Philosophy Bear

We met Philosophy Bear last week for the first time.  He  had heard about the thinking we do in our class and wanted to join us as he loves to think.  He is always wondering about the world he lives in and thinking about questions like "Why do I exist?"  "What made the world?"  "Why do people love or hate each other?"

The great thing about this sort of thinking is that we can never be wrong, because these sorts of questions have no right or wrong answers.

Philosophy has been told he asks too many questions but we think it is very important to ask questions and to listen to other people's ideas.  This helps us to understand our thoughts and how they affect our life.

We have been working in groups to think of our own 'big' questions.  Some of our questions include:

"Who made God?"

"Did the chicken or the egg come first?"

Another question we had was "How will the world end?"

These are tricky questions but often we just can't find an answer.  Do you have any ideas for our questions?  Or do you have any questions of your own that we could add to our philosophical thinking board?

With a huff and a puff ...

Primary 3 and Primary 4 were very lucky today to spend the afternoon with Mike Gore and Sue Stocklmayer, who came to visit as part of the Orkney Science Festival.  They came to show us some science experiments and told us some stories along the way.  The stories they told us were nursery rhymes and for each nursery rhyme there was a bit of magic!

The first story was about the Three Little Pigs.  We learned that straw can actually be quite strong when we push on each end.

These toilet roll middles were used as an example of how strong straw could be - and we were able to stand on these toilet roll middles without them getting squashed!

We then looked at how the second pig built his house, which was a square shape.

This is not a good shape to build a house - a triangle shape is much stronger!

Another nursery rhyme we read was Humpty Dumpty, who maybe wouldn't have broken into little pieces if he had landed on his head or his feet!  No matter how hard we press an egg on the top or the bottom it won't break - Mrs Kirkness just couldn't manage it!

Some of the class were then challenged to lie in the shape of an egg and try to get back up to sit on their bottoms.  This was very tricky - and some of us guessed that we needed to rock a little before this would work.



We also learned about pushing and pulling through reading about Jack and the Beanstalk.  Everytime we push against something it pushes right back at us.  Did you know this is how an aeroplane can fly?



We blew air into balloons and then let the balloon go.  The balloon flew all over the place - this was because the balloon was pushing against the air and the air pushed back against the balloon and made it whizz around.

We all learned new things about science today by reading nursery rhymes.  We had fun with science - and won't read a nursery rhyme again without thinking about science!

Janis Mackay visits St Andrews

Janis Mackay came to visit St Andrews this morning to tell us about her books and to help us with our writing.  Janis has written three books about a character called Magnus Fin.

We had to start with a warm up - can you tell we are working in button factory and are very busy?

Janis read us a little bit of her first book, then we had to imagine we had gone on a walk and found something very exciting on the beach.  We all shared our ideas.

We then worked with a partner to use interesting vocabulary to describe what we had found.  We then needed to decide on a character for our story.

The story Janis read was very exciting!

When Janis had read us a little more of her story, we then started to write the introduction for our own story.  Janis has challenged us to keep writing our novel and send it to her to read when it is finished!