It’s – A Little Nativity!

December 14, 2012 User deactivated 1 Comment

Another busy week finds us learning about money again in Maths. We have been trying to remember what each coin is called and see if we can match it. Then we have been writing money too. We need to write numbers and remember the ‘p’ for pence and if you are writing pounds we have to write a £ sign.

In literacy we have written to our parents and carers to tell them about our show A Little Nativity. We made a little note to send home and drew a picture of the show on it.

We also wrote a letter to Santa. We had to think about something we really wanted and then used our sounding out skills to write the words. We got a little help if we got stuck. We hope Santa likes our letters because we told him we have been good.

We also got a story about a letter to Santa.

We all got a Santa balloon or a snowman balloon to take home with us on Wednesday. What a lovely gift.

Then on Friday we had two performances of our Christmas Show. A Little Nativity. We were dressed up as sheep, wise men, shepherds, angels, stars and innkeepers. What a lovely time we had. Lots of parents and carers came along to see us. It was so good. We had been learning about the Christmas story in class and about using our voices to sing so everyone can hear us.

Week Beginning Monday 17th December

Remember to bring your filled, named water bottle with you every day (no juice please).

HOMEWORK – Please send it to school every day but any tasks should be completed by Wednesday. The teacher will collect in the weeks work on Wednesday. Each week there will be a Yellow Book Challenge to do but you can pick which challenge you want to do from a list of 3 each week. There will be no homework on a Wednesday night.

Fruit money will be £1.80 for the term.

Our Christmas Party is on Monday afternoon. Bring in your Christmas Party clothes in a bag and you can change at lunch time. There is no charge for the Christmas Party.

The Christmas Church service is on Friday 21st December at 9.30am. Parents and carers welcome.School finished at 12noon on Friday 21st December!

Christmas Fayre Time!

December 7, 2012 User deactivated 1 Comment

Another busy week in P1 has found us learning about money to help us with our Enterprise topic. We have been learning to make things to sell at the Christmas Fayre. We also have had to decorate the hall with Christmas things too.

We have made Stockings and Christmas Trees to decorate the hall. We also wrote some invitations to invite our family to come to the Christmas fayre.

We drew a picture too to show what the Fayre would look like.

We also painted and decorated lots of things to sell at the Fayre.

We have used glue to help us make the stockings ans wands and we made lovely designs. We painted and used glitter on the wings. Oh dear. They were really messy!

To help us sell at the Fayre we were learning about money in maths. We are learning to recognise coins and notes. We have been sorting money in class and playing with money in the Active Learning Zone.

On Friday we had our Christmas Fayre. We sold lots of our products that we had made. We also got to get Christmas tattoos, face painting and so much more. Thank you to all the parents and carers and friends who came to support us.

In the ALZ…

Last week we set up our Music table..

In the Active Learning Zone we have been experimenting with music and musical insttruments and making our own sounds. Mrs Munro created a music booth for us to go and practise in. We love using the different instruments and some of us have been making lullabies. Lara has learned how to use the Easi-speak microphone and she has been showing everyone how to record the music we make. Click on the links to listen to our music.

music table

music table 2

music table 3

Week Beginning Monday 10th December

Remember to bring your filled, named water bottle with you every day (no juice please).

Gym is on a Monday. Please remember long hair will need to be tied back and no jewellery. This means all earrings must be removed. Thank you.

Fruit money will be £1.80 for the term.

Dens Road Christmas Infant Nativity is on Friday at 9.45am and 1.45pm.

Percy The Park Keeper has never heard of the Flum Flum Tree!

November 30, 2012 User deactivated 4 Comments

What a busy week we have had in Primary One! It has been our school READ week and so we have been doing lots of work with books and lots of thinking about what we find inside books.

We have focused on two books in our class for READ week. We started the week by looking at a book by Julia Donaldson called Jack and the Flum Flum Tree. We all agreed that it was great and we really enjoyed reading it.

We were all really impressed with how clever Jack, Rose and Stu were to use the items Granny gave them to save them whilst they were on their journey. We had so much fun guessing what Jack and his friends would use the objects for, that we really amazed to discover that Granny had sent us a patchwork bag full of different items to use if we were travelling to the Isle of Blowyernose.

We had no idea what so of the items were and so we had to think very carefully about what each thing in the bag could be used for on our adventure- it was super and we all had really different and creative ideas. Here are some of them;

We used all that we had been learning about the book to write a blurb for the back of the book because we were surprised to see that there wasn’t one. Mrs Mackay was really impressed.

We were even happier when we discovered that we were all given a present from the Book Bug on Wednesday. We all got a bag which had four books in it. We couldnt wait to get home and read them to and with our grown ups. Everyone got very excited when we found out that Jack and The Flum FLum Tree was one of the books in the bag along with Solomon Crocodile (who we think needs to learn to be a bit nicer to his friends so they are nicer with him), The Day Louis Got Eaten and a book which is written in Scots called Jordans New Jaiket. We also got a workbook that we could do at home. It was a super surprise and lots of us told our teachers that it was one of our favourite parts of READ week.

We also took part in P5/6’s Book Swap. We brought in our old books from home and we swapped each of our unwanted books for a new one we hadn’t read yet but would like it. We all agreed that it was a very clever idea! Afterwards, some of the P5/6 boys and girls asked us questions so that they could fill in a questionnaire they had made.

We had lots of lovely visitors this week. On Monday the librarian from Coldside Library came to visit us and read us some stories. She told us that we could all go to the library and borrow some books and that there are computers there that we are allowed to use too. We also had Mrs Baxter from the Nursery who surprised us with a visit to read some of her (and our) favourite books. It was lovely to have Mrs Baxter in our classroom and we really listened carefully to her stories.

Some of the older boys and girls in the school also came to read to us. Primary 3/4 came as our paired readers and read us their reading books. We all enjoyed reading their stories with them. On Friday some boys from Primary 7 came down to tell us some stories. They were brilliant at it and we all loved listening to the stories they had chosen for us to hear.

One of our favourite activities during Read week was our Teddy Bear’s Picnic afternoon. We all brought in a teddy bear from home to join us for a fun afternoon. We made teddy bear bookmarks, had a teddy bear drive, played parachute games, listened to teddy bear stories and did teddy bear dot to dots.

After all the activities we got together in the hall with our teddy bears for a picnic. What a lot of hungry bears! One teddy had a packet of teddy bear crisps!

On Friday we all came to school as our favourite character – it was super fun and we all looked great!!!

As part of our homework challenge we had to draw or create a model of our favourite Roald Dahl character. Mrs Mackay was amazed at the fabulous models and pictures which came in….

We have also been thinking carefully about healthy diets over the last few weeks and some of us made lists of our favourite healthy foods.

Finally, because the weather has turned colder we have been thinking about people who don’t have as much as us and those people who cannot get out of their house because they are poorly or they are ill. We decided to have a harvest collection for them and we were really generous and brought in lots of food to help others.

Week Beginning Monday 3rd December

Remember to bring your filled, named water bottle with you every day (no juice please).

Gym is on a Monday. Please remember long hair will need to be tied back and no jewellery. This means all earrings must be removed. Thank you.

Fruit money will be £1.80 for the term.

Dens Road Christmas Fayre is on Friday 7th December from 1.30pm-3pm – you can collect your child from their classroom at 1.30pm and they will guide you around the fayre.

Books, bric a brac, cake and candy, children’s craft, toys, face painting, games etc.

Admission (includes refreshments) Child 50p Adult £1

A Whole New World for us to Google at….it all adds up!

November 26, 2012 User deactivated 1 Comment

In the Active Learning Zone this week we have been practising using Google Earth. We are learning during road safety week about travelling safely and we have used Google Street View to try and find our own house. Most of us managed it!

At the making table we have been drawing trees and cutting out leaves to make a number tree. All the leaves are the colours of Autumn. Well done Alise who spent a long time creating her number tree.

We have been exploring music more too. We have been learning songs for our Christmas show and are continuing to use the iPad to find out about different music through some music apps. At the Wii we have also been exploring how our bodies move and how we can make them move to music. We use the timer so we all have a turn at playing. Who let the Dogs Out is one of our favourtie dances!

Our Percy’s shed is continuing to grow. We have looked back at our plan and checked off all the things that we were able to find. We are enjoying exploring being Percy but we are still working on looking after our resources in the ALZ and will continue to work on taking responsibility for tidying up.

In number work this week we have been learning lots more about addition. We have been learning more about adding to numbers together, this week we were concentrating on learning to add the stories of 4 and 5. It is starting to get very tricky but some of us have really got the hang of it. Over the next few weeks we will revise the stories of 1 to 5 and learn some new addition stories.

In health, we have been thinking all about staying healthy. We had a fit Friday and we took part in lots of sports like Tennis, Football and Karate. We all had lots and lots of fun and lots of us were talking about what we liked the best and some of us even want to start new clubs because of what we have been learning which is super!!!! Miss Peace has been teaching us all about healthy diets too. We learnt that there are five main food groups and to stay healthy we have to have something from them all – some are better for us than others though! Next we had to make a plate of food showing what we had learnt and thinking carefully about how much of each type of food we would have in a meal so that it was healthy. We did really well and we had lots of fun too!

We have started reviewing our week and this is called our Thinking Thursday Activexpression Activity. We have to use our activexpressions to vote for the collect answer after we have listened carefully to the question and thought carefully about what the answer might be. It was lots of fun and we all did really well. We are even getting really good at interpretting the results when the results come up.

We have been learning to use our Jolly Phonic sounds to make new blends. This is when two sounds that we know join up and make friends to make a new sounds. This week we were learning all about the sounds qu as in quack and th as in this and thin. We all had lots of fun and enjoy putting on the Jolly Phonics songs CD in the story area when it is choice time.

We are continuing to self assess and we have been getting really good at it. We have made a display to go in our thinking board and it helps us learn all about what our focus is for the term and how we are doing at it.

We have also gotten some new areas around the room to use at choice time. Each area either teaches us a new skill or lets us apply a skill that we have been learning. Some of the most popular areas this week have been;

-using the wedge with magnetic letters on leaves to make new words and record them on a sheet

-using the aquamat to write words which are in our Roald Dahl books

– the writing table has lots of different independent activities were we have to write our ideas or what we think the characters ideas or words might be

–the art area where we have been creating animals to go in the jungle

Week Beginning 26th November

Remember to bring your filled, named water bottle with you every day (no juice please).

Gym is on a Monday. Please remember long hair will need to be tied back and no jewellery. This means all earrings must be removed. Thank you.

Fruit money will be £1.80 for the term.

Next week is Read Week

Tuesday 27th November remember to bring your teddy bear and a snack for the Teddy Bear’s Picnic.

Thursday 29th November remember to bring in your favourite story book.

On Friday 30th November remember to come dressed as your favourite character.

We have been so busy with Percy the Park Keeper and Roald Dahl (and a few other things too!)

November 17, 2012 User deactivated 3 Comments

In the Active Learning Zone this week…

We have been listening to the story of Percy the Park Keeper. He looks after a park and has lots of animal friends. We decided to make our Role Play area Percy’s Tool Shed. We had to think of all the things that Percy would need in his shed. We used a percy story book to help us and we had to think about Percy’s job. He is a park keeper and we had to think about the things he would need to do his job. We have also been painting some cardboard to make into Percy’s Shed.

Our iPad area has changed! It still has an iPad on it but all the apps we are using are music apps. We can create our own music, listen to lots of different musical instruments and even play the piano. We are enjoying experimenting with sounds and singing along to the music we make.

We have been talking about how well we learn and how we feel about it. We use faces to show how we feel. The teacher uses stars and wishes. We use sticky label faces with smiles, a line or a sad face to show how we feel about our learning. We choose this ourselves and can put it on any piece of work we do.

If we are happy with our learning we choose a face with a smile and it means…

I have done very well. I don’t need any help. It was really easy. I am happy with my work.

If we were unsure we choose a face with a line for a mouth and it means…

I’m not sure what I’m doing. It was a little bit tricky. I needed a little bit of help.

If we found something really difficult we choose a face with a sad mouth and it means…

I needed lots of help. It was really tricky. This was hard.

We have been using our Thinking Book’s in the Active Learning Zone to help us share our ideas. We can draw or write anything we want in our books. Libby drew a picture of being at the park and then she wrote a sentence using her phonics skills. Well done Libby!

We are enjoying exploring Autumn and Percy the Park Keeper stories.

Over the last few weeks in class we have been really busy. We have had Halloween fun, bonfire night celebrations as well as all our other learning.

For Halloween we all had to be witches and wizards – even Mrs Mackay. We had lots of fun when we discovered that something ‘magical’ had happened our to our sand and water trays. The water tray was filled with bats blood and we had to use special witches tools (tongs) to find hidden ingredients to make a magical potion. At the sand tray, all sorts of creepy crawls had found there way in there and we had to be witches and wizards and collect them with our special witch tools.

We also had some science experiements which only witches could perform. We had some magic potions in bottles, a glass of special witches water and we had some magic powder. We had to mix the powder with some of the potions and then add some witches water. It was amazing – as soon as we said our magic word ” Alacazam” the potions started to hiss, fizz and bubble- some even changed colour!!!!

We all wrote our own potions in writing. We all cast a spell together on the whiteboard and then we all made our own ones. They were so good that when we said the magic words the spells came to life and we had a cauldron full of yucky ingredients. We all took turns to see what we could find in the potion and because we were so brave we got to keep what we found! Our potions were so good we have made them into a book of spells!

In art we made pumpkin masks. We gave it a design and when it was home time we all put them on to surprise our grown ups. We looked really cute and a bit scary!

After Halloween it was Bonfire night. We talked lots and lots with our teachers about how to stay safe and we read a story called Danielle’s Bonfire Night. It was all about a little girl called Danielle who loved fireworks. She followed lots of rules about staying safe- she kept her cat inside so that it wouldn’t get hurt or scared. She was so excited though that she forgot some of the safety rules. She didnt wear gloves when she played with sparklers and she held two at once and so burnt her hand. It gave us lots to talk and think about and we all listened so well that we all stayed safe of Bonfire Night!

We are still learning all about Roald Dahl books. As part of our Enormous Crocodile plan we made a jungle in our role play area. We had to think really carefully about what we would need to make it into a jumgle from a castle. We made lots of leaves and painted the animals. We even decided to put camoflage on the floor and we have some of the Rolly-Polly Bird’s in the jungle to play with. Lastly, some of us thought that if we used the woods which were outside the deep dark woods could be the trees in our jungle so we used them with some crepe paper. We think it looks fab and we have lots of fun there!

We have been writing about theEnormous Crocodile too. We drew a picture of him and them we had to think about some words that described him. Most of us amazed Mrs Mackay and Mrs Munro because we sounded them out and they think that we did really well.

Since we finished our Enormous Crocodile story we have been reading the story of the Twits. They are HORRIBLE!!!!! They are dirty and smelly and cruel. As if all that wasn’t bad enough they used to be pretty and handsome but because they had so many nasty and unkind thoughts everyday they slowly got uglier and uglier. It even happened to their dog!!! We think it is a really funny story and we are looking forward to reading more about it.

In number work we have been learning all about symmetry. We started by making symmetrical paints of butterflies and we discovered that when we painted half a butterfly and folded the paper over it was the exact same on the other side. We thought that was really cool but we thought that the computer was even more amazing. We used textease paint to draw our own symmetrical pictures and we were amazed the special symmetry line was magic on the computer and when we drew a picture down one side the computer drew the symmetrical line on the other side. We had lots of fun. We all made a shield and butterfly symmetrical picture too – we are super symmetrically smart!

We are learning all about addition at the moment and we have learnt the story of 1. We have watched some addition songs and clips on the computer and played a matching game to help is remember all of the addition words. Here are some clips to watch at home:

http://youtu.be/uKD148lpBAE

http://youtu.be/pqltNDD5Ycs

http://youtu.be/MMZJWmJB5uA

On Sunday, it was Remembrance Sunday. This is a special day when people all across the country remember people who were hurt or died in a war. We learnt that to help people remember these soldiers, people wear poppies. On Remembrance Sunday special poppy wreaths are laid on special monument and in Dundee this is the Law Hill Momument.

Something very exciting happened this week- we all got our new writting jotters. These are special books where we are going to do all of our best writing. This week we wrote our own news with help from our new visiting teacher Miss Peace. It was tricky to remember to form our letters correctly and to use finger spaces so we told her what we wanted to write and she wrote it for us. Next we went over it with our writing pencils and then we had to be very careful to use our best writing and we wrote it underneath by ourselves. We can’t wait to write some more in them!

As part of our homework some of us made our own storys up. They were all fantastic! Edyn took what she had been learning about in the Active Learning Zone with the story of Funny Bones and created a new story called Funny Bones Goes To Hospital, it is fantastic. Kayla wrote her own story of version of the Sleeping Beauty story and it is brilliant too. If you haven’t already written or made your own storybook – it would be super if you could and then bring it in to share with us.

Week Starting 19th November 2012

Remember to bring your filled, named water bottle with you every day (no juice please).
We will send homework out on a Thursday. Please send it to school every day but any tasks should be completed by Wednesday. Mrs Mackay will collect in the weeks work and any other material on Wednesday. Each week there will be a Yellow Book Challenge to do but you can pick which challenge you want to do from a list of 3 each week. There will be no homework on a Wednesday night.
Gym is on a Monday. Please remember long hair will need to be tied back and no jewellery. This means all earrings must be removed.
ICT is on Wednesday afternoons.

Our project is ……. Roald Dahl Stories. We are looking at the story of The Twits this week.

This week we will be learning ;

the addition stories to 5
songs for our Christmas Show

Witches, Wizards and lots of pumpkins

November 11, 2012 User deactivated Leave a comment

In the Active Learning Zone we have been practising measuring too. We had Funnybones bones and we had to compare them with each other, order them and decide which was the longest and which was the shortest. We talked to Mrs Munro about how we did during the activity and decided ourselves how we thought we did too.

We also played with orange Playdough and made our own spells. We had to make minibeasts and creatures to go into our cauldron. We even got to wear witches hats to help us make our spells.

In the classroom we did lots of pumpkin measuring activities. We had to use cubes and see how many cubes it was to the top of the pumpkin. Once P1/2 were finished with the pumpkin it is now on the Autumn table. We will be watching it’s progress as it begins to decay. This will be our next Science experiment. We will need our gloves and goggles on for this one!

In the ICT suite we have been learning how to use a program called Pivot. This is a first look at animation. We learned how to move the stick man, change his colour, make him smaller and bigger, add a background and add other stick characters. Some of us needed more practise at this as it is really hard to grab hold of the Pivot stickman and make him move. We are getting really good at practising these skills in the Active Learning Zone too. Lots of us have been trying out Pivot on the Promethean Board and the computer to get better at moving the stickman. Well done us!

There’s something in the water and it’s big and snappy! …and the Active Learning Zone is rib ticklingly good too!

October 27, 2012 User deactivated Leave a comment

In the Active Learning Zone we have been listening to the Funnybones story. We have been talking about it being nearly Halloween. Funnybones, big skeleton, little skeleton and dog skeleton live in a dark, dark cellar. Our role play is now a dark, dark, cellar! We have torches in there too just in case it’s too dark.

At the iPad we have been listening to the Dem Bones song. We have to click on the different shaped bones to help sing the song. We have been trying to remember what some of our bones are called. Lots of us know our skull and we know that the skull protects our brain.

At the puzzle table we have been trying to put the skeletons back together again. In the story the dog skeleton falls into a pile of bones. The other skeletons have to put him back together again but they keep getting it wrong. Corey put our skeletons back together again and did a super job!

At the making table we have been using black paper and white chalk to see if we can draw the skeleton. We used the book to help us.

This term we are still thinking about all the things we need to help us learn. Last term we looked at being Successful Learners.

This term we are looking at what helps us be Confident Individuals. The first ones we have looked at are….

‘I like being with others’

I like playing with my friends in the playground.

I go to dancing with other people.

I like being with my family at home.

‘I am active’

I like playing boxing.

I play Tig.

I run about in the playground and get hot.

In class this week we have been learning all about the days of the week. We played lots of games on the white board and practised putting the days of the week in order. We worked out that they are just like a circle because they go around and around. Next, we got a sheet with all the days of the week written on them. We had to colour them in and then cut them out so that we could make a paper chain with them. We all had to think very carefullyto put the days of the week in the correct order and then we hung them up across our classroom.

We have also been revising our numbers. We focused on sequencing numbers 0 to 10 as well as ‘before’ and ‘after’ numbers. We are getting really good at working the answers out and some of us even managed to do the before and after numbers up to 25! During choice time some of us have been using the promethan board and Education City (remember you may have access to this at home). Carys and Maddison had lots of fun working as a team to play the sequencing game.

Our new topic is the stories of Roald Dahl. He is an authour and he used to fly planes. He is called Roald because his mummy and daddy mispelt his name when they filled out his baby forms- we all thought this was quite funny but we liked his name. The first story which we are learning all about is The Enormous Crocodile. It is all about a crocodile who is ENORMOUS and very mean and greedy. His favourite food is children and the story is all about him trying to use his clever tricks and secret plan to catch some to eat but along the way he is very unkind to his friends but they all get there own back. It tooks us all week to read this book but we ALL loved it and it made us laugh out loud.

Once we had read it we thought that we should learn more about it so we decided to make a plan. We talked about it and we decided to use different colours of pens to show different information. The Green pen is what we wrote all the characters names down with (we chose green because the crocodile is green). Next we wrote down what we had learnt about all the characters (we did this in red because some of us said that if he eats someone there would be red blood). Then we wrote down what we knew about were they lived (we wrote this in dark blue) and then we said that we would put what we wanted to do around our room to help us learn more about the story (Wren suggested we do it in light blue because our classroom is light blue and thats how we know it was for our room activities). Lastly, we wrote done some questions we had in orange. These are things which we have wondered about as we read the story. Our teacher was really impressed with all our ideas and said that some of the words we were using were super too. She heard words like; discover, experiment, create and design! We can’t wait to get started on these next week.

If you want to listen to the story at home here are two links to you tube where you can listen to Stephen Fry tell the story. Its quite long so ling one is the first part and the second link is part two- remember is an audio book so there is no moving pictures just a voice but it is very good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3dA2goH08g (part one)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqhRHM0vVEA&feature=relmfu (part two)

Lastly, we have all gotten our first reading books for the term. We have been getting very good at sounding out words so to extend what we have been learning we have been working on a piece of writing to accompany our new book. We worked hard to write our some key words from the story or title and to draw a picture from the reading book. It was quite tricky and whilst most of us were good at sounding out the words to write or to help find them in the book we are going to work on remembering to put a space inbetween the words when we write them.

Week Starting 29th October 2012

Remember to bring your filled, named water bottle with you every day (no juice please).
We will send homework out on a Thursday. Please send it to school every day but any tasks should be completed by Wednesday. Mrs Mackay will collect in the weeks work on Wednesday. Each week there will be a Yellow Book Challenge to do but you can pick which challenge you want to do from a list of 3 each week. There will be no homework on a Wednesday night.
Gym is on a Monday and Thursday. Please remember long hair will need to be tied back and no jewellery. This means all earrings must be removed.
ICT is on Wednesday afternoons.

Our project is ……. Roald Dahl Stories. We are looking at the story of the Enormous Crocodile this week.

This week we will be learning ;

Jolly Phonics sounds v and y
Measuring

We made it to the end of term!

October 16, 2012 User deactivated 1 Comment

This is our last week of term and it’s been a busy one.

We have been learning about data handling. We have been looking at how we gather information and then put it into a pictogram. We started with talking about our favourite Oxford Reading Tree character. We all stuck on our favourite onto the graph and then looked at which was our favourite character. We practised this every day in maths and at the end of the week we talked about our favourite fruit and made a pictogram on the Promethean Board. Mango was our favourite!

Ms Gauld came to our class on Friday. She brought with her lots of fruit. We have fruit every day in school as part of being a Healthy school. But Ms Gauld brought lots of different types of fruit. She brought lime, watermelon, pineapple, mandarin, tomato, mango and apricot. Mango was our favourite. Lots of us liked it.

In the Active Learning Zone we have been going outside with Mrs Munro to find some signs of Autumn. We had to collect lots of leaves, twigs and fir cones from the playground to put on our science table so we can investigate further. Mrs Munro brought in lots more fir cones from her walks in Tentsmuir forest and a great big bit of tree trunk. We have been using the magnifying glasses to investigate signs of Autumn further.

We made patterns in the playground too with leaves we found. We had to look for lots of other patterns. We found lots of stripes on the fences.

At the Cat in the Hat area we have been writing three letter words again but this time the Cat had taken some of the letters away! This meant we had to work out what the first sound was and write it down. We took a photograph of our Hat and Mrs Munro printed it off so we could add it to our folio. We have been listening to the story of Cat in the Hat on the iPad. We listen for words that have three sounds and then sound them out. We also noticed all the question marks and exclamation marks too.

We look forward to learning more through Cat in the Hat and other stories in the new term. I think that Cat may have taken more letters away!

Week Starting 22nd October 2012

Remember to bring your filled, named water bottle with you every day (no juice please).
HOMEWORK WILL RESUME ON THURSDAY 25TH OCTOBER.We will send homework out on a Thursday. Please send it to school every day but any tasks should be completed by Wednesday. The teacher will collect in the weeks work on Wednesday. Each week there will be a Yellow Book Challenge to do but you can pick which challenge you want to do from a list of 3 each week. There will be no homework on a Wednesday night.
Gym is on a Monday and Thursday. Please remember long hair will need to be tied back and no jewellery. This means all earrings must be removed.
ICT is on Wednesday afternoons.

Our project is …….

This week we will be learning ;

Jolly Phonics sounds x and y

You won’t believe what’s in our hat!

September 28, 2012 User deactivated Leave a comment

Well what a busy week we have had. On Monday we were very sporty. We had gym with Mrs Paton but in the morning we had a special treat, we all got a taster lesson in Judo. We were all fab and we had so much fun that some of us said we would like to try joining a Judo club on our Folio sheet.

In language we have beenlearning more of our Jolly Phonics sounds. This week we learnt the sounds l, f and b. We were really good at thinking of lots of words which started with our sound of the day and we are getting really good at applying what we know when we sound out a word in reading or spelling- so good infact that lots of us now have books with words in that we can read! These might be tricky but are all doing really well.

We have also been learning all about invitations because we remembered that in the story of Sleeping Beauty some of the books had a party at the start because the King and Queen we so happy to have a baby but in other stories the Prince and Sleeping Beauty had a party because they fell in love. First of all we looked at our promethean board to see what WALT and WILF said we were learning about.

Next we saw that the fairy in the Lotte Reiniger film was reading an invitation and we talked about what the invitation could be for. We heard that it was because everyone in the castle had woken up after being asleep for 100 years and we learned that there was going to be a ball (that is the name for a posh party not a football)!

We all thought very carefully about what it might say on the good fairy’s invitation. We thought that it would say that there was ball and it was going to be in the castle…. and do you know- we were right! Then we decided that we should try to write our own invitations. We did really well and lots of us said that we were proud of ourselves because we didnt know how to read or write a few weeks ago. We tried to sound out most of the words we wanted and Mrs Mackay helped us with the ones we weren’t sure about. Our teachers are very proud of us!

In number work we have been learning all about pattern. We had lots of fun making patterns with different things in our classroom. We used cotton reels, buttons, pictures, peg boards, cubes and shapes. Some of us managed to make a pattern on own and some us made super patterns with the help of an idea card but we all got there in the end.

After we made all these patterns we used what we had learned and been practising and we completed a sheet for our folios. We had to think carefully to colour a pattern and then we had to look at a pattern and think what shape might come next. After all that we then had to think how to make a colour pattern in the shape pattern that we made. Our teachers’ said “Wow”.

We were enjoying learning about pattern so much that we had to see if we could find any patterns at home for our homework. Some of us found them on our clothes, on our carpets and rugs and on our beds. Kyra took a picture of patterns she found on her cushions and on the wallpaper. Edyn took a picture of a pattern she found in a game. What lovely looking and clever concentrating to find them! Well done.

Another part of our homework was practising putting lots of details in our artwork. We had to draw a detailed picture of our family. There were so many fabulous artworks that here are just some of them…

We are really good at recording what we are learning using our digital cameras, easy speak mics and flipcams. Here is a wee look at some of what we recorded. Sameer made a letter link of all the sounds he knows. Josh drew a castle on the aquamat. Rayyan drew some numbers on the blackboards. We get a chance to do lots of different activities so watch the space and we will put some more or our fun photos.

In the Active Learning Zone we have been busy practising our three letter words. Cat in the Hat has been helping us. There are lots of three letter words in the Cat in the Hat story. We have been trying to read this book with Mrs Munro in the Active Learning Zone on the iPad. We have been so busy we are only half way through!

We do have a Cat in the Hat display and have been writing down lots of three letter words.

We have been making Cat in the Hat hats at the creative area too. We have to draw the hat, cut it out and then paint on a pattern just like Cat in the Hat’s hat. We have had a great time making our own hats.

We have been making patterns at the shaving foam with lots of different tools to help us. We used the wheels on the cars to make some patterns.

In ICT we have been practising our skills with Textease. In the Active Learning Zone we can practise using Textease Paint and using the tools to create things. We were using the pen tool, colours, shape tool and fill tool.

We have been continuing to find punctuation in books. Especially the Sleeping Beauty books. We love looking through lots of books to see if we can find question marks, exclamation marks and full stops. We have found lots!

We have been using the Sleeping Beauty story on the iPad this week. We also have to find our name on our class list and score it off once we have listened to the story. This helps us organise our time and makes sure everyone gets a turn to listen to the story.

This weeks star of the week was Billy. He has been doing super sound work when thinking of words to match our sound of the day and when matching pictures to a sound. Well done, Billy and keep it up!

Week Starting 1st October 2012

Remember to bring your filled, named water bottle with you every day (no juice please).
THERE IS NO HOMEWORK FROM WEDNESDAY ONWARDS THIS WEEK DUE TO THE HOLIDAYS. HOMEWORK WILL RESUME ON THURSDAY 25TH OCTIBER.We will send homework out on a Thursday. Please send it to school every day but any tasks should be completed by Wednesday. The teacher will collect in the weeks work on Wednesday. Each week there will be a Yellow Book Challenge to do but you can pick which challenge you want to do from a list of 3 each week. There will be no homework on a Wednesday night.
Gym is on a Monday and Thursday. Please remember long hair will need to be tied back and no jewellery. This means all earrings must be removed.
ICT is on Wednesday afternoons.

Our project is Sleeping Beauty.

This week we will be learning ;

how to use, read and create a graph
how to select good and bad characters from the story of Sleeping Beauty
Jolly Phonics sounds j and z

School ends for the holidays on Friday 5th October at 3.15pm. We come back to school on Monday 22nd October at 9.00am.

Have a great holiday and well done on such a fabulous start to primary school boys and girls, it has been a super term!

When two tribes go to school! (Well actually, it was one and it was fab!)

September 22, 2012 User deactivated 1 Comment

This has been a very special week for us in Primary 1 because we had some amazing visitors to our school. The Osiligi Warriors came to visit us and put on an amazing show.

First of all we got a talk from a nice man called Jim who told us about the Maasai people, their way of life and why the Warriors were visiting us. They are from a country called Kenya in East Africa, we have been learning about Kenya with our teacher Mrs Mackay (she knew lots of things because she has family from Nairobi). He told us that the Maasai tribesmen and women were visiting us so that they could raise money for their community and the new school which costs £16 per month for a child to go to. We all agreed this was very important because we all like school and we want the boys and girls in Kenya to be able to go to school and learn too.

http://www.osiligiwarriors.co.uk/ http://osiligi.org/wp/

Next, Jim inroduced the tribe. It was AMAZING!!! The men and woman were wearing their traditional clothes and looked beautiful. A warrior call Kesame was playing a musical intrument made from an animal horn ( he has even been on American TV before) and someone and a head dress.

We learnt lots about their culture, they demonstrated how they used to catch lions with spears and that instead of talking they would whistle and make noises so the animals didn’t hear them coming. We also saw how the Maasai tribes whistle and how as a sport they jump as well as as part of their cultural dances.

Our teacher even had a go at jumping although she was terrible at it compared to her brilliant partner Simon who made us all gasp and clap at how he could jump! Miriam sang a beautiful song for helping a baby to sleep. There was so much to see and it was absolutely fantastic.

At the end of the show the whole school was cheering and clapoing because we had all had such a good time and had learnt so much. We wanted to thank Simon, William, Miriam, Lydia, Kesame, Sarge and Richard so we sang them a song in Swahili that Mrs Mackay had taught us. We were so proud of ourselves and they even joined.

We heard that alot of the Maasai people wear tartan cloths and clothes. Mrs Mackay’s husband has a Maasai blanket in this tartan.

Click on the link to here our P1’s singing a welcome song to the Warriors.

Song to welcome our warriors – Jambo

After the show it was lunchtime and we were all in the playground trying to jump like the Osiligi Warrior and sing like them.

Although that was the highlight of our week we have also been learning all about putting numbers in the correct order. We all had lots of fun sequencing different resources from our numeracy area. Some of us worked by ourselves and some of , some of us even managed to put all the numbered feet in the correct order and make a picture of a snail with it. After we had played lots of mental maths games with hidden numbers, used lots of materials to practise what we had been learning and doing a homework sheet and activity all about sequencing, we all completed a sheet. It was tricky but we all got there and were successful learners.

In language we have been learning three more sounds. We know g, o, and u. We are also beginning to get really good at blending them to make words and some of us have even started to get reading books with words. We can hardly believe that just 6 weeks ago we didn’t even know our sounds and now we can read! We have also been learning hou to sequence a story using beginning, middle and ends. We watch the Lotte Reiniger film of Sleeping Beauty again and talked about what were the key points in the beginning, the middle and the end. Next some of us went and sat at the teaching table and Mrs Mackay explained that we had six pictures of the films but we had to pick one that showed an important image from the beginning of the film, one that showed a key moment from the middle of the film- this is when the main action happens, and one from the end of the film story. Then we had to cut these out and put them in the correct box on our sequencing chart. Once we had done this we had one more job. We had to be a class coach for one of our classmates. We had to collect a friend, gather their sheets from the teacher, explain the activity to them and support them with any questions they had by talking to them about their ideas. When they had finished the first class coach got to choose an active class activity and their ‘pupil’ had to coach a friend. We were Brilliant at this and we all enjoyed it.

Ms Gauld came to visit us again on Friday. She was talking to the boys and girls who hadn’t had a chance to learn all about keeping our mouths, teeth and tongues healthy. This time Ms Gauld brought Doogan the dental dog with her and he taught everyone how to care for their teeth by brushing correctly. Afterwards we all got a toothbrush and toothpaste to use at home.

In the active learning zone this week we have been beginning to learn how to use the choosing chart to decide where we want to learn. We have to think carefully as we are trying to practise the things Mrs Mackay is teaching us in the classroom. We have also been thinking about what makes us Successful Learners. We have to think carefully in school to use these to help us. This week we have been doing the following things:

I can use technology.

I am good at listening.

I can use numbers.

I like to learn.

We have been working on tidying up. Sometimes we forget about this. Mrs Munro found some of the areas were very messy. So messy that she had to close them and we were not allowed to play in them. There was a red sad face on the choosing chart. Some of the children in the class decided that they would tidy these areas. They worked really hard putting lids on pens and picking paper up from the floor. It made everyone really happy as the areas were open again. Hurrah! We must remember to pick things up and keep everything tidy.

We have been extending our skills with Textease Paint. This week at ICT we made our pen tool thicker and thinner, we changed the colours and we tried using the fill tool. We are going to practise this some more in the active learning zone.

We have been looking at our thinking triangle again. This time our thinking flowers were asking us questions about Sleeping Beauty. We had some really good answers. We all loved the green ‘doing’ activity. We had to pretend to be the prince and chop down the thorny hedge around the castle. We were all really good at it.

Well done to everyone fo such fab homework over the last four week grid. There has been a terrific range of ideas and creations and everyone has tried hard. One of the things to be completed this week was some writing, some thorny plant investigating and your own project. Molly and her mummy created a beautiful jewellery box, Maddison created a awesome autum montage, Billy and his friends created a Meerkat Batman moving model, there were lots and lots more but here are just a couple of pictures to see how fab the entries have been.

Finally, well done to Edyn who is this weeks Star of the Week. Edyn was off on Friday at assembly but we will give her her certificate when she comes back. She is always very good at listening and gives all her work her very best effort. Well done her.

Week Starting 24th September 2012

Remember to bring your filled, named water bottle with you every day (no juice please).
We will send homework out on a Thursday. Please send it to school every day but any tasks should be completed by Wednesday. The teacher will collect in the weeks work on Wednesday. Each week there will be a Yellow Book Challenge to do but you can pick which challenge you want to do from a list of 2 of sheet 2. There will be no homework on a Wednesday night.
Gym is on a Monday and Thursday. Please remember long hair will need to be tied back and no jewellery. This means all earrings must be removed.
ICT is on Wednesday afternoons.

Our project is Sleeping Beauty.

This week we will be learning ;

how to plan our complete and create a pattern
how to write an invitation for Sleeping Beauty’s party
how to make a Maasai sheild
Jolly Phonics sounds l, f and b