Storytelling and a Pyjama Party!

We are working on storytelling and Tom Muir came in to tell us a story. P1 enjoyed hearing him too.

We're working on our own stories now - we'll be recording traditional Orkney tales and sending them to our link school in Canada. We're looking forward to hearing some of their traditional tales too.

When the canoe family were in Orkney in the summer Tom Muir paddled with them in the canoe to Hoy and he told them some stories. They all used to be pupils at Outma Squilx Cultural School. Some of them went to Outma and read the pupils there some stories from Mr Muir's book. We're excited to find so many links to our Canadian school.

We had storytelling in drama as well. Miss Persidou told us a Greek myth. She told us about Perseus and Medusa.

Then we went into groups and acted out different scenes from the story so that we retold the whole story.

In language, P4 had fun making up headlines.

They were enjoying themselves so much that they didn't want to stop for lunch!

On Tuesday we had a pyjama party and bake sale to raise money to send to Haiti to help the children there.

Tuesday was the last day we had to go to school this week as it's the mid-term break now. Have a good holiday, everyone!

Our land art

Last week we looked at some land art made by Richard Shilling. We're hoping to make our own land art when we do some beach visits next term, but the snow inspired some of the girls and they spent break time making their own land art, and lunchtime repairing it!

Team work.

Reaching high to put the final pieces on.

Look at it - isn't it high?

"It's even higher than Mrs MacNab".

The rest of the class went out to see it in the afternoon when we went out to look at how our shadows had changed.

Snow closures and science

It was a funny week last week. Some days we were at school as usual, one day school was closed because of the snow, and one day school got shut early and we all got home to play in the snow! Even the teachers.

In school we were getting on with our work. Here we are doing spelling and using the dictionary to help us.

In drama we were role playing lots of different scenes (scenarios) where we had to show what we thought would happen next. Then everyone talked about whether the characters had acted in a good way or whether they could have done things better. This helps us to try to respond appropriately to other people.

We got some new games for the smartboard - they're VCOP games and we're really enjoying them. We've only played 2 so far but there's lots more we can try. This one is Victor Van Cleef the Punctuation Thief.

On Wednesday Mrs MacNab took us outside to do music. We loved it! We recorded lots of different sounds that we could hear or make in the snow.

We went into the courtyard to listen to find out if the sounds here were the same as the sounds at the front of the school. It was very peaceful in the courtyard. If we were very quiet we could hear birds singing. We saw a starling on the roof. When we listened carefully and concentrated hard we realised the snow made a different sound when we walked in the courtyard than when we walked on the grass.
Do you know why that was?

We did some science outside too. We looked at people's shadows. They were very long.

We went back outside later and looked at our shadows again. They had changed. We're going to be thinking about this more over the next few weeks as part of our Solar System topic.

We did some other science too. Here we are doing an experiment to try to find out why rockets have to carry oxygen as well as fuel. The oxygen isn't just for the astronauts to breathe - the engine needs oxygen too.

Did you know that? Do you know why?

The Space Shuttle has launched!

Today we watched the launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour. We saw the crew get ready and get strapped in and then we watched the launch. We wrote newspaper articles about it. We hope you enjoy reading them.


The Endeavour takes off               by Rosie

About half past nine this morning the Space Shuttle went at 1800 miles per hour to the International Space Station. It went to deliver some new things to experiment with. It was going to go a few days ago but the weather was too bad but today the Space Shuttle left. By now it will be there. On it there were five men and one lady.



The Space Shuttle takes off          by Amy

The Space Shuttle is called Endeavour. It took off at about half past nine and it took off in Florida. Then it blasted into the International Space Station. It went to the International Space Station to do more science experiments.


Space Shuttle launch            by Ashleigh

This morning the Space Shuttle took off in Florida. The Space Shuttle’s name was called Endeavour. It was going to the International Space Station. It was gigantic and noisy. They were taking potions to the space station. It was going at 1800 miles an hour. They did a countdown.



Space Shuttle takes off                 by Joe

On Monday morning at half past nine the Endeavour took off to go to the International Space Station to put a new science lab on the space station. It took off from Florida in the United States. It went at 1800 miles per hour.


Off to space                  by Alanah

This morning at half past 9 our time in Britain a space ship was launched in Florida. Florida is in USA, the United States of America. There were 5 men astronauts and 1 lady astronaut. The astronauts are going to the International Space Station to do experiments in space. They counted down from 10 to 1 and after 1 they all said LIFT OFF! The space ship went up to 1800 miles per hour. The space ship was called the Endeavour. The space ship was very very very loud. The space ship is whitey grey and it said United States on it. I think that it was very fun to watch.


NASA Rocket Takes off!                by Molly H

On Monday the Endeavour (one of NASA’s rockets) launched in Florida at about 9:30. We saw a clip on Mrs MacNab’s laptop there was tons of smoke and flames. The reason they went up is to add a new room to the International Space Station. Endeavour took off at 1800mph and to get into their seats the spacemen and women climbed onto their seats and they were lying down but when they were in space thankfully they would be the right way round. There were 5 spacemen and 1 spacewoman. When the Space Shuttle lifted off it made a really loud noise like thunder. I wonder where the rocket is now?

Space Shuttle launch

We are learning about the Solar System. We found out this week that there is a space shuttle being launched next week. It is called Endeavour and it will be going to the International Space Station.

There is a countdown clock on the NASA website showing how many days, hours, minutes and seconds it is until Endeavour is launched. You can see it here.

Sending our box to Canada.

We've been collecting things to send to our link school in Canada, the Outma Sqilx'w Cultural School. We put in lots of things we thought the pupils there would find interesting or useful.

Our link class is Class 2/3/4. They have 18 pupils in the class (we have 17) and they are aged 7, 8 and 9 just like us. We're really excited about it!

We hope they like the box. We won't write about what's in it as we don't want to spoil the surprise when they get it. We put in a peedie puffin and seal for them. The puffin is called Peter and the seal is called Sammy.

A photographer came from the Orkney Today so our photo should be in the paper next week!

Here we are putting Peter and Sammy into the box.

"To Canada"

We weighed the box before we sent it. Mrs MacNab was very pleased that everyone could tell her the weight using grams and kilograms.

Here is Gary in the school office getting the parcel to post for us. Thank you, Gary!

We really hope that the pupils in Outma are excited too!

"It's like an art gallery in here at the minute"

In Art of the Week on Friday afternoon as looked at 'land art'. All the pictures we looked at were of things made by a man called Richard Shilling.

Some people thought at first that it wasn't art because it was photographs and not "created by a hand" but the rest of the pupils persuaded them that it was art.

We liked them and thought it would be fun to make our own land art. Mrs MacNab said maybe we could make some when we go to the beach next term.

We thought some of the things must have been very difficult to make and must have taken hours!

Solar System

In music we got the last 2 Greek tunes recorded. Mrs MacNab is hoping to put the tunes onto the blog at some point for parents to hear them.

In PE we are still inventing games. Every week Mrs MacNab adds in a new challenge - this week it was a team game again, but it had to be something to do with space.

P3 made a game with 'planets' as targets. Mrs MacNab was very pleased that they remembered which planets were big and small and used big hoops for the big planets and small hoops for the small planets. They did very well with changing the rules so more people could play and had lots of good ideas for making the game easier or more difficult.

P4's game had spacemen in their space rockets (space hoppers) and aliens throwing asteroids (soft balls) at them to capture the space rockets.

At the end everyone played both games and enjoyed them.

In maths some people are doing dividing. They used cubes to help them and they have been sharing things out and making groups.

In topic time we learned about the different layers which make up the Earth. We all made models to help us remember. The layers are inner core, outer core, mantle, crust and atmosphere.

Do you know what each layer is made of?

We did another science experiment. This time we were finding out about gravity.

First we talked about what we thought gravity was.

We had to make sure the experiement was fair, so we had to drop things from the same height at the same time.

We listened to them hitting the tray to see if they landed at the same time.

We found out that gravity pulls things at the same speed even if they are big or small or heavy or light. But very light things like feathers drift around and don't fall straight down. That is because of air resistance.

Mrs MacNab asked what would happen if we did the same experiment on the moon using a hammer and a feather. We had lots of ideas. Most people thought maybe the feather would drift down but the hammer might go up because we didn't think there was any gravity on the moon.

Then we watched a video of men doing that experiment on the moon.

We were very surprised that the feather and the hammer hit the ground together!

Mrs MacNab explained to us why that had happened.

We thought it would be good to go to the moon to do experiements.

On Friday we thought about what we could do to raise money to help the children in Haiti.

You can find out more on the Pupil Council blog here.

In Golden Time some people were making winter pictures.

RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch

This week we took part in the RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch. We counted the birds in the playground and then looked at different ways of displaying the information in charts.

You can read more about it on the Green Swans blog here.

Another challenge

We had another challenge this week. We used the lolly sticks to decide who was in each group, then each group were given 2 planets (or the sun). We had to make a fact file for each of our planets and also make a collage planet.

We all had different jobs in the group. We thought that made it easier to work together. The jobs are facilitator, materials manager, time keeper, quality control and recorder.

Here we are using the computers to look up information about the planets. We used books as well.

First we had to look up what colour our planets were so we could paint the background.

After the paint was dry we used other things like foil, material and paper to add features to the planets.

We had to work together.

We found it a little easier to work well as a team this time. At the end we thought of things we had done well and things we thought we could improve.