Stenton Primary School

What an afternoon! The P4’s and 5’s set off for Musselburgh Lagoon for a fun filled afternoon of water sports. Little did we all know that the wind would play a huge part in the events of the day. The outdoor education instructors Anthony and Martyn were fantastic, they taught us all lots about sailing and canoeing. The girls decided that canoeing was the water sport for them, and so set off ahead of the boys who were preparing their sail boat. The boys were very excited about their sailing but had to learn about turning in the boat to help them catch the wind properly. Disaster struck for both groups. The wind caught the boys… and they capsized into the freezing cold water (Miss Wood had to giggle!!!!!) The boys were super sports and lauged about it too, infact it was the highlight of their day. The girls too, got stuck in their canoe and had to abandon them to the shore- they had great fun playing games to help them with their canoe skills before returning to the canoe! It was a fantastic day- ending with everyone jumping into the lagoon!!!

At Assembly today we heard from the JRSO’s about a Christmas card competition. We are all looking forward to doing it.
It was Michael’s birthday and we had a great time playing Musical Bumps. Arthur and Katrina won the game. There was some great dancing to the music of Rihanna - Umbrella ella, ella, ella!
This morning we did some mime work. We had to pretend we had gone to “Elsewhere” and we were the people living there. We had to mime different jobs people might do there. Noah’s group pretended they were working on a farm and Alistair’s group pretended they were bakers and Lois’s group mimed working at home. 

Ellyn visited her friends from her nursery in Edinburgh. They were all in their school uniforms!

Another wet and windy week has gone by!

Our new topic is studying the Dominican Republic and its’ people. It has been flooded recently and everybody has had to move out of their homes.  It was heavy rain that caused the floods Malcolm informed us.  He saw this on the news. 

We have also been learning how to write letters properly!  We wrote one to Mrs Gillanders asking her how she was getting on in her new school.  The P1 pupils wrote one to Ms. Finlayson telling her about things that they were enjoying in school and things that they might want to do in the future.

We enjoyed music with Mrs Thomson.  We sang a song about a camel with no lumps it had no lumps because the camel was a horse.  We sang a song about a pudding and one about breakfast.  After music we all go power walking with Mrs. Dillin and Mrs. Hamilton.  On our way we visited the old bakery and the Rood Well.  Malcolm saw an “old fashioned car” it was actually a 2CV.

We were bouncing balls in gym today with Mrs. Jones that was quite fun and we played a game called tadpoles.

Monday - Miss Wood started her year at Stenton.  Every Monday and Tuesday she takes us for outdoor games.  We played ‘Duck Duck Goose’ and ‘Mummy, Daddy, Baby’ it is great fun!  In the afternoon we got a chance to do our planning ideas for the Dominican Republic.

Tuesday - Mrs Thompson came to do music, we did a selection of songs. We did some work and it was a bit of a quiet day.

Wednesday-We learned all about the Catholic church.  We learned that the pope lives in Italy in The Vatican and is protected by the Swiss guards. In the afternoon we did PE.

Thursday - We did pictures for the Flower show. In the afternoon we did French and German. The French group learned to count to 100 in French.

Friday - we had brass and assembly, we did a birthday game and song for quite a few peoples birthday.

So the first week is gone already. Of course it feels like we were never on holiday, as it always does! But it’s not a bad thing. Despite sharing a Headteacher with another school, having our multi-talented auxiliary step into the breach as temporary admin assistant, no caretaker and temporary cleaners, and an absent member of staff, everyone seems happy to be back, and it seems that the children have learned quite a lot already!

Many of our parents have volunteered to come in and help this year, with the online learning logs, the children’s ICT lessons, phonics groups and golden time, and several of these activities have already begun. It’s great to work with so many enthusiastic supporters of the school on a daily basis!

The 6 girls in our new P1 (and 1 in P3!) all tell me that they’re really enjoying their new school. Long may it continue. Only one more week till they are all full time and don’t have to leave at lunchtime. They’re all very excited about staying all day.

This week primary three have learned a lot!

“We learned how to how to hold our pencil properly.” Lewis

“We learned about the world because we got the globe down and looked at the different countries.” Lois

 ”We started to learn about the Dominican Republic because we are sponsoring an 8 year old boy there called Josua.” Ben and Michael

“We learned how to use superspell.” Noah

“We made a flower picture for the Stenton Flower Show” Yasmin

“We learned how to draw the flag of the Domincan Republic.” Ali

“We made pages for a travel brochure with pictures of hotels and prices” Emma

“We learned about angles and right angles, and some of us learned about turning through  right angles.”

“We all made our own passports.” Noah

“We spent a lot of our choosing time with the lego.” P3 boys!

“The girls enjoyed playing with the dolls house.” P3 girls

I liked tracing!” Yasmin.

P2 have been learning about right angles in their maths lessons. Here are some pictures of them finding right angles in the classroom.

First thing we did today was played games on the white board.  It was very exciting as we got our school photos taken this morning, first with our brothers and sisters and then on our own.  We all had to smile!  We did some maths games this morning which was fun!  We practiced our writing with Mrs Smith.  It was raining at lunch time so we couldn’t play outside but we got to watch a video of ‘Babe’ about a pig who thinks it is a sheep dog!

After lunch time we went to the hall for gym.  We did balancing with balls and balancing excercises.  We then came back from gym, got changed and came to do this blog!

Today the new Pupil Council met for the first time. The members of the committee are Arthur (P7), Emily (P6), Caroline (P6), Alex (P6) and Sarah (P5). Ms Finlayson will be the staff member who works with the Pupil Council.

Ms Finlayson explained that this year one of the things that the pupil council will be responsible for will be maintaining a Healthy School. Ms Finlayson will be taking forward the Health Promoting Schools initiative within the school so this will fit together nicely!

The new committee members were issued with their Pupil Council badges.

All the committee members were keen to provide some sort of school magazine giving information and also some activities and tasks for other children in the school. Ms Finlayson explained that all of the children will be learning how to use the school blog this term, and perhaps we should consider it as an ‘online magazine’ for the time being, with a view to a paper version later (bearing in mind the eco schools considerations).

One thing which all of the committee members felt they would like an input into was the choosing of the school production for next summer. They are keen to do a ‘famous’ musical rather than one aimed specifically at schools. Ms Finlayson explained some of the restrictions, but it was agreed the pupil council would have more input into choosing next years production. However, this will be on the back burner till after Christmas!

They also asked if it would be possible to make some suggestions to Mrs Thompson, our music teacher, about the songs and music they use in music lessons. Ms Finlayson approached Mrs Thompson about this and she is happy to take on board suggestions from the class, if the music is available. The Pupil Council will discuss this with Mrs Thompson and she will talk to the P4-7 class about alternative music.