Ancient Greece and lots of maths

We seem to have linked almost all our work to Ancient Greece and maths this week.

We had a Greek food tasting on Tuesday. Most people tried something new and got a sticker. One pupil tried everything! Mrs MacNab was very impressed.

Some people really didn't like some of the food, especially the octopus and olives. Mrs MacNab didn't like the octopus either! Mrs Stanger said the olives were the worst.

We had bread, white grape juice, red grape juice, black olives, green olives, figs, octopus, goat and sheep's milk cheese (feta cheese), Greek butter beans, loukamis (like Turkish delight but very very sweet) and honey sesame seed snaps.

Do you think they are enjoying the food?

In Drama we worked in groups. We used props to help us make up stories. The props all became characters - like a Scottish person (kilt), dragon (wings) and lots more and then we made up a story using all of our characters. It was fun.

Here we are hard at work writing.


In maths we have been learning about length. P3 have been estimating and measuring in metres and finding out if things (or people) are longer than about a metre, about a metre or shorter than a metre.

P4 have been measuring in centimetres and measuring objects with curved sides.

We did Ancient Greek maths and helped Pythagoras, a mathematician from Ancient Greece, prove his theory about right angles triangles.

In PE we are still practising for the class Olympics. We did javelin and Boccia this week. We had to measure how far the javelin went - so that was maths too!

We measured using a very long measuring tape.

Can you see what we are measuring with here?

P4 made the fish and they are all about a metre long so we could use them to measure the javelin throws.

 We used a measuring tape to see whose balls were nearer the jack (white ball) in Boccia.

P4 have been learning the 6x table - here we are practising it and testing each other (using timers).

We used Greek water clocks this week to time our talks (that's in a different blog entry). Abbie thinks we should use the 5 minute water clock if anyone loses 5 minutes of Golden Time next week. Mrs MacNab hopes we don't have to use the clock!

Here are some pupils using timers to test to see if the Greek water clocks are accurate (correct).

Would you like to use a Greek water clock instead of a watch?

We've adopted a dolphin!

We've adopted a dolphin. We weren't sure what animal to adopt so we split into groups and each group researched an animal that Mrs MacNab gave them.

We then had to do a short talk about our animal to persuade other people to vote for it. We used a Greek water clock to time the talks.

When we counted the votes the bottlenose dolphin had the most so Mrs MacNab has adopted that for us.

Did you know that we learned about democracy from the Ancient Greeks?

The Greek word demos means people!

Here is more information from Dani and Alanah.

Alanah wrote:

Our class is going to be adopting a bottle nose dolphin and we will be taking a toy one home. Its name is Rainbow and it has two or three babies. It lives near Inverness and she is a girl.

Dani wrote:

Our class is adopting a dolphin called Rainbow. She is a bottlenose dolphin. We will also get a little toy dolphin. You might see Rainbow if you go to Inverness and it also has a baby but we don’t know what it’s called yet but we might find out.

Here is Rainbow having fun. We think it is one of her babies with her.

Photo ©Charlie Phillips/WDCS

We will tell you more about our dolphin when we find out more. We hope when Rainbow's toy dolphin arrives it has some exciting adventures with our class.

Thanks to Charlie Phillips of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society for letting us use his photo on our blog.

Happy St Andrew's Day

P4 wrote an acrostic poem for St Andrew's Day.

St Andrew’s Day

Cool weather

Old castles

Towns and cities

Lovely countryside

Absolutely beautiful

Nice, friendly people

Do come and visit!



We hope you like it.

Walking the labyrinth

This week we were able to borrow a labyrinth which the pupils from Uyeasound School on Unst in Shetland made. We used it in Drama and we also explored other ways of using it. We had great fun!

Here we are, acting out scenes from Theseus and the Minotaur. Theseus has killed the minotaur and is making his way out of the labyrinth. Can you see Ariadne and King Minos waiting for him?

Another minotaur is killed after a fight with another Theseus!

Here we are walking the labyrinth.

We walked it to music.

We were all allowed to write our initials beside the labyrinth to show that we had walked it.

Here we are thinking of other ways of using the labyrinth. We think it could be used to have fun, keep healthy, show respect, ask for help, have quiet time, have thinking time - or even for sacrifices.

We used the labyrinth for maths as well - we estimated how long it was and then measured it to see if anyone's estimate was close. Some people got it nearly right.

Here are some of us showing last week's spelling strategy of the week - writing our spelling words in alphabetical order.

This week's spelling strategy of the week is to make a word pyramid by writing the easiest word once at the top, then the next easiest twice below that, then the next 3 times, and so on. It might look a bit like this:

april

large large

giant giant giant

magic magic magic

orange orange orange orange

vegetable vegetable vegetable vegetable vegetable

This is us in art.

Can you guess which person from a Greek myth this is?

In PE we started our Boccia competition. We have already managed to play quite a few matches and the semi-finals will be next week. We really enjoyed it. Mrs MacNab said we have already improved a lot and we can throw the balls a lot more accurately.

Here we are in maths. P3 were still working on time but P4 were doing length. We were estimating whether things like string, scarves and belts were about a metre, longer than a metre or shorter than a metre.

P3 will be starting doing length next week.

We had to measure lots of things - even the classroom and dinner hall.

Some people even practised maths at lunchtime!

This is us doing health. We have been thinking about what helps keep us healthy and this week we thought about healthy bodies and the food we eat and exercise we do. We have started keeping health diaries for a week, and we designed healthy meals. P3 let us play in their healthy cafe too so we served healthy meals to each other.

The Pupil Council had a meeting this week. Here are our representatives reporting back to the class.

Lots of people are looking forward to the Greek food tasting next week - and lots of people aren't because they don't want to try octopus! Mrs MacNab said that they don't have to try everything - they can choose what to try.