Embedded Files
29/6/22 - Over the last few weeks the class have been making an entry for the Highland Mammals Schools Competition.
The display was made from items that would go into a recycle bin or gathered from the school grounds.
We have a Deer, Badger and Red Squirrel all mammals found within our local area and also the names of our School Houses.
We will find out in the new school year how they have done.
21/6/22 - We had our final visit from the Countryside Ranger John Orr (and his dog). We collected our camera and ink trap from the wood and we will have a look through the footage to see whether we managed to film any creatures.
8/6/22 - Yesterday we had our second visit from the Countryside ranger John Orr. We went into the woods beside the school to have a look at what wildlife could possibly live there. We set up our camera and ink trap in the wood area in the hope that we can capture some of the creatures that live there. We played a food chain game and a mammal quiz testing our knowledge on all of our learning this term. We will be checking the traps regularly and hope that by the end of term we will have camera footage of the animals living next door to our school!
23/5/22 - Shinty Stars!
Well done to our P3/4 shinty team who recently played in a local P5 and under tournament. What great team work and positive attitudes from you all! We are very proud of you!
16/5/22 - P2/3/4 had a lovely visit today from John Orr the countryside ranger. This afternoon he came into our classroom to talk to us about Highland Mammals which is our topic for the term. We were learning about what mammals are, what types of mammals live in the Highlands and those that have become extinct.
We will be doing lots of exciting things with John in the next few months or so for our topic. We are going to be looking at life cycles, food chains, habitats and the importance of mammals to the natural environment. We are also going to be setting up a camera and an ink trap to monitor what wildlife we have in and around our own school grounds.
9/5/22 - It was a busy day in P2/3/4 today! We were learning a new card game in maths called 'I spy'. The game is helping us practice our addition, subtraction and multiplication skills.
In the afternoon for our science lesson we were joined by the big class who were great helpers. We continued our learning about food chains and carried out an experiment to see what would happen if we removed sunlight when planting seeds.
Following our fantastic trip to Aigas, we went pond dipping in our own school pond. Have a look at what we found!
We found a few dragonfly and damselfly nymphs, a water boatman, some phantom midge larvae, a whirlygig beetle and we saw newts as well. Our marsh marigolds were out in flower too!
3/5/22 - It was lovely to have everyone back after the long weekend. Today in our literacy lesson we were learning the difference between thick and thin questions. Working in cooperative learning groups we came up with our own questions for the clip Hewn. We had a great discussion and came up with some brilliant answers to the questions we created.
28/04/22 Class Trip to Aigas Field Centre
The sun was shining for us at Aigas today! What a stunning location!
We had a super day of outdoor learning with the fantastic Aigas team. So much wildlife spotting, with pond dipping and den building too. We were learning about local wildlife, beavers, identifying pond invertebrates, using microscopes and so much more! Enjoy all the photos!
21/3/22 - With all this sun it was time to open up our ice cream parlour this morning. The class had great fun ordering, creating and 'eating ice creams'. We even carried out a class survey to find out what the most popular ice cream flavour is.
Today in maths we have been working on our addition and subtraction skills. We have been playing lots of different mental maths games using cards and dice to improve how quickly we can work out adding and subtracting sums within 30.
7/3/22 - We had a great last Kodaly session with Rosalind today via Google meets. We were practising keeping a beat, playing musical games and learning how to combine pitch and rhythm on the stave using the jamboard.
1/3/22 - We had a great time bringing our Viking topic to life with our drama session run by Amanda's in P2/3/4 this afternoon. We all became Vikings with our own Viking names and had actions to match -many were very terrifying!
The class also acted out a day in the life of a Viking thinking about all the tasks a Viking would have to do to survive. We think we have some budding actors and actresses here at Balnain!
28/2/22 - It was lovely to see everyone today after the weekend. During our soft start this morning we had lots of the class playing in our Balnain Primary Post Office. Parcels had to be counted, weighed and delivered; letters and postcards written along with the odd tea break! Others in the class were developing their hand and eye co-ordination, copying pictures of warships and submarines from a book kindly lent to them by our school bus driver Bill. There was also a bit of time for some drama role play in the home corner. What a busy start to the day!
7/2/22
We had a lovely Monday in P2/3/4. The children enjoyed singing songs and playing musical games with Rosalind during our morning Kodaly session.
For science this afternoon we were exploring forces. The class took part in various experiments to determine the impact pushing and pulling has on an object. We even had a class tug of war!
5/2/22 Shinty Super Stars!
We would like to say a huge well done to all of our pupils who played in the local shinty tournament. Great teamwork, super shinty skills, positive attitudes and lots of smiles from everyone! Brilliant!
4/2/22 Here Come The Vikings!!
We kick started our new topic with a fantastic wall display of a Viking long boat complete with our very own Vicious Vikings! Do you recognise any of them?
1/2/22 - Brilliant balancing today from the P2/3/4 during their gymnastics session!
We worked in small groups to develop a short sequence of balances using different parts of our bodies.
Have a look at what we came up with!
Play Activities
Our pupils really enjoy leading their own learning by choosing their own daily morning play activities. They love learning through play! We are always impressed with what the children want to learn. Some of them have been using Geomags to create fantastic 3D shapes with magnets; others enjoy playing with the farm set and taking some animals to Africa and Indonesia; others enjoy being archaeologists in our sand tray and unearthing all sorts of treasures and others were choosing to create wonderful drawings of land, sea and air military vehicles; others use DuoLingo to learn Indonesian; others choose to practise tying their shoe laces; others choose to practise spelling common words with our Illuminated Light Boards; others have enjoyed playing in our home corner and creating tasty treats out of play doh. Well done everyone!
18/1/22 - Today P2/3/4 were learning to roll with control in PE. We all had a go at a pencil roll, forward roll, rolling to stand and even a backwards roll!
We will continue our gymnastics block next week with a focus on balancing.
A couple of the photos are blurred as my phone didn't cope very well with the movement!
17/1/22 - P2/3/4 were delving into the world of magnets today for science! They tested out various materials in the classroom to see if they would would be attracted or repelled by a magnet.
We discussed the use of magnets in day to day life and our next steps are to create a game using magnets.
7/1/22
It was so wonderful to see everyone again after the holidays!
With all this winter weather, lots of fun was had making snowmen in our playground.
We designed a little experiment to see if we could stop a snowman from melting so quickly. We created little ice snowmen and investigated whether different materials could help stop them from melting so quickly. We were all quite surprised with the results! We learned that some materials were good insulators.
Christmas Jumpers!
It was lovely to see everyone looking so festive for our Christmas Jumper Day! We raised £43 for Save the Children. Well done!
December Crafts: We worked hard to create these wonderful wool wrap pictures, using hot or cold colour schemes. We think they look beautiful, especially with the sparkly beads! We also had a go at sewing these gorgeous gingerbread men decorations. Don't they look great? Well done everyone!
12.11.21 - Loy Krathong
The children have been learning about a variety of religious festivals. They understand that many of these festivals are festivals of light and they have inspired some class artwork. The class worked together to make a floating floral display for Loy Krathong, a Buddhist festival. Isn't it beautiful? The leaves are meant to be banana leaves, forming a basket to float flowers and candles.
9.11.21 Visit from Aigas Outreach
We had a super outdoor session today focusing on Climate Change with the wonderful Aigas Outreach Team! We learned about some of the environmental challenges we face, and solutions already being implemented. We discussed how we, as individuals and as a school, could do better for our environment.
First we learned about the carbon cycle by becoming carbon atoms in an interactive activity to discover what carbon is, where it goes and what role it has in the atmosphere.
We examined how long different materials take to decompose, and how litter affects the planet.
We did an experiment to make a biodegradable alternative to the plastic bottle! We made blue blobs!
We learned about creative solutions people have already found to deal with conservation issues.
We were given seeds collected from native trees to plant and take care of.
Thank you Team Aigas!!
Have a look through our collection of photos from today.
Bonfire Night Safety
We discussed the importance of being safe on Bonfire Night and the children created posters to remind everyone of how to stay safe.
28.10.21 Halloween Art
We painted our backgrounds before we added our spooky silhouettes. Don't they look great?!
26.10.21 Counting Collections
We put our counting skills to the test when we were busy counting collections of objects today.
1.10.21 - Ready, Steady, Recycle!
Well done to everyone for your wonderful models and designs that you made for National Recycle Week. We were so impressed with the variety of creative ideas! A special well done to Eirica, Jasmine and Alexa for your winning designs!
15.09.21 Gardening Club - We helped to plant some spring bulbs in the school playground and we are excited to look out for them growing next year!
We have created our own map of our local area. Can you see all the local features?
1/09/21 - Local Walk
The sun was shining for us this afternoon when we went for a walk in our local woods. We were noticing lots of wildlife on our way; butterflies, flowers, berries, dragonflies and fungi. We went up one of the forestry tracks that has recently been harvested to enjoy a good view of Balnain and Glen Urquhart. We could locate features such as the loch, river and main road that we were seeing on our maps. We also had a look through our binoculars and some of us could even see our homes! This really helped us to build a mental map of our local area. Well done everyone!
30/08/21 Beebots
We had such fun using Beebots this afternoon! We had to plan, describe and program routes for our Beebot using words and angles associated with direction and turning.
23/08/21
We were delighted to welcome Rosalind back to our class today for Kodaly music sessions!
The children really enjoyed learning new songs and games. Great fun was had by all!
20.08.21
We were using directional language such as forwards, backwards, turn left or right to give each other directions and guide each other to find a target number on the wooden logs. It reminded us of following Sat Nav directions in a car. When we reached our target number everybody said "You have reached your destination!"
19.08.21
We enjoyed playing some maths games with playing cards. This game is called Victory and we had to find pairs to make target numbers. The person with the most pairs wins!
Welcome!
It was so lovely to see everyone back at school this week.
Everyone had a think about why they like school and for most of the pupils it was because they could see their friends again!
18/8/21 - Welcome Back to our P2 to P4 pupils
11/06/21 - This week we had our last session of Kodaly with Rosalind. The children loved learning the new songs and games and there was always much hilarity as we tried to do the actions and keep the beat. Our bird box is busy again and we are hoping that this time the birds are here to stay and their nest will really begin to take shape.
Bird Box Update!
The children are on their summer holidays but we wanted to share the exciting news that we have chicks in our bird box! We could see 4 chicks eagerly awaiting their parents to come and feed them.
04/06/21 - Another busy week in class. The children are fascinated with the caterpillars and everyone is enjoying watching them grow, shed skins and form webs. Two of the caterpillars are now hanging and we're hoping by Tuesday all of them will have formed a chrysalis. The children are designing and making models. Most have chosen to work with a partner and they have spent time discussing, negotiating, and planning what they want to make, along with materials needed.
28/05/21 - What a busy week it has been in the little class! Our caterpillars have arrived and we are really enjoying watching them grow along with our sunflowers, peas and onions! We continued with Measure, and spent time thinking about metres and measuring what we could find with our partners. But the most exciting event of the week had to be our Class Talks. The children were absolutely magnificent!! Each of them prepared fantastic information and were all able to stand up in front of the class and deliver their talks. Some were nervous to begin with but once they started to talk, they spoke well and answered questions knowledgeably. All with a smile on their faces too! Massive well done to each of them!
21/05/21 - This week we started to look at Measure and the children had great fun measuring lots of different things, including each other, with a variety of objects. We also spent time looking at the Lifecycle of a Butterfly and made some fantastic butterflies with Mrs MacLeod on Wednesday. We are looking forward to our caterpillars arriving so we can watch how they transform into butterflies.
14/05/21 - This week we were learning about the life cycle of a plant. On Monday we planted sunflower seeds, along with pea and onion seeds. On Wednesday we discussed the different stages of the life cycle and drew fantastic pictures to help us with our writing on Thursday. We are so excited to care for our seeds and watch, measure, and record how much they grow in the coming weeks. A big thank you to Mrs Girvan @lochnesspumpkins for providing the class with seeds.
07/05/21 - The children have settled back well and are working very hard. We have started a new class novel, The Enchanted Wood, and the whole class are captivated by the setting and all the different characters and adventures. Everyone imagined what they thought the cottage looked like and we had great fun creating textured pictures of the book's setting and describing it in our writing.
04/05/2021
In PE we are enjoying learning all about kicking and how to pass, dribble, move, and aim using a football. Our concentration skills have been put to the test especially when using our less 'natural' foot to dribble and pass.
01/04/21 – What a busy last week of term! The children have had great fun learning all about Easter. We have explored the Easter story, made Easter baskets, created Easter/Spring gardens, decorated Easter eggs, solved Easter maths problems, and this afternoon we cannot wait to take part in our Easter egg hunt. The children have worked really hard this term and are so ready for this holiday! I hope you all a happy, restful and safe Easter holidays!
26/03/21 - This week we welcomed back our P4s, and we're all are super excited to be back in the class together. We have spent time thinking about and discussing our health and wellbeing, especially regarding corona virus. There was lots of independent and collaborative working to produce posters on how to stay safe and happy in school.
24/03/21 - HUGE excitement in the class today as we spotted a pair of Blue Tits in our nesting box. We have a bird box on the outside of our classroom and it has a camera and a microphone which enables us to see it in our classroom on the Smart Board. We can also see a small amount of nesting material in the corners too. We are all hoping that they will make a nest in our bird box!
In maths we have been looking at Time. We have explored days of the week, months of the year, seasons, our daily routine, hours in one day, am/pm, and learned more about different types of clocks. We made our own analogue clocks and enjoyed drawing them in the playground.
05/03/21 - Today we made our favourite book characters out of potatoes.
04/03/21 - We loved taking part in World Book Day, listening to some stories, and drawing bookmark characters with Rob Biddulph.
24/2/21 - We really enjoyed our walk to Loch Meikle today. The sun was shining and we saw our shadows again! We noticed that the river was very high and had flooded. We think this is due to all the recent snow and ice melting. We also saw some ice waves at the edge of the loch. It looked like a pile of crystals being washed up on the shore!!
24/2/21 - We were very pleased to complete our new jigsaws. They were quite a challenge! We needed to persevere and work together with our observation skills to complete them. We think they look great!
22/02/21 - It's wonderful to have the P1-3 children back in school and they are so excited to reconnect with each other. The classroom has been buzzing with loads of chat and laughter, and the children have spent considerable time playing and learning in class as well as outside.
16/12/20 The pupils made and then decorated gingerbread biscuits in class today. I hoped they enjoyed eating them at home.
PE - We have been practising our throwing and catching techniques and even tried passing to our partners when we were both running. We also tried to throw the balls and beanbags into a bucket which is a lot harder than it looks!
16 - 22 November 2020 - is Book Week Scotland our national celebration of books and reading.
P1, P2 and P3 pupils all received Read, Write, Count bags filled with books and resources to inspire a lifelong love of reading, writing and counting.
Festivals and Celebrations
Festivals and Celebrations
This term we are learning about the different Festivals and Events celebrated during Autumn and Winter. We have already looked at Halloween and Bonfire Night. The children created their own paper pumpkins and bonfire night artwork, and wrote super Magic Potion spells and Acrostic Poems using the word Firework. In the coming weeks we hope to learn about other special celebrations like Remembrance Day, Diwali and Christmas.
30/10 Some of us dressed up to celebrate Halloween. Here we are with our decorated paper plate pumpkins.
5/10 Many thanks to Soirbheas for giving all children a nature pack. We had great fun planting our salad leaves and are looking forward to tasting them.
The children have been learning about place value and we used some natural materials to identify the value of digits in a number.
Skipping
Skipping
2/10 - On Friday we headed out to enjoy the sunshine, practising our coordination skills through skipping. This was challenging but great fun!!
30/9 - Following our woodland walk last week the children created pictures using the natural materials they had gathered. Some chose to create a picture of their favourite animal and others created flowers or trees.
Ask your child to help identify their picture!
Wasps
Wasps
All of the pupils were very concerned by the number of wasps in the classrooms and playground, and some were scared they would get stung.
But, after a lesson with Mrs MacLeod, who taught us more about wasps and their life-cycles, we now realise why they are buzzing about us and are trying not to worry if they come towards us!
While it was dry and sunny we headed outdoors for some of our lessons.
We also made self portraits out of playdough.
This year we welcomed Annick into our school.
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