Primary 2 are Archaeologists!

Today we were very fortunate to get a visit from Elaine Clarke, a Historic Scotland Ranger.  She came to talk to us about Skara Brae and she took a ‘magic box’ with her which was full of items from Skara Brae.  These items were very interesting and we were able to be archaeologist detectives and think about what all these items tell us about the people who lived in Skara Brae.  We came to the conclusion that although there are quite a lot of different things about how we live now some of the basic ideas are still the same as those who lived in Skara Brae.  They wanted to have a nice house, a cosy bed, pretty things and to play games – much like us now!  We were very excited to see a piece of pottery which was made by someone who lived in Skara Brae and they left their thumb print on it!  It was tricky for us to think that this thumb print was over 5,000 years old!  We really enjoyed our visit from Elaine and we are now very excited about hopefully going to Skara Brae to see it for ourselves! 

Amazing Puppets!

Last week we were very lucky to take part in a puppet workshop!  It was brilliant fun.  We learned all about puppets and how to use one and make it talk.  We got to use a real puppet, name them and ask them questions to find out about them!  We were really good at putting on different voices and thinking up interesting facts about our puppets.  Then we watched and took part in a puppet show of the Three Little Pigs.  Some of us got to take part in the show and the rest of us made our puppets join in with the songs.  We laughed nearly the whole way through!  It was great fun and we really enjoyed ourselves!  Here are a few pictures. 

Supermarket Sweep!

Primary 2 have been busy learning about money!  We have been looking at coins and paper money and thinking about the value of each of them.  We also learned about using Debit Cards, Credit Cards and also loyalty cards and how we can use them in banks or shops.  To help us with this learning we have set up a shop outside our classroom.  First we had to plan out or shop and decide how we were going to set it up.  Then we created signs, labels and price tags for our shop.  We had to think carefully about where items went in our shop as we thought it wasn’t a great idea to have shampoo next to our food! 

Now our shop is up and running we are having great fun in it!  Miss Shearer's Uncle has kindly given us a real till to use in our shop.  It really works and we are enjoying getting the receipts printed in the till! 

We are going to continue our learning about money for the next week and any discussions at home about money will help our learning!    

Ross Collins Visit

Today we had a fantastic afternoon with the Author and Illustrator Ross Collins!  He visited us to tell us about being an illustrator and author.  It was very interesting and we really enjoyed his visit.  He told us that he really enjoys doing the illustrations for books and he drew us some characters which we have put on the wall.

 

 

 

He read us some of his stories then showed us his portfolio which had his drawings from all the different stages of his books.  He showed us the first drawings he does and then the ones he puts all the colour in.  They were very nice drawings and it was interesting seeing them on a big sheet out of the books!

 

 

Ross spoke to us about his book Dear Vampa - it's one of our favourites.  He started off by telling us that he needed to do a lot of research about Vampires and that he couldn't understand how much children knew about vampires.  He said the only reason he could think why children knew so much about vampires is because we are all vampires!  Then he tested us with some 'holy water'!  If we flinched we were vampires!  It made us all giggle!

 

 

We really did have a great afternoon and Ross really inspired us to think about being authors and illustrators when we are older!  We hope he will come back and visit Stromness Primary again!

Super Sports Relief

On Friday we had lots of fun raising money for Sports Relief.  Primary 7 had organised a great afternoon of events in the school.  We all dressed up in sporty clothes  - we even had a jouster in Primary 2!  We had a go on lots of the stalls but our favourite was Soak the Teacher!  Mr McIntosh was the prime target and although some of us in P2 didn’t look strong we got the sponges right on target!  A big thank you to Primary 7 and Mrs Leitch for organising such a great afternoon and raising money for a very worthy cause. 

Printing at the Pier!

Yesterday we went to the Pier Arts Centre to take part in a workshop with the staff there.  Here we are getting ready to look at some artwork and create some art of our own.  In the background you can see the piece of art which was used to inspire us! 

We created a print as our piece of art.  First a group had to make the background.  We used very thick paint and rollers to make our prints on fabric. 

Then the next two groups added on details by making patterns in polystyrene and then putting the paint on them and using the roller to press the paint onto the fabric.  We thought about designs like the sea and we also thought about symmetrical patterns as we have been learning about symmetry in maths!

It was a great experience and we are very thankful to the Pier Arts Centre for letting us come and make such a great piece of artwork.  The pieces which P2 and the rest of the school have made will be on display from this Saturday with the preview beginning at 2pm!  Come along and see what you think of our work! 

Symmetry in the Sun!

Today we took advantage of the glorious sunshine and went outside to do some learning about symmetry.  We used chalk to draw shapes and find the line of symmetry. Then we added detail on both sides so they were symmetrical! It was great to be out learning in the sunshine.  It made it so much easier!  We know that both sides of something have to be exactly the same or else it isn't symmetrical.  It was a bit tricky at times to keep things the same on the bumpy ground but we managed!