Today, we started to learn about planet Earth in more detail. We already know that we orbit the sun and we are the third planet from the sun. Today we looked at the inside of the Earth and discovered it is made up of four main parts: the inner and outer core, the mantle and the crust. 

The inner core is solid iron and nickel while the outer core is molten (liquid) and moves around. The mantle is the thickest part and gives the planet its weight. The crust is the thin layer on top that we live on. 

​We made models using Plasticine to to show each part. 

P3/4 have been learning why we have Remembrance Day each year on the 11th of November and the importance of the Poppy. There has been excellent discussion about this in class and they have worked hard creating different images of poppies. Today we held a 2 minute silence at 11 o'clock.

We have been learning about the planets in our Solar System. 

As a class, we can name all eight planets and put them in the correct order! We also learned that all the planets orbit the sun and it takes the Earth one whole year to go round (which is the same as 12 months or 365 days!). We started to look at characteristics of planets today so we could paint our own solar system to put up in class and will look into these in more detail. 

Lots of excitement in class today when we received our new 20s Plenty Safety Vest! 

The Scottish Borders Council have given one to every child in the Scottish Borders. Please wear this on the way into school and on the way home to promote safety. 

As part of our Space topic, P3/4 have been learning about the sun. 

We now know it is a star! It is the only star in our Solar System. It gives three types of energy. Infrared energy gives us our heat, the visible light is the light we can see and ultraviolet light can burn our skin. We can protect ourselves by wearing sunscreen and hats. 

We looked at tangles of energy causing explosions on the surface of the sun, called Solar Flares and explored what happened with the moon to cause a solar eclipse. To finish off, we experimented with chalk techniques to show a solar eclipse. 
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Primary 3/4 worked hard with Mrs Stirling this morning to create spooky Winnie and Wilbur pictures. 

Today P3/4 explored work by the artist Laurel Burch with Mrs Stirling. Then they worked hard using oil pastel techniques to create their own cats. 

I thought they were excellent! Well done P3/4 :)

We read through the pop-up version of the colour monster and talked about different ways to make things 'pop out'. We then worked together, focusing on our listening skills, to use instructions to create a pop up card for happy. The next week, we had to use our skills to create our own pop up card independently. 

P3/4 designed and created their own Colour Monster toys. 

P3/4 worked hard on designing and modelling their own clay monsters. Once they were dry, we painted them colour monsters! Some were angry, some were happy and some were very confused :) 

P3/4 have been very busy exploring emotions through The Colour Monster story. 

In the story, the monster has to untangle his emotions and put each one in a jar. Each emotion had a different colour and description. Here are some of  the monsters colours.

We then had a good discussion about what colours matched our emotions and realised that sometimes, people chose different colours and that is ok! We recorded our own colours and labelled them.