Pre-Prep: Inside-out exploration
Last Wednesday, the Pre-Prep enjoyed an exciting visit from Anna Milne, aka Label Lady, as the children will be designing and sewing some lovely Christmas decorations for charity with Anna's help, after half term. This made us feel rather festive, although perhaps a little early...!
We also had a very informative visit from the Thomas Franks nutritionist who talked us through the benefits of healthy eating and being brave about trying new food. She also told us what a portion of fruit and vegetables should look like on your plate; it should be the size of your fist. We learned that we should try to eat the rainbow as different colour foods have different benefits!
All the year groups have been enjoying the changes in the weather over the last few weeks, including changes in colours and our environment. We have collected lots of conkers, which will be used for numeracy games in class, and we have learned about wind and enjoyed the benefits of being outside in all weathers. 
Form 6
In Maths, we have finished our statistics topic which has been good fun and we are now continuing with place value and number. Literacy lessons have seen the children working on adjectives and adverbs and producing brilliant descriptions. We have put this into practice this week with our autumn description. We wandered around the grounds taking photos of trees, conkers, chestnuts and leaves. We finished off by toasting some marshmallows around a campfire and discussed more descriptions using all 5 of our senses. I am looking forward to reading the finished results.
We have continued to investigate different rock types in Science. The children became petrologists and tested the rocks with acid to see if they fizzed, with water for permeability and with sandpaper for hardness. This helped the children to find out the name and type of rock.
Joan Eardley’s landscapes have been the source of inspiration during Art lessons and, after completing a charcoal drawing of the Bass Rock, we have started working on large colourful paintings, adding texture by using thick paint and scratching into the surface.
In DT, they have completed individual logo designs for various shops and companies and they are now working on a group project – re-branding Scotland! Together the class is developing a logo for Scotland. We will make a stop motion pro animation about the process of creating a logo. So far we are at the story board stage.
Form 6 have also started to look at Stop Motion animation in Computing. So far they have drawn a character on a piece of paper and repeated it with a slight difference on another piece of paper. Once they have done this on several pieces of paper and then flick through the pages, it will appear as though the character is waving.
Form 7
In recent weeks Form 7's numeracy lessons have focused on the key strategies you can use when adding two numbers. We have grown in confidence when using a number line, partitioning numbers and, this week, improving our speed of recall of number bonds to 20. We have played the number bonds song so many times we've all heard each other singing it hours later: "1+9, 2+8, 1+9, 2+8, 3+7 number bonds that make 10...". If you know, you know!
Last week was a first for all of us - we had an indoor campfire! This helped to stimulate our senses ahead of our writing lesson. The children enjoyed some autumnal snacks as we listened to the crackling fire surrounded by crunchy leaves and fallen acorns. We then planned our writing on the iPads using the Picollage app and applying the children's new found skill of resizing images to help us.
Ahead of the upcoming festivities, Form 7 and 8 started Scottish country dancing and learnt the first half of the Virginia Reel. It takes a lot of concentration and coordination to follow all the steps but they gave it their best and worked hard with their partner to follow along to the music.
Form 8
Form 8 have been busy learning new sounds. We have learned i,n,p and g over the last two weeks. This means we are now able to build even more sounds and read simple words that include them.
We are also focussing on addition and looking at the different resources around our classroom that can help us develop our understanding of number. We have enjoyed naming and describing 2d shapes and consolidating our learning through play.
We had a really exciting visit from Katie Gladstone who told us all about The Black Watch and even let us try on some of the uniform. We really loved holding the sword but it was very heavy for us! As soon as we put the uniform on we noticed that we walked like soldiers which will help with our acting skills in our drama lessons. 
As part of our Scotland topic, we have been looking at the weather. We noticed that it rains lots in Scotland so we recreated rain in a jar as a science experiment. It was so interesting to discuss how rain is formed.
