Golfing and Growing!

Today we have taken advantage of the better weather!  We had our second, and last, session of Club Golf today.  We were learning about putting and chipping.  As it was so nice we did some of our putting outside!  We had to make sure our feet were in the right position before hitting the ball – we know to take a step back then out to the side.  We had to try and score points but putting the ball onto a sticky score board.  It was great fun!  There is an open day at the Stromness Golf Club this Saturday 2^nd May – it is free to go along and get a taste of golfing!  They even have some clubs for you to practice with!

Finally this afternoon we planted some seeds in the raised bed outside our classroom.  We planted Poppy, Vetch and Butterfly Mix seeds.  We are hoping that these will attract butterflies and bees.  We are going to hatch some butterflies in our classroom so decided we needed to provide them with a habitat of wild flowers to attract them back!  We turned the soil and added some compost to it.  Then we sprinkled the seeds and watered it to help the seeds to grow.  We have also planted some in small pots in our classroom and will plant them when the seedlings are a bit bigger. 

Just Another Manic Monday!

We’ve kicked our week off in P5 with a ‘Manic Monday’! 

First of all today we had a ‘taster’ session of some Russian.  Mrs Carr came in to talk to us about Russia and give us an introduction to the language.  It was great fun!  We saw some Russian memorabilia, heard about famous Russians, looked at the Russian alphabet and had a go at speaking in Russian. 

Then we had our second session of Tag Rugby.  Unfortunately it was a bit too snowy to try and play on the 3G pitch so we played in the hall instead.  We are really developing our rugby skills.  Tom, the local rugby development officer, is really impressed at the progress we have made in just two sessions.  We are looking forward to using our skills at the local Tag Rugby festival on Friday!

Finally today we took part in a worldwide ‘Puffin Virtually Live’ Event.  Jeff Kinney was being interviewed and releasing the title and cover of his new book.  As we are all Wimpy Kid Fans at SPS, P6 and P7 joined us to watch it.  We heard about Jeff Kinney’s favourite parts in each of his books and got to see the brand new cover first.

 

Rugby, Relics and Rubish

We have had a busy week in P5.  We started a block of Tag Rugby on Monday.  It was lovely and sunny – perfect conditions for playing Rugby!  We got the chance to revisit our skills we have learned before at Tag Rugby in preparation for the Tag Rugby Festival on Friday 1^st May.  We enjoyed our session and are looking forward to the next one. 

 

We finished off our Viking Topic this week.  We looked at some artefacts which Sandra from Historic Scotland left for us to see.  We have really enjoyed our topic this term –it’s been very interesting learning all about the Vikings and their lives. 

 

 

 

Our new topic this term is ‘Orkney Wildlife’.  We are going to learn about some of the common wildlife in Orkney and what we can do to preserve their environment.  As part of this we ‘Bagged the Bruck’ on the shoreline in the front of the school.  We found all kinds of things including gloves, cans and even a hard hat!  It was easy to find the big pieces of bruck but what we needed to do was pick up the really tiny pieces of plastic which birds and fish and other wildlife might try to eat.  We managed to gather 7 bags of bruck from quite a small piece of the shoreline.  It made us think a lot about not littering the environment.

 

 

Back with a Bang!

Welcome back to Term 4!  We are straight into our learning with a bang!  We’ve been doing some information handling in maths this week.  We’ve been asking each other questions and recording the information in a table using tally marks and then converting them to frequencies!  It’s been great fun.  We’ve learned about the different kinds of questions we can ask and how the answers we get determine what kind of table we need to make. 

 

We also had a music lesson in our own classroom this week!  Miss Shearer showed us a clip from Tom and Jerry but we couldn’t hear the soundtrack.  We had to go and create our own soundtrack using instruments from the music room.  We listened to each groups’ soundtracks and then we heard the real one.  It was interesting to hear where we had used similar sounds to the original! 

 

 

Finally this week we had a new addition to our classroom – tadpoles! Our topic this term is going to be Orkney Wildlife so tadpoles will be a great opportunity to learn about some wildlife right on our doorstep!  They are still spawn at the moment but we think by Monday most of them will have hatched!  We will keep you updated on their progress!

 

P5's Big Day Oot!

On Wednesday 25^th March P5 had a ‘Big Day Oot’!  We got glorious weather and had a brilliant day learning about Viking life in Orkney.

We started our trip by going to Maeshowe – a Neolithic burial chamber which the Vikings broke into and vandalised!  It was really interesting to see and it boggled our minds a little bit to think we were standing where the Vikings actually stood and we could touch their carvings and runes in the stone!

 

Then we headed into Kirkwall.  We had a quick break outside the Cathedral and then went in for our guided tour.  We learned about some of the features of the cathedral, including the most valuable item in the building!  Fran also told us lots of details about St Magnus and St Rognvald and why the Cathedral was built.  We saw where St Magnus’ bones are kept and saw pictures of his skull where Lifolf had struck him with his axe. 

 

Next we nipped into the Museum to have a look at the Scar Plaque and also the box they found St Magnus’ bones in.  Then we went into Tankerness House Gardens to have our lunch – we enjoyed our picnic outside and having a run around the gardens!

 

After our lunch we met Sandra and began our tour of Kirkwall.  She showed us a map of Kirkwall in the Viking times – we were most surprised to find out that the sea would have come right up to the front of the Cathedral!  There were some really interesting facts about the buildings and street in Kirkwall – ask us to tell you some of them next time we’re in Kirkwall! 

 

We also had a quick visit to Grooves to see our Hamnavoe in situ and add some final touches of people and cars to it!  It was also an opportunity to see some of the other models in the exhibition.

 

By the time we were picked up we were all tired from walking all day and learning so much!  In fact we thought we were going to fall asleep in the bus on the way back! We had a brilliant day!