We have been talking about friendship as part of anti-bullying week.  Today we watched a short film which showed us kind friends and unkind friends.  You can watch it again here.

We discussed the kind and unkind birds with our friends and tried to think about ways that the small birds could have acted differently.  We also spoke about being different and decided that the small birds might have been being unkind because they thought he was different.   Many of us thought that the big bird was the most exciting bit of the video and decided that it is good to be different.

We based our story writing on this fantastic video too.  The elephants were introduced to ‘openers’.  These are special words to begin our stories.  They all achieved their target of starting their sentences with an opener.

The pandas and tigers worked hard to remember finger spaces and full stops.  They are becoming very confident at sounding out words with less help – even managing tricky words like ‘pushed’ and ‘pecked’.  Well done!

Here are a selection of the finished stories! 😉

Today we were experimenting with torches in a dark room.  We used black paper and torches to try making Batman signals.  We really enjoyed attempting to make large or small shapes with the torches and tried out various stances to see what affect it had on the light omitted. We also tried covering the torches with our hair, fingers and clothes.

Literacy

– new sounds and new words.  These will be issued on Wednesday.

– reading.  This will be done on Thursday for all groups.

Maths:

Circles – using the whiteboard that your child should still have in their schoolbag please make a noughts and crosses grid.   Write 9 simple addition sums in the different sections of the grid such as 4+3, 5+ 4 etc.  You could also include some learn-its .  Take in turns to complete a sum and draw in a naught or a cross.  The winner is the first to get a line of noughts and crosses.  If your child manages this you could try it with harder sums such as 9+6, 7+5 etc using the count on method that was explained at parent’s evening.  We ‘throw’ the big number in our head and then use our fingers to count on.  The children should be able to demonstrate this if you have forgotten. 🙂

Triangles – please use the numberline that was sent home to practice adding 1.  If the sum was 6+1 your child should place his/her finger on 6 and then add 1 by stepping onto 7.  The idea is that over time your child will be able to mentally add 1 without using the numberline and learn that adding 1 is easy because we go to the next number.

Optional extras

Please watch the ‘fluheroes’ video clip that has been created by the NHS.  This will help prepare your child for the flu vaccine this week.   Click here to watch it.

Continue to revise ‘Learn-its’.  1+1, 2+1, 2+3.

Our favourite things:

• playing with the clay.  Katie
• the clay – it was fun to play with.  Timo
• putting my three fingers in the clay and scooping out the inside.  Alex
• giving everyone seeties.  Veer
• making the assault courses in the forest.  Neve
• getting sweeties.  Kian
• count in tens.  Axel

We have learned:

•  how to build a superhero den.  Aila
• about Diwali.  Holly
• about oo.  Max

What should we do next?

• more clay.  Everyone
• go back to the forest.
• learn higher numbers like 100 and 1000.  Scott
• making dinos with the clay.  Enzo

We have been celebrating Diwali this week.  We watched some videos about different families getting ready for Diwali and related this to our own celebrations.  We made Diwali lamps today for golden time with clay. We enjoyed exploring this new texture.

Next week we will paint our Diva lights and then you will have a new beautiful, hand made decoration for your homes! 🙂

Veer shared some of the things he does to celebrate Diwali. He told us you get sweets and presents.  He even brought some sweets for all his friends.  We enjoyed eating them! Thank you Veer!

The elephants have been working with our students Miss Tait and Miss Cameron to find out about WOW words (adjectives).  We did a science experiment related to the theme of fireworks and then made glittery firework pictures.  We used WOW words to describe our fireworks.  We were very proud of the finished result. We will miss Miss Tait and Miss Cameron when they return to university the week after next.

We had a wonderful day in the forest today.  We are becoming much more confident in exploring larger areas of the forest and when climbing trees.

Today our main activity was to build Superhero assault courses with our friends.  Some of us had said we wanted to try this last week.  We worked in teams and tried to think about different obstacles that would make a superhero strong and fast.  We also applied some of our new skills in literacy to make signs to tell others what to do at the different obstacles.  Mrs Duncan was very, very proud of us doing this!  We worked hard in teams and solved tricky problems such as making an ‘under’ or ‘over’ obstacle.  We had great fun trying the assault courses out.   We are going to build on this skill in gym next week.  It was a very physical day and we might be very tired tonight! 🙂

Flu vaccine

This week many of us will be being Flu heroes as we get our flu vaccine. Please click on the above link to watch a short video aimed at children to help them prepare for the vaccine.  Unfortunately, I have not been able to get this video to work in class.

We were little scientists today.

Last week we had found out that a steep gradient (our posh word for hills) made our superheroes go faster.  Today we were finding out if different materials on the gradient changed the speed.

We made sensible scientist guesses before we began our experiment. Many of us thought the bumpy material would make our car go fast because the cars would ‘fall into the bumps.’   Some of us thought the towel material would make our car go the fastest because it was flat.  Some of us also thought the wooden material would be the fastest because it was smooth.

We worked in teams to find out if our guesses were correct.  We used towels, bubble wrap, bumpy material and smooth wood on our hills.  We used a stop watch to time which material made the car go fastest.  We tried each one two or more times because Scientists always double check!

We found out that the wooden material was the fastest.  It took only one second for our superhero cars to move down the wooden hill!  We decided it was because the wood was smooth and hard.  We also spoke about forces and decided that a push force is helping the car to move.  We explained that ‘the car doesn’t even move without a push force on the towel!’

We also wrote and drew what had happened in our experiment because Scientists like to always remember what happened.

We are going to explore our experiments further in our play over the next few days.

We finished the afternoon with some games on the computer.  We were really keen for these to go on the Blog so we could play them at home.  Here they are:

Rock and Roll.  Help Caveman Max to decide which force he should use.  Click here.

Forces – push the truck.  Find out if a hard or a soft push makes a difference.  Click here

Forces – push and pull.  We did not have time for this in class.  Follow the instructions in the game to learn more about forces.

We will become more confident with these websites over the next few days.

• Maths.  New learn-its.  These are part of the mental maths work we have been doing in class.  We will get new ‘learn-its’ every few weeks.  Please help your child learn them.  The idea is to become so familiar with them that the children can recite the answer without using their fingers or requiring much thinking time.  I have taught the children that they should be able to answer them just like they would answer, ‘what is your name?’  or ‘what colour is the sky?’ i.e. with very little thought.   As with all P1 homework little and often is best, perhaps a few minutes in the car, whilst making dinner etc.  The learn-its are
  1. 1+1=2
  2. 2+1=3
  3. 2+3 =5

• New sounds and new words.  These will be issued on Tuesday.
• Reading on Monday and Wednesday for the Elephants and Tigers.  Tuesday and Friday for the Pandas.
• Writing practise.  Please help your child to practise writing the letters we are sometimes forming incorrectly: the caterpillar letters (c, a, g, d).  These letters all start with a curly caterpillar that looks like a letter c.  Your child will have a whiteboard and pen in their folders to practise these letters on.  Please ensure these whiteboards are sent back to school every day as we use them on an almost daily basis in class.  Thank you.

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