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!

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?

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! 

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.

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!

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!!

28.10.21 Halloween Art

We painted our backgrounds before we added our spooky silhouettes. Don't they look great?!

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!

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!

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.

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. 

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!!

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.

While it was dry and sunny we headed outdoors for some of our lessons.

We also made self portraits out of playdough.