Friday 24th March:
Working hard on the allotment!
This week, Primary 6B and Primary2B have been out to the allotment to get started with planting and general maintenance. Pupils transplanted carrot and courgette seedlings. They also put in potatoes and spread wild flower seed bombs in the wild flower area.
They also worked on digging out our oldest compost heap and putting the compost onto the beds in the polytunnel. We had a great crop of tomatoes from these beds last year, but the soil needs fertilised, if we are going to have good crops this year.
Children had a chance to look at mini beasts in the wood pile. Armed with magnifying glasses and bug boxes, they used identification charts to find out what they were.
We found a tray of spring bulbs that were shooting, and we decided to put them in the ground, even though it’s a bit late to do this. At least they will flower next spring.
All in all, a good days work on the allotment, and we were all finished in time for break!
Friday 10th November:
Food, glorious food!
This week, both Primary 6 classes have made a healthy lentil and vegetable soup. In addition to learning to chop, peel and grate vegetables, they also considers the risks involved. They identified risks from misuse of equipment, heat, food poisoning and food allergies. Everyone enjoyed making the soup and most children chose to try it. Some children even had two bowls and asked for the recipe. Here it is below. This recipe makes enough for two people, so use your times tables to make bigger quantities.
We can now use these cooking skills to cook other recipes. Yum!
Thursday 2nd February:
P6 Trips to Murrayside Care Home
This week P6A and P6B have both been separately on trips to Murrayside Care Home. On Tuesday, P6A supported residents to take part in the RSPB Big Birdwatch. Some residents came outside with pupils to look at birds using our school binoculars. Other residents were supported by pupils to complete painting and colouring tasks in doors.
On Wednesday, P6B took part in National Read Aloud Day. The children selected books from the school library and took them to read to the residents. After this, they sang two Scottish songs, ‘Donald, where’s your Troosers?’ and ‘The Jeely Piece song’. Then they recited their Scots poems.
Staff at the care home praised the children for their exceptionally good behaviour and their quality interaction with the residents. “The residents have not stopped talking about it,” they say. The pupils also said they enjoyed their visit. Well done P6!
Friday 20th January:
Oor Januar Blog!
2023 hus bin an eydent year sae faur!
In countin, we hiv bin learnin aboot roundin, multiplication and wirk oan the i-blad.
In French, we hiv bin learnin aboot nummers uptae 100.
Inower airt, we daed Scots airt tae dae wi Rabbie Burns – we gat a silhouette o’ him and we colfed the gaps wi jurnals, magazines and calendars.
We hiv bin learnin aboot gymnastics and balancing and aw in oor PE. We learnt pousturs, sic as v-shape, hurl, barrae and syne daed mair difficult versions o’ thaim.
In Scots we hiv bin learnin verses and many ither Scots writin.
In Literacy, we hiv bin learnin aboot ‘figurative’ langage and discussion screeds. We are ey readin different readin beuks in oor groups.
In oor topic this term, sae far we hiv blethered aboot suffrage in Scotland and discrimination (whit isnae guid but is gesserant tae learn!). We are makin a poster aboot discrimination and hou tae fecht it, and blethered aboot different kins o’ discrimination, efter performin a drama role play in wee groups.
Outdoor Learning is enjeyable and we are learnin aboot birdies.
We howp ye wir fain o’ oor Scots blog for Januar and kent whit we were sain!
Friday 25th November:
Last week during Book Week and Anti-Bullying Week 2022 Primary 6s discussed stories chosen by our school Equalities Group – ‘Bear Shaped’ by ‘You Are Enough’ by Margaret O’Hair. We talked about the books’ main ideas and learned about some of their themes and how they linked to the overall theme of ‘diversity’ and ‘reaching out’. Our discussions were incredibly positive and lots of us showed real maturity in our answers, thinking quite deeply about the issues.
After reading and discussing the books, we worked with our talk partners to design class posters for the school library. In P6A, we decided to choose the best bits from each of our individual posters and use a relevant quote from the book to make our final group A3 design. 5 of the people who worked especially hard were chosen to create the final poster.
In P6B, we worked in groups to design posters for the library, educating others on down syndrome (which the main character, Sofia, had in our story). One of the quotes we loved from the book was ‘Start by looking in the mirror. Love what you see there!’ We discussed what this quote meant to us, and how we are all different too. We celebrated our differences by creating a wall display for our stairwell, which included this quote and our self-portraits, highlighting our differences that we’re proud of!
11 pupils from P6 were then chosen to speak about our posters in front of the whole school at the Book Week Assembly, and did very well! The final designs will be displayed in the school library, but here’s a sneak peak below, as well as some of our individual efforts…
As well as getting arty and thinking about books, the P6s have also been very active too. Here are some of our action shots from learning various badminton skills last Monday.
Lastly, P6 have been learning about tone, form and texture to make beautiful etchings of leaves. We have worked with a range of different media, including pencils, charcoals, and oil pastels to achieve many different results. We decided to create a colourful forest floor to bring nature in from outdoors – below are the outcomes we achieved from oil pastels.
Friday 4th November:
Planting Spring Bulbs at Local Care Homes
This week both Primary 6 classes visited local care homes. On Tuesday, Primary 6A went to Struan Lodge Care Home. We were met by Louisa, and she showed us where she would like us to plant bulbs. The pupils all did a super job of planting the daffodil bulbs around all the edges of the flowerbeds. Next spring, the residents will love seeing all the spring flowers.
On Wednesday, Primary 6B went to Murrayside Care Home. Last year, we visited this home to plant spring bulbs, but due to the pandemic, we could only plant outside the fence. The care home was only built four years ago and this spring had no daffodils inside the grounds at all. The pupils planted daffodil bulbs all over the main ground floor garden. We were helped by the gardener Brian, the activities coordinator Gemma and Cliona. Several residents came out to watch too. Again, residents will be thrilled next year to see the first signs of spring.
Well done Primary 6!
Friday 30th September:
When Art Meets Maths!
It’s been an action packed week full of maths mayhem in Primary 6. We’ve had a go at Maths Week puzzles, taken part in some outdoor maths, challenged ourselves with daily mental maths questions, as well as linking our learning about shape and art to other areas of the curriculum.
In RME, P6 has been learning about the Islamic faith and so we connected our learning to maths by creating Islamic inspired shape art!
We also learned that MC Escher, a famous Dutch artist, was inspired by Islamic art when he created some of his fantastic tessellations. Escher used maths in lots of his art work and, as well as finding out about tessellations all around us, we used MC Escher as an inspiration to create our own tessellating patterns.
Another artist inspired us to make some digital art linked to shape: Piet Mondrian. Piet Mondrian used shape and primary colours to create some colourful abstract art. We used our iPads and the app Sketchbook to create our own, Mondrian-inspired abstract digital shape art:
Finally here’s some snaps of us taking part in this year’s Maths Hunt. Well done to Ollie P and Daniel, who managed to answer the most questions correctly!
Friday 16th September:
P6 Study Water!
In Primary 6, pupils have been learning about water. We’ve used the school grounds in Outdoor Learning to build on class work, by taking real-life water samples in our local environment and filtering water using readily available materials.
Thursday 16th September:
The 6s Summery Summary
Our first month back in Carrick Knowe since the summer holidays has been action-packed to say the least! Here are some of the Primary 6 highlights so far…
Trip to see Dr Kaboom at the Edinburgh Festival
One day down and we thought we’d try our luck at a trip to the Edinburgh Festival to see Dr Kaboom, which got our science brains kicking into gear (more of that later in the blog). We learned a lot; we laughed a lot; and one of us even levitated a little too…
Going with the Flow
Our learning context this term is linked to water, floating/sinking and other things science-related, and we’ve already done three experiments to explore our learning: one to demonstrate the water cycle, and two to show how density works in solids, liquids and gases.
However, our learning context hasn’t all just been about the science; we’ve also been making fantastic connections with the Expressive Arts by creating a whole class art piece (inspired by the Japanese artwork, ‘The Great Wave Off Kanagawa’), as well as crafting some downbeats, front beats, back beats, up beats and eighths whilst learning about layering rhythm in music!
Helping out in Primary 2
The Primary 6s have now visited the Primary 2s twice since we started back in August to get to know them and also to help them with their learning. First of all, we visited to talk about the importance of recycling for our outdoors and our planet and, just today, to support them with their ICT and reading skills whilst logging on to SumDog and completing some really tricky sums!
(Rights and) Responsibilities
We’ve been talking a lot our school value of kindness this month, as well as different ways we see and hear kindness at Carrick Knowe, however, before that we discussed what it means to be responsible in school (and elsewhere) and talked about our ‘rights’ to create our superhero themed class charters.
Trip to see the Zoo in search of Galaxy the Giraffe
One trip in a month just wasn’t good enough for us, so we thought we would squeeze in another at Edinburgh Zoo. You may have seen ‘Galaxy’ – the CKPS giraffe – in Bibi’s Bakery in Hanover Street over the summer; now Galaxy has migrated west to take part in the ‘Giraffes About Town Trail’ at Edinburgh Zoo, and the P6s were invited to see the whole herd of giraffes reunited at the zoo as they were the children who were most involved in the design and creation of Galaxy. With thanks to Mrs Kane and other helpers, we walked from school to go giraffe spotting, as well as seeing Bruce and Ginger, the red pandas, climbing in the trees, and a few other animals. There has also been plenty of other learning in between!
Carrick Knowe Primary School 