Primary 6 enjoy Games @ the Hub

Primary 6 joined in with Primary 6 classes from across the city to take part in an event called Games at the Hub.  We took part in 3 different sports – Dance, Volleyball and Cricket.  The dance group spent the day learning a fantastic routine which 200 of them performed at the end of the day.  The cricket team played matches against other schools and managed to score 98 runs in their first match!  The volleyball teams played many matches throughout the day and showed great skill and team work.  We really enjoyed taking part in the sports but it’s safe to say we were exhausted by the time the closing ceremony came round at the end of the day!

World Book Day Bookshop Visit

P5, P6 and P7 pupils visited the Edinburgh Bookshop today to see the FANTASTIC World Book Day display they had created. We created ‘Book Monsters’ which were reading hand drawn copies of our favourite books.

Marie was kind enough to talk to us about her love of reading and to share an extract from Spellchasers: The Beginner’s Guide to Curses. We exchanged our World Book Day tokens for an exciting new book and received some expert advice on choosing our next read. Thank you to Marie & Kate for making us feel so welcome.

A huge well done to all the pupils involved in creating the window display. You did a tremendous job!

Victorians

Primary 6 have been learning about what it would have been like to live as a child during Victorian times.  We had a great, but eye-opening, experience when we visited the Victorian School Room.  We met Miss Ingram and Miss Craig who taught us a lesson in the three R’s, Reading, Writing and Arithmetic.  The punishment in Victorian times was thankfully very different to the punishment we have now.  We quickly realised how important it was to use our right hand, to sit up straight and to answer every question with Miss at the end.  Otherwise there was the threat of the taws or the wriggle board!  We did enjoy trying to write neatly using the nib and ink and we liked the layout of the classroom so much that we thought we’d give it a try in our own classroom when we got back.

We also learned that hard work wasn’t finished when the children got back from school, they would have had many hard and tiring chores to do around the house.  It’s safe to say that most of us are glad that we are children in 2018 rather than in the 1800’s!

Primary 6 Solar System

Primary 6 have loved learning about the Solar System this term.  We have researched the planets that make up our Solar System and after finding out many are named after Roman Gods we had the chance to share our findings in the form of a presentation to the Primary 4 class who have been learning about the Romans.  We learned a Mnemonic to help us remember the planets in the correct order and had fun making up ones of our own.  One of our favourites is My Very Excited Mother Just Served Us Nachos which reminds us the planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.   After researching the planets we made papier-mâché models of the planets to show their size and distance from the Sun.

Beans Galore!

A fortnight ago it was broad beans and this week Miss McGregor and the Green Team have been out picking runner beans in the school garden. Look at the fabulous crop we’ve grown this year after all that springtime sunshine. There was enough for all the P6 pupils to take some home to try cooking. Let us know of any successes in the kitchen!

 

Author Visit!

In St. Catherine’s we love books and authors! We are delighted to announce that Primary 4 -Primary 7 will be receiving a visit from the award winning author Mark Smith in October. Yay!

Pop Quiz!

Q: What do the following pictures have in common?

A: Well they are all connected to Mark’s brilliant new book titled ‘Slug Boy Saves the World’. Read on for more information:

Thanks to an unfortunately tasty-looking radioactive garden slug, eleven-year-old Murdo McLeod is now the world’s worst superhero. His two powers are pretty unique: the first is sliding up walls. Quite slowly. The second is secreting slippery slime from his skin. (Yes, just as disgusting as it sounds.) 
Now, Slugboy has to use his not-so-super and oh-so-gross abilities to save the world. Let’s hope he doesn’t slip up.

Sounds interesting doesn’t it? More details about Slug Boy and Mark’s visit to follow.

 

Primary 6 trip to the Scottish Parliament

On Thursday 22nd June Primary 6 went for a visit to the Scottish Parliament.  We heard about the history of the Scottish Parliament and learnt that our current Parliament building was built only 14 years ago.  We had a tour of the building and got to go inside the Debating Chamber where the First Minister questions would be taking place later on that day.  There are 129 seats in the debating chamber one for each of the MSP’s.  We then had an opportunity to meet and pose questions to Andy Wightman, who is an MSP for the Scottish Green Party.  He told us about what life was like as a politician and what kind of activities he was involved in as an MSP.

P6 & P7 Parent Showcase!

We would like to invite P6 & P7 parents to our debating showcase next Monday, 5th June at 2:30pm. Come and see what we have been working on!

 

Invitiations should be with you tomorrow!

 

P6 Cricket at Holyrood High School

On Tuesday 9th May Primary 6 took part in a cluster event at Holyrood High School.  We were split into 3 teams in order to learn about and take part in Cricket matches.  Our teams were named after countries and our first task was to work as a team to come up with a team chant.  Our countries were India, Sri Lanka and West Indies.  Throughout the afternoon we played several cricket matches against pupils from other schools.  We learned that in cricket you are not allowed to run once you have picked up the ball so we had to work as a team  when we were fielding in order to stop the batting team from getting too many runs.  It was great fun and as you can see from the photos it was also very warm!

Life as a Victorian Child

As part of our Victorian topic Primary 6 have been learning about what life was like as a poor Victorian Child.  At first we thought we might like to live in Victorian times but after doing a bit of research most of us changed our minds!  We found out that children from poorer families would have to work for around 10 hours a day and would get as little as 25p a week for their hard work!  There were a few different jobs for Victorian children including being a chimney sweep, working in a factory and working in a coal mine.  We used the information from our research to help us write a diary entry as if we were a working Victorian child.  We then used water to age them and ripped our diary entries to make them look as if they had been written during the Victorian era.