Month: September 2021

P4-5 Blog Update September

IDL

Primary 4-5 have been learning about Scottish Geography and Landscape in our topic. We were learning about U-Shaped valleys left behind by glaciers in the ice age and had a look online at one in Glen Coe. We went for a walk around the village with Mr Gould, who is a geologist. He kindly volunteered his time to show us evidence of glaciers left behind in our landscape right here in Fettercairn! We learned about the red sandstone that is used in some of the buildings in the square that was brought down from the mountains thousands of years ago by glaciers.

(Some of this sandstone was used to build Mrs Hay’s house!)

 

Expressive Arts

Primary 4-5 used the knowledge they gained about glaciers to create some glacier landscape paintings in art. We spoke about the cool tones of the paint and used these to create a background of sea and sky, and then glaciers which we glued on top.

 

ALEC Virtual Session

On Monday this week, we enjoyed an online session delivered by Aberdeenshire Life Education Centre and the children recognised Harold the giraffe from previous in-school visits! Harold spoke to the children about keeping their brains and bodies healthy.

As always, if ever you need anything please feel free to contact me on jodi.riley@aberdeenshire.gov.uk

P6/7 September 2021

Over the last 2 weeks we have been planning and writing a newspaper article on the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD. The children have taken on the role of a journalist, and we have learnt about the key features of a newspaper article. When the children have completed their final draft, I will send a copy of the newspaper articles via Marvellous Me.

For our comprehension work this week, we focused on the ‘Metalinguistics’ reading strategy – this means we explored new words and researched the meanings. This helps the children develop a greater understanding of the text.

In maths this week we have focused on multiplication. Most children have focused on mental multiplication, and we have learned about the halving and doubling strategy to aid us when calculating multiplication problems. Here is the link to the video that we watched which explains the strategy – Multiplication Strategy: Doubling and Halving – YouTube

Some children have been working on long multiplication word problems.

In Health and Wellbeing, we discussed our emotions and our emotional needs. In pairs the children created different characters. I gave the children a range of scenarios, and they discussed whether or not their emotional needs were being met. The children came up with lots of positive coping strategies that we can use if we feel upset or down.

 

We learned about earthquakes for our topic this week. The children researched facts on the chromebooks to answer a range of questions about earthquakes and why they happen. This afternoon we carried out an experiment using jelly, marshmallows and straws – we tried to create an ‘earthquake-proof structure’ that would withstand 30 seconds of shaking in the jelly!

P1 Blog – September 2021

Primary 1 have been working on 2 new sounds, r and m, in Literacy. We have also been enjoying working with our first reading book. In writing we are practising writing our names correctly , retelling a story and thinking about beginning middle and end.

In Numeracy we have been working on ordering, writing and counting numbers to 5, and in Mathematics we are learning about 2d shapes, including squares, circles, triangles and rectangles. Please ask us about geometric shapes that we see when out and about.

We have been working on ball skills in PE, throwing, rolling and catching, aiming the ball and using opposite hands and feet. In Health and Wellbeing we are learning to listen to others and take our turn to talk at circle time. We are enjoying organising our School Harvest Collection and hope you received the letter we wrote about this. We are going to decorate collection boxes for each class to encourage people to bring in donations.

In Social Studies we have discussed the jobs that people do, especially the unseen jobs that are done in school by catering staff, janitor, cleaners and administrator. Mrs. Johnstone will visit our class to tell us about all the work she does.

 

Nursery Blog September 2021

This week in nursery we have been supporting children to recognise their name and the letter sounds in their name, through matching letters activities and games.

Next week, we will be exploring ‘Where our food comes from?’ Celebrating Harvest Time. The children will be acting out the story of ‘The Little Red Hen.’ Our literacy focus will be – can they retell the story, using puppets and props. We will also be baking bread, which the children are really looking forward to.

We asked the children to come up with ideas to change the home corner. They voted 6 votes for a building Site and 3 votes for a Dog Vets. The children helped change the area into a building site and have been using their imagination role-playing in the area.

 

In Gym this week we set up an Obstacle Course. This was a great activity to develop their gross motor skills. We also did some funky finger movements to support their fine motor skills.

On Wednesday at the woods, we played the can you find game. This week the children had to find objects that were hard and soft. We have added the items they have collected to our Inquiry Table in Nursery.

 

P2/3 September Blog Post

In P.E we have been working on our ball skills, focusing on chest passes.  We have been working in teams, competing to see how many chest passes we can do before we drop the ball, whilst also focusing on our technique.  We have also been working with a partner challenging ourselves by moving into a space and passing the ball for our partner to catch it.

In Topic we have been learning about our sense of taste and touch.  We were discussing whether our sense of smell affected our sense of taste and whether we needed our sense of sight to be able to identify what objects were in our mystery feely boxes. We were also discussing what is safe and unsafe to touch.

In health and wellbeing we have been learning that it is ok to make mistakes and discussing how we can succeed at something.  The children came up with lots of different feelings that we can feel when we are learning something new.  We discussed how our learning journey looks and we made a learning line for our classroom.  We each made a brick for our line, which we created through pattern.

In literacy we have been focusing on imaginative writing.  We read Lucy’s Blue Day and wrote about a time we have felt an emotion and what colour our hair would be with that emotion.

P6/7 September 2021

In Literacy we have continued to focus on our class novel – Holes. For our writing, we focused on creating a detailed description of the yellow-spotted lizard from the book. The children used expanded noun phrases to build up a picture of the lizard in the reader’s mind. This week we have started writing informal letters from the perspective of Stanley, the main character in the book.

Each spelling group is focusing on a different spelling pattern/rule each week, and we have been practising our words in lots of active ways!

In Maths last week, we were learning about place value to 1,000,000 and beyond. We learned how to round whole and decimal numbers. This week we have moved onto addition, and over the next few weeks will revise subtraction, multiplication and division.

On Monday we were very lucky to take part in a Health and Wellbeing workshop delivered by SCARF. This focused on physical and mental wellbeing – there was lots of great discussion about how we can keep our minds and bodies healthy.

We are continuing with our theme of friendship in health and wellbeing lessons, as well as having circle time discussions on responsibility and trust.

This week for topic we learned about Volcanoes. We focused specifically on the structure of a volcano, and after learning about it the children were tasked with creating a poster showing what they learned. We worked in groups where each child had a role, and we only had 30 minutes to complete the poster. As you can see, the children did a fantastic job on this task! Next week we will be learning about Earthquakes.

 

P1 Blog September 2021

Primary One have been revising the first set of sounds, making sure they can say, read, write, and do the actions for each sound. Those who have been absent in the first few weeks of term have had a chance to catch up. Next we will be making and reading words with these sounds.

In Numeracy and Mathematics we have been learning to use positional language in a variety of practical activities, and making sets of 3 and 4 objects.

In our topic ‘Me and My Family’ we have been discussing what we need to survive, including wants and needs. We had a virtual visit from ALEC where Harold the Giraffe taught us about ‘Happy Healthy Me’.

We have been talking about how we will celebrate Harvest as a school, Primary One are taking responsibility to organise this. We are making flags in Art to celebrate the Tour of Britain passing through Fettercairn.

Nursery – September 2021

We have had a very busy week in Nursery, the children played lots of games incorporating colour in Gym. We danced with scarves, practised our ball skill and played a colour corners game.

Woodland Wednesday was great fun, we talked about staying safe before we left Nursery. Everyone really enjoyed playing on the rope swing and playing pooh sticks on the bridge.

After a picnic snack we retold the story of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” the children acted out the story and we had lots of bears chasing Goldilocks out of the cottage.

On the way back to Nursery we saw the bunting on the Market cross and we talked about the special bike race coming through the village on Sunday.

P4/5 September 2021

IDL

Primary 4-5 have been learning about Scottish Geography and Landscape in our topic. We were learning about U-Shaped valleys left behind by glaciers in the ice age and had a look online at one in Glen Coe. We went for a walk around the village with Mr Gould, who is a geologist. He kindly volunteered his time to show us evidence of glaciers left behind in our landscape right here in Fettercairn! We learned about the red sandstone that is used in some of the buildings in the square that was brought down from the mountains thousands of years ago by glaciers.

(Some of this sandstone was used to build Mrs Hay’s house!)

Expressive Arts

Primary 4-5 used the knowledge they gained about glaciers to create some glacier landscape paintings in art. We spoke about the cool tones of the paint and used these to create a background of sea and sky, and then glaciers which we glued on top.

 

ALEC Virtual Session

On Monday this week, we enjoyed an online session delivered by Aberdeenshire Life Education Centre and the children recognised Harold the giraffe from previous in-school visits! Harold spoke to the children about keeping their brains and bodies healthy.

As always, if ever you need anything please feel free to contact me on jodi.riley@aberdeenshire.gov.uk

P2/3 September 2021

In literacy we have been writing imaginative stories with the focus of making our writing legible and combining words and pictures.  We have also been learning our spelling words through active games like word bang, word splat and hangman.

In numeracy we have been learning to identify the number before, after and between and have been playing ‘spin the wheel’ to reinforce this.  We have also been learning to count in 3s and have been making groups of 3 to support this and we have been sequencing numbers up to 10000.  For mental maths we have been playing around the world and are working together to beat our timer for counting up to 100.

Our focus in health and wellbeing is our feelings and we have identified lots of different feelings that we have and we are learning that it is ok to speak about our feelings.

In art we have created optical illusions and have learned that an optical illusion is an image which tricks our brains.  We have also made flags for when the Tour De Britain comes through Fettercairn with encouraging messages and pictures on them.

In p.e. we have been playing team games to encourage working together to achieve and we have carried out a guided obstacle course to link in with our topic in order to see what limitations there are without our sight and how we can help others keep safe.