Science worshop

Primary 4, 5, 6 and 7 were very lucky last week when staff from the Edinburgh Science Festival came up to do a science workshop with us.  Primary 4 and Primary 5 did this together and had a lot of fun!

We were learning about saving energy and how this will help our environment. 


Hopefully Primary 4 and Primary 5 will add some comments on to explain what it was we were learning.

Please take a look at the photos to see what we were doing.

Slideshow - Science workshop

Football festival

We had a fantastic time when we went to Papdale School and took part in the Football Festival for Primary 4 pupils.  There were children from Glaitness, Papdale, Shapinsay, Burray and St Margaret's Hope (we think!).

We all enjoyed playing football and doing the drills to help with our skills and fitness.  We were also very lucky with the weather and the sun shone the whole morning!  Please have a look at our photos to see how much fun we had!

Slideshow - Football Festival

Lady Franklin's Lament

After our explorer themed day on Tuesday, the whole school got together with Douglas and Mrs Keldie on Wednesday morning to record a song they had been working on that was written about Sir John Franklin's expedition.


Please click on the link to the right to listen - it is beautiful - well done Mrs Keldie, Douglas and pupils of St Andrews Primary!


(There is also an entirely different version of this song on the new "Saltfish Forty Live" CD which is now available to buy!)


Homeward bound one night on the deep
 On my hammock, I fell asleep.
I dreamed a dream and I thought it true
 I dreamt of Franklin and his gallant crew.

A hundred brave men did sail away
To the frozen ocean in the month of May,
To seek a passage around the Pole
Where we poor sailors do sometimes go.

Through cruel hardships they vainly strove
 Their ships on mountains of ice they drove.
 The Eskimo with his skin canoe
 The only soul that e'er came through.

In Baffin’s Bay where the whale fish blow
The fate of Franklin no man may know.
The fate of Franklin no tongue can tell
  Lord Franklin and his sailors well.

And now my burden it gives me pain
For my long-lost Franklin I would cross the main.
Ten thousand pounds I would freely give
To know on earth that my Franklin lives.

Forces - air friction

Primary 4 are learning about forces this term and have been investigating air resistance.  You can see the effects of air resistance on a parachute - it is air resistance that slows the parachute down.  The air moves over the surface of the parachute and this slows the speed it falls.  There is also another force pulling the parachute down, which is called gravity. 

To help us learn about air resistance we were given the challenge of making our own parachute.  We had to design one that fell slowly to the ground and make a prediction about what we thought might happen, before putting it to the test.  We tested it once and then made changes to try to  make it fall slower the second time.  There were some things that we could NOT change because we had to keep the test fair - these were the weight that we tied onto the parachute and the other was the height we dropped it from.

 

We then had to write a report which explained what we had found out.  Primary 4 will hopefully add some comments on here to explain what they found out about air resistance.

 

Please have a look at our photos to see us in action!

 

Slideshow - air resistance experiment

 

Column subtraction

Primary 4 have also been learning about column subtraction and made videos to explain how you do this. Please have a look at our videos and leave us some feedback on how well we explained this!

 

 

 

 

 

Column addition

Primary 4 have been learning about column addition and made videos to explain how you do this.  Please have a look at our videos and leave us some feedback on how well we explained this!

  

 

 

Kindness week

St Andrews Primary has had a 'Kindness Week' this week, and each class were given a task to do during the week to make us think more about what being kind means.  Primary 4 were asked to think about the meaning of the word kindness and we worked in groups to think about this.  We thought of different words that came into our minds when we thought of kindness and then we made posters to explain what we think kindness means.

 

When we had finished our posters we then went around to look at each others posters and wrote kind comments about they had done well.

 

Here are some photos which were taken while we were working on this task.

 

We also each secretly got the name of someone else in the class and our challenge is to be kind to them throughout next week. We are not supposed to tell anyone who our secret friend is! This is something we will try to do all the time, but we will make an extra special effort to do this next week. Hopefully Primary 4 will leave comments here to let everyone know how this went.

Ms Rendall was very happy when Primary 7 came to deliver a

flower that they had for her -

this was a very kind thing to do!

 

Fun in the snow ....

We were very excited last week because there was some snow!  We went out on Friday afternoon just before home time and had some time playing - it was just a shame it all disappeared over the weekend!

 

 

Slideshow - Fun in the snow

Children in Need

Primary 3 did a fantastic job of organising lots of activities to raise money for Children in Need on Friday.  We had lots of fun and would like to thank Mrs Kirkness and Primary 3 for all their hard work.

 

Please click on the link below to take a look at some of the photos that were taken on Friday - St Andrews School raised £613.90 altogether which is just fantastic.

 

Slideshow - Children in Need

Handwork

We are very lucky in St Andrews School to have handwork every Thursday afternoon in Term 2 and 3.  We are all busy making mats or knitting in Primary 4 and really need to concentrate to do this well!

 

We are very lucky to have so many helpers who come in especially to help us with our handwork - thank you!

 

Maths

We use lots of games and different activities to help us in our Maths, which makes the learning more fun and helps us understand better.  Last week we were learning about place value and how numbers can be written down in lots of different ways.

  

As well as helping our Maths skills, this helps us learn how to work with and help others around us.

 

It would be great if Primary 4 could add some more information about the different things we are learning in class during Maths lessons and the different activities we do to help us with this!

 

Helping each other

In Primary 4 we think it is very important to help each other if we can, and we do this in lots of different ways.  One way we have been doing this is to work with a partner to complete a tricky reading comprehension activity and we have to work together to figure out the answers.  It can be tricky but when we work together it is much easier.