Wishing all our children and families a very Happy New Year filled with good health and positive times.
We hope you had an enjoyable festive break.
We would like to say a huge thank you for the beautiful cards and generous gifts we received at Christmas. Your kindness and thoughtfulness are greatly appreciated.
It has been wonderful welcoming the children back to school this week. There has been an abundance of chat about the holidays and lots of fun being back together. It is always a bit of a change/challenge getting back into the routines and demands of the school day after time at home (especially with cold, dark mornings) but P3 are adjusting well. Good work everyone!
Home Learning
As we enter term 2 of the school year, we will return to weekly home learning posted here on our P3 page. This will include reading from Monday 12th January. Look out for a 2026 calendar coming home on Monday to support the Maths task for next week.
Sacramental Preparation: Reconciliation
A P3 Mass will be celebrated at St John’s Church at 9.30am on Sunday 11th January.
We hope that all children preparing for the Sacrament will have completed lesson 3 (Baptism) in their purple booklets by Friday 16th January. We will continue to prepare the children in class and move forward with home tasks in the coming weeks. Many thanks for your support at home.
Beyblades
As you will know, a number of our children are loving Beyblades.
As part of our STEM learning and in response to the children’s interest, we have been making our own for use in school. These creations are marvellous and proving very successful!
In class this week, we have been reflecting on the old year of 2025 and all it brought us while looking forward to the promise of a new start in 2026.
Our giant Ancient Egyptian wall display has been much enjoyed but we get ready now to move on to our new learning focus…
We are all very excited by the prospect of 2026 and the opportunities it will bring.
We look forward to a productive term working together.
This morning, P3 took part in the online launch of a new song by Fischy Music called “We’re the Land of Scots.” It was a fun way to end our week as we approach St Andrew’s Day. The link to the song is included on this week’s home learning plan if you would like to sing along at home.
Primary 3 enjoyed their educational visit to the museum on Thursday 27th November. We travelled on the number 5 bus and all the chatter showed how excited the children were!
We took a moment to look at the museum building from the outside then had a year group photo taken on the famous steps.
Exploring the Egyptian exhibition was our main focus so we made our way to level 5 to get started.
P3A feeling the Egyptian heat!
After lunch, each class visited a selection of the museum’s halls and rooms. We investigated Earth and Space, Animal Kingdom, Adventure World and the Explorers Zone: an amazing, interactive learning experience for Primary 3.
A huge thank you to all our parent/grandparent helpers who supported us so brilliantly throughout the day. Your time and effort were greatly appreciated and your presence enhanced the children’s opportunity to move around each area of the museum more freely.
Thank you to everyone who attended our recent parent meetings. It was great to talk with you.
We hope you enjoyed the October week holiday. We are looking forward to a busy, fun-filled and productive time in school this term.
Here is an overview of what we have been learning in the last few weeks.
Literacy:
Focus sounds have been oo/ew and oy/oi. We have been learning to use the suffix –ed. We are using the strategy ‘Look, cover, write, check‘ to learn spelling words. We have been playing word building games outdoors and in class eg. chalk sentences, hopscotch, letter cubes and bingo. We use the website ‘Spokabulary’ to practise focus sounds and words. P.3 have just started using our Read, Write, Inc Spelling workbooks. Handwriting tasks continue in jotters and using the ‘Letterjoin’ app each week.
We celebrated National Poetry Day on 2nd October by analysing the poem “I Was Just Thinking…” which we were entertained by then we wrote some verses of our own using funny ideas and rhyming word pairs. Great amusement all round!
We have been using our Ancient Egypt study as stimulus for different genres of writing. We learned about old style Egyptian houses then wrote a factual description of them:
We used our imaginations to write a brief story about a Pharaoh and his pyramid:
After learning about the process of mummification in Ancient Egypt, we wrote a set of sequential instructions using sentence openers such as ‘first, next, then, after that, finally’:
We are very pleased to see the children’s positive responses to the feedback we give them during writing lessons. As their knowledge of spelling patterns, punctuation and their ability to read grows, they are more able to engage in meaningful conversations about their work and edit and improve it. We will build on this throughout the year.
Numeracy and Maths:
Focus areas:
Counting in 2s, 3s, 5s and 10s. Lots of number games help the children to practise and learn concepts.
Addition and subtraction- number bonds/fact families to 20 and beyond. The children have completed tasks and assessments in class.
We like to take number work outdoors as much as possible. The children enjoyed collecting and organising natural objects into groups to be counted. We drew counting flowers.
In Maths, we have been working on symmetry. We have studied vertical lines of symmetry in shapes and images. We have used numicon, drawn lines and completed the matching half of a picture. Our ‘White Rose Maths’ workbooks have given us some challenges to meet:
STEM:
We used the net of a shape to make 3D paper pyramids for our Egyptian collage walls.
We used a range of construction materials to build our own 3D pyramids during a timed challenge:
Ancient Egypt Learning:
Drama/Digital Technology:
Working in small groups, the children planned, rehearsed and re-enacted ‘a day in the life of’ an Egyptian farmer, scribe or Pharaoh. They performed their drama to their class audience. Each group’s performance was filmed using green screen and we used iMovie to add an Egyptian background for our scenes.
The big screen release of our performances created great excitement! Peer feedback was provided using the ‘Two stars and a wish’ format to recognise positive features and an area to improve.
Art:
P.3 have been working on an impressive piece of art based on the Ancient Egyptian Gods and Goddesses. They produced a line drawing of their chosen image then coloured using pastels. They are stunning. The children are preparing their own special work for display by measuring and making golden frames for their pictures:
We are currently making Pharaoh head-dresses.
On Friday 24th October, we participated in a live digital session with the National Museum of Scotland to enhance our learning. It was very interesting seeing artefacts and thinking about possible uses for items.
Music:
We have been learning new songs called ‘Amazing Egyptians’ and ‘Amulets and Hieroglyphs’ 🎵
We look forward to sharing alot of our Egyptian learning with you in school on 4th December. Details are in school newsletter.
In other aspects of our curriculum, we continue to enjoy PE with Mr Devine, music with Miss Miller, outdoor loose parts play sessions, weekly assemblies and French lessons.
RE:
We were very proud of P3 for their participation at Mass at St Mary Magdalene’s Church on 3rd October. Father Jock asked each class to think of their own Beatitude which we did back at school.
We learned the ‘Glory Be’ prayer in class. We have been finding out about the Twelve Apostles of Jesus.
This month, we learn about Mary. We explore the Rosary and how to pray a decade.
It was wonderful to see the children who will be preparing for the Sacrament of Reconciliation at a special Mass on Sunday morning at St John’s. They did themselves, their families and the school proud.
We continue to learn respect for each other in our words and actions. Happy Diwali to all our families who celebrated last week.
Finally, P3 created beautiful ‘Winter Wonders’ images (a bit early) last week as entries for the City of Edinburgh Council’s annual competition. Good luck! You are all winners in our eyes.
It was a beautiful day for taking Maths outdoors on Thursday. We went on a 2D shape hunt in our school environment and used our iPads to photograph what we found.
ANCIENT EGYPT
We are using our knowledge of Ancient Egyptian life to create and build a wall collage as we learn. This week, we made crops for the farmland and some houses.
