Pencaitland Primary Blog

 To finish off our Mary, Queen of Scots project P5 had a day out of class to visit Holyrood Palace and Edinburgh Castle.  Our first stop was the Palace.  After a short introduction, where P5 showed they had remembered a lot of what they had learnt, we started our tour.  We saw the Grand Staircase. the dining room where the current Queen eats when she is in residence, the Drawing Rooms, the Great Hall (with 97 portraits - it acts as the family tree of Mary, Queen of Scots), Mary’s bedroom, Lord Darnley’s (her second husband) bedroom and most importantly to a number of us the room where David Riccio was killed. We spent some time in the activity room, had lunch and then moved to the castle.After a talk on how the Castle fitted into Mary’s life we visited the room where her son James was born and the Great Hall, with its many weapons and Mary’s Coat of Arms. After this we went to the Education Room where we tried on costumes representative of that era. We also saw replica artifacts and had fun trying to guess what they were used for. We all thoroughly enjoyed the day (much better than Maths and Language!) and have learnt even more about Mary, Queen of Scots from seeing these things up close and personal! 

Primary 3 have been having fun with Beebots and Constructa-bots as part of their ICT work on control and modelling. They created courses for the ‘Bots which the other groups then had to find a way through by programming their own ‘Bots.

During our art lessons this term we have looking at using different media. The landscapes below were created over a series of lessons using a variety of media:

By Susannah and Olivia

• We used ready mixed paints to create the sky.
• We stippled white paint over this to create the clouds.
• The hills were outlined in black marker pen and filled with wax crayon.
• Oil pastels were used to create the field of flowers.
• We mixed sand with yellow paint to create the texture for the beach.
• A wax resist covered with water colour created the sea.
• Finally, the cottage was drawn with felt pens.

The finished results will be on display outside our classroom very shortly.

We have just fininshed learning about the Vikings. We discovered that they were great craftsmen and decided to try our hand at some of their skills! We carved messages, in “runes”, into soap . We made brooches and pots from clay and built model longboats - some were more seaworthy than others!

Can you work out our message?

During our recent Health Week the children in the Nursery enjoyed a variety of activities, including an aerobics session and obstacle course designed and managed by P7 pupils. The children had a super time, so a big thanks to P7.

In the Nursery, in the lead up to the Easter break, we discussed road safety. The children used role-play to demonstrate how to cross the road safely, then practised what they had learned when visiting the library van.

The Nursery children and staff would like to take this opportunity to thank the PTA for the new kitchen play furniture. The children love it and are having a great time cooking gourmet meals and washing the dolls’ clothes with their top of the range appliances!

Primary 1 enjoyed various, exciting, health promoting activities.

Yesterday, we wrote reports for the primary 5 class about life in Primary 6. We told them all about the changes they will come across - wearing a different colour of jumper, working on the tuckshop etc. We also wrote about the topics that will be new for them. We hope that they will find the information useful.

P7 entertained the rest of the school last week with performances of their Japanese dances. They have been working on them since early February and were finally ready to perform to their audience on Thursday. They were performed using mime and the puppets they had made during art. Various elements of Japanese culture were shown in the dances including chopsticks, kendo and sumo wrestling.

The Parent Council met this week and were pleased to welcome Councillor Ruth Currie to the meeting.  Among things discussed was the recent annual audit of parent views.  One quarter of parents were surveyed and the results were very pleasing.  All parents surveyed felt the school had a good reputation in the local community,  the school encouraged the children to work to the best of their ability, staff made them feel welcome in the school and that the school was well led.  Parent Council questionnaires were handed over and will be discussed at the next meeting.  To see the draft minutes of this meeting click on Parent Page(left hand side of home page) and then click on Parent Council (right hand side of page).

Last week the infants raised some money for the Guide Dogs for the Blind by having a fund raising week. In P1/2 we drew a great big dog and then we tried to cover the dog with coppers. We called the dog Copper, and by the end of the week he was completely full! Counting all the money took ages but in the end we found we had £42.60!!! We were very happy and we would like to say thankyou to everyone who helped us by sending in money.

THANK YOU!!!

The infants were raising money for guide dogs for the blind. P2/3 organised a target game at 10p a go. Toby won a certificate for getting 3 beanbags in the puppy’s mouth. We raised almost £20.

Mrs Murdoch P2/3

It is now week two of Craft Club and this week we have been painting flower pots to sell at the Spring Fayre. It is fun but you need to be really careful not to smash them (unlike Miss Muir who managed to smash three before craft club started!)

Last week, we made dream catchers which are traditionally used to catch bad dreams.

We will keep you updated on our progress over the next four weeks.

We discussed

The fun day - a mixed response - pupils who did not get to be teachers were disappointed

Issues from classes - glue sticks, Accelerated reading books in the upper area

Playground issues

Action points

We asked Miss Ross for more glue sticks and these have been ordered.

We requested a compost bin in the lunch hall

We decided no rugby to be played on the concrete part of the playground

P6 will be responsible for putting out the friendship stop.

P1-P7 will all be allowed in the quiet area - Sandra Samuel Area

We discussed the idea of a path leading up to the quiet area and would discuss this with the ECO reps

P5 have been continuing to put together their magazine on friendship, team-working and anti-bullying. Following last weeks interview with Ms Ross, another group have been putting together a photo-strip. They wrote the script, organised the props and costumes, worked the digital camera and here’s the result of their labours!

In our class each group earns airmiles for good behaviour.  We save up the airmiles so that we can travel around the world ‘visiting’ different countries.  This week we were each challenged to research one of the countries we visited and give the others in our class a short presentation. We listened to each others presentation and gave feedback/comments on how we thought it had gone.  Mr Cain was very pleased with the overall quality and effort we had put in.  It was really interesting and we found out lots of facts about the different countries.  Did you know ice-cream was invented in Russia? Or that children in China don’t put their baby teeth under their pillow but bury them in the garden to encourage their new teeth to grow in big and strong!  It was good to see several  of us used the interactive whiteboard to help with our presentations, and we also brought in interesting ‘props’

.

We’ve been busy in P5 this term making up a magazine dealing with important issues such as getting on with each other, anti-bullying and how to work well together.

We have been creating pages such as a comic strip, poster page, a story page, a photo strip page, a page with quizzes and crosswords and an “Agony Aunt” page.  One of our other pages has been an interview with the head teacher.

We made up our questions for Ms Ross and learned how to create a podcast so we could capture all her answers - she speaks too fast for us to write everything down ! We then used the podcast to play back so we could type up a written page for the magazine.

As a taster you can hear the podcast below :

Head Teacher Interview

Last term, our topic was the European Union and we learned all about the member countries. We have been set a challenge - to design and make an EU Monopoly game.

Here are some of our thoughts so far:
“We’re really glad that we were asked to do this activity because it has been great fun and we will be able to play with the boards when we’re finished.”
Annabel, Morgan, Lucy, Shereen and Cara

“It is fun working in groups and you can get lots of things done faster.”
Eilidh Mc, Lydia, Samantha, Rachel B and Mhairi

“We look forward to playing other people’s games”
Abby, Rachel L, Emily, Eilidh M, Calum D and Connor

“It’s very fun and a creative activity.”
Andrew, Adam W, Euan, Lachlan, Lewis and Guy

“We’re having really good fun making it and can’t wait to play other people’s.”
James, Robbie, Adam M, Jacob and Calum B

After having practised reciting Scottish poems, 5 finalists were chosen to recite their  poems to Miss Dury who used to teach in our school! Caitlin, Johnny, Erin, Antonia and Robert did really well. Miss Dury had a difficult job to choose 3 winners who each received a  certificate.

Class Reps Meeting -15th February

Today we discussed:
Matters arising
Blog leaflet for parents
Pupil questionnaire
Suggestion Banner
Class Issues

Action points
We decided to:

Have the blog leaflet completed and sent out by the end of March.
Include P3 in the questionnaires for pupils and discuss at future meetings.
We decided to make posters at the next meeting,no agenda.
We came up with the fantastic idea of letting the children teach - class reps will tell their classes more - this will be held on the 7th of March. Each class will have 5 pupil teachers.

Keep checking the blog for updates.

We have been learning about people who help us. We have painted some pictures.