minibeast hunt

Diane from Starling Learning came into class today to help us learn about minibeasts that we might find in our playground.


She told us about insects having six legs and asked us to think about other creatures that had more legs or even none at all!


We were keen to get outside and have a look for ourselves, even though it was quite chilly!

Diane showed us where to look and how to carefully lift the minibeasts with a spoon so that we didn't hurt them.

We worked with a partner to find the minibeasts.

We looked at them closely in the viewing jars. The jar had a special lid that made the minibeasts look much bigger so that we could have a really good look at them.

We had to put them back in the same area that we found them. Diane told us that some minibeasts might not travel too far so if we put them at the other side of the playground, they might never get home.

Thank you again to Diane for all her help.

Katie Morag Open Evening

Room 2 held their open evening this week and it was very well attended by our family and friends.We entertained our guests with Scottish songs and dancing in the gym hall, then we took them on a tour of our class. Just in case you missed it, here are a few pictures.

Grannie's wall was made up of bricks that described the ways we have shown ourselves to be confident individuals, successful learners, effective contributors and responsible citizens. We discussed our learning each week before writing on our bricks. Our wall is very high!

Our beach wall displays some of our writing and pictures of the birds we researched. You can also see the pictures that we took of our shell fish. We made pictures with Mrs Dargo using real shells.
In the sea we have our lovely colourful fish. We made these as a group challenge and we think they look good. We also worked together to make our bird information posters. Our sense poems are displayed around the edges.

Outside our Post Office you can see the photographs that we took when we went on our materials hunt with Room 1. We had to write about the pictures before Mrs Ayres could put them up on the wall.

Inside the Post Office are our paintings of the view from Katie Morag's window.

We finished the evening by drawing the raffle for Katie Morag's teddy bear in the hall. It was a very enjoyable night and Mrs Ayres was so proud of the children.

To make sure that all of our activities would work out, we had some new buddies from primary 6 come and try them.

We had lots of fun showing them all of our super work and our Post Office of course.

They worked through our activity sheets that we were going to use with our families in the evening. They even got to try out our jigsaw puzzles....

...and play the games that we had made.

We really enjoyed showing them round our classroom.

Primary 6 seemed to enjoy the visit too.

Visit to the Post Office

As part of the preparations for our open evening, we designed some tartan kilts to be used as the cover for our invitations.

Mrs Ayres thought that we made a really good job of them. What do you think?

Once we had made the cover, we had to write the invitation. We talked about why it was important to try and keep our handwriting nice and neat - we wouldn't want our Mummies and Daddies to get mixed up about when to come!

The next job was to put them in the envelopes and write the addresses - that kept Mrs Ayres busy for a wee while - then it was off to the post office to buy some stamps.

We had to walk along beside our partners. We really enjoyed getting out and about.

When we got to the post office, the lady gave us each a stamp to put on our special letters. Mrs Ayres was pleased that we remembered our manners.


After the stamps were safely in place we posted the letters into the post box.

When we looked at the writing on the post box we found that the postman would collect our letters at 5pm.

We had a lovely time. Thank you again to Mrs Cameron for coming along to help us.

Terrific Technology

We got to try out our technology skills this week when Kieran helped us with some woodwork and Mrs Ayres and Mrs Ward helped us to build models with plasticene.

We had to listen to the instructions and be very careful, especially when we were using the saws.

We are not going to say what we were making but you might be able to look for them at our open evening.

As a little clue we can tell you that all of the models will be displayed on or around the island.

Katie Morag group tasks

One of the things that we are really enjoying about our Katie Morag topic is the opportunity to work with lots our friends. We are helping each other and having fun as we complete our group tasks.

We can't tell you what we are making in these pictures because that would spoil the surprise, but perhaps you will see some of the finished items at our special open evening if you are lucky enough to be invited.

Spinning wool like Grannie Island

Primary 1 were very pleased when they came into class the other day and found a special visitor with lots of things to tell them all about life on a farm.

Alice from Lamont Farm brought some really exciting things to show us. She showed us some of the foods that the different animals eat and even her wellies!

She talked to us about how Grannie Island would get her wool to knit cosy jumpers for Katie Morag and shawls for baby Liam. She wouldn't buy it from a shop but would collect it from her sheep.

Alice very kindly showed us some of the equipment that might be used like a spindle, a niddy noddy and a lazy kate.

Grannie would clean the wool using carders before she could spin it on her spinning wheel.

Alice was very good at spinning the wool. She showed us what it looked like when it had just come off of a sheep and it was very different to when it was spun.

We also enjoyed looking at the pictures of the animals on Lamont Farm and were quite surprised at how many different ones there were.