Week beginning May 25th 2009…

Apologies for the lack of ELP diaries over the last two weeks. This is due to Mrs Binnie being appointed Acting Principal Teacher Pastoral until the summer holidays to cover for Mr Main, who is now Acting Deputy Head.

However, there are some important dates we would still like to take the very quick opportunity of reminding you of…

May 27th 2009 – last day of the extra sports at Moray House

May 28th 2009 – school concert in the evening (if your child is involved you will already have had the letter home)

June 1st 2009 – provisional date for change of timetable but this is still provisional – we will keep you up to date

June 5th-7th – rewards weekend for outstanding effort by winning S2 pupils – those involved have already been contacted. Well done!

June 22-26th 2009 – Activities Week. More details will be sent to you in due course about the planned trips. Parents should be aware that there has been no booking form this year as the format of Activities Week has changed.

ELP Diaries will recommence after the summer holidays – thanks!

We don’t poo poo our dinosaur lesson!

This is how some scientists, who specialise in studying dinosaurs, think prehistoric turtles would have looked like. They are quite similar to modern turtles in many ways but perhaps have more protection on their bodies to save them from the vicious predators that roamed the planet millions of years ago…

One of these creatures left clues to its life for us to find, all these years later when it deposited THIS on a beach or riverbank a long time ago…

 

It may look like something your friendly neighbourhood pooch has left on a pavement somewhere – but it is different in so many ways!

This poo is as hard as stone, in fact in so many ways it IS a stone. If you touch it, it is hard and cold. It has no smell. It cannot be compressed. It is the fossil of a turtle dropping from the time of the dinosaurs – and from it the scientists can find out a lot. Mr Kiernan brought one of these turtle fossils into class for us to look at. He also brought a number of other interesting remains that had been turned into fossils at the bottom of the sea, rivers or deserts…

We had the opportunity to look and touch fossils including:

• fossilised iguanadon egg shells
• prehistoric shark teeth (from megalodons)
• hairy mammoth tusk
• dinosaur back bone discs
• fossilised anenomes
• fossilised ammonites – which look like big swirly snail shells and belonged to animals who lived in the sea
• trilobites – which were like giant woodlice!

It was amazing to think that these things were around in the times of the dinosaur – how amazing to think that we were seeing and touching some of the things they saw, did and had.

Would you fancy finding one of these things under a stone in your garden though?

Week beginning May 11th 2009…

This week we will be working hard in the build up to Open Day! Our dinosaur project is coming along well and this morning we had a special visitor to our science class…

ELP Science

In ELP Science this morning, we were visited by Mr Kiernan, who is something of an expert in fossils! He brought with him his boxes and bags of goodies – full of fossilised remains from dinosaurs, their eggs and even their fossilised poo!

ELP Gardening

We are moving our ELP Veggie Deliveries to a Thursday from this week onwards. Expect to see our smiling faces bringing lovely summer fruits and veg to your classroom doors during Period 2.

ELP Maths

We are continuing to work on our number, money and time. This week we will practise finding the missing number or predicting the missing number in a simple sequence. We will be working really hard on our quarter pasts and quarter tos. We may be taking a lovely stroll to see Robyn in her new job – and practise spending some money (on juice!)

ELP Social Studies

Dinosaurs rule again this week as we continue our work for Open Day – making book covers for our own Lost World exhibition, finishing off our Mrs T Rex model and making a start on our dinosaur landscape. Mr Kiernan has offered to lend us some of his fossils for Open Day so that we can put on a Fossil Exhibition…

ELP PE

This week the children will be out of school twice for extra PE. On Wednesday they will be going to Edinburgh fo extra swimming with the PE teacher students at Moray House and on Thursday they will be going up to Meadowmill to take part in their annual SPORTS DAY!