Hello again from P2a!  This week we had lots of snow and it was really cold outside, but that’s okay because we were nice and cosy in our classroom!

We started off the week with P.E. and we practised more dodging skills and throwing and passing balls to each other.   On Tuesday we were back in the gym finishing off the last part of our Pinocchio story.  It had a happy ending with Pinocchio turning into a real boy instead of being a puppet. 

In Maths we did really well with our money sums.  We started off choosing the correct coins to pay for things…but by the end of the week we were trying more difficult sums and we had to try to work out giving change of 20p, 50p and £1.  We found that it was helpful to use cubes instead of coins to work out the sums.

We also practised our shapes and coloured in some shape pictures to show we could identify squares, rectangles, triangles, etc.

  

As part of our topic about Journeys we learned about the journey trees make to become paper.  We watched Curious Cat on our whiteboard, who explained that trees are cut down then go through a number of different processes before finally being turned into paper we can write on. 

We also watched William Whiskerson who visited some of the forests in Scotland and showed us some red squirrels, who live in drays in the trees.  

In Literacy we read the story about Hamish the Highland Cow by Natalie Russell.

                        

Hamish was a Highland cow, who hated having baths and never cut his hair.  He loved sticky toffees and there were lots of sticky papers stuck to his long hair.  One day he visited the hairdresser where he had his long hair washed and cut.  He was now lovely and clean but had nowhere to hide all his sticky toffee papers….so his friends gave him a special bag to keep his toffees in!  We liked the story and decided to colour in some pictures of Hamish (with some of his sticky toffees!)

  

  

On Friday we celebrated the birthday of Robert Burns.  We’ve been talking about lots of Scottish things this week…we’ve been learning a Scottish poem called ‘I dinna like the midge’.  This is the poem we will be performing at the school competition to take place on Friday 22nd February at Assembly..  We’re also learning some Scottish songs for this competition to be judged at the Assembly.  More about this soon…

After our story about Hamish we decided to make some Hamish McHaggis characters to get our classroom into a Scottish mood.  We used tartan napkins, paper plates and scissors to make our Haggis characters.  They really brighten up our room.

   

  

On Friday some of us tried Haggis, Neeps and Tatties for our lunch.  Lovely!

We are always very busy doing things in our class but sometimes we do have some time for a bit of relaxation.  Here we are chilling out with some of our classroom activities.  

  

We do like playing with our toys and games…..and our dolls just love being bathed!  (Unlike Hamish the Highland cow!)

  

 

To round off our Scottish themed week we had a little Burns party on Friday afternoon when we had some Irn Bru and Shortbread.  We also had some dancing.  Here are some of us having fun dancing!

     

It was very nice at the end of the week to look forward to playing in the snow at the weekend.  P2a hope everyone has fun making snowmen and playing on sledges.  We would also like to say Good Luck to Mrs Duffy, who is starting her new job soon.  We hope she liked the card we made for her.

                 

Bye for now from P2a!

 

Hello again from P2a! 

This week we were busy learning more about our Topic: Journeys.  We watched some BBC clips about the water cycle and read the book ‘The Drop in my Drink’ by Meredith Hooper, which explained about the journey water makes before it finally reaches our taps and into our drink of water.  We also watched Curious Cat and found out what happens to water once we’ve used it…e.g. our dirty bath water!  We learned that underneath the streets and our houses there are lots of pipes called sewers that carry all the used water from our houses away to processing plants.  There the dirty water is processed and cleaned so it can go safely back into the sea.   Now we know about the journey water makes from the first raindrop until it is recycled back into the sea!

                    

On the subject of bath water….we were talking about hygiene, health  and how to look after ourselves – in particular, we we learning about how to look after a baby, so we practised bathing a ‘baby’ in class!  We filled up a basin of soapy water and washed a ‘baby’ doll.  We learned how to hold a baby by supporting its head.  We know we have to do this because a real baby is a bit wobbly at first and can’t hold its own head up.  We thought it was funny when we tried to put our ‘baby’ down to sleep after its bath and bottle of milk,  because it didn’t matter how careful our teacher was, the ‘baby’ kept waking up and crying whenever she tried to put it down.   What a naughty baby!

                      

We also read the story about Mog and the Baby, which was all about Mog the cat having to put up with a playful baby, who came to visit.  Mog wasn’t very happy about the baby, but in the end Mog saved the baby from being run over by a car and got a big fish as a reward.  It was a very funny story and we all liked it.

Last week we read the story of Baboushka and  we made our own Baboushka dolls.  This week we were very lucky because Tess told us that her mummy had some real Russian dolls! She very kindly brought them in to show the class.  Aren’t they super!  Thanks, Tess for sharing this with us….and also the globe you brought in, which will come in very useful for our Topic.

                        

In Art we coloured in lots of pictures of planes and trains.  Here is some of our work.

     

    

We like colouring in pictures and are still finishing off our pictures for our Room on the Broom storybooks.   More pictures next week!

In P.E. we had fun with games and circuits.  We are learning about dodging skills so we can play ball games.  One of the activities we practised was working with partners.  We  had to try to touch their knees…. It sounds easy but we had to keep facing them so this made it really tricky to dodge them. 

We continued with the next part of our Pinocchio story with BBC Let’s Move.  We’re good at pretending to be wooden puppets and we especially like when we have to pretend our noses are getting longer if Pinocchio is naughty!  The last part of our story is next week.

                         

In Maths we did some more work with Money and learned which coins to use.  We also had to work out what change to expect if we hand over more money than needed in a shop (e.g. if we hand over a 10p and a sweet only costs 7p we had to work out that we would get 3p change back.)   We’re doing very well with this and will keep practising next week. 

We also used our large 100 square to play a number game where we have to close our eyes while someone takes 2 of the numbers away and mixes up another 2 so they are in the wrong order.  Then we open our eyes and have to work out what are the missing numbers and the mixed up numbers!  It’s very tricky but we’re all very good at this game! 

This week it has been very cold outside (but we’ve been nice and cosy in our warm classroom!)……but we’ve been waiting all week for the snow to come.  Here we are in our playground today.  We’re looking pleased because the snowflakes have started to fall and we’re hoping to have fun at the weekend making snowmen…..well maybe…

  

More from us next week…Bye for now from P2a!

 

Happy New Year from P2a!  Yes, we’re back again for another new term and this time our new topic is all about Journeys.

We started the week with games in the gym-hall.  We warmed up by jogging around the hall with a partner…sounds easy but we had to chat to our partner about what we did at Christmas while we jogged around!  This was a bit tricky and tiring but we all managed to cram lots of gossip and news into just a few minutes.  Once we were warmed up we had some relay races when we practised jogging, jumping, hopping, leaping and skipping.  We finished off with a game called Giant steps and Fairy steps – super fun!

In Maths this term we’ve started learning about Money.  We used the whiteboard to play Money games on the Education City website.  We took turns to match the correct coins to different amounts of money.  It all seems very easy…but we’re finding it a bit of a nuisance that there are no such things as 3p coins..or 7p coins…or 9p coins…. More about money sums next week!

As part of our topic on Journeys we read the story ‘Room on the Broom’ by Julia Donaldson. 

This is the story of a journey on a magical broomstick.  There is a kind witch in the story as well as a cat, a dog, a frog, a bird and a dragon.  We really liked the story and have coloured in lots of pictures of these characters.  We’ve also started to write a description of the characters and next week we’re going to use our character descriptions to write our own adventure with the magical broomstick.  To help us with our imagination we now have our very own broomstick in the classroom as well as a ‘cackling’ witch!

 

We learned about some other journeys this week with William Whiskerson and Curious Cat. 

     

We watched the BBC programmes on the whiteboard and discussed the journeys water makes…from the first drops of rain on the mountains to streams, rivers and the sea.  It was interesting to learn how we can use water to generate electricity!  We now know that dams can be used to trap the water and that  turbines then generate electricity to our homes so we can use all the electrical things in our houses.  We’ll find out more next week.

In R.E. we read the story of Baboushka – a Russian tale about a woman, who was too busy cleaning and tidying her house to be bothered to go with the 3 Kings to visit Jesus in Bethlehem.  When she did decide to follow them it was too late.  We learned that children in Russia believe that at Christmas it is Baboushka who leaves presents for children at Christmas, whereas we believe that it is Santa!……We were very busy in Art making Baboushka dolls (or Russian dolls) which is 1 large doll with lots of smaller dolls inside.  We think they look super!

   

   

Our groups have now been re-named to match our topic so we are now the Planes, the Trains and the Boats.   So congratulations to the Boats, who are Group of the Week, and to Connal, who is Star of the Week….and well done everyone for working so hard this week.  

More from P2a next week…Bye for now!