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We have a ‘spring’ in our step!

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Well it has been a busy few weeks at school and we have all been having lots of fun and lots of visitors. Our new topics are the Spring and the Seashore.  Our class have been  very excited because we have had some people in filming us from Promethean Planet and we have been meeting with a lady from the BBC and CBEEBIES who makes Nina and the Neurons. We had to watch some clips of Nina and then we said what we liked. Next we used our listening ears to listen to a radio show that Nina had made and we carried our the science experiments that she was talking about. We had lots of fun and we learnt lots of new words. Best of all, Anne who was our visitor got lots of ideas. Here is a link to the Nina page to share it with your family. We listened to the Sticky Materials show.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/nina-and-the-neurons/

In numeracy we have been learning lots and lots of new things. We have been learning all about sharing (division). We used the Promethean Board to read a story called The Doorbell Rings. It is all about a brother and sister who’s mummy makes them cookies. Mrs Mackay gave us cookies just like the boy and the girl got and we had to solve the sharing problems in the story. It was lots of fun and we were really good at using our thinking brains to divide well. Some of us even managed to work it out in written form too!

Lots of us enjoyed showing our families what we have been learning about dividing. Maddison even made a picture/model of what she had been learning using pasta.

We have also been learning all about fractions in numeracy. We looked at some pictures of pies and and we talked about what would happen if we cut the pie into different pieces. We knew lots of fraction words and we didn’t even know that’s what they were! We all got a paper plate and we had to cut it into smaller fractions and write on each part to say what it was. Next we had to fit the plate back together to help us to see how different pieces fit together to make the bigger fractions.

We have also been helping to create a beautiful school garden in our P1 playground. We were given a big tub full of soil and we had to plant plants in it and try to create a pattern using them. It was lots of fun and we were able to apply what we had been learning when we were planting our sunflower seeds in class to planting the flowers and the lavender bush. The flowers had roots and we had to shake them to loosen them up a little so that they can spread out and help them grow. We can’t wait for all our and the baskets that all the other classes planted to grow even more!

We had been thinking about the sorts of skills people need to do different jobs. Since we had been planting our sunflowers and our garden basket we decided that we would make a list of all the skills a gardener would need. We worked with our learning partner and discussed what skills we thought a gardener might need and we wrote them on a whiteboard. Then we gave our answers to Mrs Mackay and we made a class list. Some of us even went home and made a list of what skills the job we would like to do when we grow up might need.

At assembly we heard a talk from one of the older girls at school. She told us all about her life, where she and her family were from and what her culture was like. It was really interesting and we were really impressed that she was brave enough to stand up in front of the whole school by herself and talk about her life. Mrs McDonald was so impressed too that she asked all of us to think about our families, our cultures and heritage and create a mind map with our families. We all did a super job and Mrs Mackay and Mrs McDonald were both really impressed. Here are some of the mind maps we made;

We were also set a challenge to solve another problem for Mrs McDonald at assembly. She asked us to think about of ‘how to get our families involved in school more’. We talked to our teacher and made a mind map about that too. We had some terrific ideas and we hope that Mrs McDonald finds them useful.

Each term we have a focus on one of the four capacities of Curriculum for Excellence. This term our focus is on us to be Responsible Citizens. We have been looking at one of the aspects of this each week and we have made a flipchart page to show us what each one means to us and to see if we are using any of these in our daily school lives. We have been looking at how we can be responsible and care about each other. This doesnt just mean in school but in our community too. Here are our ideas…

Since we are all son good at being Responsible Citizens our Eco Committe decided to have a Green Day. First of all our eco committee member told us all about it. He did so well that we all gave him a green assessment smile! Next, on Friday we had to come to school in something green. It could be green in colour or green because we had recycled it from someone else. We ALL made a huge effort and our teachers were very proud of us. Jamie Lee even made her own top with her family which was AMAZING because it was recycled from a school t shirt into an eco t-shirt and had a message on it! Well done her and her family!

In class we have been finding out who are our class champions. Class champions are people who have tried hard, shown good skills and can demonstrate to others how to do something well. At the moment we have 8 champions.

They are;

Responsible Citizen Champion – Corey

Reading Champion – George

Writing Champions- Carys (handwriting) and Wren (blending and sounding)

Listening and Talking Champion – Lara

Sports Champion – Kyra

Numeracy Champion – Becca (Number, Money and Measure (weight))

Technology Champion – Billy (design)

Friendship Champion – Edyn

We are still collecting our Monstor points using Class Dojo and we have been asked to talk to Mrs McDonald, the rest of the school and teachers about what we have been doing. We are still doing really well with hitting our targets but in order to create our presentation we had to work with our learning partner and note down some ideas that we thought would encourage other classes to use it. We made a list using these on the big board and we have been taking photos of our monsters, awards, champion of the day medal and head teacher stickers that we use along with our monsters. We are going to use all of these photos in our presentation at assembly… we are all very excited!

We have been trying to keep fit during our Fit Fridays and we have had lots of fun having a taster session of Karate. It was so much fun. We had to be in teams and follow the Sensei (the teacher). To make it easier to follow him we all wore a red and blue band on our wrists. This made it easier to work out which was our left and right hands and feet. It was great and we were really excited to hear that we could all join the after school club on a Friday. We all got a letter but if you are interested and can’t find your letter please phone the school or the sports development team.

We have been learning lots of lots in music this term. We have been learning all about tempo and beats as well as LOTS of new songs! We have been playing instruments and singing everyday! Keep an eye out for your invitation to our assembly where you will hear some of our new songs!

Edyn has enjoyed learning how to play the instruments so much that she and her family even made their own musical instrument- it’s a guitar!

We have some visitors in class… We have been learning how to care for not just our class fish but we have been observing tadpoles and helping them to grow big and strong into frogs! We will have some pictures of you next week but here is a video clip of them in the wild.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/green-balloon-club/watch/green-balloon-club-tadpoles/

Lastly, our teachers have been playing a very fun game with us to see what we know. Some of us have been practising this ourselves and have been making a sound sheet using all of the magnetic sounds we know and take a picture of it. Here are the sounds Wren knows.

Week Beginning Monday 20th May 2013

  • Remember to bring your filled, named water bottle with you every day (no juice please).
  • The sunny weather is here (sort of) – remember to bring in your own lotion (your child must put their own on) and sun hat on the sunny days.
  • 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.
  • 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 for this half of the term is £1.40 please place in a named envelope.
  • Please return your child’s trip form and money as soon as possible (these do not have to be sent in together).
  • Our class topic is ‘The Seashore”.
  • PLEASE NOTE THE SCHOOL IS CLOSED ON FRIDAY 24TH MAY AND MONDAY 27TH MAY.

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

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    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