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Monsters (and some have a red nose)!

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This has certainly been a busy and slightly unusual week for all of us. On Friday it was Comic Relief which we have been calling it Red Nose Day. The main thing that made it strange is that we all came to school either dressed in our pajamas, onesies or red clothes… even the teachers!!! We all thhought this was very funny. Then we had a special day of things ahead. First of all we got to go to the special ‘red’ tuck. We got to buy lots of sweets, cakes, treats, jelly, juice and other lovely things- it was fab! We were all very happy because we were helping a charity and we were getting to eat treats! YUM. Primary 6/7 were organising it and they did a super job!


After that we got to go to a special zumba session. We all got very red in the face because it was so hard but it was lots of fun too.

We watched a video and talked about why we were doing all these fun things and we watched a video about a little boy in Kenya, Africa called Robert who is 8. We discovered that some things in his life were the same as ours. He liked football, playing with his kitten, and playing games like hide and seek and we all agreed that we like doing those things too. We found out that some parts of his life were very different though. His house was very different and the way his family lived was different too. We felt a bit sad at the start but we realised that the money we were raising would help people like Robert and lots of other boys, girls, men, women and families in the UK and in Africa. We felt really happy that we were helping and very proud of ourselves. The video is below if you want to watch it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMBu4xr_wvk&feature=player_embedded

At the creating table some of us made our own red noses and red nose pictures.


In the afternoon the people who had made it through the class talent show performed in the Comic Relief Talent Show Final! We had lots of different acts during our class performers. We had karate shows, dancing, singing, magic, and lots. lots more. In the end there could only be three perfomances for the final and from P1 we had;

The Primary One Dance Troupe (dancing and singing to Starships)

Becca, Wren, Maddison, Billy and Jamie Lee

The Jokers (telling jokes)

Josh, Chamseddine and Leyan

The Amazing Hula Hoopers (accompanied by the very bendy Erin)

Kyra and Carys

The show was in front of the whole school and we wowed and amazed and we all did very well.There were 29 acts altogether and in the end the winner was the P5 dancers , and in 3rd place it was Casey from p3/4 but in a superb 2nd place it was…..

The Primary One Dance Troupe (dancing and singing to Starships)

Becca, Wren, Maddison, Billy and Jamie Lee

We are all really proud of them and they are going to recieve a special award at assembly. Some of the comments about our performances were “amazing”, “they are so talented”, “wow” and ” brilliant”. Lots of people told us we could be on the TV we were so good!!!

We got surprise on Monday because we did know that we had monsters in our class. They had come to help us learn well and and to follow our class and school rulesEverybody got their own monster and they are all different. When we are doing something well we give our monster a point this can be if we are being sensible, well behaved, hard working, being polite, being respectful, creative or lots more. If we are not following the class or school rules we have took take a point away from our monster.

Everyday we see who has the most points and that person wears the special points champion rossette for the day and they get a special sticker from Mrs MacDonald.

We have been set a challenge by Mrs Mackay and if we can log on at home, in the library or on our grown ups phones we can change our monster to whatever design we want and we can share how we have been getting on at school with our families. Mrs Mackay sent a sheet home to show everyone what the page looks like and we even get a point if we log on ( don’t worry if you can’t though!).

Mrs Mackay set us the challenge of getting at least 15 points each by Friday but we all did so well that we earned a whopping 548 green points (they are the fab ones!) and just (21 red points (they are the not so good ones!). She is VERY proud of us and we are all enjoying using it that we showed Mrs MacDonald. She was so impressed we are going to give a little presentation at assesmbly and tell the rest of the school about it and the skills it is giving us! If you want to know more or see what we are talking about here is a link to a video telling you all about it! If anyone is having any problems getting onto their page just write a not your green books and Mrs Mackay will try to sort it out for you.

http://youtu.be/KaeNSYJvrn0

This week with Ms Gauld we learned all about the Green Protector Food Group. This is the groups which is made up of fruit and vegetables. We had to taste different foods and then write about the food we were trying. We tasted peas, grape juice , mango juice, tomato juice, lemon juice, bananas, oranges,  and lots more. We learnt that we grow fuit and vegetables from seeds and we saw a model to help us understand. We learned that they are really good for you but they do contain sugar so we shouldnt eat loads of them but we mu8st try to eat at least five portions every day.

In numeracy we are learning all about the half past time. We can tell it on a digital clock and on an analogue clock. We played a matching game with cards on clocks. It was easy because we worked as a team. We have also had to draw the hands on analogue clocks to show what the time was. It was a bit tricky because we had to read the digital time first!

In literacy we are continuing to write our stories about our pet penguin. There are some amazing ideas and we are all being super creative! We had to use our thinking triangle again and also our thinking flowers. Here is what we got written down this week.


As part of our yellow book homework challenges we have been thinking about what we do in a day and when we do it, looking for signs of spring ( although the snow this week made that a wee bit tricky, and playing a game with our families. We all did really well Kyra played hungry hippos and ‘let’ her dad win 3 times! Kaitlyn played a gingerbread man with her brothers and Sameer played the sounds game with his mum and brother. Here are some of the other pieces of fab homework completed this week!

In the Active Learning Zone we have been practising time. We have been investigating this on the Numeracy table looking at watches, clocks and stop watches. We have been playing a game on the iPad called What’s the Time Mr Wolf. We have to match the correct time to the clock. At the end of the game we have to save our score.

We have been continuing to learn about Nature and habitats and are still exploring our Nature Table.

Week Beginning Monday 18th March 2013

  • There is our annual school Bingo on Thursday night – please see office for tickets and help us raise money for the new Activtable. We would love to see you there (pupils must be accompanied by a grown up).
  • 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.
  • 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. Thank you.
  • Fruit money for this 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).
  • This week we will be learning about counting in 10’s(numeracy), writing a story with a beginning, middle and end (literacy) and the purple food group (sweets and sugar) (healthy and wellbeing).

    • There is no drag-on our school day! Kung Hei Fat Choi!

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    This has been a very funm busy and exciting couple of weeks for us. We had a long weekend and we have been learning all about Chinese New Year! Did you know that the Chinese New Year holiday lasts for two weeks but there is one special day and on that day everyone wishes each other ‘Kung Hei Fat Choi’ which means happy new year and good fortune.

    We decided to make our role play area a Chinese resaurant and we thought about all the different things we would need. We looked in some books to get some ideas. Some were fiction  (which means they are imaginative books) and some were non fiction (which means that they are all about real events, objects and facts which are true). In one of the books we discovered that Chinese people eat with chopsticks instead of cutlery so we put these in our restaurant and we also saw that people ate sitting on the floor at a low table so we put cushion to sit on instead of chairs. We all really love being in the restaurant and practising using the chopstick to eat as well as using the wok to cook in. 

    We learnt that instead of presents Chinese people give each other red envelopes with letters of good luck inside and money ( we all liked that idea!). Sometimes at family meals there would be a decoration covered in red envelopes and people would take one when they when home.  We have been trying our some Chinese writing at our writing table and some of us made our own red envelopes to give to our friends.

        

    Did you know that the Chinese New Year is named after an animal? 2013 is the year of the snake. We wanted to know about why the years were named after animals and how they worked out which order they would come in. We heard a story all about a race which the Emperor’s daughter organised because all the animals wanted to go first. We all really enjoyed the story and lots of us said that we thought that it was a very clever way to solve the problem.

    To try to help us remember the sequence of the animals who won the race by completing a cut and stick worksheet. It was tricky but we all did well.

      

    In literacy we all completed a fact sheet to show what we have been learning about Chinese New Year. Some of the pictures we had to draw were already in our classroom and that really helped us.

               

    In art we all made our own Chinese dragon puppet. We had to design a head design and tail design then fold the paper carefully using the fold and flip method. We all did really well and were so excited about them we all took them straight home to share with our families!

    In music we have been learning about chinese music and rhythm which is the musical word for pattern. We learnt two songs. One was about two tigers and the other song was called Gong Xi which means good fortune. We were really good at singning them so we played some musical instruments following the rhythm. We used a tambourines, indian bells, symbols and wooden blocks. It was really fun and we are looking forward to learning some more songs and trying to play different rhythms.

     We were lucky to work with Ms Gauld this week. She let us taste and smell lots of Chinese foods. We even got to wear some chinese clothes. It was all really good fun and we learnt lots. Almost all of us thought that the smell of ginger was the nicest thing.

    On Tuesday we were all really hungry because it was Pancake Day which is sometimes called Shrove Tuesday.

    Oxford Reading Tree: Stage 1: First Words: Pancake

    Some of us remembered that we had read a reading book where Dad makes pancakes ( but they don’t eat them which we thought was funny). We all talked about the ingredients that Dad needed and we made a list. Then Mrs Mackay showed us a recipe on the promethean board and we talked about what it tells us to do and equipment we would need if were going to make pancakes at home would be. Next, we made our own recipe sheet and made a super job of it!

     

    Before we went home we read a really funny book called Mr Wolf’s Pancakes. Mr Wolf was really trying to be nice to all his neighbours but they are all horrible and use terrible manners. Nobody would help Mr Wolf but he still managed to make his pancakes in the end but then his mean and rude neighbours turn up at his door and demand some pancakes (how rude!)…. don’t worry Mr Wolf soon gets his own back but we don’t want to give away the ending!

    In ICT we have been learning all about using programmable resources like Beebots and controling the turtle by progamming his path. We all to take turns programming the Beebots to travel to our friends then we took part in a Beebot Challenge where we had to work out how to make our Beebot make a pattern on the floor. We made shapes, flowers and went forward and back as well as in a circle.

      

    We are still learning all about subtraction in numeracy. We are all getting much faster and able to answer more questions correctly using the activexpression in self paced challenges in addition and subtraction every day. We are also finding tha cubes really helpful when we are working out our subtraction and addition work in the classroom and ALZ. After we finish our work we self evaluate and then we show it to our teachers and they evalute our work too. It helps us to think carefully about what we can do well, what we need to work on and we are getting so good at it that we normally have the same evaluation as our teachers.

      

    This week we had our Open Afternoons. It was lovely to see so many of our families and we enjoyed showing them around our classroom and Active Learning Zones. We also had fun telling our grown ups about what we have been learning by going through our folios with them. After their visits our grown ups left us a note in our special folder.

    Week Beginning 18th February 2013

  • 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 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. Thank you.
  • For the pupils who applied for tennis club it will begin on Monday 18th at 3.15pm – 4.15pm. Please check with the office or class teacher if you are unsure of anything or if your child has a place. Thank you.

    • 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

    We read a story and everyone fell asleep for 100 years!

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    This has been our first full week of part time P1 and we are all feeling pretty tired but not as tired as Sleeping Beauty! This week  we started our new topic of Sleeping Beauty. We read three stories and they all had the same title of Sleeping Beauty on the the cover but we noticed that the illustrator was different on each one and the story was a little different too. We discovered that the first story had a forest grow up around the castle, the next story had thorny bushes grow up all around the castle and the third story was very special because even though its title was  Sleeping Beauty, it had Biff, Chip, Kipper, their Dad and their friend Wilma in it! We had to put our ‘thinking hats’ on  and talked with our teachers about the similarities and differences- they were very impressed with us!

       

    We are still counting our days at school every morning and some of us are getting very good at talking about the numbers that are before and after the number we are putting up. We were amazed to see that wewhen we counted our number on Friday morning we had been at school for 9 days! We checked it against our rabbit number line ( they bring us a carrot for every day we are at school) and it was right!! We are also getting very good at moving the hand on our classroom clock to show what activities we are working on. We like looking at it in the morning when we come in because it helps us to know what we are doing and we can talk about the exciting things we will be doing. Our teacher, Mrs Mackay, says it is helping us learn about time too even though there are no numbers on the clock but we are sure that we will find out more about that soon.

      

    Ms Gauld. our Healthy Eating Assistant, came to visit our class this week. She told us how to wash our hands properly to stay healthy. We were very good at listening to her and giving her ideas of when and why we should we wash our hands. We decided that there were five times we must wash our hands;

    1. After we go to the toilet.
    2. Before we eat anything.
    3. After we have touched an animal, even our pets.
    4. After we cough or sneeze.
    5. After we have been playing outside.

    After we made our list Ms Gauld introduced us to Handy. He was a Hand Washing Helper and he told us if our list was right- and it was! He showed us what to do and what we would need, just like Ms Gauld and he even taught us a hand washing song. After that we all had a practise and Ms Gauld and Mrs Mackay said we were good enough that we could get one Handys special stickers!

     

      

      

    We have been learning even more sounds this week. This week we learnt p, i and n and in the active learning zone and the classroom we have been practising using them to make words, finding them in words and writing them. We are getting really good and we even took our sound books home as part of our homework this week so that we can teach our families the sounds, their actions and their songs.We have also been enjoying using the iPad to play games all about our sounds.

      

     

    In the Active Learning Zone there have been lots of new areas to investigate and learn in. One of our favourites this week has been the science table. We have been investigating different objects and shiny things. We know what to do when we are there because Walt is there to tell us what we are learning.

    All through the week we have all had a shot at playing a really fun game called PIPs. It helps our teachers see what we know and we all thought it was lots of fun! We had to do some counting, say what some sounds were, find some items in a picture and lots more fun things!

    Week Starting 27th August 2012

    •  We are still in for mornings only this week 9.00am – 12.15pm
    • 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. 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. There will be no homework on a Wednesday night.
    • DC Thomsons will be coming to take our photograph for the paper on Thursday 30th August. We will let you know when it is going to be in the paper.
    • We are going to be in school fulltime from Monday 3rd September 2012

    Our project is Sleeping Beauty.

    This week we will be learning the Swahili  song Jambo so that we can sing it for our visitors next month.