From Monday 1st February, a revised lunch menu will be in place. This can be viewed below.
Dear Parent/Carer
Here we are at the end of week 3. The First Minister announced this week that the national lockdown is to continue until mid February. The stay at home message has been reinforced and schools continue to deliver online learning to the vast majority of children and young people across Scotland. The next review will be on the 2nd of February and the government hope to be able to give parents/carers and schools at least 2 weeks notice of a planned return.
Our teachers and class teams have been working hard to deliver online learning as well as providing a range of supportive materials via email as well as personalised packs being delivered to homes as appropriate. I would like to thank you all for your continued support as I now home learning has many challenges and changes in routines for families create all sorts of demands on yourselves.
I get daily reports from the authority of the number of children that have logged into google classroom which gives a snapshot of numbers at a certain point in the morning. We are usually sitting between 30% and 40% each day. We have more chromebooks going out to families this coming week to assist with online access.
If your child does not have a device to access google classroom please let your child’s teacher know and we will arrange for a device to be made available as soon as possible. BT are offering hot spot connection to any families that do not have access to wifi/internet. We can apply on your behalf for these vouchers to support your child to access online learning. If this is something that you need please contact Amy Dunnett our PT Primary on ADunnett@aberdeencity.gov.uk
Thank you to everyone who has been completing the daily check in form as I understand you all have very busy days so your help is very much appreciated. This information has been requested by the Scottish Government on a daily basis. Here is the link https://forms.gle/vsuT6tE3TwNm3pju6
Northsound Cash For Kids, supported by the Scottish Government, have opened applications for their Winter Fund Grants. Grants of up to £100 per child or young person are available to support the purchase of food, heating, toiletries or other basic essentials to meet the individual needs of the families and children experiencing hardship in these very difficult and challenging times. If you feel that your family would benefit from this support, please contact the school and we will be happy to discuss this further with you.
There will be a revised school lunch menu being introduced from 1st February. We will post this on our website.
On Monday 25th January we are hosting a whole school event celebrating Burns. Our BIG BURNS DAY will be delivered through our new whole school google classroom. There is a suggested timetable of activities for the morning however you can of course choose as appropriate to your child’s and family’s needs.
The school community have pulled together to bring you some fun learning stimulus;
In the afternoon we will have live sessions:
Followed by:
And finally
This is a day for pupils both at home and in school to participate in Burns days celebrations. It is a chance for our whole school community to share and engage in common learning and we hope it will bring a familiar sense of community despite the online platform.
We hope you can join us for all/part/some of our BIG BURNS day! We look forward to feedback and we are always delighted to see photos and videos of your home learning. Your child’s teacher will email the details for joining these events.
Please take care everyone and stay safe.
Kind regards
Caroline
Monday 25th January, is Burns Day, celebrating the birthday of the famous Scottish poet, Robert ‘Rabbie’ Burns. To celebrate, we have a day of fun-filled activities planned for our pupils and families to take part in.
Come along and join in the festivities through your Google Classroom. We look forward to celebrating with you all!
This week we have two art activities for you to try.
Activity 1: Ice Cube Icebergs
This is a little follow up to the iceberg/ stormy sea art we did last week .
I still had the frozen paint and really liked the patterns it had frozen into . I thought the cubes looked like little icebergs!
So using the iPad I took photos of them as they melted onto paper. My kitchen was warm so they melted fast!
You could take some photos using your ice cubes or make a collage using different pictures. When the ice was melted I used my fingers to pull the paint into different patterns – I still have blue fingers! You could use a cocktail stick or a fork or something else.
Remember to warm your hands up afterwards.
Activity 2: Northern Lights
There have been several sightings of the Northern Lights over the last couple of days and I loved the pictures I saw reported online and in the papers. I wanted us to have a go at making an impressionistic rendition of this wonderful natural phenomenon.
Have a little warm up by wiggling and shoogling as before – get someone to help if you like.
Concentrate on the visual stimuli in the picture below – they are beautiful pictures and really show Scotland off! Really look at the colours!
For this one I’ve used paint with a brush and with a sponge to print. You may want to use a resist technique (as we have done before) with crayons and watercolour. Chalks would also work really well. For the foreground, you could rip paper or cut out shapes and stick these on. You might like to splatter white paint on at the last stage for stars in the sky (remember to pull your fingers towards you across your brush or you will splatter yourself!) Whatever you decide to try , remember that the process is more important than the end product. Really explore the materials and media that you have to work with whatever they are!
Give it a go and let me know how you get on !
What have you learned about? Colour, impression. wet on wet painting, personal choice, printing, process
This week, we have a recipe for pizza that you can try making at home.
No Yeast Pizza
If you like this recipe, here are some other pizzas recipes you might like to try.
Quick Pitta Pizzas:
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/pitta-pizzas
Tortilla Pizzas:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/makes/tortilla-pizza
Muffin Pizza
We would love to see how you get on with you Home Economics activities so please feel free to share any photos or videos via your child’s teacher, through Google Classroom, or email Amy Dunnett (Principal Teacher Primary) adunnett@aberdeencity.gov.uk.
Today may be known as blue Monday but we have something special that will brighten up your day! We are delighted to share the final nativity performances from our Nurseries and we hope you enjoy them!
Orchard Brae @ Ashgrove AM
Orchard Brae @ Ashgrove PM
Orchard Brae @ Howes Road AM
Orchard Brae @ Howes Road PM
Sense.org.uk is a charity that supports people with complex disabilities in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Sense Scotland is part of the Sense family and works with children, young people and adults who have communication needs in Scotland.
Sense has developed a set of play toolkits for parents and professionals to provide information and advice on enabling children with complex disabilities to enjoy inclusive play.
The toolkit for parents contains simple ideas, suggestions and practical tips on making play fun and fully accessible. You know your child best, you know their likes and dislikes, so not all the activities and ideas may be suitable for your child but hopefully there will be some inspiring ideas for you to try.
Sense have also produced a series of videos to go along with their play toolkit which we have linked below.
During the current restrictions we know that you may not have, or be able to get, a lot of the items in the videos. The videos have simply been added to hopefully give you some ideas of things that you might want to try with your child, using or adapting, whatever items and objects you do already have at home.
Our lives are full of sensory experience. We all respond to sensory information. We touch, move, see, hear, taste and smell. It is important to recognise that the sensory information we process can have an impact on how we feel, how we think and how we behave and respond. Any of the senses may be over, or under sensitive, or both, at different times.
These booklets will give you some ideas and examples of things that you can try to help you support your child with their sensory experiences.
The latest GTCS magazine, January 21, ‘Teaching Scotland’, includes an article on autism.
The magazine is sent out regularly to members but it is also available online. If you want to have a look through back issues the website link can be found here.
An autism lens on nurture
The article is written by Lorna Johnston and Marion Rutherford from the National Autism Implementation Team (NAIT).
The authors reflect upon adaptations to nurture-focused and compassionate approaches which might be relevant to autistic children .
At the end of the article reference is made to the GTCS booklet ‘Meeting the needs of autistic learners: A Professional guide for teachers’ which we have added below.
Let’s not just see how it goes
This is an article from the November 2019 issue discussing six key anticipatory supports which have been found to be relevant for pupils with autism in secondary schools.
Make a change
This article was first published in the May 2019 issue. Frances Young, is a Support for Learning Teacher who is also the parent of a child on the spectrum. In the article Frances outlines her views on how you can help pupils with compliant autism in your classroom.
Tomorrow (14th January) we will be having our first Secondary Assembly of the New Year. Our assemblies have been virtual since our return after the initial lockdown due to having to restrict the numbers for gatherings and our young people have responded well to this.
Tomorrow we would like to invite both our remote learners and those staff and pupils in school to join us. If you have not yet signed up, please do so by accepting the invitation sent via Google Classroom. If you are having any issue, please contact the Class Teacher for further support.
The link will go ‘live’ in Assembly Classroom a few minutes before we start. I hope you can come along!
