Diwali Festival

Today we lit our Diwali Diva pots which we had made in class.  We spent time looking at the lights and thinking about the story of Rama and Sita arriving home whilst using the lights to guide them.

 We also set our Rangoli patterns on the floor to welcome visitors during the Festival of Diwali.  These patterns are seen as good luck and fortune to the families who have them.

 We then enjoyed watching our Indian puppet shows whilst trying out some of the Indian foods we had baked over the past few days.

Traditional Indian Games

As part of our India topic we made some traditional Indian board games.  Some of the games were really interesting as it turns out they have been developed further into games we play nowadays.  

 Ashtapada is now more commonly known as Chess.

 Pachisi is now more commonly known as Ludo.

 Aadu Puli Aatam is now more commonly known as Checkers.

Paramapadham is now more commonly known in Britain as Snakes and Ladders.
We had great fun making and playing these games.

Indian Baking

To celebrate the Indian festival of Diwali we made some Semolina Halva (an Indian pudding) and some Diwali sweets.                                    

 We worked together to measure out the ingredients and bake for the rest of the class.

K'Nex Estimating and Measuring Challenge

As part of our maths this term we have been learning how to estimate and measure.  Mrs Shearer set us a challenge to design a playground which needed to have various items with different measurements.                                              

 We estimated lengths using items we knew the sizes of as a guide.  We then checked our estimations using a ruler or meter stick.

 Our playground had to have an area of 3600cm squared so we had to remember the formula then calculate the length of each side.

 Some groups added in extra pieces of playground equipment...tents, tunnels, tyres for jumping and climbing in etc.

 We then gave a 5 minute presentation on each of our models, explaining the things we had included and thinking about how well we worked as a group.  Mrs Shearer then measured some pieces of equipment to check how accurate at estimating and measuring we were.  Most of us managed to accurately estimate and measure when constructing our models.

                                                                              

Well done netball girls!!

Well done to the netball girls in P7 who took part in the Primary Netball League over the past few months.   They showed good team work and had great fun whilst taking part.

Puppet theatre performances

We were very busy last week practicing and putting the final preparations into our puppet theatres and shows.  We have recorded them using various bits of technology. 

We now hope to link the scenes together using a computer programme which will allow us enjoy watching our puppet shows next week. 

Leadership skills

As part of our P7 Leadership course we have had to learn the skills needed to plan and run an activity for a group.  We thought about the space given to us, the safety of the participants, the way we communicated and the equipment we could use to make our games enjoyable and exciting.  

 It was hard work getting people to listen sometimes!! 

Sometimes we found that we hadn't thought about certain things enough which meant our activities didn't run as smoothly as we would have liked.  We took time to evaluate ourselves and gave each group next steps to work on which would help their next activity to run better.

trip to Millburn farm

We left the school at half past one to go to Millburn farm. We were all very excited and couldn’t wait to get there. Once we got there we had to wait a bit because a cow has having her first calf. While we were waiting we interviewed Mrs Sandison.  We all got to see the calf’s birth. We then asked Mr Sandison few questions about the calf. Then he showed us round the farm and told us that he’s chickens didn’t lay eggs anymore. At one point a cow showed us that it didn’t like us by throwing hay at us. We got to see how much a hand-fed calf weighs. We met a bull named Millburn Bob and found out why bulls have rings on their noses. At the end of the experience we got to interview Mr Sandison. We left Millburn at about half past two. We had a lot of fun and learned lot at Millburn. We want to thank Mr and Mrs Sandison for letting us come to the farm and interview them.                                                         

posted by Annie & Morgan