Category: Primary

Storytime

Room 6 have a “story of the month” which we listen to after lunch. Last month’s story was The Gruffalo. Here we are colouring our Gruffalos, cutting them out and showing them to each other!

Get Well Soon!

We made “Hope you’re feeling better” cards for a special friend. We collected things at Outdoor Education and then chose what we wanted to put on our pictures. Then we wrote our names on our pictures and sent them to her.

Room 4 has been very busy celebrating different events and successes over the last few weeks.

We have been getting ready for Christmas! We have put on our festive clothes and hats and made Christmas ornaments to decorate our class tree!

We made decorations with our footprints and hand prints and we enjoyed the sensory play with the paints.

We made the Scottish flag to celebrate St. Andrews day.

In Room 4 we have been developing our skills when using our trikes. We enjoy going on our trikes and finding new ways of keeping active!

Our Head of Primary, Karen, asked Room 2 in September if we’d like to do an enterprise which would involve us learning to care for plants in our classroom. Our class teacher Ann didn’t realise Karen was going to give us quite so many Spider Plants to care for! However, we have risen to the challenge and observed our plants grow, helped to transplant many of them, watered them regularly and generally nurtured them.  We have all participated actively in their care.

During the last 2 weeks of term we will take turns going round the classes at Orchard Brae School asking if anyone, for a small donation, would like to have one of the plants. We will give all donations to the PE department’s bicycle fundraiser.

Room 9 have been having lots of fun exploring St Andrew’s Day through a range of activities. Here they are actively engaging with colour and matching shapes on the flag.

Today in Room 5 we celebrated St Andrews Day!

We played a traditional game of Toss the Wellington boot! All of the boys tried their best to toss the boot into the air and get it the furthest across the room. With a little bit of help Ollie won!! Well done Ollie.

Then this afternoon we took part in some traditional Scottish dancing. Everyone in class decided to get into the spirit of things dressing with a touch of tartan showing off their best moves on the classroom dance floor.

We then enjoyed a social snack with friends tasting some shortbread biscuits and a small drink.

Everyone in Room 5 had a great time and through these fun activities we explored some of the traditional aspects of life in Scotland.

A brief History of St Andrew

St Andrew has been the patron saint of Scotland for well over one thousands years with people celebrating him since 1000AD. He was only made patron saint in 1320 when Scotland declared independence with the Declaration of Arbroath. Since then St Andrew has been honoured in many ways in Scotland including on the Scottish flag with the St Andrew Cross and the town of St Andrews, thought to be where he was buried, being named after him The reason St Andrew became important for Scotland was because he sums up a lot of characteristics found in Scots. St Andrew, who was a fisherman, had a humble upbringing and was known though his entire life for being generous and strong. His philosophy was to share everything he had with those less fortunate.

St Andrew always took every opportunity he had to help others – and that’s why he was chosen as their patron saint. St Andrew is also the patron saint of Greece, Romania, Russia and Barbados. He became one of Jesus’s disciples and one of the Twelve Apostles. He was also the brother of St Peter, who founded the Catholic church, so the Scots were able to petition the Pope in 1320 for protection against English kings’ attempts to take over Scotland. St Andrew died on an X-shaped cross in Greece, now known as the Saltire or the St Andrew’s Cross. It is believed that after his death his remains were moved to Constantinople hundreds of years later.

Like many early Christians, St Andrew was crucified by the Romans because they didn’t like Christians very much. St Andrew was the first bishop in Greece, and the Romans weren’t too happy about that. His remains were moved again in the 13th Century to Amalfi in Italy. Most of St Andrew is still there today but bits of him have been moved over the years to Scotland. These include his tooth, kneecap, arm and finger bones, which have been in Scotland now since the 16th Century. While his shoulder blade was gifted by the Archbishop of Amalfi in 1879 and Pope Paul VI gave Scotland more bits in 1969. Legend has it that St Andrew’s first bits ended up in Scotland thanks to St Rule or St Regulus, a Greek monk who had a vision in which he was told to take the bits to the ends of the earth for safekeeping. His journey took him to the shores of Fife, which is easy to mistake for the ends of the earth. The town where St Rule landed is now St Andrews.

One of our favourite activities in Room 8 is ‘The bucket time’.

Attention Autism is an intervention model designed by Gina Davies, Specialist Speech and Language Therapist. It aims to develop natural and spontaneous communication through the use of visually based and highly motivating activities.

This activity helps the children in Room 8:

• To engage attention
• To improve joint attention
• To develop shared enjoyment in group activities
• To increase attention in adult-led activities
• To encourage spontaneous interaction in a natural group setting
• To increase non-verbal and verbal communication through commenting
• To build a wealth and depth of vocabulary
• To have fun!

The Attention Autism programme progresses through a series of stages, building on each skill level. Each new stage is introduced when the group is ready to expand attention skills. Room 8 has reached stage 3.

Stage 1: The Bucket to Focus Attention

Our purple bucket is filled with visually engaging objects and toys, aiming to gain the shared attention of the group.

First, a song is sung: ‘I’ve got something in my bucket, in my bucket, in my bucket. I’ve got something in my bucket, I wonder what it is?”

Next, the adult leader shows each item to the group and uses simple repetitive vocabulary to comment on the various objects. Our favourites are the naughty monkey, the pig, and the horn.

Stage 2: The Attention Builder

Visually stimulating activities are shown to the group by the adult leader, aiming to sustain attention for a longer period. The activities are fun, visually engaging and can often involve delightful mess! The favourite in room 8 is “Splash the cake!’.

Stage 3: Turn taking and Re-engaging Attention

The adult leader demonstrates a simple activity, often modelled with another adult in the group. Some children are then invited to have a turn, but only if they are comfortable to do so.

The children in our group get a turn, which then teaches important emotional regulation skills, as well as the essential skills of waiting, turn-taking and learning through modelling. I could say the favourite activities have been ‘Make your cake – Halloween party’, ‘The bread shop’ and ‘Choose an instrument’.

So far, the Bucket time sessions have been fun and “offered an irresistible invitation to learn”!