Tag Archives: learning

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

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.

 

Noah’s Park! Sun, Sand and Safari!

What a fantastic time we have had this week! We all went to Blair Drummond Safari Park!!!!! We saw lots of animals and had a fantastic time! Here are some of our favourites!

Flynn loved the peacocks. Their tails were beautiful although none of them showed us their tails when they were in full display.

We heard the Lions roar. They were really huge and we saw them having their lunch but we didn’t think it looked very tasty.

We all thought it was very funny that the Lions have a big cat climbing frame. We saw the big male Lion walk around and were amazed by how big his mane was!

The zebras were next on our safari tour. They were staying in the shade and eating from a box on the tree! We thought they really did look like stripy horses!

We saw some very TALL giraffes who we eating leaves on a tree branch.

We saw a white rhino in his bedroom enclosure!

We loved seeing the elephants they were VERY big. One of them was walking up and down a hill moving big sticks. It was very funny!

These meerkats were our helper Gregor’s favourite! They were really sweet and very busy! There were lots of little families and we thought we could see Mummy, Daddy and baby meerkats! One was busy looking for grubs to eat!

The humbolt penguins were next on our Safari. We managed to get photos of them sleeping, swimming and we THINK one was even playing hide and seek!

Mrs Mackay liked watching the otters. They were busy eating their lunch.

The ring tailed leemurs were having lots of fun, we saw them climbing and eating their lunch. We were very amused to find out that  a chicken stayed in their enclosure with them!

There were two bears. We think that the big one was the Mummy bear and the little bear was her baby. The mummy bear was quite slow and was happy playing with her swing toy but baby bear was very fast and was exploring her area.

We met some animals that we knew and some of us even have as pets! There were two guinea pigs and a big rabbit.

There was a turkey, we learnt that turkeys don’t say cluck cluck but gobble gobble!

And all the way from Australia there was a Wallaby!

The wallaby had a very long, strong tail to help it to balance and bounce!

The last animals we saw were the Sea Lions! They were so sweet and very clever! It was a very hot day and they were enjoying swimming in their pool to keep cool but one was sun bathing!

We went to see the Sea Lions perform a show for us. They could do lots of tricks like clapping, barking (which we thought sounded like a dog!) and collecting toys and tidying them up!

At the end of the show one of the sea lions did a trick where it climbed up a big tower then jumped off….

….. and it jumped REALLY high to touch a ball! WOW!!!!

We had a BRILLIANT time and we would like to thank our helpers,Miss Holtz, Ellie’s mummy, Geoff- Aiden’s daddy, and Gregor- who is Mr Mackay! They really helped to make our day very special and lots of fun…. some of them even enjoyed the slides in the playpark when they were helping us to get ready after lunch.

NEXT WEEK – SCHOOL ENDS THURSDAY 28th JUNE 12pm

  • There is no gym this week.
  • There is only yellow book homework this week. Please keep all packets at home from now on – Thank you for all your support with homework this year.
  • Excellence Awards are on Monday 25th June
  • Prize Giving is on Tuesday 26th June
  • p7 Leaver’s Assembly is on Wednesday 27th June
  • Nursery Assembly is on Wednesday 27th June

Mrs Mackay, Miss Davies and Mrs Munro would like to thank all the boys and girls and their families for all their support this year! We would love it if you could leave an end of term comment on the blog for us- it can be about anything on this site or just something you have enjoyed this year!

We hope you all have a fantastic summer! See you on Tuesday 14th June when you are in P2!

We would also like to thank all the people around the world who have looked at our blog and left a comment as well as all our visitors to school ! THANK YOU!

Jack, something is growing outside your window!

Well some very exciting things have been going on this week – we have been learning lots more about our Jack and the Beanstalk story and project. Our assembly is very soon so we have been listening carefully and we evern have a special pen which reads the story in Polish and English. Our assembly has been going well and we are getting very good at using our BIG voices to make sure that everyone will be able to hear our performance. We have also been thinking carefully about how we stand and making sure that we always face our audience so that everyone can hear us… It has been very exciting and we can’t wait to share our hard work with our school and families.

  

We have been meeting some of the nursery boys and girls who will be taking our place in Primary One next year as we are getting so big we will be in Primary Two soon. Here is a link to see what they have been learning about Jack and the Beanstalk.

https://wikis.glowscotland.org.uk/0003321/Jack_and_the_Beanstalk_Pre-school

We have had some amazing homework projects going on recently and now we have beanstalks in our classrooms! Ellie, Alexander, Aiden and John have all build their own beanstalks – all complete with their own Jack and Giants. All the teachers were amazed and impressed and Mrs McDonald even gave them a Head Teacher award! We have put them in our classrooms where something has been growing too!

   

 After we created our topic plans with our teachers we started to put our garden centres together. P1a2 decided that they wanted to call their garden centre Dibbies because some of us had been to Dobbies and we thought it sounded like that name but it was a but different. We have put lots of things into our centres and have had fun making labels and price tags for things.

In the Active Learning Zone we have been busy planning to have a shop. We have had to think about what we would like in our shop, who would work their and what skills they would need to have. It was lots of fun and we can’t wait to see what we will create when we apply what we have been designing!

 

We are still learning about and using money in our Garden Centres, numeracy areas and the Active Learning Zone. We have been looking at different notes and have been making our own money! Our teachers said if we could use it we would be VERY rich!

 

In Primary 1a2 Pirate Pete and Pirate the Parrot invited a friend to visit us which was a lovely surprise! Pirate the Parrot had been a bit lonely so he invited his best friend Tallulah the Toucan to come and visit us. She flew in our classroom window at the weekend and we knew that she was here to stay for a while because she even had her own suitcase. Some of the Busy Bees recognised the word ‘fragile’ on her case from their reading book. Tallulah said that she had flown across from the other side of the island our Smugglers Cave is on and that she had seen an amazing sight – A GIANT BEANSTALK! It was going all the way from the back of the cave in our classroom to the other side of ‘island’ in the Active Learning Zone. We can’t wait to see if she has been having any adventures after the weekend…

 

On Tuesday, Tony the Minister came to visit us. He has been telling us some stories from the Bible. This week he was telling us about Noah and his Ark. We thought it was a brilliant story and lots of us have been drawing pictures of the animals, the ark, Mr and Mrs Noah and the rainbow that God sent to show that the rain had ended, Dylin even made a brilliant model with his family as part of his homework challenge. Abdul Malik and Abigail knew how rainbows were made and lots of us had seen them but none of us had seen an Ark! We really enjoy our visits from Tony and we look forward to seeing him again soon.

 

We have been getting very excited about the Olympics. We are following the Olympic torch as it travels through the United Kingdom. We can’t wait until it reaches Dundee and there will be a special party in Baxter Park!

 

This Friday has been our Jubilee Jamboree. We all dressed up in red, white and blue clothes- Ellie even made her own hair bobbles and skirt which were fantastic.  We had a competition where we had to design a Jubilee stamp or coin and Rory won. Mr Mackay (Mrs Mackay’s husband) even let us borrow his medal to get some ideas of what the Queen might like. We have been designing our own Union Jacks in the Active Learning and Aiden even made a delicious cup cake!

  

 

Week Starting Wednesday 6th June 2012

THERE WILL BE NO SCHOOL ON MONDAY OR TUESDAY AS IT IS THE JUBILEE HOLIDAY

WE HAVE OUR ASSEMBLY ON WEDNESDAY 6th JUNE at 2pm. All family and friends welcome!

  • We will have a new way of doing homework this term. All homework will be given out on a Thurdsay and is due back on a 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.

On the day your child has gym, please ensure they returned their clean shorts, t-shirts and gym shoes (some of us have grown a little so please check that they still fit) and have no jewellery on. Also, please tie up long hair. Thank you.

Please remember to return your child’s summer trip as soon as a possible.

This week we are learning how to perform an assembly.

What sport do pirates like? Arrrrrrrrrm wrestling!

This has been a very busy week so its just as well we have been learning all about co-ordinates or else we would have gotten lost! First of all we got another present from our friendly pirate, Pirate Pete. There was a big box with a letter and a visitor inside…. it was Pirate the Parrot. We listened to a story where he was part of the ships crew! We have learnt that he is a Scarlet Macaw and he will stay with us as long as we promised Pirate Pete that we would look after him. We were even more excited to hear that Pirate the Parrot would go and visit Pirate Pete at the weekend when we were at home with our families so we have left a window open so he can fly in and out… Pirate Pete’s letter also said that if Pirate the Parrot is happy in our class she might even bring some of her friends to visit us too!

We have been having ever such a fab time in the Active Learning Zone making lots of treasure maps. These have been really detailed and we have been building on what we have been doing by learning all about co-ordinates. We had a grid with lots of pirate pictures on it and we had to work out what grid they were in. We thought it was tricky but we all did really well. We have also been making our pictures of pirate ships on the Promethean Board and with the big bricks. We are really pleased with our work.

  

We are still learning all about subtraction and have been practising trying to work out missing number subtraction. It was very different from working out normal subtraction and some of us thought that it was a bit like trying to solve a problem.

We have been thinking about different ways to think! Mrs Munro introduced us to some thinking flowers. We recognised the triangle from the one that our teachers have on their walls and we discovered that the flowers were the same colour as the bands of the pyramid. Each of the colours meant we had to think in a different way… it was so much fun and we got fab answers when we thought about a story we had been reading. We can’t wait to use them again!

  

On Wednesday Tony the Minister came to see us. He told us a great story all about how God made the world and about what different people believe. It was really interesting and we are really looking forward to his next visit.

On Friday we got a a surprise when a story bag arrived in our class. It had lots of exciting things which made us think about what story they could be from. When the bag was empty we decided that the story was ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ and that we would like to do a project about it. We also read  the story and the book was very special because it had dots in it which we could put a magic pen on and it told us the story in English and if we touched a different dot it read the story to us in Polish. It was lots of fun and we really liked listening to it in a different language!

  

  

   

Week Starting Monday 21st  May 2012

THERE IS NO SCHOOL ON MONDAY AS IT IS A HOLIDAY

  • We all have gym on Wednesday afternoon.
  • We will have a new way of doing homework this term. All homework will be given out on a Thurdsay and is due back on a 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.
  • THE SCHOOL IS CLOSED ON FRIDAY FOR INSET TRAINING.

On the day your child has gym, please ensure they returned their clean shorts, t-shirts and gym shoes (some of us have grown a little so please check that they still fit) and have no jewellery on. Also, please tie up long hair. Thank you.

Please remember to return your child’s summer trip as soon as a possible.

Our topic is all about Jack and the Beanstalk.

Gong Xi Fa Cai – Happy Chinese New Year!

In school this week we have been learning all about Chinese New Year. We have been learning all about the different ways that people celebrate and we have been hearing the story of how the animals each had a year named after them. 2012 is the year of the Dragon and so we each made a Chinese dragon. Chinese dragons are special because even though they can fly- they don’t have wings. We listened to the story of Chopsticks the mouse who, with a little help from Old Man Fu, helped a beautiful dragon to fly! We LOVED the story and all agreed that Chopsticks the mouse was very kind, brave and clever. In our role play areas we have made a Chinese Restaurant. We take it in turns to be the chef and  the customers. We have been practising using chopsticks too but they are quite tricky.

  

 In the Active Learning Zone we have made laterns which our teachers put up over the restaurants. Some of even tried out Chinese writing on them, just like people in China might do when the send their laterns up into the sky.  At the water tray we had to try to collect the noodles with chopsticks, this made us laugh alot but some of us got quite good at using them.  In the sand tray we had to build the great wall of China and we watched a film about the Terracotta Army and were amazed at how many of them there are  and how big they are.

  

  

In number work we are still learning to add. We have been learning the stories of 8 and 9 and we got a Dragon Adding Sheet for homework to show what we know.

Week Starting 23rd January 2012

  • P1a1 have gym on Monday afternoon.
  • P1a2 have gym on Wednesday afternoon.
  • Book bags will go out on Friday this week, please read with your child and return it with them on Monday morning.

Friday 27th January will be a Fit Friday so please wear your sporty clothes to school all day.

Please send in your child’s Fruit Money in a named envelope £1 until the Mid February or £2.60 until the Easter Holiday. Thank you to those who have already paid.

On the day your child has gym, please ensure they have no jewellery and long hair should be tied up.

Next week we will be learning about all things Scottish!

Money, Money, Money and Marvellous Models Too

MONDAY 14th NOVEMBER 2011 WE HAVE 5000 FOLLOWERS TODAY! Thank you to everyone who follows us and leaves us clever comments, we love reading them. 

What a fun and busy time we have been having in Primary 1.  We have been learning all about money this week and set up a Gruffalo food shop.  We take it in turns to be the shopkeeper and the customers.

We have also been reading detectives this week looking for words in the Gruffalo story.  We used different coloured pencils to show all the words we found.  We then showed our learning partner.  It was fun and we are all super detectives.

We have been enjoying all our learning around the story of The Gruffalo and this week we made models of the characters from the story.  We are going to use the characters to make a film which we are all very excited about.  We are sure you will agree that our models are fantastic.

After all of our Halloween fun last week we were left with some pumpkins and we used them to become Super Scientists! We got a pumpkin and investigated what it looked like, felt like and smelt like. Then we cut it open to see what was inside… we were surprised by how many seeds we found. Next we carried out an experiement to see what would happen if we left our pumpkin out in the air but you will have to check out our blog on Monday to find out what our experiment taught us!

 

Our pumkin has gone all fury. We felt it and it felt very different and much more squishy. We all took turns to smell it and we didnt like the way it smelt either. We can now tell you what happens if you dont keep fruit or vegetables cool and dry.

Well done to Rory, Saul and Aiden who worked so well as a team to complete a VERY tricky crocodile puzzle! It was so good that we have stuck it together and put it on the wall.

Week Starting 14th November 2011

  • P1a1 have gym on Monday afternoon.
  • P1a2 have gym on Wednesday afternoon.
  • Book bags will go out on Friday this week, please read with your child and return it with them on Monday morning.

On the day your child has gym, please ensure they have no jewellery and long hair should be tied up.

Next week we will be learning to make our own stop motion animations of The Gruffalo.

Halloween, The Gruffalo, Pumpkins and Apples!

What a fun and busy week we have had in Primary 1. On Monday we celebrated Halloween with lots of spooky activities in our classroom and the Active Learning Zone. In the afternoon we had a Halloween party with games and challenges.

We ducked for apples and with the left over ones we decided to measure how long we were in apples. We even got to measure Mrs McDonald our Head Teacher and found out that she is 2 apples longer than Mrs Mackay.

After measuring with apples we did a taste test to see if we liked red, green or red and green apples best. We enjoyed tasting the apples and recorded our results on a pictogram.

A pumpkin patch grew in our classrooms this week and we used tape measures to measure their circumference. It was a little bit tricky to measure the very big and very small ones but we worked with our learning partner. We recorded our results on our pumpkin measuring record sheets. We are going to have a go at measuring the circumference of lots of different things in the classroom.

We have been learning all about the Gruffalo. This week we watched the DVD of the Gruffalo and we loved it. We reread the story and then compared it to the film. We used Activexpressions to vote for our favourite. Primary 1a1 preferred the film to the book but Primary 1a2 liked the book and the film exactly the same.

Primary One got a postcard from our fish from last year saying that they were having such fun on holiday that they decided to stay on the sunny lake they were visiting. They have sent three of their friends who had heard how good we were at looking after fish to stay with us and we are very excited to have new class pets to look after. We voted on their names and finally settled on Rex, Buster and Fish.

We have been very busy in ICT this week too and have been learning how to use PIVOT. It is lots of fun and there have been lots of giggles while we make our Pivot Man do whatever we want him to. We even managed to get him to change colour and do lots of funny movements and dances.

We are all looking forward to Bonfire Night and enjoyed making bonfire and firework pictures this week. We will remember to stay safe on Bonfire Night.

Week Starting 7th November 2011

  • P1a1 have gym on Monday afternoon.
  • P1a2 have no gym  this week due to In Service days.
  • There will be no book bags this week due to In Service days.

On the day your child has gym, please ensure they have no jewellery and long hair should be tied up.

Next week we will be learning about money the different coins we use.

REMEMBER TO HAVE FUN AND STAY SAFE ON BONFIRE NIGHT.

Beginning, Middle and End

This week we have been learning all about the beginning, middle and end of stories. First of all, we watched the Sleeping Beauty DVD and though carefully about what happened in the beginning, middle and end of the film. Next, we looked at a sheet of pictures which showed scenes from the film. We had to pick the one which showed the most important scene from the beginning, the middle and the end. Once we had done that we then cut them out and stuck them onto our sequencing card. It was lots of fun and we all did very well.

  

We have been using our numeracy areas alot this week. When it is choosing time we have been using all of the things in it to investigate lots of number work, patterns, measuring and sorting.  We have also been playing lots of games to help us remember the characters in our reading books. Primary 1a2 have been playing a game to help them sound out simple words by listening for the start, middle and end sounds. They had lots of fun and Primary1a1 are looking forward to playing it next week.

      

We are really enjoying our Sleeping Beauty project and we all enjoy playing in the Sleeping Beauty’s castle and in her Bedroom in the Active Learning Zone. We have been making pictures of the Prince who comes to awaken everyone in the castle. We had to match the shapes to the picture and stick them down. We think they look really shiny and very brave! In the Active Learning Zone we have been busy making paper plate pictures of ourselves, characters from Sleeping Beauty and some of us even made Aliens!

 

  

Week Starting 3rd October 2011

  • P1a1 have gym on Wednesday afternoon.
  • P1a2 have gym on Thursday afternoon.
  • Remember to return your permission slips and money for our trip to the DCA Film Festival.
  • Book bags will be now issued on a Friday. Please read the book with your child over the weekend and return it to school on Monday morning.

On the day your child has gym, please ensure they have no jewellery and long hair should be tied up.

Next week we will be learning about length.

We met Floppy

This week we have been learning some new sounds. We have been practising writing them at the writing table. We have also been writing our names. We love writing them on the aqua mats.

In our reading we have been learning about more of our Oxford Reading Tree characters. This week we met Floppy. Floppy is a dog. We also used the Magic Page and read books on the Promethean Board. We listened to At School and The Lost Teddy.

In our maths we have been learning about shapes and numbers. We have been counting and practising writing numbers.

We have been enjoying playing more with Sleeping Beauty. We have been drawing pictures of the characters of Sleeping Beauty. Some of us drew Sleeping Beauty, some drew the good fairy, the bad fairy, the prince, the king and the queen. Some of us even drew pictures of the spindle.

We have been playing at Sleeping Beauty in our classroom and Mrs Munro’s Learning Zone. We made pictures of a castle with shapes, made a castle with a thorny hedge all around and have been playing in Sleeping Beauty’s bedroom. We also have a floor book all about our learning through Sleeping Beauty.

We have been talking about Eid. Manahil had a beautiful henna pattern on her arm to celebrate Eid.

We also put in an entry to the Dundee Flower Festival. We made birds with feathers. We won a third place!

We are learning about Plants and Animals

We started this week by finishing off lots of experiments. We had to use our senses to taste different crisps and decide what flavour they were. But Miss Davies and Mrs Mackay hid the packets they came from so we didn’t know what flavours they were. We filled in a sheet to record our experiment. Then we did a smelling experiment. We had to guess what will hidden in the cup. We recorded our findings for this experiment too.

This week we are learning about Plants and Animals. In the classrooms we have a vet and a garden centre. We have compost in the sand tray so we can practise planting. We did a mind map for our areas to help us decide what we need.

Our Garden Centers have needed a lot of work. We needed to made signs and put up lots of flowers. We have a cutting activity where we have to use catalogues to cut out things for our garden to help us design it. We all like the sheds and swimming pools.

In our water trays we have a pretend frog pond. It had pretend frogs and tadpoles that help us to play and learn about the life cycle of a frog. Try out this website.

http://www.ngfl-cymru.org.uk/vtc/2008-09/cynnal/discovery/eng/life_cycle_2.html

We have been listening to lots of stories about animals too.

P1a1 are very lucky because they have two new class pets. They are goldfish. A gold one and a black one. The class voted on names for them and decided on Daisy and Rocky. We are looking forward to caring for them.

In Mrs Munro’s Learning Zone we have a pet shop and an X Box Kinect with Kinectimals game. We all got the meet the five cubs who are in the game and used the Active Expressions to vote on who our favourite cub is. We choose the black panther to be our P1 cub. Watch out for more information about what we get up to with him as we play and care for him.