Children’s Parliament: Children as Human Rights Defenders

Back in April and May, 6 Members of Children’s Parliament (MCPs) and child Human Rights Defenders called Hannah, Cameron, Dylan, Alexander, Anna and Emily (aged 12 and 13) led five workshops across Scotland in Tranent, Edinburgh, Blairgowrie, Inverness and Benbecula. The workshops explored why children’s human rights are important and what children and adults can do to defend these rights. Every child involved created a piece of artwork, a story, a rap or poem about a right they feel strongly about defending here in Scotland – and these were just incredible!

We have created films about each of the five workshops which you can find here.

So what happened next?

In June, the 6 MCPs were joined by another 6 child Human Rights Defenders. They worked together to sort through the creative work produced in the workshops and organised the artwork into five key themes. These were:

  • Defending the right to play
  • Defending the right to education and a decent standard of living
  • Defending the right to be ourselves and participate
  • Defending the right to be protected from harm
  • Defending the right to be loved and cared for

In August, the 12 children worked together over five days to decorate five giant papier-mâché shields, painting and collaging images and text from children’s creative work produced in the workshops. It was a lot of hard work and a lot of fun making them! We’re so grateful to all the children who were involved in the workshops – so many of the ideas and views shared are woven into the shields in some way and we can’t wait to see what you all think. You can read Dylan’s blog about the process here.

Over the past few weeks, the children have been preparing to take the shields to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s Day of General Discussion which is at the end of next week! The children will give tours of the shields to children and adults from across the world who will be participating and will share stories about what each of the shield means and represents. We’ll be blogging and tweeting from Geneva next week so do keep an eye out for updates!

From all of the 12 children going to the DGD next week and from the rest of our Children as Human Rights Defenders team, we want to say a huge thank you to all the children involved in the workshops for sharing your ideas with us and for playing such an important role in the upcoming global discussion about defending children’s human rights.

Families Connect for P1 and P2 Families

Windygoul Primary School are going to be running the Families Connect programme for 8 weeks from Friday 26th October. The programme enables parents to support learning at home. We are having a Coffee Morning on Friday 5th October from 9.00 until 9.30 and we hope that you will be able to come along and find out more about Families Connect. Look out for the leaflet that will be coming home next week. If you require any further information, please contact either Louise Innes (Principal Teacher) or Tina Mackinnon (Support for Learning Teacher) at school.

Seashore fun in P2C

P2C have had lots of fun over the past few weeks learning all about the seashore. We have been looking at ways to sort animals, what food chains are and about the different features that make seashore creatures perfectly adapted to their habitat. Today we learned about jellyfish and had a go at making our own ones using paper plates and tissue paper. We hope you like them!

 

P3B have been learning about magnets

P3B spent some time learning about magnets as part of their Science work. We looked at North and South poles, attraction and repulsion and what materials in the classroom were magnetic and which were non-magnetic. We predicted first, then carried out the experiment. Lots of us got our predictions correct!

P1/2 Trip

P1/2 had a great time at the Seabird Centre today! This morning, we had lots of fun exploring the rock pools and finding out about the creatures that lived in them. We went to three different areas of the beach to explore and we even got to collect some ‘marine minibeasts’ to put in a tray of water! We were then able to have a closer look at them moving around. We then had lunch outside on the grass as it was such a sunny day. After lunch we went back out to the beach to learn about food chains. Some of us got to wear fancy masks to act out a sea life food chain and then we sorted some food chain cards into the correct order in our groups. We finished off our day by making some of our own food chains in the sand, using our fingers to draw the shapes and stones, shells and seaweed to make them look more realistic! We had a super day in the fresh sea air and we were all very tired on the bus journey home! Well Done P1/2! What a lovely day!

P6A Amazonia visit

Amazonia

 

On the 29th of March P6A went to Amazonia.

Firstly we put our coats and bags in a locker and then we lined up waiting to go into Amazonia. The lady who was taking us round talked to us about some things that were inside. Then she took us inside and asked us some questions about the rainforest. Next she took us round so we could see all of the different animals and there was even a nocturnal section. Some of the animals we saw are: toucan and he was called Coco, snakes, monkeys, birds, amphibians and butterflies. After that we went into the handling room where we could hold a tortoise, a snake and a tarantula. Some people didn’t hold any of them but most people did. After a while we went into the interactive section, also with a green screen. The boys sat down on the green screen first and they played a game to jump up and down to catch butterflies on the screen. Eventually the girls got a shot and then they played one more game, but by the end of that everyone was really hungry! So we went under a big tent to eat some lunch. While we were eating we were given a rainforest booklet to fill in. Before very long everybody made their way back to Amazonia to have another look around at the animals. Some people even fed the fish. Lastly we got on the bus and we went back to school.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P1/2 Update

P1/2 have been very busy this term! We have enjoyed learning all about how to keep our bodies healthy and we did a fantastic assembly on this too. Here are some of the things that we have learned!

We started off by learning all about what foods to eat and how to have a balanced diet. We even planned some balanced meals and lunches and carried out a survey to see what our favourite fruits and vegetables were. We now know that we need to try our best to eat 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day.

We then went onto find out how to brush our teeth properly and what things are good and bad for our teeth. We were very surprised at how long 2 minutes was when we were pretending to brush our teeth in class! We also learned about the importance of hand washing to stop us from getting ill. We did a fun activity using glitter to show how easily germs can be spread. We enjoyed practising our hand washing at the water tray and we tried our best to remember all the different steps. We then looked at how much sleep we need at our age and we thought about how we feel when we are tired. We finished off our healthy body work by looking at how medicines can help us to feel better when we are ill and we now know the importance of using these safely. We also thought about who can help us to feel better (dentists, doctors, nurses etc).

Last week, P1/2 also took part in a Tesco workshop. We got to make our own muesli by mixing together lots of different ingredients. We also found out how much sugar is in some cereals that we eat, as well as popular fizzy drinks. We had lots of fun eating our very own muesli afterwards!

Well Done for all your hard work this term P1/2. Keep it up!

P6C Update

P6C have been very busy recently so we wanted to update you on our progress.

We have been working on Keeping Myself Safe this term. This has been very interesting to work on and the class have provided interesting and insightful comments.

We have recently begun working on fractions during our maths lessons. We are working on identifying fractions and equivalent fractions. Continue reading →

P4C and the Vicious Vikings!

P4C have had a great time this term learning all about the Vikings. The children have all been really engaged in their learning and have produced some excellent work. They have been able to successfully link their learning with all areas of the curriculum. We have had Drama sessions from a specialist teacher, we have designed our own shields and jewellery and even baked Viking bread. The children are extremely proud of all the work they have done and have produced a book, showing all their learning. They are really looking forward to showing  their work to their parents and friends on Thursday afternoon,. We hope lots of you will be able to come and see our art displays and maybe even try some Viking bread. I’m sure that all the children will remember their learning for years to come and hopefully teach their families all about the Vicious Vikings!!