Outdoor Learning this year

This term the Outdoor Learning Team will be focusing on Health and Wellbeing Curricular areas.  So far pupils have been exploring the playground and reacquainting themselves with the sights, smells, sounds and equipment.

Learning tasks will be playground based and will include loose parts play and water play.  Your child’s teacher will let you know which day they have outdoor education.  The aim is to use outdoor spaces as much as possible and having waterproof and or warm clothing will be essential

Storytime In Room 3

Room 3 pupils have been having a great time exploring the story ‘Mrs Vicker’s Knickers, written by Kara Lebihan and illustrated by Deborah Allwright.

In the story, poor Mrs Vickers is pegging up her pretty pink knickers when a gust of wind whisks them up into the sky. Her pink frillies spiral away on the breeze, causing quite a commotion. They land on a fire-engine’s windscreen, get hooked over the traffic lights, twirl through a classroom, twist over the zoo and even round a rollercoaster. Finally Mrs Vickers’ knickers startle a parachutist who spins down to earth, crashing into Mrs Vickers’ washing-line and sending all her other knickers off on their own adventures.

Using Mrs Vicker’s knickers as their inspiration, we have been looking at movement and forces. This included using toy cars and ramps, creating artwork using salad spinners, pushing Big Macs, passing objects to our friends, feeling water spray on our faces.

Why don’t you have a look at all the fun we’ve been having!

LIVE PE: Wednesday 24th Feb at 2 pm

We have big news this week! Tomorrow (Wednesday) we will have a LIVE PE lesson. To join us all you need to do is to check the ‘PE at Home’ class on Wednesday at 2 pm and there will be a link for the ‘Meet’.

You will need: comfy clothes and a willingness to have fun!

Amanda and Salvi look forward to seeing you!

The PE at home classroom on Google is updated weekly and the team are doing a great job in providing a range of activities to suit pupils of all abilities. These include Dance, Boccia, Orienteering, Scavenger Hunts (this week’s is a lovely sensory, texture hunt) and our regular PE with Salvi and Amanda, ably supported by our own Young Leaders in school.

Please ask your child’s class teacher for a link if you are not in the PE at Home classroom.

Countdown To Christmas

Orchard Brae Advent Calendar: Days 3 and 4

We hope you enjoyed the first day of the Orchard Brae Advent Calendar yesterday and we are delighted to share the next instalment with you.

For Day 3, Room 3 bring you a very special sensory retelling of Twas The Night Before Christmas.

For Day 4, Room 14 perform ‘I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas’ featuring a great vocal accompaniment from one of the pupils.

Exploring The Grumpy Duck In Room 3

Room 3 have been learning about our emotions and working on our movement skills through the context of the story ‘Grumpy Duck’.  Poor duck is grumpy because her pond has dried up and a little grey cloud appears above her head.   She goes on an adventure and meets other animals….the dog who digs mud and wags his tail, the pig who rolls in the smelly puddles, the noisy cockerel, the bunny who hops, the sleepy tortoise, the goat who chews all the clothes….none of these are things duck wants to do so the little grey cloud gets bigger and bigger until everyone is feeling sad.  Eventually the cloud bursts so the water from the rain fills up the pond!  All the animals are happy singing and dancing in the rain before seeing a beautiful rainbow.

We have explored a sensory story of Grumpy Duck in our drama sessions where we have explored props for each part of the story.  Our favourite part is the magic plastic dust sheet which flies up in the air like the cloud…. Unfortunately no photos as it needs all hands on deck!

We have done Story Massage sessions around the story so we could feel the different emotions on body.  These were relaxing sessions but some amazing concentration too! 

We did our music and MOVEment sessions themed around the different animals.  We did some hopping like bunnies, stamping like the duck, moving our heads like the goat and rolling like the pig, this was a definite favourite!

The boys and girls in Room 3 have worked extremely hard this term, lots of fun but incredible learning at the same time.  We finished the term with celebrating the birthdays of two of our girls.  Have a fantastic holiday everyone!

Fantastic Fun In Room 3

The boys and girls in Room 3 have made a fantastic start to the school year.  We have welcomed some new Primary One pupils into the class as well as some old friendships being re-established.  All of the children have been extremely enthusiastic about trying new activities as well as familiarising themselves with some they have not done for a while.  Everyone is adapting so well to new routines and beginning to get to know their friends in class.   These photos show just some of the fun we have been having!

Aberdeen Reads: Join the Summer Reading Challenge

Aberdeen City Libraries have announced an exciting new reading challenge for the summer. Starting tomorrow (27th June) and running until 29th August, everyone is welcome to register as an individual or family / group. Register for the challenge online: https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=aw-pJD2_E02ip4k2nOs16xSlCSTRm75Nn6t-EpSexzdUN0kySlJWRlpJUEdRSEdZUlhLRTczUDZDTSQlQCN0PWcu

There are 9 reading related challenges and you can choose those that appeal. Full details of all the challenges are on the Aberdeen Reads website:

Click to access Aberdeen%20Reads%20final%20form.pdf

 

There is something for everyone!

 

Some ideas of how you might use the challenge are:

 

Places

Read some of your favourite stories that are set in other countries (real or imaginary). Two of my personal favourites are:

Where The Wild Things Are (Maurice Sendak), a lovely picture book for younger readers, and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (C S Lewis) for older readers.

 

Get Creative

Across the school we’ve seen lovely photos of our children and young people engaging in Life Skills and Arts & Crafts during our period of remote learning. Why not challenge yourself to bake or cook something new? You might find a no-cook recipe that will encourage even greater independence. Try a new craft project and make something useful, or use some of your old junk to create something inspired by a book. Lots of exciting crafty projects can be done using recycled materials and this helps our environment.

 

Ec0-Friendly

Use recycled materials to create a favourite character or a scene from one of your books. One young man from Room 14 did this previously, creating his favourite scene from Harry Potter.

 

Cover Versions

Some of our Secondary pupils enjoy the Harry Potter books. These are magical stories to escape into and are very enjoyable to read aloud. Why not compare the film and the book to find out which you like best? Horrid Henry is always a favourite and episodes can be watched on TV. Do you like the TV episode or the story best? Popular with many of our younger pupils is Disney Cars or any other Disney movie. Again, see what you like best – the film or the book. There are also lots of E-comics on the library website, including Disney.

 

Favourite Place

Try reading in different places and find out what your favourite place to read is. I like to read in the garden, particularly on a fine day.

 

Let us know how you get on and feel free to share with your teachers the stories that you have enjoyed.

 

 

 

Online Learning Survey

We’ve now been learning remotely for more weeks than we care to remember! This week is particularly exciting with the launch of our Google Classrooms (GSuite) and it’s great to see so many families getting involved with this.

As always, our aim is to support our children and young people as best we can, and we have a Leadership Group working together to focus on how do this as we move towards ‘blending learning’ from August. In order to support their work we’d really appreciate your thoughts on what we have offered so far, any issues or difficulties you’ve experienced, and what you would like to see as we move forward.

All feedback is welcome so please take a few minutes to share your views if you have not already done so. Thank you.

https://forms.gle/oparbBDTDzYbex8Z7

 

Google Classroom Survey

Thank you to everyone that has completed our Google Classroom survey for their child to date. If you have not already done so, we would be grateful if you would complete the form on Survey Monkey. This is to ensure that you have access to the necessary IT to enable your child to access it. Please click on the link below:

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/GLX5LM5

Please note this applies to Primary and Secondary pupils only.

POSTPONED: Friends of Orchard Brae 5k Fun Run

Due to the ongoing situation with COVID-19 our planned Fun Run is postponed until further notice. We will maintain contact with the City Events Team at Aberdeen City Council and hope that we can have our event at some time in the future. For now, our priority is to keep our school and wider community safe and well.