Hello again from P2a!  This week has just flown in and has been especially nice for us because we had visits from some of our parents and carers on Monday and Wednesday afternoons.  Some of us still have visitors to come to our class next week on Monday afternoon….we all look forward to welcoming you into our classroom.

This week was a little bit different because when our visitors were being shown around by their children, the rest of us  were busy completing challenges.  Some of the challenges we did were –

1. Alien symmetry – we had only half of a picture of an alien.  We had to use symmetry to draw the other half….some of us found this very tricky!

2. Rocky the Robot goes to the moon – we had pictures and sentences about a robot building a spaceship to take him to the moon but they were all mixed up!  We had to colour the pictures in, cut out the pictures and sentences, then put them all in order to stick into our jotters.

3. Design a name and a flag for a new planet. 

Rylan wonders what challenges we will have to complete this week!

 

This term we have been learning how to play musical instruments.  Here Kiara demonstrates how to play  the triangle….a very serious business!

 

Here we are having musical fun playing our instruments in the Music Room.

       

We’ve also been learning songs about Space in our own classroom and we especially like the one about 93 million miles, which is the distance our planet is away from the sun! 

In Literacy this week we have been learning more about the magic e sound and we learned how to spell words like cube, tube, tune, excuse, and useless.  We wrote more sentences and listened to a funny story called Peace at Last by Jill Murphy. 

 

 

We’ve been making good progress with our own reading books and know we need to practise every day so our reading just gets better and better!

In Maths we’ve been busy using cubes and numberlines to help us with our subtraction sums.  Sometimes it’s hard when the sums are mixed up…with some add and some take away…so we’ve learned that we have to look carefully at the maths sign to check whether it’s an add or take away sum.   We sang along to the Currant Bun song on the Education City website to help us understand subtraction. 

The Star of the week this time was Abigail.   The Aliens were the Group of the week.  Well done to you all!

We haven’t found out yet who is the winning class for Walking to School last week….hopefully we’ll find out soon!

More from P2a next time…bye for now!

Well… what did we do this week Reece wonders…

Oh yes, we had a Walk to School challenge!  By Thursday a lot of us had walked to school and so we earned a ‘footprint‘ sticker on our wall chart.  

Every class in our school had a wall chart and were keeping a record of how many were walking to school.  Next week we’ll find out which class earned the most ‘footprints’.

This week’s star of the week was Tess for being such a good learning partner.  The Group of the Week was the Astronauts.  Well done!

          

In P.E. we practised our throwing and passing skills with beanbags.  We also tried to improve our fitness skills doing some circuits where we had to practise step-ups, jog around cones with hoops,  aim beanbags into hoops, and throw quoits over cones.  It was all very busy especially when we included a game of Monster tig!

In Literacy we learned more about the magic e – this time we learned words like bone, cone and stone.  Later in the week we tried to complete a wordsearch to find some of these words.  It was tricky but our teacher said we were very good at it.  We also wrote a story about a robot called Robbie.  We had to use lots of describing words to describe Robbie.   Our stories are very good and we’ll let you see some of them next time.

In Maths we practised our numbers to 100 by playing a game called Snakes and Ladders.  We were all very excited by the game and will get the chance to play this game again soon.  We also had lots of group quizzes where we practised our number bonds to 10 and 20…..we are really getting better at this!  In Problem solving we had to solve a pattern-problem using circles, triangles and rectangles…easy peasy!  Remember we had to use shapes for our Homework Challenge last week?….well here are some of the rockets we made using triangles and rectangles –

  

In RME we learned about a baby called Moses, whose mother tried to save him from an Egyptian Pharoah by placing him in a basket on the River Nile.  We enjoyed colouring in pictures of Moses and are looking forward to learning more about him next week in the dvd ‘The Prince of Egypt’.

  

  

  

  

On Friday after a week of working very hard, we all enjoy Golden Time in the afternoon, when we can free-choose.  Here some of us have chosen to play on the interactive whiteboard or colour in pictures. 

  

This Friday we also had the chance to have a Pirate-themed dinner at school.  Ellis made a pirate hat for the occasion.  Isn’t it super? 

Next week there are some parent open afternoon sessions on Monday and Wednesday, when we’ll have the opportunity to show our mums and dads some of our work.  We look forward to your visit.

Bye for now from P2a!

 

 

Another busy week in P2a!  We learned about robots this week and watched some BBC clips about robots.  We saw scientists make robots move like humans and even make them look like us!  We thought it was funny.  Then we took turns to behave like robots.  We had to give our ‘robot’ instructions to get from one end of the classroom to the other.  We learned that our instructions had to be accurate so our ‘robot’  could reach the other side of the classroom safely.  Our ‘robots’ were not allowed to make any movements without us telling them, so it was really tricky….but of course, we managed to steer them in the right direction and our mission was achieved!

Then we used boxes, tubes and coloured paper to make our own robots.  It was very sticky work using gluesticks and sellotape but finally our robots were complete.  Here are some of them!  (Can you see our flying saucers in the background?)

   

  

  

  

 We also learned some more about the planets.  This week we looked at pictures of Saturn and learned that the circle around it is actually make out of rocks and ice!  

In RME we recently learned about the Christian story of Creation.  Here are some of the pictures we drew of creation. 

   

  

We used our whiteboard to find out more about the magic e we learned about in spelling last week and watched the Alphablocks going to the moon.  We were very busy with our reading and writing this week.  Our writing was so good that we all got a special sticker for trying so hard.  We wrote a description of a Monster.  Here is some of our work.

  

    

In Maths we revised our number bonds to 10 and had fun trying to see patterns with the numbers.  Then we tried to find the patterns with bigger numbers to 20.  Some of us like to use cubes when we are counting and we especially like the colourful counting elephants!  Our elephants come in different sizes and we can link their tails together.  We like to put them together to make adding and subtracting sums.   Next week we’ll play more maths games on our whiteboard using the Education City website.  We’ll also try to improve our score on the Alien game, where we have to work out the answer to an adding sum then scoot the Alien holding up the correct answer.  How many Aliens will we manage to scoot with water??

Our Maths Challenge this week was to use different 2d shapes to make a rocket picture.  Well done to all those who achieved this.  Your rockets were amazing!  (Pictures on next week’s blog.)

This week the star of the week was Blair, who worked really hard at his writing.  Well done, Blair!  The Astronauts had the highest score so they were  group of the week.  Well done!   Who will be the stars next time?

More from P2a next week!  Bye for now from all of us!

 

Hello again from P2a. 

This week we moved on from making rockets to making flying saucers as part of our Space topic.  We used paper plates and painted them bright colours.  It took our teacher a long time to hang them all up in our classroom and they look great…..but during the night we think maybe some aliens decided to have a fly around the class because the next morning there were some flying saucers that had landed on the floor!   We’ll put a photo of them on the blog next week, but here’s a photo meantime of us all busy painting them.

   

  

More of us completed our Homework Challenge to make a Rocket Desk Tidy and here we are with them.  They are all super!

  

  

  

 

The Homework Challenge this week was to make a healthy sandwich for an astronaut, then bring it to school to eat for snack.  Lots of us made some yummy sandwiches and brought them in.  Well done!  There are no photos of our sandwiches because they are all in our tummies!

In P.E. we continued to build up our astronaut fitness.  We played a warm up game called Tidy the Garden where the class was split into 2 teams – boys versus girls.  Our task was to tidy up our ‘gardens’ by getting rid of all the beanbags in it.  It was difficult to keep our ‘gardens’ tidy because as fast as we were clearing it, the other team was tidying their ‘garden’ by getting rid of their beanbags into our ‘garden’!  It certainly got our heart rate going faster!

We also listened to a Space CD and pretended we were travelling to the Moon in a rocket.  We  had to move like rockets and shooting stars.  It was fun!  Next week we’ll pretend we have landed on the Moon so we are looking forward to finding out what will happen next. 

We were sad to learn that Neil Armstrong died recently.  We learned that he was the first man to set foot on the Moon in 1968.   Next week we’re going to be looking at some BBC clips about the first Moon Landing and we’ll find out what happened.   We’ve already learned that one of the other astronauts, who was with Neil was called Buzz.  We think that Buzz Lightyear from Toystory must be called after him!  Here’s Buzz in our Space display –

We hope to also be learning a little about  the present mission to Mars and will be watching the television for more stories about this.  

In RME we listened to the bible story of Creation and drew pictures of all the things God made each day.  We were surprised that it only took 7 days for our world to be completed – Wow!    We also listened to the story of the first people, who were called Adam and Eve.   We learned that they did not do what they were told, so God threw them out of the Garden of Eden.  We wanted to know what happened next……..but we’ll have to wait until next week to find out!

In Literacy we learned about the magic e.   On Friday (after we’ve learned our spelling homework for the week) we usually have a Spelling Quiz when we can win points for our Groups.   Most of us remembered about the magic e in our spelling so the Groups were really battling it out to become Group of the Week.  This week the Rockets were the winners – Well done!

We are all making really good progress with our reading books this term and are using really amazing words when we are using our Read Write Inc workbooks.  Keep practising at home….and remember to bring reading books in every day!

In Maths we are learning about numbers to 100 and addition to 10 and 20.  Some of us are finding number lines really helpful, but some prefer using cubes for counting.  We’ll continue with this next week.  We’ll also be playing more Maths games on our whiteboard and learning how to play Snakes and Ladders.  Our Maths homework next week will be a Challenge using 2-dimensional shapes….so that should be fun!

In Health and Wellbeing we spoke about our different friends and drew pictures of them.  Some are in our family, some are older or younger than us, some are animals and some maybe live in another country.

On Friday we had Assembly and were pleased that Bethany was named as Star of the Week.  Well done, Bethany! 

 

We wonder who will be the Star next week….

Until then, bye for now from P2a!………oh and a special bye from a fluffy dog friend, who visited our class this week. He looks very busy on our computer!

 

 

This week we have been very busy making Rocket pictures as part of our Space topic.  Here we are using different shapes, materials and, of course, lots and lots of glitter to make our pictures sparkly.

  

  

…..and here are some of our completed rocket pictures!

  

   

Last week we read the story of Aliens love Underpants so we painted some Aliens and designed our own Underpants for our aliens to wear.  We now have these on display in our classroom too.

  

We hope the Aliens we painted recently, as well as Mike the Monster and Buzz Lightyear, who live  in our classroom just now, like our designs.

  

This week some of us completed our First Homework Challenge to make a Rocket Desk Tidy and brought them into school.  They are all fantastic and we are looking forward to more coming in over the next few weeks!

  

  

This week we talked about how fit and healthy a person would have to be to be an astronaut.  We are going to try to improve our fitness this term as if we were going to become astronauts.  We started this week at P.E. by doing some relay races in the gymhall.  First we checked our heart rate before our races, then compared our heart rate after.  It was much faster!   Then we practised skipping with skipping ropes.  It was fun and we hope to improve our skipping skills this term.  We have P.E. on Monday and Tuesday so we have to remember to bring in our gym kits for those days.

In Literacy we started to write a recipe for a Monster meal.  We’ll finish this next week and let you see some of our ideas.  We just hope they’re not too yummy  in case we get some real Monsters and Aliens coming to our class to try them out.  That would be too scary!!

  

In Maths we’re still doing a bit of revision as well as looking at numbers to 100 and addition to 20.  We used number fans this week to show our answers.  It was fun so we’re going to use them again next week.

More from P2a soon – until then bye from us all….oh and some special smiles from Leo and Ellis!

Hello again from P2a at Ancrum Road Primary School!

We are still getting used to being P2 instead of P1.  Now we line up in a different place in the playground and have a new classroom.

We all had a super holiday but are happy to be back at school with our friends.  This term we are pleased to welcome a  new boy called Rylan in our class…a new friend for us!

Our topic this term is all about Space and we were very busy this week painting lots of aliens, monsters, planets and astronauts to decorate our classroom. Here we are exploring our new classroom and trying out some of our activities at Golden Time.

  

   

 

    

We read the story about Aliens love Underpants, which we thought was very funny!  We designed lots of different underpants for the aliens and they are now on a washing line in the classroom!  We’ll show a photo of them next week. 

In Numeracy we did some revision of addition to 10.  We remembered most of our number bonds but we’ll have to be really good at them because this term we’re going to be learning addition and subtraction to 20 AND our numbers up to 100!  We used a number line up to 10 last year but now we have number lines up to 20!  We also looked at a 100 square on the whiteboard and talked about the number patterns we could see on each line.  We’ll be working on this more next week.

In Literacy we all got new reading books.  We’ve also got some super library books in the classroom that we can read if we finish our activities early.  We learned our spelling words with the -ck sound and practised writing some sentences. 

For Homework we’ll be getting some spelling words to learn,  maths activities, our reading book to practise and Homework Challenges.  The first Homework challenge will be next week and we’ll be making a Space-themed Desk Tidy using a small cardboard box and 4 tubes.  We’ll get more details about this on Monday.

We went to the ICT suite this week and learned about the keyboard.  We had to find the letters of the alphabet on the keyboard and key them in order.  It was very tricky.  Later we coloured in pictures of a keyboard to show the keys we would need to use to spell the word computer and keyboard.  Here are some of our pictures.

  

In Health and Wellbeing we spoke about our families.  We drew pictures of the people in our families and labelled who they were.   Here are some of our pictures.

  

We’ve been very busy this week and it’s only been 4 days since we came back from the holidays!

Remember that next week we need to bring our Gym Kits for Monday and Tuesday!

More from us next week – bye for now from P2a!