park on Monday. There was so much going on in all the classes, but some highlights included transient art activities, parachute games, zoned play areas, a school clear up, appreciating the beautiful colours of autumn in the Winton Estate and lots more! No Pens Wednesday was a fun challenge to find ways to learn in creative ways and to focus on verbal communication and practical activities.

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60 second update 28 September

P1

We have been on a shape walk this week, looking for 2D and 3D shapes and a popular game on the whiteboard has been matching symmetrical pictures.

Working with our buddies we discussed things similar and things different about ourselves. We made thumb prints – something unique about us all.

We had fun spotting this week’s tricky word “the” in lots of books.

P2B

P2B enjoyed working with their P5 buddies on Tuesday. They helped us to make our characters for Mathletics and some of us played our first maths game. Each child has their own username and password and details of these will be sent home today (Friday) so that they can access the site from home. It’s a fun way for children to build their skills in Maths.

P3

As part of our learning about sustainable development the children in P3 have been thinking about taking care of our environment. We went outside one day after morning break to check that no litter had been left lying around … we were rather disappointed to find lots! We decided to investigate further so we made a simple ‘litter map’ of school to find out where the litter hotspots are. Then we made a tally chart to show what types of litter we found and we also represented the data in a block graph. Now we are trying to think about what we can do about this.

 P5

You could ask us anything about Iceland! We know about geysers, glaciers, and the Blue Lagoon, we know that Iceland is only 16 million years old, and we know the proper name for the Northern Lights. Just as

P7

P7 had a great time at the Risk Factory – ask them about their visit and if they made any rather silly mistakes!!

We also started rugby on Thursday with some games and tackling – a bag not each other.

To end a really busy week we hosted the Macmillan Coffee Morning on Friday raising £576.20. Thank you to everyone who donated.

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60 second update 21 September

P1

P1 really enjoyed meeting author Coo Clayton on Tuesday and made our own binoculars. Some of us spotted different birds with them from the playground later. We went for a woodland walk with P5 and impressed them with our knowledge of different trees!

P2B

We enjoyed meeting the author Coo Clayton, who read one of her books for us. We really enjoyed the story and made our own binoculars to go monster spotting! We also made rocket spaceships as part of our Big Writing adventure. We engaged in lots of chat which will help us with our writing.

P2R

This week we enjoyed having a visit from the author Coo Clayton. We have been exploring 3D shapes; looking at them within the environment and discussing their properties using the faces, corners and edges to describe them. We have been working really hard with our BIG writing mission and managed to help Zag the alien remember what he had done during his time on earth.

P3

This week the children were excited to be introduced to our Accelerated Reading Programme. They will all do a ‘Star Reader assessment’ and will soon be completing AR book quizzes online in class when they have finished reading a book.  Another highlight of the week was making simple kites and then testing them outside to see if they would fly; they did, somewhat assisted by this week’s windy weather!

P4

It was lovely to have Mrs Berry with us on Tuesday and Thursday and we look forward to seeing her again soon. We have been learning to prepare a healthy snack. We used the ‘bridge hold’ and the ‘claw hold’ to cut fruit and make a fruit salad. We learned about the artist Georges Seurat and used his technique of pointillism to make fruit pictures.

We enjoyed going to the woods where we identified some trees including a rowan tree and a walnut tree.

P5

We packed a lot into a short week! We joined P1 for a woodland walk and helped them use the I Spy tree guides we had made for them; we were amazed by what they know! We have been looking at maps of Europe and trying to recognise some of the countries, and we are nearly finished some pretty outstanding stories for our parents and carers to read at parents evening.

P6

This week we have been learning about decimal numbers in maths. We have also started a new Big Writing adventure and have been writing newspaper articles about strange goings on at the Red Café.

P7

On Tuesday P7 did their spelling lesson using the BBC gameshow Pointless. They had to use clues to find tricky words and then attempt to spell them. Everyone did a great job! Next Tuesday we are heading to the Risk Factory in Edinburgh to simulate different dangerous situations and how to deal with them. I’m sure everyone will take a sensible approach.

 

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60 second update

7 September 2018

  

Nursery

The children have been very busy again in nursery. We have been continuing our friendship theme as well as looking at shapes. During our nature play and nurture session the children enjoyed the activities which were on offer, including rope play, hammocks, mud painting and stick wall building.

 

P1

This week in P1 we have been learning to recognise and write the sounds “g,o,c,k”. We have been counting backwards from 20 – quite tricky when we’ve to keep in time with the pendulum! We have enjoyed using stick puppets to retell the story of “The Little Red Hen” and have turned our painted hand prints into pictures of the red hen.

P2B

P2R

This week Primary 2 have enjoyed creating some wonderful spaceships as part of our big writing adventure – they had to think very carefully about what materials they would use to make it. Primary 2 have been learning more about 2D shapes and their properties. We have enjoyed finding them within the school and thinking about where we see shapes different at home.

P3

This week we have continued our story focused theme based on the book, ‘Stuck’. The children learned the difference between closed and open questions and developed their questioning skills through role – play activities (outside). They had to think of good quality ‘open’ questions that they might ask different characters from the story. They did this really well and then applied their new skills to a writing activity back inside the classroom. They also wrote their own, imaginative endings to the story.

 P4

Primary Four have had a busy week. Our theme is ‘Healthy Eating’ and we started by baking blueberry muffins which we enjoyed as a snack on Wednesdays. We will be looking at where our food comes from and collecting labels. We will have a special look at food from Scotland.

The sun shone for our  walk in the woods on Wednesday when we identified trees by their leaves. We saw Horse-Chestnut, Lime, Oak and  Sycamore trees. We will look again on Wednesday.

P5

This week we have continued thinking about Pencaitland as a place for tourists to come. We have made “Visit Pencaitland” posters, and we thought about our woodlands and all the wildlife that lives there. We used chalk pastels to create owl faces, and we have started Modroc models.

P6

This week we have been learning about the motion of planets in our solar system. We have also created our own models of the solar system which are making our classroom look very interesting. In maths we have been learning about negative numbers.

P7

This week P7 have been continuing with their class novel – The Stolen. On Monday we reached the twist in the book which allowed for much discussion to predict what will happen next!

P7 have been working really hard on their areas of responsibility. We have clubs about to get started and fantastic competitions from the house captains and the JRSO’s. We also have a team developing a termly newspaper. Good work team – keep it up!