Fettercairn Nursery News – January 2023

‘Gung Hei Fat Choi’

This week the children have been learning about the customs and traditions around the Chinese New Year.

On Monday, we watched some video clips of two children preparing and celebrating the New Year. The children have had the opportunity to make Chinese Lanterns, Fans and do some Chinese writing.

On Tuesday, at Gym the children took part in a Dragon Dance, which they were extremely excited about. They made the Dragon’s head and had great fun being under a long piece of material, which was the Dragon’s body.

On Wednesday, the children helped to make a Chinese Stir fry for our snack, practising their chopping skills. We also set up a Chinese restaurant. Staff have been supporting the children to take on different roles (Chef/Waiter/Customer). The most ordered dish was chicken and rice at an awfully expensive price of £50!!

Next week, we are going to be learning about Rabbie Burns. We would like to invite parents to stay at drop off time on Wednesday 25th to listen to Scottish Poetry recited by P6/7 and two Scots Songs, performed by the Nursery Children. There will also be Coffee/Tea and homemade shortbread made by the children. We look forward to seeing you then.

 

On Friday, the children will be taking home a Sheet to record Birds that they see in their Garden. This is part of the RSPB Big Garden Bird Watch held over the weekend of the 27th of January. We would like if you could spare 1 hour at the weekend counting and recording the birds that land in you garden. If you live in a flat, you could do this at the local park. Please return the Bird Sheet on Monday 30th January, where the children will collate the data into a graph. You can then also go onto the RSPB website and send them the vital bird data. Big Garden Birdwatch | The RSPB

It is free, fun and a lovely activity to do with your child. There are also other activities to support your child’s learning on the website. Happy Birdwatching 😊

Reminders

All parents need to sign up online to register for starting p1 or returning to nursery in August.

Primary 1 Registration

w/c 16 to 20th January

https://www.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/applyForSchoolPlace

Nursery Registration

w/c 23/01/23 to 03/02/23

http://www.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/schools/information/early-learning-and-childcare-information/

This week staff have been meeting parents to talk about their children’s learning and update their child’s care plan. If you still have not managed to arrange a meeting, please see staff at drop off or pick up to make an appointment.

Children’s Observation Update

Staff are recording children’s observations they are being printed out and kept in Keyworker Folders in the Nursery. We are looking into ways of sharing you child’s observations and will let you know in due course. Meanwhile, the Nursery Floor book will be available for parents to look at every Tuesday and Thursday. The Floor book shows all the learning experiences and activities that the children have been doing in Nursery. We would love to have your feedback in the Floor book. We will have post it notes out for you to write any comments.

Parent Visit

Next week, Evie’s Mum, who is a Doctor, will be coming into talk to the children. If you would like to come in to do an activity with the children, please catch Mrs Keal or Mrs Rae at the gate.

We have an open-door policy at Fettercairn Nursery. If you have any concerns and would like to discuss something in private, we can arrange a private meeting. See Mrs Keal or Mrs Rae.

That just leaves me to say have a lovely week and we look forward to seeing you next Wednesday for our Scottish Parent Session in Nursery on Wednesday 25th January at 9.15 a.m.

P1/2 Update – December 2022

In Literacy P1 have covered the 4th set of sounds and have been writing labels. P2 have been learning to write a list, working on alphabetical order and sound blends. We have also worked on the books from our Bookbug packs.

In Numeracy , now that P1 are secure in their numbers to 10, we have begun addition and will continue next term. P2s were working on different strategies to take away from 20. We have also been working on Measure and have been learning about Length and Weight.

The children have been very excited about our Night and Day topic and have been recording what happens to the moon in different phases. We have also been drawing shadows in the playground, and reading our class novel ‘The owl who was afraid of the dark’.

   

We have visited the Nursery for Transition sessions, participated in Art and Craft and made new friends. Miss Riley has visited the class to teach IT skills when Mrs Smith is teaching Russian to P4/5, and we have been learning how to log in with our passwords.

We were very impressed by how well the children learned their lines and songs for our Nativity production. They were also ready to step in if any friends were absent during rehearsals. They enjoyed working with P6/7 to make their headbands too.

In PE we have learned some Scottish country  dances.

Lastly, thank you very much to all parents who sent in resources to enhance our Post Office role play and wet playtimes box.

 

 

P6/7 – December Update

In Literacy this term, we used a short film called Shadow of Blue as stimulus for our writing. The children wrote brilliant character and setting descriptions, up levelling their vocabulary using a thesaurus. We learned about synonyms and antonyms, and we explored symbolism and what different characters/objects might represent.

 

We have been reading ‘The Accidental Prime Minister’ which the children have loved! This book ties in with our topic this term, so we have been learning about key vocabulary which has helped us with topic work. P6/7 particularly enjoyed creating a list of questions they would ask the Prime Minister if they came to our school, then did a ‘Hot Seating’ activity where they acted this out with a partner.

 

At the start of the term in Maths we continued with Division. We learned how to use our times table facts to divide numbers beyond the times tables. We practised long division by 1- and 2-digit numbers, which proved to be quite tricky! This is something we will revisit next term for consolidation.

Over the past few weeks, we have learned about Money. The children applied their knowledge of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division to problems involving money. We have learned about different ways to pay and have discussed the advantages and disadvantages of each method (cash, credit and debit cards, digital wallets, banking apps). P6/7 have really enjoyed learning about budgeting – the children budgeted for a bedroom makeover and soon realised that things cost more than they initially thought!

Next term, we will be learning about Fractions, Decimals and Percentages, as well as Time.

In Health and Wellbeing, we learned about Online Safety. We created posters showing how everyone can stay safe when using the internet. We have practised our debating skills and have worked on listening to others and being respectful, even if our views are different from others.

In PE, we have loved learning to play Badminton this term. We have learned about grips, footwork, attacking and defending, and how to play a game. We enjoyed pairing up with P2/3 to play some games too. The children are becoming quite competitive!

Next term, P6/7 will learn about Food and Health.

Our current topic is Democracy. We learned key vocabulary by doing a QR code hunt outside. The children have created timelines of the Scottish Parliament, and most recently we learned about political parties in Scotland and their leaders. We will continue with this topic at the start of next term where the children will be creating their own manifestos and will be continuing to develop their debating skills!

P6/7 have worked so hard to plan for the Christmas Show which takes place on Thursday. We planned craft lessons to make props for the show with other classes. I can see the children’s leadership skills developing very well!

I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

P2/3 Update – Term 2

In numeracy this term we have been focusing on addition up to 20, 100 and beyond 100.  We have been developing different strategies to support us and have been strengthening our mental agility.  To help us we have played beanbag addition and challenged ourselves to see if we could add more than 2 numbers together.

In literacy we have been writing letters, focusing on the layout of a letter and seeing if we can use different openers.  We have also written persuasive letters to Mrs Strachan using ‘bossy’ language to convince her that their shop name and what is sold in our role play shop is ‘without a doubt’ the best option to go with!

We have also been developing our ICT skills this term.  Some of us had never worked with a keyboard before so we have been familiarising ourselves with the keys, signing in and out of the chromebook and have even started to type out our persuasive letters.

In health and wellbeing we have been speaking about kindness and what kindness looks like.  We have also been thinking about our bigger emotions we can feel at school sometimes.  We then developed a HWB ‘I feel… So I can…’ display where the children came up with feelings and what somebody could do if they felt that feeling.  This has been getting used very well in class so far.

P4-5 Update – Term 2

Hello Everyone!

Primary 4-5 have been busy this term with lots of activities such as learning about fire safety, sessions with the SSPCA about animals and mental health and making poppies for Remembrance Day.

Literacy

This term, we have been working on creative writing. The children are working towards writing a Christmas-themed story. We started with traits of characters and listened to some good examples from popular stories. Then we created our own characters to use in our writing. Next, we used the 5 senses to create a setting e.g. ‘my character can see…’. Then the children went on to plan their stories and come up with a plot. I can’t wait to read what the children write once they bring all of this learning together!

We have been talking about WOW words a lot this term and have been identifying them in popular stories. The children have been practicing saying these out loud with an accompanying action so that the words they are saying have more of an impact, for example, BELLOWING!!!

 

Maths

This term, in number with Miss Riley, the children have been working on the four operations – addition, subtraction, multiplication and will be starting term 3 with division. We have worked hard to learn lots of different methods to figure out these problems, so that the children can choose which methods suits them best for each individual problem.

In beyond number with Miss Davie, the children have been learning about time and money. They have been answering questions about time durations, reading timetables and working out the duration of time between two times. The children have been carrying out practical tasking using money and adding and subtracting amounts of money and giving change.

 

Health and Wellbeing

Primary 4-5 have been working on their gymnastics skills in PE with Miss Davie. The children have been learning to balance and link movements. With Miss Riley, we have been learning to play Kurling and Boccia and are having a little tournament against the rest of the class. The children have learned the rules of these games and how to score them.

We are also learning about relationships in health and wellbeing. The children are identifying features of healthy relationships with friends and caregivers and how to promote positive interactions in these. We are working on conflict resolution within these relationships also.

 

Other Curricular Areas

Languages

The children have been learning greetings in French with Miss Riley and are learning how to say a short greeting to introduce themselves.

Primary 4-5 have been learning a little Russian from Mrs Smith this term. They have learned how to say, hello, how are you? And my name is…

Now, they are learning a Russian song!

 

RME

The class have been learning about Hinduism this term with Miss Davie. They are learning about the main beliefs and practices of the religion and have been learning about Diwali.

 

Topic

Our topic this term has been States of Matter. The children learning about solid, liquid and gas and how one changes into the other. We are learning about the boiling and freezing point of liquid and carried out some experiments to determine what things were soluble or insoluble. We changed some variables such as heat and stirring and observed the effect they had on the dissolving. We also learned about saturating water with salt and sugar.

 

Christmas

As always, this term is choc-a-bloc with learning songs and lines for the Christmas show. The children have been absolutely excellent, and I can’t wait for you all to see their hard work on Thursday evening!

The class made some wreaths with Mrs Gatherum, Christmas cards with Miss Riley and are writing a review of their panto trip this week.

 

All in all, we’ve had a brilliant, busy term. Thanks so much to those of you who took the time to come and meet me for parents’ meetings. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and New Year and I’ll see everyone in 2023!

P1/2 October 2022

In Literacy Primary 1 have been introduced to the first two sets of sounds and have worked very hard to listen to them in words, read them and form them correctly. P2 have been learning some two-letter sounds and working on tricky words in pairs. We have been listening to lots of Mr. Men stories in order to improve our listening skills and vocabulary.

In Numeracy P1s have been working on counting , ordering and forming numbers 0-8, and making numbers one or two more. P2s have worked on strategies for addition to 20 and reinforcing subtraction to 10. Everyone has worked on 2d and 3d shape, positional language and pattern making.

In RME we learned about Harvest traditions and sharing food with our neighbours, and in music learned a Harvest song  called ‘Cauliflowers Fluffy’ to sing when we delivered the food. In Art we have painted and used oil pastels and collage to create a variety of pictures. In French we have learned about the country of France and some greetings. In Drama we learned how to use our body posture and actions to adapt a role. In PE we have been working on improving our core strength.

Through our topic ‘Senses’ we learned how we use our senses to find out about the world around us. Thank you very much to the parents who visited the class to share their knowledge and experiences, there will be other topics throughout the year that you may be able to help us with.

P6/7 October 2022

Literacy

P6/7 have thoroughly enjoyed our novel this term – Wonder by R J Palacio. Our writing has been based around this, and the children wrote a diary entry from the perspective of one of the characters. We had lots of discussion on the characters and their thoughts and feelings during the planning of our writing. The children all worked well to use the novel to inform their writing. You can see the final drafts of these pieces of writing on Seesaw! Below is a picture of the Character Log we created for our wall display.

 

In Grammar, we have re-capped the Parts of Speech (adjectives, nouns, verbs, adverbs, pronouns) and have started to think about using these to up-level our writing to make it more interesting.

Next term, we will be focusing on Character and Setting Descriptions in our writing.

 

Maths

In maths this term we have covered Place Value and the 4 Operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division). We learned about the value of each digit in numbers to 1,000,000 and played games to reinforce this. We have covered lots of different strategies in addition and subtraction, including the empty number line method, column method, and partitioning (breaking the numbers down). In multiplication, we have been developing our confidence in sharing our mental maths strategies, as well as practising our times tables. We have learned the grid multiplication method for long multiplication, as well as the column method. Ask your child what their preferred method is!

With Ms Casasola, we have been learning about the names and properties of 2D and 3D shape. The children have also been practising to draw shapes accurately and neatly. Ms Casasola has also taught the children about different the types of triangles.

Health and Wellbeing

In Health and Wellbeing, we have been learning about Growth Mindsets. We have discussed the difference between a Growth and Fixed Mindset, and the children have reflected on their own attitudes towards their learning. We created a ‘Learning Pit’ display in the classroom where we can move our name to show where we are in our learning journeys.

In PE our focus has been on Striking and Fielding skills, and we have been putting this into action through Cricket. The children have written the skill they feel they have developed, which you can see on Seesaw. I have watched the children grow in confidence each week which has been lovely to see.

Next term, we will be focussing on Badminton in PE.

IDL

The children have enjoyed learning about Dundee in our topic this term. We have researched landmarks in Dundee and created a wall display with this information. The children created posters on Jute, Jam and Journalism, and the significance this plays in Dundee’s history. We have enjoyed doing some different STEM activities, building the Discovery Ship and V and A Museum which looked fantastic!

Expressive Arts

P6/7 have loved art with Mrs Gatherum this term! In music, the children have been learning about the different sections of the orchestra through listening to the Harry Potter Symphonic Suite – this was a big hit!

I hope you all have a lovely October holiday!

P2/3 – October 22

In numeracy this term, we have been working on place value either with 2-digit, 3-digit or 4-digit numbers.  We invited our parents/carers into a learning workshop to share our place value learning.  We worked collaboratively to build models using 1s, 10s and 100s dienes.  Our parents/carers then supported the children to total the value of our model, focusing on grouping in tens to support our counting.  In beyond number we have been learning about 2 dimensional and 3 dimensional shapes and thinking about their properties.

In literacy, we have been focusing on developing our independence in our writing and knowing what can support us; word bank books and independent white boards.  We have also been focusing on making our writing legible and knowing when to use full stops and capital letters.  We are also developing our reading for enjoyment through daily ‘everybody reading in class’.

 

In health and wellbeing we have worked together to create our class charter based on our school visions and values.  We have also been learning about growth mindset and how this can help us on our learning journeys.

           

For our topic we have been learning about Helping our Community.  The children came up with lots of learning activities so have been learning about who helps us in our community and we had a parent GP come in and explain their roll to the children and gave them the opportunity to use some medical equipment.  The children also suggested helping their community by organising a litter pick-up.  We therefore went out into the village and collected lots of litter from our walk.

P4/5 – October 22

Hello Everyone!!

Primary 4/5 have settled well into the new school year, I cannot believe it’s the October holidays already! The children have learned lots this term and made some good progress. Thank you all for signing up and engaging with our learning on SeeSaw, it really is a great way for us to keep you updated with what’s happening in the classroom in real time!

 

Literacy

This term, our writing focus has been letters. We have identified the difference between a formal and informal letter and the different features of each. The children have written, checked and redrafted their letters often with the support of their peers. Finished articles can be found on SeeSaw!

We have been answering comprehension questions for our reading books in class and the children enjoy reading out loud to an adult. We are working on the fluency of our reading this term and trying to add expression when reading aloud.

The children took part in a short debate organised by Mr Cormack in which the children had to put forward ideas for lunch time clubs in school and give feedback on the speakers.

 

Maths

In number this term, the class have been working on place value, ordering and estimating and rounding with Miss Riley. We are now working on addition and subtraction. The children found place value tricky, so more practice on this would be beneficial! We are learning to ‘carry’ in our addition and subtraction chimney sums.

In beyond number with Miss Davie the children have been working on measure. They have worked on capacity and area and have carried out lots of practical tasks to support their understanding and bring their maths in school into a wider world context.

Next term, the class will be moving on to multiplication and division. Any practice of times tables will always be great to support the children’s maths.

 

Other Curricular Areas

The class have loved having Mrs Gatherum working with the class – this term they have been working on creating seasonal pictures using a mixture of media. This has included watercolours and oil pastels. The quality of work the children have produced has been beautiful!

RME

The children have been learning about Buddhism with Miss Davie. They have created lots of great work including Tibetan Prayer Flags which are up in the hallway outside the classroom! They learned about the Four Noble Truths and have been practicing meditation and mindfulness – this has been great to see!

 

French

We have been learning to say the names of shops in French, and to identify what you can buy from these shops! The children created these, and we have started to make a little French street in the classroom.

Thank you so much for your support this term, I know we have asked for donations of items for lessons and for you to join us for our Sharing the Learning session. Once this has been published, you will all have been in to see us already so thank you in advance for that. I hope you all have a great October break, and we will see you in term 2!

Miss Riley

Nursery Update – June 2022

Literacy

We have been learning about rhyming in Nursery through songs, stories and carrying on our own rhyming string.

 

One of our key texts is the Gingerbread man we are making gingerbread men and taking part in a story walk around the Nursery Garden.

Health and Wellbeing

We have had some special visitors in to visit us in Nursery, one of our parents is a Nurse so she came to talk about how she helps people. And we also had 2 Firefighters in to talk about what to do in an emergency. Mrs Dubber followed this up with a circle time discussing what we knew about keeping safe.

We are getting ready for our Graduation ceremony, practising our songs, and making hats.

 

 

TECH

The children have had the opportunity to make hedgehogs and mallets with one of our dads. They learnt how to use the tools safely and were proud of their finished models.

EXA

We have made potions in the mud kitchen, and enjoyed the sand in our Garden

The pre-schoolers have had enjoyed lots of Transition activities with the P1’s and their new teachers.