Almost the end of term...

We can't believe it's almost the end of the school year already. We'll soon be in P4/5! We met our new teacher this week - it was very exciting because she took us to see some chicks in her classroom. We saw one hatching, and another 2 that were eating food. They were cute.

We're still rehearsing hard for the class assembly.

We've been finding out about how different creatures develop.  We compared orcas, grey seals, bottlenose dolphins and humans.

Did you know that orca calves drink 230 litres of milk a day? We don't think even Reid could manage that!

Did you know that puffins can start having babies when they're only 3 years old?

Did you know that grey seals pups are left to look after themselves when they are only 3 weeks old?

Did you know that female orcas can live to 90 years old?

Did you know that a newborn orca calf puts on weight at rate of 4kg per hour (that’s about 10 tins of baked beans!). By the time a seal pup is 3-4 weeks old it will weigh about 3 times what it weighed when it was born. A human baby will take about a year to weigh about 3 times wat it weighed when it was born.

We found it really interesting that creatures all developed at different rates.

It was exciting at the start of the week because we received some PowerPoints from our link school in Canada. The pupils from Outma Sqilx Cultural School made them to teach us some of their language. It looked really funny and has different letters to English - we had no idea how to say the words but they had added sound files so we could hear them speaking too. Then at the end they gave all the translations.

 

Lim limpt, Outma school!

We've all learned how to say "We are Okanagan" in the Syilx language. Ask any of the pupils and they will teach you too.

We've got some more exciting news about our link with Canada - the Canadian Spirit Dancer canoe is coming to Glaitness to visit us next week. We had a competition to design a piece of artwork to go on the canoe, so that a piece of Orkney will go with the canoe wherever it goes in the world! We're going to paint it on to the canoe soon and will show you more then.

We had fun with parachute games in PE.

Here's the cat trying to catch the mice...

On Friday it was the auditions for "Glaitness Has Got Talent". It was VERY scary performing in front of the whole school. We are very proud that 2 people from our class got through to the final. There are only 8 people in the final, so they did very well. Well done Dani and Kaitlyn!

The final will be next week, so it looks like the last week of term will be another busy and exciting one!

An active week

We've had a very active week, with Walliwall and Sports Day (despite the afternoon races being postponed to next week).

As well as those exciting events we had a visitor this week - Cara came to visit us! She's 10 months old, and we were able to see if our ideas about what a 10 month old baby can do were correct. She was cleverer than we had expected - and mischievious too. She enjoyed playing a game where we took turns at handing her a toy and then she threw it for us to pick up!

We were surprised that she could understand so much - when Mrs MacNab asked Cara for the toy,Cara held it out to her. Here she is with her proud big sister.

We did some problem solving with money. We were very pleased that we worked everything out correctly.

Can you estimate how many groattie buckies are in the bottle? They were all collected on North Ronaldsay.

How many do you think you could find?

We finished making our 'under the sea' corner in the classroom - we're hoping the parents will get to see it after the class assembly (on Tuesday 22nd June). Do you like the jellyfish and sea urchins?

Under the sea is a great place to work.

After sports day afternoon was cancelled, it was raining too hard to go outside to play at lunchtime, so we got the dressing up clothes out......

We had FUN!

We enjoyed taking photos of other people dressed up too.

What would you dress as?

Money, money, money

We're doing money in maths at the moment. Here we are playing money bingo.

We enjoy playing games on the whiteboard too.

Some people helped set up the shop. Now we'll be able to go shopping and practise buying things and giving change. We'll have to work out what we can afford to buy. We wonder how much money Mrs MacNab will let us spend.

We've done lots of other things this week too.

This isn't music (though we look like a choir) - it's actually drama.

Here we are practising our spelling words.

We're doing SRA reading comprehension. Most people love it!

We looked up information about coasts, watched some videos of waves creating coastal features like caves and found out what sand is made of. We started making our own sand too.

We practised our passing skills in football.

In Golden Time we had lots of fun!  What would you choose to do?

(We made these things and took all the photos ourselves too.)

Under the sea ...

Under the sea is a nice play to be .... to think, or read.

This is the under the sea corner in the classroom. We have this because we are studying the coast this term. In Golden Time craft we are making things to go under the sea. What do you think we will make?

Here we are in Circle Time playing a game. Do you think we managed to pass the keys round without making a sound? We had to try it with a tambourine too.

We're doing some work with Mr Giles in drama this term. It's great fun!

We're all hoping to build our confidence at performing so that we are confident when we do our class assembly later this term.

Listening, talking, reading and writing

We regularly practise our language skills.

In Drama this week we had to pretend to be aliens from another planet - when you were in the "hot seat" you were an alien and you had to answer questions that people asked - like "What is your favourite food?" or "What does your house look like?"

In RME we had to talk in groups to work together to sequence the Easter story.

We enjoy going to the library and sharing books with each other.

We did listening skills ...

... and in maths we need to talk, listen, read and write to practise our times tables.

We finished writing our star myths this week too, and we recorded more traditional tales which can be heard here. We hope you enjoy them.