This week to finish off our COO 26 work we finished off making our recycling machines from junk. The children drew designs, gathered materials, taped and glued them together and finally painted these. This was a very messy process. However, the end results were great and the children had great fun. Photos below. 

We created some snowmen to be displayed on our Christmas stars around the school. The pictures of these aren’t great as the are already hanging up but I think they look lovely and are adding some Christmas spirit to the school. 

In outdoor learning this week we looked at exploring shape and symmetry. With some brilliant team work and communication by the children. 

In other areas we have been learning about time, r constant blends link cr and br and we have started reading our new class novel for Christmas which is called the Christmasaurus. The children have enjoyed getting to know the characters, elves and of course Santa over the first couple of chapters. 

I hope you have all enjoyed a nice long weekend. Today we learned a little bit about St Andrew as well.
We are all looking forward to getting into the Christmas spirit over the next few weeks. I can’t believe it is almost December!
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This week was Scottish Book Week. The children got the opportunity to explore the books on offer at the Book Fair. They have all chosen what books they would like and brought home a slip. Some of the children have already been given books that they have ordered. Unfortunately some of the boys and girls will need to wait a little bit longer to get their hands on their books as Mrs Ivalo will need to order more copies. These will be delivered when the book fair is collected. 

As part of book week the children received their read, write, count bags. Throughout the week we enjoyed hearing the stories that were in the bags. 

We continued to work on our writing of instructions creating our own text maps and looked at constant blend like cl, fl, go in our phonics. In numeracy we have been looking at time including months of the year and moving onto o’clock and half past on an analogue clock. 

We also designed and started to build some recycling machines using our junk and old recycling to make our models. Pictures to follow once a bit more work is done on them. 

Star of the Week was Esenia for brilliant work in PE, literacy and maths. 

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On Thursday afternoon we returned to our classroom after lunch to find we had, had an intruder.

A golden egg and some clawed prints were suspiciously found lying in our classroom. Miss Notman put up some caution tape so we could examine the scene and get to the bottom of what had been in our classroom. 
After some discussion we came to the conclusion that it was a dragon! We had to come up with a plan to trap the dragon. 

we used the instructions below along with some actions to learn the text. This will help us in the coming weeks to write instructions, as well as have some fun while doing it. Mrs Ivalo joined us for our lesson and we were all very impressed with how well the children could retell the text. I look forward to the children creating some amazing text maps and written texts. 

This week we also finished our Diva lamps, which turned out amazing! We also learned about remembrance day and why this is so important. We took part in our 2 minute silence on Thursday to commemorate the occasion. 

This weeks star of the week was Noah who had been working so hard in class and giving his learning 100%.

Next week is Scottish Book week, all the children in the class will receive a read, write, count bag at the end of the week. 

This week we celebrated Diwali and Bonfire night. 

We started the week with a visit from the Galashiels Fire Department to learn all about bonfire and firework safety. The children learned about ‘Stop, Drop and Roll!’, as well as holding sparklers and staying away from fireworks and bonfires. The children were able to answer questions about his and we even got to have a look at the fire engine p, learning about all the tools they carry. 

We also learned about Diwali this week and made some diva lamps using salt dough. These still need to be painted but are now dry after Miss Notman put them in the oven. 

On Friday we discussed why we celebrate bonfire night and out a ‘Guy’ on top of the bonfire. 

In writing we started learning how to write instructions. to. Elgin this unit we completed a ‘cold task’ or a ‘give it a go’ task to show what we know. We wrote about how to defeat a monster. I am excited about what we are going to write about and learn throughout this writing block. Stay tuned for some exciting writing and pictures! 

In maths we focused on patterns and number sequences, counting in 2s, 3s and 5s. 
Following on from last weeks coding session, we took this outside and drew our own grids, directing each other round the grid and avoiding obstacles. This was lots of fun, although it did start to get cold so we headed back inside to finish our art work. 

This week saw the beginning of COP26 in Glasgow and we were learning all about what happens to our rubbish and what items should be recycled. In class we have a recycling centre for the children to practise putting the items into the correct bin. 
We have also collected lots of junk and recycling and look forward to turning this into some awesome creations. 

Some of the children enjoyed doing jigsaws this week so we took some pictures of the finished pieces. They worked together as a team to find the correct pieces. 

Finally this weeks star of the week was Caitlin - for amazing answers to questions about bonfire safety. And last weeks Star of the week was Caleb - for amazing listening, writing and hard work.