Term 2 well under way

Well, we've reached the end of our first week of the second term in primary 6. We've shared stories of our exciting holidays and we are once again well settling into school routine.
   We've all had the good fortune of gaining a new pupil in our class to mix things up a bit. I think we'd all agree she's a great fit for our great class and having an even number helps things out as well.
Let's have a great term!

Dahlicious Dress Up for Roald Dahl Day

Today, in celebration of the author, Roald Dahl, P6 and Stromness Primary School joined in with schools across the country in dressing up as our favourite Roald Dahl characters.

We had Charlie Bucket, Danny, the Champion of the World, Violet Beauregarde, Mrs. Silver, Verruca Salt, two Matildas, and two Mrs. Twits; a bunch of characters for sure.

This year's theme was the book, The Twits. We spent some of our afternoon learning from Quentin Blake how to draw Mr. Twit's beard and hearing all about Roald Dahl.

Well settled into Primary 6

Settled in

It's the end of week 5 and we've all settled into a new classroom, with a new teacher.
We've got into our new routine, found our new route back from the toilets and know what to do when Mr. Cowan claps 5 time.

Over the past 5 weeks we've been learning about Europe and are much more familiar with our countries, our flags, mountain ranges and have even been learning all about how our coastal features are formed.

Bike ability

We're in our 4th week of Bike Ability 2 with Mrs. Leitch and are all doing great. We can successfully use our turn signals and practice our manoeuvres safely.

P6 raring to go!

Giving Nature a Home

We’ve been very lucky this term to have had a few visits from Lindsey Taylor from the RSPB.  She has been helping us look for different types of wildlife around our school.  Last Wednesday we went on a ‘Nature Walk’ up to Copland’s Dock.  We found lots of different types of wildlife from birds to bugs!  We were surprised at how much we found so close to our school and Lindsey was surprised at how eagle eyed we are!  Miss Shearer took her camera but unfortunately the battery ran out after about 10 minutes!  Ooops!  Here are a few of the pictures! 

Today we headed out to Cottasgarth Bird Hide.  We were all very excited!  We spent time in the bird hide using our binoculars to see if we could spot the elusive Hen Harrier.  Unfortunately we didn’t manage to see any – they nest in the heather and are often very difficult to spot.  We did see a Raven, some Starlings and a group of 3 bonxies out hunting!  When we arrived at the hide we found a cuckoo who had possibly banged in to the window and had become stunned.  Lindsey picked it up and we got a really close look at it!  It was great. 

We heard lots of information about Hen Harriers.  We got to play some games where we used our listening skills to try and catch people and we also did a quiz on the beautiful mural painted in the hide.  Finally we went stream dipping to see what wildlife we could find in a natural stream – we mostly enjoyed splashing around in the water!

 

 

Although we didn’t see any Hen Harriers we had a brilliant time.  Cottasgarth Bird Hide is open all year round and is a great place to go to see birds as well as other wildlife – we would all like to go back! 

A big thanks to Lindsey for all the visits she has done for us this term – we have enjoyed every one of them!

Brilliant Bikeability

This week we completed our Level 1 Bikeability.  We’ve had great fun over the last few weeks learning about how to check our bikes, how to get on our bikes safely, how to cycle properly and how to signal using one arm.  Mr Macleod and Mr Johnston have been impressed at how we have improved over the last 5 weeks and how well we have listened.  We will now get certificates which will show the areas we have passed (coloured green) and the areas we still need to work on (orange and red).  Mr Macleod reminded us that even if we have ‘green’ on our certificates we still need to practice sometimes! 

We were very proud of our class mate Caity who has been working hard to learn to cycle over the last few weeks.  She has made so much progress she has learned how to cycle her bike and was able to join in with our final session in the playground!  Well done Caity!!

We will do our Bikeability Level 2 in Primary 6 where we will learn how to cycle safely on the road and how to use roundabouts. 

Lovely Library

Today we visited the new Library in Stromness at Warehouse Buildings.  We were given a tour of the building and got to see around all the rooms in the building.  We saw the meeting rooms and where they are going to hold ‘Bookbug’ instead of at our school!  We went upstairs and saw some desks where we can do our homework or studying when we are older.  We also got to go into the George Mackay Brown room where there are lots of special books which used to belong to George himself.  There were also copies of old Orcadian newspapers – some from the 1930’s!  Miss Shearer looked in some of them and found Ruben and Lucy’s birth announcements!  Lots of us would like to back and have a look at all the old newspapers.  Miss Shearer said we should try and find her birth announcement from 1987!  We then had some time to look at the books in the ‘Junior Fiction’ section and read quietly for a little while.  We were really impressed with the light and airy library and are looking forward to visiting again.    

Bikeability Update

Yesterday we had another session of Bikeability.  We have been learning about how to check our bike is roadworthy and safe to cycle.  We have also learnt about getting on and off our bikes safely. Yesterday we had to cycle past Mr Macleod, take a small hoop from his hand, turn at the bottom and give it back to Mr Macleod on our way back.  It was tricky!  We had to think about lots of different things like our balance, putting our hand out and turning all at the same time.  This is preparation for when we go on the road and need to indicate which way we are turning. 

 

Mr Macleod and Mr Johnston are impressed with our cycling skills and how we are coming on.  We will hopefully achieve our Bikeability Level 1 before the summer!