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:
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
