Have a strange Christmas!

Today, we researched different Christmas traditions. Here's some of the traditions from around the world we found:

In Japan, some people go to KFC for Christmas dinner!

In India, people will decorate a mango tree at Christmas time.

In Brazil, seeing someone dressed up as Santa surfing is no surprise but seeing a reindeer surfing would  still be shocking!

In Canada, people will bake a cake with a bean inside. The person who finds the bean is king or queen for the day! It's a very lucky bean, I guess.

In the Ukraine people usually hide fake spiders and webs in their Christmas trees.

In Russia, everybody belief in St. Nicolas is popular but they used to believe in a witch woman instead.

Christmas events!

Today and tonight we have our Christmas service and concert. Primary four did very well performing their song, 'Mary's Boy Child'. Their practice certainly paid off! We really enjoyed watching the other classes performing well! 

Santa came to visit us today! He brought presents for our class: bean bags for our reading area and board games. On Tuesday we had our Christmas party with P3 and P5. It was filled with Scottish dancing, games and food!

This week! (By blogger Nell)

This week, we have... chimney sums 
I have learnt...to tell the time
I have enjoyed...Christmas crafts.


Fiddler on the Roof: I was in it and so was my dad I have been practsing rile hard anybody that comes I hope you enjoy it.

Teaching maths to the class

Maths groups had to teach the rest of the class how to add two numbers together. The pupils had to really think about what other children might find difficult, how to help them, and what was the important steps to explain.

School Closure Activities!

In the event of a school closure or when pupils are unable to get to school, here are some activities to benefit learning...

1. If there's enough snow, build a snowman. Make sure he has eyes, a nose, mouth, arms and a scarf! Can you make a snowman that is over 1 metre tall? 

    If there's not much snow but a lot of wind, create a kite. Here are two guides to help you. If you don't have some of the equipment, can you improvise by using something else? How high can you make your kite fly?

http://www.learnplayimagine.com/2013/03/how-to-make-kite.html

http://www.u-createcrafts.com/2012/05/how-to-make-garbage-bag-kite-by-2.html



2. Write a cinquain poem about the weather. Remember a cinquain has five lines. 

The first line is one word
The second the second line has two describing words
The third line has three action -ing words
The fourth has a short sentence (four-five words)
The fifth is another word for the first word (synonym) 

Can you write a cinquain for the wind? the snow? your favourite sport? film? feeling?



3. Practise your time tables. If you feel confident with a times table then time yourself. Try again, can you beat your first time?

4. Practise our song for the Christmas concert: 

Term 2: Salutations!

This term in primary 4, we have been reading a class novel: Charlotte's Web. The whole class is very excited about the story! 

Charlotte's Web, by E.B. White, is a children's boo about a pig called Wilbur. He is in danger of being killed and eaten as pigs usually do. Soon he befriends Charlotte, a very intelligent spider, who promises to save his life. Charlotte's Web teaches us all about being a good and encouraging friend. 

Good friendships make our life better.

We have used different ways of exploring the novel. In languages we have written and performed our own plays (based on the chapter 'Bad News'). This helped us understand the features of a play script and our talking and listening skills.

Menna is playing Charlotte, high up in her web. Abi is playing Wilbur, in his pen.
Dylan is the sheep with baaadd news!

Caity is playing Fern, who watches and listens to the
animals and their adventures.

Pupils had to work well in groups to write and perform their play.

Recently, Primary 4 acted as reporters at a fair so they could write a news article about Wilbur's trip to the fair. This was a great way to think more about news reports and the lot of Charlotte's Web.


We have used Charlotte's Web to inspire our art work but most of all, it teaches us about friendship.

Wedding!

Last term, Primary 4 held a mock wedding. This was an enjoyable way of learning about the meaning of a wedding ceremony. 

The bride, groom and whole class had to make decisions about the wedding service. We discussed what each role's responsibilities were and how we could do them.

It took a lot of courage to be a main role in our mock wedding, well done Primary 4!

https://vimeo.com/80137616

This Week (By Owen)

This week we have been writing about Charlotte's Web, when they went to the fair.
I have learnt about Tutankhamun's tomb. Some of it was made out of real gold.
I have enjoyed maths because I like counting.

This Week! (By blogger Aiden)

This week, I have enjoyed...making the pyramids.
I have learnt...to play with my friends.
I am looking forward to...the activites.

This Week (by Blogger Eileen)

This week we have had a shop just outside the classroom 2 of the maths groups have got to be the shopkeepers we had to count back change to people.
I have enjoyed writing our wedding invitations.
I have learnt how to multiply big numbers by 10 or 100.
I am looking forward to our mock wedding.

(Ruben) I have enjoyed doing our wedding invites. I am looking forward to doing our mock wedding.

(Aiden, from last week) This week we had an assembly, it was cool and very good. I have enjoyed this week. I am looking forward to for experiments. It is cool.

P4 Assembly: Here we rest our story!

We would like to say a big THANK YOU to parents and family who visited us on Thursday for Primary 4's assembly. The children were absolutely brilliant and their performance showed how much hard work they had put into it! So much of it was their own decision, including the song ('The Lion Sleeps Tonight'), Kwaito dancing and describing their masks.

Attached is the video footage. We watched this on Friday and discussed all the positive feedback we were given. We also thought of ways to improve our performance for next time!

Africa Assembly part 2 from SPS on Vimeo.

Africa Assembly part 1 from SPS on Vimeo.

Taxi!

The boys discovered a fantastic and innovative way to clear up after playing with the Scrapstore. Dylan, Aiden, Owen and Ruben filled compost bins with Scrapstore objects and sped them back and forth across the playground!

P4 filling compost bins while tidying up. Aiden and Dylan tie the objects down with rope.

Ruben, Aiden and Dylan speed across the playground, cleaning up.

Inventive idea to tidy up and a little fun too!

Dans, Senufos, Baules and Woyos!

We have been continuing with our math work in multiplications, reading groups and RME topic (weddings). We are quickly working through our times tables and building them up using concrete materials.

Zoe, Lucy and Dylan building up the 4x tables

However, more and more we are spending time exploring our topic, Africa! Over the past two weeks we have used Africa to inspire our letter writing. I hope you received a personalised invite to our parents open afternoon and P4 assembly.  This week we have written letters to children in Muona, Malawi. The pupils are very excited to send letters to the other side of the world!

On Tuesdays (with Mrs Johnston) , Primary 4 have been investigating the climates found on Africa and recording the temperature in Malawi and Stromness... I'm afraid it is much colder here! much. colder. This involves our ability to predict and interpret graphs.

Creating a 3D map of Africa's climates

We used sand for deserts and will use felts and wood for forests

 We have spent a lot of time exploring African art, especially African masks. We started by discussing four types of African mask: Dan, Woyo, Senufo and Baule. Each have their own characteristics and special features.
Next we chose a type of mask to make and created a design. Secondly, using fabrics, paints, jewelry, scissors and a little help from mums and dads we created our masks. Looking at the pictures we can see a range of designs:

Out in the Sun, creating our mask designs

Dylan, Owen and Aiden working hard on their mask designs

Boys creating their Dan masks. Dan masks have pout lips, pointy chin and long forehead.

Pupils creating their Senufo , Baule and Woyo masks.

P4's finished masks. Notice the contrasting colours!

Leigha's Senufo mask. Senufo masks are used to contact the dead in the Senufo tribe.

We have really been enjoying our project yet in some parts of Africa children don't have enough to eat, or clean water to drink. We have learnt that there is enough food in the world to feed everyone but not everyone gets the food they need to survive. We have been saving money to provide children with school uniforms and meals to eat. In some lessons we explored rights ( a right to health, education, play) and we ordered these by importance:

P4 comparing children's lifestyles here and in Africa

Nell and Eileen dramatizing pouring cups of water from a pump in Africa

Organising rights in order of importance.

We realised that although education, shelter, food and play are rights for every child... not every child has these yet.

This Week (by bloggers Caity and Zoe)

This week people liked making African masks , writing,  maths, and other people have enjoyed Sumdog (website). Other people have enjoyed LAPTOPS (everyone likes the laptops!). We also liked having the e'pap porridge that Mrs Morrison brought in for us to try!

Dylan working on a laptop.

Mrs Morrison sharing about her charity work in Africa

Caity and Zoe

Sound Stories and Scrap Stores

We have had an interesting second week! In numeracy, we have been working on our recall of multiplication or addition number facts. We played games to help us recall quickly and accurately. 

Dylan and Aiden matching number facts (5x7) to their products (35)

During drama, we enjoyed some warm up games before creating sound stories. To create a sound poem, we divided ourselves into teams, chose sounds then added a narrative.

Drama class, in partners touching ankle to ankle and ear to ear!

On Friday, we explored our ability to create a method (to melt an ice cube) then evaluate it. Dylan ad Emily were able to melt an ice cube in 5 minutes. We tried squashing, squeezing, wrapping them up, wetting them and jumping on them. We found holding it tightly under cold water worked best.

We weren't allowed to use hot water, if you were wondering!

Abi melting an ice cube with her chosen method

On Tuesday, Primary 4 were visited by the Challenger Bus crew. The Challenger Bus taught our class about a missionary Mary Slessor and her work in Nigeria. We enjoyed this immensely. We got to to sing songs, ask and answer questions, play games and "CHOOSE YOUR FISH!" 

Primary 4 outside the Challenger bus 

Children being shown a small (very small) Bible

This is the first full week that we have had access to the Scrap Store: a collection of scrap and junk we use in our free play during lunch. There have been so many innovative ideas and pupils cooperating to build structures and invent games. The girl of Primary 4 are working on a climbing frame built from ropes!

Owen and Aiden creating a trolley with the Scrap Store

This Week! (By blogger Menna)

This week we have been learning about John Rae's early life and we have been recalling number facts. I really enjoyed it! I also liked gym.

We have got a new award, they are SPS hero's. we learnt a new song called Special Kind of Hero's.

Welcome to Primary 4!

Our classroom for 2013/14

We are glad to be back at school and in the senior end of Stromness Primary! There's so much we are looking forward to: our topic Africa, writing stories, other topics we will be doing, music and art.

In our first week we have been reading a story called 'Cloud Busting'. 'Cloud Busting' is a story about a friendship between Sam and his weird but wonderful friend, Davey. We created clouds with adjectives describing ourselves and retold the story using pictures and text (words). Abi used the words active and imaginative, Dylan used stylish. Other words our class used to describe ourselves were technical, sporty, intelligent, funny, musical and hilarious!

Our 'Cloud Busting' display (Our adjective clouds and our story summaries) 

We have been trying to decorate our classroom and organised some very important responsibilities for pupils to have such as librarian, water watch and window operator. We have explored the well being wheel for getting it right for every child.

Our Health and Wellbeing display, our class jobs and commitments

We created a set of class commitments. These commitments are:

To keep a tidy classroom, 

Follow instructions first time, 

Always respect other people and 

Think before you speak!

We are looking forward to everything this school year brings!