Outdoor Learning
Outdoor Learning space
Last term we asked the council to come and cut down the weeds, to make an area where we can set up outdoor learning. They then delivered a large load of bark, which the pupils helped to take down to the newly cleared area. This area will now be developed over winter, to have bug hotels and hedgehog houses.
Making animals with natural materials
We used beech nuts and twigs to make scary spiders for Halloween. We used string to make the web, and then added our spiders.
In October we made eco bird feeders, by coating pine cones in bird seed. It was a sticky job and took a lot of concentration. The next day we hung some in the school playground and took the rest to hang up at the duck pond. We then gave the leftover bird seed to the ducks.
Room 4 have been reading ‘The New Friend’ by Alex Scheffler for their book study this term.
In the book, the main characters Pip and Posy make a new friend at the beach and they work together to build a sandcastle.
We enjoyed the book so much that we thought we would have a go at making our own sandcastles! We visited the beach and worked together to build our own sandcastles. We thought we did a good job. What do you think? We even made our own new friend when we went looking in the rock pools!
The beginning of summer is upon us! As we head into the final stretches of the school year, everyone should take time to reflect on the highs and lows of the year. What worked? What flopped? How can you improve for next year? What from your old job will you bring to your new one? What must you definitely leave behind?
However, when we take time to reflect on our year and take stock of how we’ve grown and changed, we are more able to acknowledge the gifts of this passage and harvest our own learning for the future.
Let’s find out together our best moments.
Some of our primary pupils took part in a very special outing on Wednesday at the SRUC Aberdeen Campus at Craibstone, participating in a range of activities organised by various Rotary clubs in Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire for their annual Kids Out fun day.
Despite the gloomy weather, we all had a fantastic time. Some of the highlights of the day included bouncy castles and face painting, magic shows, Aberdeen Science Centre, a disco and the very noisy police van and fire engine. However, the best bit of the day for many of our pupils were the animals and there was great excitement over the numerous pony rides, bird displays and Therapet dogs.
Thank you so much to everyone in the local Rotary clubs for organising such a wonderful day and we can’t wait for next year.
Our class have been looking at the amazing NuArt all around Aberdeen and wanted to come up with our own contribution for an outdoor piece of artwork. We looked at some videos that showed yarnbombing all over the world and thought this is something we could adapt and put our own stamp on.
Yarnbombing is a type of street art that shows displays of knitted or crocheted wool, yarn or fibre. It can also be called yarn storming, guerrilla knitting, kniffiti, urban knitting or graffiti knitting.
We started with some knitted backgrounds and chains that Allison, our EYP made and then made some wool wrapped twigs, learned how to use pompom makers and made tassles and attached them all to the trees outside our window. We think they make a lovely display. It’s a work in progress – there are many trees in our playground we can yarnbomb!
Official Yarnbombing Day is 11th June.
Room 9 pupils appreciate our natural world.
They have observed Spring daffodils growing and produced these wonderful paintings depicting our class’s daffodils.
We have all looked at the paintings and commented on them. We all agree they are fabulous pieces of art.
Some pupils from Room 7 enjoyed a walk in the countryside today. We headed along the countryside path towards Kingswells and saw lots of exciting things. We took pictures of some of the animals and when we got back to school we used our Pixon and core vocabulary boards to talk about what we saw. We also practised our maths skills by counting aloud the number of animals. We saw 3 deer and 7 brown and white horses and far too many sheep and crows to count!!!
In Room 16 we have been working on our John Muir Award all year. This focuses on Outdoor Education.
In order to achieve our Bronze Award, we have to do 4 days work in our chosen outdoor space. We chose our playground, as we felt it was a bit bare and it was readily accessible to us.
Our plan was to blur the boundaries between the indoor and outdoor spaces. Here’s what we’ve done so far:
But we are not quite finished yet. We are in the process of making some more interactive and noisy sculptures for the playground.
We would like everyone to be able to enjoy using the outdoor spaces in school more, so here’s hoping for some dry weather!
It’s that time of year again to look out the gardening gloves, trowels and spades and to start growing. Firstly we examined our sunflower seeds, then we filled our little containers with compost, poked our little seeds under the soil and finished off by watering them. Now it’s time to tend our little seeds and watch them grow.
