We are very pleased to have raised over £400 for Children in Need (some of the secondary are still collecting from their sponsors).

Here is a photo of the Upper Primary dressed as pirates!

Here is a photo of the nursery with their enormous bag of pennies!

And here is a photo of Madame Rendall after being slimed by the secondary!

When we do learning through play there are lots of different areas in our classroom that we can go and play in. The areas are set up with fun things we can do to do with our book of the week.

We do "Plan, Do, Review". First we plan what we are going to do, then "do" is doing it, and "review" is people going around and looking at what you've done and speaking about what we've learned. Mrs Harcus gives stickers to some people that say "Ask me about... " and when we review we explain what we've been doing and all about our area. When we say what we've done the rest of the class have to listen carefully and see if they are going to want to do it next time.

This is the book nook, there's lots of questions on the walls for you to think about the books that you are reading. This is a picture of some of us sharing the book and reading it out to each other.

This area is the construction area. I've never been there yet but what I think it is is people build things with connex and lego, things that are in the book. Like for Sam's duck we could build a shed for the duck to fit in, and for Uan the Lamb that we are doing now you could build anything to do with it. This is a picture of Davy who has built a sheep.

In the art area Mrs Harcus brought in some things like sand, seaweed, this fluffy stuff, and you could make clouds or the sheep with the fluffy stuff, and with the sand you could make the beach. Courtney did something different, she did her lamb in a field. Carys made the island all stormy, because in the book it was mostly all the time stormy, and the lamb in the field was abandoned. She made big black storm clouds with the fluffy stuff and painted black over them.

This is the writing area and there's jotters here that says Characters and Action and Setting. The setting is where the story was placed, so you can draw or write about different settings, and the characters is where you write about the characters. And we haven't learned about the action yet, but I think it might be what they're doing and what happened.

Before we start we write a little plan. And then at the end we write about what we did, and we think about things like what we learned, and "could I have done things differently?" and "how do you feel about what you did?"

I was in the book nook, and I was one of the ones that Mrs Harcus gave a sticker to today, so I had to share my reflections with the class. I was reading Spooky Poems, and I thought it was really fun doing the writing there, and I would definitely go again!

On the bottom you can write what you think you're going to do tomorrow, so you could go to any place you want and do anything you want! I will be going back to the book nook!

Overnight, a science museum popped up in our school! 

There had been a murder, and we had to use Science to solve who done it. There was also loads of weird experiments to do. And all the older kids had done investigations themselves and they were telling us about it. We really liked Drew's about farming and what sorts of chemicals are in cattle feed. Kyle had made a little car that actually moved! It looked really hard to put together. 

Our project is the sea and shore. Mrs Stout gives us challenge homework. This is homework that is a challenge! We have to do stuff that nobody else does, and not copy anyone. This challenge homework was to collect shells and make something out of it that’s really cool.

Davy: “I built my box by myself in the shed. My Grandad helped me a little bit. I nailed it all in and cut it all out and Grandad put the hinges on.”

Alfie: “My dad helped me make the box and my mum put all the sections and the shells in and my dad put the scallops on the front.”

Jack: “My mum did the first bit but it was too small. Then I cut it out and it was too big! Then mum did it again and it was fine, and we stuck the shells on.”

Robyn: “My mum cut off the top of a cardboard box. Then we stuck on some shells and we decorated the boat with groatie buckies.”

Here are all our friends in our class with their challenge homeworks!

Riley’s dad caught the star fish and then he gave the bucket to us with the star fish in it. We looked in and saw all the star fish. We took them out so that we could draw them. And then we saw a hermit crab!! We called it Harry the Hermit Crab!

It was such a surprise because that morning we read a book about a hermit crab! In the book the crab didn’t have a shell and then he was looking around and he found a shell so he went inside it. And he shared it with a sea anemone and a worm that cleans the shell.

Harry the hermit crab had a tiny tiny shell, that wasn’t the right size for him. Robbie and Alfie were looking for a big shell for him, and then we got a little winkle. He didn’t go into the winkle, so we put him in a big dog whelk. He was very still then and we were a bit worried he was dead.

In the 1st of May P3-5 went on the boat to Kirkwall to see St Magnus Cathedral. It has been 900 years since St Magnus got an axe to his head, so we are doing a project on St Magnus. We are learning his story, and then we are going to retell it in cravendale boxes (we are going to make scenes inside the boxes and have a little peep hole that you can see through into them).

We heard the story about St Magnus in the Cathedral.

St Magnus was a Christian saint. He had a cousin called Hakon who hated him. They were meant to rule Orkney together, but Hakon wanted to rule by himself. Magnus was a Christian and he wanted peace. When he was in a battle once, he didn’t fight, he just sat singing hymns. But Hakon was a more traditional Viking warrior, so they had quite different approaches!

Hakon got sent to Norway, and everything settled down. But then Hakon came back, and they arranged to meet up in Eglisay to talk about how to rule Orkney together. They were each meant to bring two ships and all their soldiers unarmed, with no weapons. Magnus came with two ships, but Hakon had eight! And he had lots of soldiers with weapons. When they met up Hakon said “one of us must die today”. Magnus said “you don’t need to kill me, just make me blind or lock me up in a cell, because death is a bad sin”. Hakon asked his chef, Lifolf, to kill Magnus with an axe. Magnus said “hit me on the head, so I don’t die like a common thief”. Hakon buried him in Egilsay, but his mum wanted him to be buried in a proper Church, and Hakon let her take his bones away to do that.

Years later, a man called Rognavald (you say it Ronald, but really his actual name was Kali!) wanted to celebrate Magnus, so he built a large beautiful Cathedral in Kirkwall, and they took St Magnus’ bones and put them in a grave there.

During the reformation, Scotland changed from being Catholic to Protestant. Catholics liked Saints a lot, but Protestants didn’t, and people were told to burn or destroy the bones. St Magnus’ bones were taken out of his grave, and everybody thought they had been burned. Then years later people in the Cathedral found a wiggly stone, and they took it out, and they found a box with St Magnus’ bones in it! There was a skull with an axe hole in it, so they knew it was it him. Today the bones are still in the wall, in a new box.

After hearing the story we did some sketching and took some photos of the Cathedral. It was beautiful! Then we went to have lunch in the town hall. After that we played for a while in Tankerness Gardens because it was so sunny. We played hide and seek in the gardens and we climbed on the rocks and we hid in the trees and bushes.

In the afternoon we went to the library to continue our world book day theme. We had a tour of the library and we got to spin the big wheels that moved the book shelves, and we saw Sally the librarian’s office, and we got to see where the library van was kept. We also saw some dead butterflies in a drawer! After that we got the St Magnus story read to us again! We are not going to tell you it again because we just wrote it all out. Then we had silent reading time.

The last thing we did on our trip was go to Dealz! We bought sweets and toys. Lots of people bought brain liquor, which when you lick it your tongue and teeth turn blue! Tom spent ages rummaging in the hot wheels cars looking for the ones he wanted to buy.

On the boat on the way home we looked out of the window and saw the kirk where St Magnus was first buried.

It was a really sunny and fun day!

We researched lots of different facts about bananas, tea, coffee, farmers, chocolate, and other Fair Trade products.  We used speech bubbles as if the farmers in the pictures were telling us facts.We needed a name for the chocolate bar on the display so we ran a competition and we had two names that we couldn’t decide between so we merged them together, so Ben and Elsie’s name won.  Ben’s name was Swirly Whirly and Elsie’s name was Delight.  So “Swirly Whirly Delight” was the name.