We had hoped to have golden time outside today but the weather was not great. This was despite Erin and Timo’s efforts to change the weather with their magic powers!
We went to the ICT suite instead and could choose what we did on the computer. Some of us created pictures, typed or played games. It was lots of fun. A great end to a great week! Well done everyone!
This week the top table were the blue table. They broke previous records with their staggering total of 218 cubes! Well done blue table! Their prize is to have a special stationary box at their table containing pink glue, fancy pens, space pencils and twisty crayons. They were delighted with this. They also get to line up first all of next week.
Here they are…
We enjoyed exploring our active spelling stations and managed to focus and remain at an activity for longer than last week. We used cooked spaghetti to make our spelling words too. Some of us thought this was great, others were less enthusiastic! 🙂
We also used some retro stationary from Mrs Duncan’s era: magic pens. These change colours when the magic pen is written on top. They caused a lot of excitement and were great for developing fine motor skills as the children had to carefully trace over each word they made.
New sounds and new words – these will be issued on Tuesday.
Reading – please see reading diaries.
Maths
Circles – use the numberlines and sums that were sent home to try and solve the sums on the whiteboards (these were sent home in the book bags a number of weeks ago). Try cutting up the sums and scattering them on a table. Get your child to choose a sum. These are missing number sums. They are tricky for us to work out but we enjoy the challenge. If the sum is 6+_ = 10 we place a finger on 6 and count how many steps it takes to get to 10. 1 step would take us to 7, 2 steps to 8 and so on. In time, this skill will enable us to work out the sum mentally by picturing the numberline in our minds. Your child would then write the completed sum on their mini whiteboard. Your child was given a whiteboard pen in the story sacks that were recently sent home. Please encourage correct number formation. We are trying to remember that all numbers, with the exception of 5, start at the top. You could also try playing the websites from last week. You can keep the numberlines at home for future maths homework.
Triangles – rainbow number writing. Using a range of coloured pencils, pens, paints or crayons please help your child to form all numbers from 0 to 10 correctly. They should then trace over each number they write with five different colours. This is called rainbow writing – we do this in school to help with number and letter formation. Please encourage your child to start all letters at the top, with the exception of number 5. Number 1 is just a straight line and for number five we draw the ‘neck’ and ‘big tummy’ first and then draw the ‘hat.’
Please sign the reading diary to acknowledge that the homework has been done. Thank you.
Thursday is magnetic letters day! We are becoming so confident at spelling three and four letter words.
Our focus for PE with Mrs Duncan is Scottish Country dancing. Today we explored Scottish music and tried to move our bodies quickly or slowly to the music depending on the speed of the song. We played musical bumps and musical statues to help us explore this in a fun way. Mrs Strachan’s P1 class joined us too. It was delightful to watch the children choosing to hold hands and dance together!
Today we used the iPads to find different images of fossils. We successfully managed to open ‘Safari’ and use the search box.
We then used these images to create our own artistic interpretations of fossils.
The triangles revised some key addition strategies in different games today. They are becoming more confident using their fingers – you can help them with this at home.
The circles continue to learn new strategies for working out the different ways of making 10. Today they had a competition to see which group could match up the different ways to make 10 the fastest. Here are the winners:
We wrote non-fiction stories this week. We used information we learned from watching ‘Walking with dinosaurs.’ We all worked very hard to achieve our targets !
Congratulations to Keir, Oliver, Mara and Erin who were the star writers for our writing session this week. They worked very hard to meet their targets independently. Here are their stories:
Today we watched some clips from ‘Walking with dinosaurs’ to find out what the world was like when dinosaurs roamed the earth. We were all surprised to learn that humans did not live at the same time as the dinosaurs. This prompted a very interesting discussion on what humans have created that would not have been around during the dinosaur period.
We were unsure how humans know about dinosaurs if they did not live at the same time. This led us onto a big chat about fossils. We watched an animation and looked at pictures online to see some examples of fossils.
Then we made our own fossils using clay. We worked hard to manipulate and soften the clay. We used different tools to create a flat shape for making a fossil. We then used a range of dinosaur toys, bones and shells to create different fossils. We all enjoyed it and are looking forward to painting out fossils next week.
