What a Christmassy week it has been!

We were very excited to write our letters to Santa.

We all told Santa what we wanted for Christmas by either drawing, labelling words or writing sentences.

We made sure that we sounded out please (plees) and added this to our letters because we make sure we use our manners in P1/2S!

Some of us asked for technology like x-boxes or playsations, some of us asked for a great story to enjoy, some of us asked for racing cars, some of us asked for guitar pics and other goodies!

Some of P2 made an effort to think about Santa this Christmas since he is so busy! Some asked him what he wanted for Christmas, whether the elves were working hard and some of us even told Santa a joke!

Why does Santa wear a black belt?
Because he is so good at karate – I bet he will love that one!

Today, we posted our letters to Santa at the post box. We had to make sure we wrote the address in our neatest handwriting and put the stamp on the right way.

In Maths, this week we have been leanring all about shapes – some of the shapes we have been learning about include circle, octagon, square, rectangle, triangle, rhombus, hexagon and pentagon.

We were describing them by talking about the number of edges and vertices the shapes have.

We also had an amazing time at our party – we danced, laughed, danced and danced some more! All of the children and adults had a brilliant afternoon – well done to all the children for really embracing the Christmas spirit!

Primary 1 wish to share our weekly evaluation of learning this week for our Glow Blog.

What’s gone well?

• Identifying 2D shapes and describing their properties.
• Cutting and sticking activities.
• Reading The Magic Paintbrush and using paint to complete pictures that we had coloured in.

What do we need to do better?

• Counting backward from the number 15.
• Spelling CVC words using the ‘Say, Make/ Break, Blend, Read, Write’ strategy.
• Creating our own pictures using different 2D shapes.

What do we want to do more of?

• Playing more tig games in P.E.
• Painting pictures with the thin paintbrushes and using fine motor control to stay in the lines.
• Solving alphabet jigsaws during Literacy stations.

Star moments

• Geraldine the Giraffe visited our classroom and watched us learning the ‘u’ sound.
• Going on a shape hunt around the class.
• Watching the storyteller Christmas special video for our assembly.

The holidays are coming… and we are SO excited in P1/2S! This week we filmed our assembly and can’t wait to show your our efforts! We have also been working hard on our whisper reading, let us tell you more…

This week we were so excited to finally put our pyjamas because we filmed our assembly! We look like we are ready for bed on Christmas Eve. It was very exciting as we got to visit the gym hall which we don’t get to do very often. There, Mr Mathis filmed us saying our line. We had to speak slowly and clearly, looking at the camera and speaking into a microphone. If someone else was saying their line, we had to sit super quiet so they could be heard!

In the classroom, we filmed our songs. It was great fun! We had to sing loudly and clearly AND do the actions! We can’t wait until you can see it all pieced together soon!

This week we have also been working hard on reading more and more by ourselves. To do this, we have been using our Animal Reading Friends. Eagle Eye helps us to remember to look at the pictures for clues. His best friend is Lips the Fish who likes to use the first sound of words to help us work out what it might be. We have also been using Stretchy Snake who helps us stretch sounds to read and spell words. We are trying to use these friends more and more by ourselves!

Primary 1 wish to share our weekly evaluation of learning this week for our Glow Blog.

What’s gone well?

• Learning our speaking parts for our Nativity.
• Setting up our Nativity scene.
• Sequencing The Christmas Story.

What do we need to do better?

• Writing the numbers 11, 12 and 13.
• Knowing when to talk and when to listen e.g. when watching something on the Interactive Whiteboard.
• Speaking in a loud and clear voice in front of an audience.

What do we want to do more of?

• Learning numbers within 20.
• Learning the words and actions for our Christmas songs.
• Read more Julia Donaldson books for our topic.

Star moments

• Making our Nativity video.
• Working really hard to achieve Superstar Certificates at our assembly.
• Decorating our Christmas tree.

It has been a very exciting week in P1/2S as we have been rehearsing for our assembly! We can’t wait to film this next week and show you all our hard work soon. Let us tell you a bit about our rehearsals (but not too much as we want to keep it as much of a surprise as we can!) and some of our other learning this week…

We have been excitedly rehearsing our assembly! We have been practising our songs and have included some jazzy actions too! We are very proud that we know most of our lines and have been trying very hard to use a big loud (but not shouty) voice. We can’t wait for you to see our assembly soon.

We have also been working hard to tell the time in Maths. We have been learning about digital clock this week and have been practising reading o’clock and half past times. We have been noticing digital times everywhere – on the iPads, on Miss Smith’s computer and the whiteboard.

We have enjoyed reading Charlie Cook’s Favourite Book this week. We have been talking about our favourite books and have enjoyed trying to remember the order that the books are read in the story and the characters in them.

We have been enjoying exploring ‘A Squash and a Squeeze’ this week in P1/2S! It has certainly been ‘A Squash and a Squeeze’ to fit everything in as we have been so busy but somehow we have managed! Let us tell you all about it…

In Literacy we have been exploring our book of the week by writing about it. P1 were drawing and writing the name of the characters. We were very proud that some of us could write ‘man’ and ‘hen’. All of us managed to label our drawings with the start letters for words with sounds we have learned. Meanwhile the P2s were writing the story out using Stretchy Snake to help them spell their words and using openers like ‘First’, ‘Then’ and ‘Next’.

To help us learn more about ‘A Squash and a Squeeze’, we built houses for the lady from Lego, with room for all the animals, told the story using puppets, drew out story maps and created our own farm.

In Maths, we have been learning to tell the time. P1s have been reading o’clock times and making these on their own mini clocks. P2s were working hard to remember o’clock times from last year as well as making half past times on their clocks. We loved listening to this song to help us remember o’clock times – feel free to listen and join in at home! WARNING: It WILL get stuck in your head!

Primary 1 wish to share our weekly evaluation of learning this week for our Glow Blog.

What’s gone well?

• Learning how to tell o’clock times.
• Ordering and sequencing numbers on a number line from smallest to largest and largest to smallest.
• Formation of the sound ‘d’.

What do we need to do better?

• Drawing the hands on an analogue clock.
• Playing games as a group e.g. bingo, dominoes etc.
• Trying our best when an adult isn’t at our station.

What do we want to do more of?

• Playing with the dinosaurs during choosing time.
• Finding objects that begin with the sound we are learning and then solving literacy jigsaw puzzles.
• Story maps to retell our Julia Donaldson books.

Star moments

• Parents hearing lovely comments at Parents’ Night
• Creating our You Be You display, as part of our learning in Health and Wellbeing about celebrating our unique abilities.
• Reading and taking home our Book Bug books.

In Numeracy, we have been continuing to explore amounts within 10. We have had many opportunities to read, write and count our numbers. We also started exploring the next few numbers that come after 10 (11, 12, 13) by finding out where they are on the number line, how to write them and what it looks like when we count these amounts out on a tens frame.

“We write a 1 and a 3 to make 13 .” – Ruby

“4 and 3 makes 7.” – Emily

“We used the Cuisenaire rods and estimated how long they were then measured them.” – Brodie

In Literacy, we have been learning the sounds ‘m’ and ‘h’. We had to sort through objects in the class, practise our letter formation, use magnetic boards to build CVC words and we even had a go at writing some words too. We read Stickman, as part of our Julia Donaldson topic and used this as a stimulus for writing as we were able to draw and label Stickman and also write his name using the sounds we have learned so far.

“I liked the part where Stickman found his family tree.” – Niall

“I made the word nest. N-e-s-t.” – Rebecca

“The girl said ‘1, 2, 3’ and dropped the stickman and he went all the way down to the river.” – Matthew

In Health and Wellbeing, we were learning to tell the truth. We read The Boy Who Cried Wolf and explored the key message from the story. We discussed why it’s important to not tell lies and then drew a picture to illustrate a time when we decided to be responsible and tell the truth.

“You can’t tell lies because there wasn’t a wolf.” – Eilidh

“The wolf ate all the sheep because he was hungry.” – Nathan

“I told the truth when I snatched a toy from someone.” – Ethan

It has been another exciting week in P1/2S as we have been exploring the book ‘Stick Man’. We have loved following Stick Man on his adventures. Let us tell you more…

We built all the places that Stick Man had visited in the book. We did this using Lego. We worked in pairs to create the Family Tree, park, bridge, nest, beach, snow, fire and Santa’s sleigh so that we could track Stick Man’s journey as we read the book.

We also pretended that we were Stick Man and wrote a postcard to ourselves from one of the places that he visited. P1 were able to stretch out the sounds for Stick Man and try and write it themselves, whilst P2 told themselves where Stick Man had sent the postcard from.

We also made our own Stick People from sticks, lollipop sticks, pipe cleaners and masking tape. We had to problem solve how to put these together to make our own Stick People with arms and legs.

In other news, we also used Numicon in Maths this week. P1 were using it to show how to make numbers in different ways – making 6 with 5 and 1, or 4 and 2 or 3 and 3. Meanwhile, P2 were using the Numicon to work out odd and even numbers. We realised even numbers were laid out in pairs whilst odd numbers always had a piece that was ‘the odd one out’. We will continue to build on this learning next week.