Parcel from Canada!

We had something very exciting happen this week - a parcel arrived from Canada! It wasn't from our link school (Outma Sqilx'w Cultural School), it was from the Kwu Sukwna?qinx Canoe Family who visited Orkney last summer. We feel like our link is with the whole community in Penticton which is great.

We were excited to see what was in the parcel and people had turns of picking things out.

There was a book, so that Mrs MacNab can learn all about how the Penticton Indian Band and Syilx people got their own land. There were some cards and photographs of the Canoe Family. We enjoyed finding out who was who, and seeing them in the Spirit Dancer canoe in Orkney as well as in their own canoe in the Okanagan.

There was also chewing gum. We're all quite excited about it! We won't be eating the chewing gum in school but we'll be given it to take home. The chewing gum has pictures from the Winter Olympics on it as they were held in Vancouver, which is also in British Columbia (where our link school is).

We decided to write letters to the pupils in the school. Here we are working on that. We drafted the letters first ...

... then we got out the laptops and typed them so they can be emailed to the school. We hope the pupils enjoy getting the replies to their letters.

We decided to make a display all about International Education and our link with Canada so that everyone else in the school can see it. We put the display up in time for our Mums and Dads to see it on parents' night too.

We chose what went in the display, and even what colours to use for mounting the pictures on. We made a list to compare things we do in Orkney with what the pupils in the Okanagan do.

We like International Education and we're very proud of our display. Mrs MacNab says it's excellent, and lots of other pupils and staff have already been looking at it. Maybe they'll leave comments for us here?

We love books

We celebrated World Book Day this week. We watched a live broadcast with Michael Rosen - he was really funny!

Then we had our own World Book Day event in class. Everyone brought in their favourite fiction book and their favourite non-fiction book. We did book reveiews and then had time to share our love of books. Everyone got very enthusiastic about sharing their books.

Mrs MacNab and Mrs Scott had brought in books too - their books were older than us!

We enjoyed seeing other people's books, and we found interesting facts about space in a lot of the non-fiction books. We also looked at Winnie the Pooh in Polish.

We also had World Maths Day this week. Lots of people took part in live maths games against people from all over the world. We were very proud that Molly C came top of the school for Level 1.

The rest of the week work carried on as usual. Here we are doing drama. We are making plays about being honest.

This is us looking at newspaper articles to find the 5Ws - who, what, where, when and why. We noticed that you can always find the 5Ws at the start of an article. We wrote our own newspaper articles about the space shuttle. Some of them will be appearing on the blog before the end of term.

Problem solving in maths - we were working together on different strategies to solve a problem.

We had an exciting time on Thursday and Friday when Mrs MacNab said we all had to become teachers and teach other people in the class. At first we were a bit worried, but in the end we loved it!

We went into groups to research all about how astronauts live in space. Some people found out about what they ate, some researched how they sleep, one group found out about how they keep clean and the last group researched what astronauts do in space when they're not working.

Here we are doing our research and making and highlighting notes to use to teach our group.

We went back to our original groups to teach them, so that everyone learned all about how astronuats live.

Do you know what astronauts eat?

Did you know that astronuats wear nappies when they are on a space walk?

We had to speak clearly so our group could hear us.

Did you know there is a keyboard in the International Space Station (ISS)?

Mrs MacNab showed us a picture of an astronuat playing it and Ewan spotted that he wasn't sitting on a seat, although he looked like he was sitting down there was no seat!

We watched some astronauts being interviewed in the ISS. They had some apples and oranges but most of their food is dried and needs to have water added and to be heated up.

We would like to be teachers again.

Our Solar System and PE

Here's the constellation some of us created this week. We wrote a myth about it too - that will be appearing on the blog in a few weeks when the other groups have done theirs.

Abbie got a planetarium and brought it in for us all to see. We enjoyed watching the planets orbiting the sun and we discovered that they stay in the same order so Mercury is always the planet closest to the sun.

The first day the classroom wasn't dark enough to see the constellations on the ceiling, but Mrs Scot held a big piece of paper for us to see the constellations on. Then we got some curtains and put them up and shut the blinds and we were able to see the constellations faintly on the ceiling.

Can you find any constellations in the sky?

We're still trying to look at the moom every night. What shape is it tonight?

Here are P4 writing newspaper articles about the space shuttle. They watched some interviews with astronuats and took notes first. Taking notes was hard!

Here we are doing tennis in PE. We learned how to play tennis rounders!

In RME we've been learning about Hinduism. This week we learned about reincarnation and karma and we made a game. Do you know what karma is?

This was our last week of gymnastics with Mr Berry and we were showing off how much we have improved, especially at balances.

In Golden Time some people were making aliens, others were using the techno lego to build things. We're hoping we get to use techno lego again next week.

Do you like our models?

What would you make?

Lots of fun

We've been having lots of fun again.

Here we are in drama, acting out scenes to show good ways and bad ways of responding to people. We had lots of ideas of good ways to act and we are trying to remember good ways to deal with things in the playground too.

In PE with Mrs MacNab we have started doing tennis. It's great fun!

In PE on Fridays we're doing gymnastics with Mr Berry.

Here we are doing listening skills.

In our topic we've been finding out why the moon looks like it changes shape. Do you know why?

Some people pretended to be the Sun, Earth and Moon so we could act it out.

In our topic we've been finding out about stars and constellations and some groups have made their own constellation and written a star myth about it. Here is one group working with Miss Persidou (who is from Greece).

We made 'pinprick pictures' of 2 constellations - Orion and The Plough - to help us find them in the night sky at home. Do you know what they look like?

In maths we've been working hard at multiplication and division. Here we are doing loop cards and trying to get a new record time.

P4 learned lots of 'magic tricks' to do with the 9x table.
Did you know you can use your fingers to help with the 9x table?

Tables practice - with different people taking turns of being 'teacher' and leading the tables.

P4 were challenged to teach Mrs Scott the 9x table ausing as many 'magic tricks' as possible. How many different ways do you think they used?

Divison is fun!

Fun in Golden Time - blowpainting aliens ....

... colouring in (these are Rangoli patterns. Do you know what a Rangoli pattern is?) ...

... and chess.

Who's winning?

Another fun week in P3/4.