P5 - P7 Class Aug 20 to Jun 22
31/5/22 Loch Insh Activity Day
We had an amazing day out at Loch Insh! Pupils really enjoyed the experience of canoeing, paddleboarding and archery and they gained lots of new skills. We also enjoyed an evening meal together. The weather was kind to us too!
18/5/22 - The P5-7 pupils visited the Affric and Kintail Deer Management Group. They provided an educational experience of traditional upland estate management focusing on deer as a central theme.
26/4/22 - We visit Aigas Field Centre
27/4/22 - We have a tradition in Balnain that the P7 pupils can wear their Leaver's Hoodies during their last term with us.
30/3/22 - Our trip to Culloden Battlefield
Shinty News
Huge congratulations to Emily, Glenn, Euan & Finn who represented Balnain as part of the Glen Urquhart shinty team at the recent National Indoor Shinty Finals in Fort William.
They came in second place in a closely fought final.
Well done all of you!
1/3/22 - The Jacobites are coming … !!
As part of our project about The Jacobites, the class really enjoyed a drama session with Amanda Luscombe-Smith, where we explored what life as like during Jacobite times.
It was great fun to re-enact a Highland Charge with our own targes!
16/12/21 - Today the senior pupils helped to plant a Victoria Plum tree and a Concord Pear tree in the school garden. These were purchased with money raised from the sale of firewood from our Bird Cherry tree, which had to be taken down due to safety reasons. We are looking forward to seeing some plums and pears growing in our school garden!
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in the Big Class…… We have been celebrating Christmas Jumper Day with £37:85 raised for Save the Children Fund.
We have also been making lovely fabric Christmas decorations…
We have been busy creating bug houses to encourage biodiversity in the school garden.
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!!
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 Emily, Maribel and Dubhgal for your winning designs!
Visit to Newton Room UHI
It was very exciting to visit the Newton Room at the University of the Highlands & Islands last week. Lindsey, our guide helped us to find out a little bit more about robotics. We learned how to measure the circumference of wheels and how to use this information to calculate distance.
Then we programmed robots to travel a specific distance without hitting a target. We used ipads to program robots to travel along a specific perimeter of a shape that we created on the floor. It was great fun!
Hebridean Whale & Dolphin Trust
We have been taking part in a series of lessons about the work of the HWDT and on Friday we took part in a live Q&A session with two members of the HWDT team, who were located on board the Silurian, their research boat near Mull. The pupils were praised by the HDWT team for their “really great and interesting questions”. It has widened our knowledge of whales and dolphins around the west coast of Scotland.
Technology Skills – BeeBot Treasure Map
We have had fun exploring directions and routes with BeeBots, the programmable robots. We designed games involving a series of instructions, rules and routes for a treasure hunt. The wee class ‘road-tested’ the games for us. Don’t they look great?
Shinty News
Emily, Glenn, Euan and Finn recently represented Balnain as part of the Glen Urquhart shinty team in the Tulloch Cup Finals in Fort William. They played very well and came in second place to Newtonmore. A super effort by our shinty stars!
Week 2 - Mapping Skills
This week we have been improving our map reading skills. We explored virtual maps and then we found out about Ordnance Survey maps and looked at the one for the Balnain area. We then practised using a compass in the playground and drew our own maps of the school area.
Rights Respecting Schools
The Rights of the Child is very relevant to our school setting. We discussed this and then designed posters to illustrate some of the these Rights and then we displayed them in the relevant areas of the school. For example: Articles 24 & 39 Every Child has a Right to Healthcare. This poster is now attached to the First Aid cupboard.
Week 1 - New Playground Equipment
We would like to buy some new playground equipment and so we looked through some catalogues from educational suppliers and also online for some ideas.
We used our maths skills to work out the total cost of items and calculate the measurements. Very exciting!
Building Bridges
Our Design & Technology challenge was to design and make a bridge using only paper and sellotape. The bridge had to span a 25cm gap between two tables and it also had to support a given weight. Our ‘engineers’ set to work and produced an impressive selection of bridge designs, which all supported the given weight. A few bridges even supported a 4kg weight! So in future, if the Scottish Government is planning to build a fourth bridge over the Forth, they know where to find us!
18/8/21 - Welcome back to our P5 to P7 class
Egg Decorating Competition
Everybody did a such great job in decorating their eggs!
Well done to Christopher, Daisy and Maisie for their winning designs!
30/3/21 - We really enjoyed our Easter STEM Challenge today. We had to design a safety harness for our eggs to travel safely across the room on a zip line. This wasn't as easy as it sounds! We had to consider many factors to make it successful - we discussed friction, gravity, mass, air resistance and aerodynamic designs, as well as the properties of different materials. Well done to everyone!
The fastest time recorded today was from Emily and Euan's design, which took 2.85 seconds to travel down the zip line. We were very impressed!
Virtual Cross Country
We have all been trying to improve our fitness by participating in the Highlife Highland Virtual Cross Country Challenge. Well done to everybody for completing this!
29/3/21 - P7 Transition to Glen Urquhart High School
The transition process for our P7s is slightly different to previous years. They are having weekly Google Meets with the pupils of Glenurquhart Primary School, Cannich Bridge Primary School and the teachers at the High School.
Our pupils have made a film with 10 facts about our school.
VID_20210329_112946.mp4Gingerbread Biscuits: 21/12/20
Today we enjoyed baking these gingerbread biscuits and decorating them. Hope they taste as good as they looked!
The classroom smelled delicious today!
Festive Foliage:
We made lovely arrangements of festive evergreen foliage to hang up at home.
Christmas Star Decorations
P5-7 enjoyed making these Christmas Star decorations. It was quite a challenging task as they were quite fiddly and required careful wrap weaving. Well done to everyone for your hard work! We think they are beautiful!
Friendship Bracelets:
We talked about the importance of friendships and the qualities which make a good friend. We made personalised friendship bracelets for our friends.
Animation:
We enjoyed exploring Stop Motion Studio to create these animations. We had to write a simple storyboard, create our characters, props and scenery, then use our Chrome Books to take a series of photographs for the animation. Some of us tried to add sound effects and music too. We are quite pleased with our first attempts and we all know how we would like to improve our efforts in future.
We also developed lots of other skills like: teamwork, by including everyone in the group, listening to everyone's ideas, compromising, taking turns, all contributing to the tasks, problem solving, perseverance, and many more besides!
We are looking forward to using this app again in the future.
Well done everyone!
Copy of Winter_wonderland_1_.mp4Copy of fun_in_the_snow.mp4Copy of My_first_Movie.mp4Copy of wacky_races.mp4Copy of snowmen_at_night.mp4Copy of christmas_eve (1).mp4Symmetry
13/11/20 - The class were outside finding examples of symmetry in their school environment.
Maths Week Scotland
We had fun using some of the activity cards and resources from our Outdoor Maths Kit. We measured the trees in our playground and calculated how old they were. We also created maps of our playground and had a go at measuring distances with trundle wheels. We also drew shapes on the tarmac and worked out their perimeter.
Class Charter:
For the start of a new school year we have also agreed a new Class Charter by reflecting on the Rights of the Child and how we can agree to support the rights of everyone in our class.
We also created our own avatars - can you spot your child?
Wasps
All of the pupils were very concerned by the number of wasps appearing in the classrooms and playground. Some people were scared they would get stung.
We had a lesson with Mrs MacLeod where we learned more about wasps and their life-cycle. Hopefully we won't worry about them so much now.
AFskip.MOVSkipping
We have been trying to improve our fitness this term by doing Run a Mile and from skipping sessions.
We can do some great skipping tricks now!