Author: Mr Cormack

P1 Update – January 2022

Primary One have completed the sounds of the alphabet and are working hard on their reading and comprehension skills and learning to write a dictated sentence. Thank you for supporting us with their homework and going over their reading books.

In numeracy we made a great start in addition, concentrating on vocabulary such as add, altogether, more than, plus, equals, gives, makes. In Maths we are working on time, and have been talking about the calendar, seasons, months, and days of the week. Please take every opportunity to talk about what you are doing on different days and revise order of the days at home. We will move on to reading analogue and digital clocks and telling the time on the hour.

We have been discussing weather, looking at the BBC weather website, and writing a weather report.

In PE with Miss Davie we have been doing Scottish Dancing. We have been working on pas de bas, skipping and continuous dance sequence such as Military 2 step.

The children have been to keen to practise greetings in French. In Science we have been learning about electricity. Vicky Armstrong also came to lead an art lesson on the theme of Electricity. The children got a chance to film each other making light pictures with torches as inspiration for wire sculptures, and also made electric circuits with salt playdough. In RME we are looking at themes from story of Noah’s Ark such as trust, obedience and promises.

Nursery blog 19.01.2022

We have welcomed 6 new children into Nursery so we have lots of new friends to play with.

The children have enjoyed recalling their Christmas holidays, we have done black pen drawings and the staff have scribed for the children.

We have also enjoyed leaning about our new children through their all about me  bags.

We are looking at the weather, the children have taken a weather diary to fill in at home and we are recording the weather in Nursery. We have frozen dinosaurs and investigate how they melt this has led on to making chocolate crispies and marshmallows on the firepit. Lots of opportunity to discuss solids and liquids!

We are covering Numeracy through games, activities, and roleplay. The children have asked for a café and shop in our roleplay corner. So there will be lots of opportunities for maths and mark making.

Coming up in the next couple of weeks …

  • Burn night
  • Scottish dancing and Burn s night supper snack.
  • Chinese New Year, Chinese writing, Chinese zodiac, and Dragon dancing

 

 

P2/3 January Update

To incorporate Burns Day within expressive arts we have been learning some Scottish country dances such as the Canadian Barn Dance and the Happy Gordons and in art we have been learning about the Scottish artist Steven Brown.  The children have discussed the artistic features of Steven Brown’s art work and have created their own McCoo’s.  The children have also created their own tartan, focusing on the repetition of their pattern.

In literacy, the children have chosen their new class novel and they have chosen The Bfg.  They have carried out a listening activity and illustrated the Bfg, focusing on the detail that they were given within the story.  Within writing the children have been learning about poetry and have created their own acrostic poems and are now learning how to write rhyming poems.

In numeracy, we have moved on to addition within 10, 20, 100 and 1000.  We have been revising our number facts and have been using lots of concrete materials to support us.

Our focus in topic this term is Fettercairn countryside.  We have discussed all the amenities in and around Fettercairn and have mapped out where our house is in relation to the Fettercairn Square.  The children have expressed they want to find out more about the Royal Arch and therefore we will be focusing on this as part of our learning.

P4-5 Blog Update – January

Hello everyone, Happy New Year! P4-5 have settled well back into school life after a very excitable and busy Christmas term.

We have re-established our class charter based on the school’s visions, values and aims. We also looked at the UNCRC children’s rights and used some of these to form the basis of our charter too. The two pupil council reps, Helena and Aiden (who were voted in last term) have been looking at ways to feed forward ideas from the class in their meetings.

                         

Literacy

The children have been studying different types of poetry with Miss Davie and they have been learning to use figurative language such as alliteration, personification, and onomatopoeia in their poems!

We will be studying ‘Cosmic’ by Frank Cottrell Boyce, in line with our new topic this term which is space. The children are continuing to practice their reading and spelling throughout the week in class.

Maths

In maths, the children have started learning about fractions with Miss Riley. We are finding out fractions of amounts of things and working out what to do when the numerator is more than one. Primary 4/5 are finding this tricky if they are not confident with their times tables. If you would like some extra practice at home, you can visit https://www.timestables.co.uk/

The children are also continuing with weight and volume with Miss Davie, who is really enjoying hearing about the class baking and cooking at home to reinforce these skills!

Health and Wellbeing

This term, we are working on finding out what our internal and external motivators are and using these to ensure we can reach our goals! We are trying to set long term goals for our lives, and short-term goals for a hobby, interest, or school subject.

PE – In PE, we are learning a range of Scottish Country Dances! The children can not believe how tiring it is!

Other Curricular Areas

Music – We are learning to sing and play some reggae music. The children were interested to find out more about the history of reggae and how it became a well-known music genre in the 1970s.

RME – The children are studying humanism.

Languages – Primary 4-5 are learning how to say their birthday, and to ask someone’s birthday in Spanish. We are revising saying and writing our numbers in French.

 

P6/7 December Update

This week we learned about using alliteration and applied this learning to our writing. The children did well to make their writing more interesting using figurative language.

To create our script for the Christmas Carol Concert, we made a storyboard showing the Christmas Story. We have also written imaginative Christmas stories using story starters – the children had to continue writing in the style the way the author had started the story; this was very effective!

Last week in maths, some of the children in the class taught the other pupils how to do long multiplication – feedback from the children shows they enjoyed being taught by their peers!

We have now completed our Money topic in maths, where we learned about adding, subtraction, multiplying and dividing money values, profit and loss, credit and debit cards, and how money can affect our feelings.

 

A few weeks ago, we had a visit from a local police officer to talk about online safety and bullying. This theme has continued in our Health and Wellbeing discussions, and we are continuing to work on how we interact with our peers.

This week we made Christmas trees with baubles showing what we are grateful for.

With Miss Davie, the P6/7 have been learning to play Deck The Halls on the xylophone. We have been practising for our Christmas Carol Concert, and we hope to see lots of you there!

In our topic, we have been researching the importance of water conservation, and we made posters to encourage others to save water. The children focused on using persuasive language to create an eye-catching poster. Next in our topic, we will carry out some simple chemical reactions.

P1 December Update

In Literacy we have been learning to use finger spaces between words and we also learned about full stops. We have covered new sounds h and w. We started working on our reading passports with the help of out P6/7 partners and have written the first entry about a book we have read together.

In Numeracy we have been working on one more/one less and more/fewer. We had lots of discussion when comparing the sizes of our families. In mathematics we have been learning about weight, working on using the language  light/heavy and lighter than/heavier than. We had fun comparing the weights of shopping items and Christmas parcels.

In Technology we have designed and made a toy that can be pushed and pulled. We have been practising the songs for our Christmas concert, and we enjoyed working with P6/7 to make some artwork. In PE we have worked on some simple social dancing.

Our Happy Birthday roleplay area has been a great success with the children finding lots of opportunities to write invitations, cards and messages. Thank you for sending in so many birthday items for us to use, this has really enhanced the area and added to the children’s enjoyment. We are hoping to have a Vet’s corner next term, so if you have any soft toy animals or other props we could use we could use we would be very grateful.

P2/3 – December 2021

In numeracy, we are learning to round numbers to the nearest 10 or nearest 100.  We have been playing Rounding Rockets on Top Marks and have been working in pairs using playing cards to round to the nearest given number.  We are also continuing to practice our times tables.

In expressive arts we have had primary 6/7 lead a Christmas craft activity which links to our song that we are singing in our Christmas concert.   We all had to listen carefully to follow each step at a time.

 

We are beginning to become familiar with learning using Chrome books and we are gaining experience with logging in and navigating our way around the chrome books.  We have played some numeracy games and have even managed to type a letter during literacy.

In p.e we have been learning hockey skills.  We have been focusing on how to use the hockey stick safely and how to control the ball while moving around cones.  We have also practiced obtaining the ball from another person while moving and we have hit a target with the ball.

P4-5 Update December

Literacy

Primary 4-5 have been learning about the features of a newspaper article and have written these using information from our class novel ‘Saving Finnegan’. The children named their newspapers, worked on the layout and included two articles.
Next term, the children will be working on writing for information/explanation writing.

Numeracy

The class have been working on their understanding of the four operations this term (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) and we are currently finishing off multiplication. The children have been consolidating their times table facts to help them with this and this should help them with division later this week. Some children have been using concrete materials such as cotton wool balls or cubes to split or group to visualise this.
We have been playing times table games on Top Marks – if the children would like to practice at home, they can visit https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/7-11-years/times-tables.

Expressive Arts

This term, the class as you know were working hard to make Christmas decorations to sell at the school fayre. Primary 4-5 supported each class from Nursery to P7 to decorate their own which was around 200 decorations in total!
We have been doing a variety of Christmas craft activities in class including making props for the Carol Concert with the help of P6-7.

Topic

Many thanks for helping your children to complete their inheritance homework this week. We have been learning about the difference between traits that are inherited and things that can be influenced by environmental factors. We also spoke about dominant and recessive genes.

Just a few little reminders for the remainder of this term –

Dress as you please with a touch of Christmas every Friday
Carol concert Tuesday 14th at 2.30pm
P4-7 Christmas party Thursday 16th in the afternoon

Have a lovely Christmas and New Year when it comes, Miss Riley.

Nursery Blog – December 2021

Some of the activities taking place in Nursery.

The children are enjoying a range of cooking and baking activities.  We made homemade soup to have outside, as it was a very cold day! Chopping up all the vegetables was hard work, but it was very good for our fine and gross motor skills.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mrs Fraser led the Fire Pit Activity Outside. The children were very good at following the Fire Pit Safety Rules. There was a big thumbs up for the delicious soup and the children want to have more soup outside again for snack.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Science

Over the next week the children will be budding scientists predicting and testing objects, to see if they float or sink.

We have been practising our Christmas Songs for our upcoming Outdoor Christmas Song Concert on Thursday 9th December.

Nursery is looking very festive. The children have had great fun decorating the classroom. They also wanted a Santa Area, so we did a mind map and gathered their ideas. We now have a fantastic Santa’s wrapping station, which has been very popular. They have also made a Santa’s Sleigh, using the dolls pushchair. Everyday it has been flying all over nursey delivering presents!