Pencaitland Primary Blog

Look out for our reflective lettering!
P5 sorted out materials according to how good they are at reflecting light.
We then cut our initials out of reflective tape and now plan to stick or stitch them onto our school bags or jackets. It will help to keep us safe on the dark, winter evenings.

Primary 5 children have been learning about impressionism and visited the National Gallery of Scotland on Thursday to find out more about French Impressionists.  In the afternoon they had a landscape workshop.  What do you think of the results?  Are we better than Claude Monet?

In ICT, Primary 5 have been learning to use the digital camera. We have been snapping away throughout the school. Some of our photos are shown below. Our challenge now is to produce a slideshow!

To tie in with our “Living Things’ topic, we visited Dalkeith Country Park today.  When we arrived we played some ‘nature-themed’ games which were both good fun and reminded us of some of the things we had learnt about plants and animals during this topic.  To keep active we also played some football and rounders. [...]

On thursday 29th of May, Richard English the Ranger came in and told us what trees, plants and animals need to survive in the wild. He brought in somew stuffed animals and photos of trees and plants and we discussed what each needed in order to live. He also told us how to care for [...]

P5 were holding an assembly and cafe on the 23rd May about fairtrade. Parents came to the assembly and cafe and the schools neighbours from the Glebe were invited to the cafe as well. We were able to inform the audience about what Fairtrade was, and how it helps unfortunate farmers in poorer countries. [...]

PC Cairns came into school yesterday to talk to us about drugs and vandalism. He was very good at giving us advice about what types of drugs there were and how they affect your body. He told us about drugs like alcohol, cannabis, heroin and caffeine. PC Cairns is a nice police man because he tries to [...]

Yesterday, Mrs Proudler came in to talk to us about fair trade. She told us about how fair trade works and how they help people who don’t have any money to feed their family. Fair trade gives them a fair money. Mrs Proudler talked about tear craft, a company that she is a volunteer for.You [...]

On Thursday we used the after school clubs parachute to learn about teamwork & cooperation. We all shared the parachute and instead of playing against each other as we would in other games we had to work together. We played a number of games - sharks, cat & mouse and other games! It was really [...]

 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. [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

We have been working recently on our co-operation and teamworking skills. Today we were challenged to build the tallest tower using just jelly babies and sticks of spaghetti. It was harder than it sounds as the spaghetti broke easily and the jelly babies were all sticky. All the teams had to modify their original [...]

To accompany our ongoing theme of friendship, teamwork and anti-bullying the local community police officer came in to talk to us today. He was very friendly and talked to us about what bullying is, what effects bullying can have on others and what to do if you know someone is being bullied.
He was very patient [...]

We’ve been doing more project work this afternoon. We were mixing different materials to see if they were soluble or insoluble.  Coffee and sugar dissolved and formed a solution in water.  Flour and sand did not dissolve but formed a suspension.
We have taken our own photos, we hope you like them.

We have been looking at some of the properties of solids, liquids and gases today.  First we tried squeezing an empty juice bottle and found we could quite easily squeeze the air inside. When we filled the bottle with water we discovered it was much harder and we guessed correctly that if we put the [...]

We have been seeing how much a solid can be pulled or stretched before it breaks. We suspended a bottle from a broomstick using different materials and added water, a little at a time, until the material snapped. We learned that gravity pulls downwards on the bottle, creating a pulling force called tension, causing the [...]