All posts by Mrs Lynch

Jack and the Beanstalk

April 27, 2012 Mrs Lynch 1 Comment

Hello and welcome to our blog!

We have continued to gather and record information this week. We again used a Carroll diagram, this time using two criteria – colour and shape.

We also used a tick sheet this week. There were coloured hoops on the classroom floor. We had to choose the hoop that was our favourite colour. We then recorded our findings altogether on a tick sheet then used the information from the tick sheet to create a bar graph!

We all watched a Jack and the Beanstalk film this week. It wasn’t the usual kind of animation we are used to seeing. In this film the characters were shadow puppets so we couldn’t see their faces or their clothes. We then read another version of the Jack and the Beanstalk story and we discussed what was the same and what wasn’t the same between the film and the book. After we had talked about them both we had to decide which one we like the best. We then recorded on a speech bubble the reason why we preferred the book or the film. All our speech bubbles were then put into a big book so we can all look and compare everyones answers.

We have discovered there are many versions of Jack and the Beanstalk and we read another version of the story. This time each of our classes had to pick a scene from the story. P1a picked a scene from inside the Giant’s castle. P1b picked the scene when Jack was climbing the beanstalk. P1c picked the scene when Jack was selling Daisy the cow for magic beans.

We were all given a sheet of paper and we had to draw our scene putting in as much detail as we could. We had to think who was in the scene, what were they doing, what was in the background. Lots to think about and we tried very hard and made a very good job!

Finally this week we again looked at 8 pictures from the Jack and the Beanstalk story. We had to cut them out and put them in the correct order. We then had to sound out the words and match them to the correct picture. Finally we had to colour in the pictures very carefully making sure we used the correct colours and the same colours in every picture so the story made sense to make our own comic strip.

Our Jack in the Beanstalk topic is part of the early years cluster project. A wiki has been created so we are able to share all our learning. Please follow the link below.

https://wikis.glowscotland.org.uk/index.php?title=0003304/J%26BSClusterProject/Longhaugh_PS

Notices for parents:

Gym – P1A –Wednesday & Friday, P1B – Thursday and Friday, P1C – Wednesday and Thursday. Please ensure your child has a full gym kit in school. Also please note that all jewellery must be removed for gym.

Open Doors – Every Thursday 3.00pm – 3.15pm. Please come in to school and see all the hard work your child has been doing.

The school will be closed to pupils on Thursday 3rd of May as the school is to be used as a polling station for the local election.

Back to School!

April 20, 2012 Mrs Lynch Leave a comment

Welcome back to our blog after our 2 week Easter break. We are all very pleased to be back at Longhaugh Primary School and are looking forward to our last term.

We had a quick revision of all our sounds to refresh our memory as 2 weeks is quite a long time not to be at school!

We talked about all the things we had done in our holidays and we wrote a sentence about one thing that we enjoyed doing.

In our number work this week our teachers introduced us to Carroll diagrams. This is a simple way of sorting things into groups and looking at what is the same and not the same.

We have started a new topic this term and we had to predict what we thought it might be. We looked at pictures and some objects and had to ask ourselves some questions. Had we seen the objects before? Did we know what the objects were? What did we think we would be learning? We made a mind map to help us.

We decided that we were going to be learning about Jack and the Beanstalk and we looked at several different Jack and the Beanstalk story books. We had to choose which of the books was our favourite and we did this by standing in or just beside the hoop where our favourite book was placed. We then made bar graphs displaying our favourite books.

We are decorating our outside area with a beanstalk and of course a beanstalk needs lots and lots of leaves. We sponge painted, tore up and stuck tissue paper and marbled our leaves. It is looking very nice and we are looking forward to starting the learning activites in this area. Even more exciting is that the beanstalk goes right into Mrs Lynch’s room and there are even more Jack and the Beanstalk learning activities in there! This is going to be a very good term!

Notices for parents:

Open Doors – Every Thursday 3.00pm – 3.15pm. Please come in to school and see all the hard work your child has been doing.

Teddy Bears Picnic

March 30, 2012 Mrs Lynch Leave a comment

This is our last week of school before the Easter holidays and we have again been working very hard.

We have continued to revise all our words and sounds everyday and we have been doing our sounds activities stations in the class room. We try to practise as often as possible to sound out and make new words.

We looked at the “I can” book and talked about what we are able to do. We wrote our own “I can” sentences sounding out all the words we needed to write.

In number this week we have continued to look at money. Role play in our shop has helped us to price the toys correctly and find the correct money and change needed to buy them. We have also had our money stations in the classroom too. We have played money games on the interactive white board, money dominoes, money men and sorted coins etc.

In our topic we finished the week with our Teddy Bears picnic. We all discussed our favourite bears and we brought in our own bears to school. We sang teddy bear songs and played team games, with our teddies cheering us on!

We then had a snack and finished our picnic with parachute games and an Easter egg hunt. It was a lovely afternoon and the perfect end to our term.

As it is Easter when we are on holiday, we made our Easter ‘chick’ card this week. We had to, very carefully, draw around our hands then cut them out. This was a tricky job. We also had to use our best handwriting to write our Easter message.

On the last day of term we walked to Fintry Parish Church for our Easter/end of term Service. Easter weekend is when we are off school so we celebrated Easter early in our local church. It was a lovely day and a very pleasant walk. The minister, Mr Brough, gave us a lovely sermon and our school choir did us proud as usual and sang some beautiful Easter songs.

The Easter bonnet competition was judged by Mrs McKillop and Mrs Sands. They had such a difficult job as there were so many splendid Easter bonnets.

P1A entries P1B entries P1C entries

The Winners!!! Well done to all the boys and girls for their superb effort!

As we are on holiday there will be no P1 blog for 2 weeks. All of us in P1 and in fact the whole of Longhaugh Primary wish you all a happy and peaceful Easter.

Notices for parents:

Open Doors – Every Thursday 3.00pm – 3.15pm. Please come in to school and see all the hard work your child has been doing.

Friday 30th March – School will close for 2 weeks for the Easter holidays. We will re-open on Monday 16th April.

Sports Relief Mile

March 23, 2012 Mrs Lynch Leave a comment

Welcome to Longhaugh Primary 1’s blog, we have had another very busy week here in P1.

We have been practising our sounds and words everyday, this is especially important when we are sounding out new words in our reading books and library books. We have continued with our sound stations in our classrooms. This gives us the chance to try all the different activities and we’re getting more confident in sounding out, reading and writing cvc words and short sentences.

We have continued to look at money this week and we also had money stations around the classroom. We have been sorting coins, playing money games on the interactive white board, using the money washing line, using the money beebot mats and being the customer/shop assistant in our toy shop. We had to use the correct coins to buy toys if we were pretending to be the customer and give the correct change if we were pretending to be the shop keeper.

We have continued to watch small video clips of some famous bears. We have watched Yogi Bear, Pudsey and the Care Bears and we discussed the differences between them.

This week the artist we looked at was Picasso. We looked at several of his famous paintings and discussed his use of regular and irregular shapes. We noticed that in his portraits they didn’t really look like a normal face as he used different shapes and colours to represent features. We drew and coloured in our own portraits in the style of Picasso.

The Play Bus visited school this week. The Play Bus encourages us to use our imagination and create our own play and design dens, outside games etc. We loved it at the Play Bus and it was certainly more fun than sitting inside playing our XBox!!

Today is Sports Relief Day when thousands of people are running, jogging or walking a mile to raise funds for people around the world who are less fortunate than themselves. At Longhaugh we are all wearing something red and we are all collectively running or walking a mile. The boys and girls in P1a, P1b and P1c ran around the school playing fields twice for their part in the mile. All the funds raised will be going to Sports Relief.

Notices for parents:

Open Doors – Every Thursday 3.00pm – 3.15pm. Please come in to school and see all the hard work your child has been doing.

We are holding an Easter Bonnet Competition in school. Children can design and make their own bonnets using a variety of materials. Completed entries should be in school no later than Wednesday 28th March.

Friday 30th March – School will close for 2 weeks for the Easter holidays. We will re-open on Monday 16th April.

Ruby Bear

March 16, 2012 Mrs Lynch Leave a comment

Hello there and welcome to P1’s blog!

We have continued to revise all our sounds and to practise putting the sounds together to make words. This can be quite tricky to begin with so we will be continuing to do this for several weeks so that we become really, really good at blending our sounds and hearing the words they make.

Our teachers introduced money to us this week. We made a mind map of all the things we knew about money already. We looked at coins. We looked at the size, shape and colour of the different coins. We pegged up all the different coins onto our washing line starting with the lowest value, a 1p coin, going all the way up to a £2.oo coin! Miss Simpson also tipped all the coins from the tray onto the floor, mixed them all up in a right mess and we had to tidy them up and sort them into the correct trays! If this was not tricky enough we also had the large 5 minute timer and had to finish the job before the sand ran out in the timer! Phew! It was hard work but great fun!

We read the Ruby Bear story. It’s a story about a bear who is very special indeed. We talked about all the the things that made Ruby different but very special. We had a picture of Ruby and we labelled all the things that made her stand out from all the other bears; squint mouth, orange eyes, spotty tummy etc. We also painted our own Ruby with Mrs Lynch. We think, just like Ruby, our bears are very special.

As it is Mother’s Day on Sunday we made our own Mother’s Day cards. We all thought that our mummys worked very hard and deserved a treat so we made our cards with a cup on them and popped a tea bag in so they can relax with a nice cup of tea!

We are looking at the different things that keep us healthy. This week we made a healthy drink with Mrs Johnston. We made a fruit smoothie. We looked at all the ingredients needed to make this and next week we will be writing all the ingredients down. Our smoothies were delicious!

Notices for parents:

Open Doors – Every Thursday 3.00pm – 3.15pm. Please come in to school and see all the hard work your child has been doing.

Friday 23rd March – the school will be participating in ‘Sports Relief’ by collectively running a mile. We would appreciate it if every child brought in 10p and wore something red on the day.

Teddy Bear Topic

March 9, 2012 Mrs Lynch Leave a comment

This week we have continued to revise all our sounds and to practise writing cvc words at our sounds stations. Our stations include word mats, sounds board games, ‘find the missing sound‘ games, lace cards, sounds and word games on the interactive white board etc. We all take turns then move around our stations. We really enjoy doing this.

We have been revising time this week. We worked with the time washing line, clock faces, time bingo games, time loop cards and our time bee bot. It’s important for us to keep revising so that we can remember and retain all the things we learn.

We started our new Teddy Bear topic this week. We started by reading the book ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’. We also looked at the DVD and talked about all the different places they went to in the book. We painted the ‘thick, oozy mud’, the ‘big, dark forest’ and the ‘swirling, whirling snowstorm’ with Mrs Lynch ready for our wall display.

We looked at a 2012 bear and we also looked at Miss Simpsons Mum’s bear. We talked about their ages and compared how differently they looked. We are all getting a chance to take 2012 bear home with us. We will also take a camera to take pictures of our favourite bear at home and a picture of a favourite bear belonging to our parents or grandparents. We then have to write down the names and ages of the teddy bears so we can add the pictures to our Teddy Bear Timeline.

This week in art we looked at the artist Vincent Van Gogh. In particular we looked at one of his paintings, Starry Night. We looked at the way he swirled the paint to make the night sky. we painted our own starry night pictures using this technique.

Notices for parents:

Open Doors – Every Thursday 3.00pm – 3.15pm. Please come in to school and see all the hard work your child has been doing.

Digital Time

March 2, 2012 Mrs Lynch Leave a comment

This week in P1 we have continued to revise all our sounds and practised sounding out and writing cvc words. It’s quite tricky to make words but we are trying very hard and some of us are really getting quite good at it.

We have continued to look at time. This week we learned about digital time. We learned that in digital time the ‘o’clock’ has two zeros. We played time bingo games, loop card games and used our time beebot mats to help us with our analogue and digital times.

It is the last week of our water topic and we talked about freezing water. We put water into two trays. One we put outside overnight and the other we put into the freezer. We had to decide if we thought the water in the outside tray would freeze or not. What do you think happened? Do you think the water in both trays froze? We wrote a sentence in our thinking books.

We also put water inside a rubber glove. We discovered the glove was still soft and wobbly when the water was inside it, but when we put the glove into the freezer overnight when it came out the water inside was frozen, the glove and the frozen water had become very hard and solid indeed!

In art we made our own jelly fish. We finger painted them using a pattern of colour. We then made tentacles from coloured cellophane and stuck them onto the jelly fish. Don’t they look good?

The big boys and girls in P6 came down to our classroom and read different story books to us. They will be doing this over the next few weeks and we will then be voting on our favourite book.

Notices for parents:

Open Doors – Every Thursday 3.00pm – 3.15pm. Please come in to school and see all the hard work your child has been doing.

100 Days At School

February 24, 2012 Mrs Lynch Leave a comment

Hello, and a warm welcome back to P1’s blog!

We have continued this week to revise all our sounds and have been trying to blend and use our sound knowledge to make words. We have had “sounds” stations in our classrooms. we have been using the flip charts on the interactive white board, sorting sounds, playing sound games and playing “making word” games.

In number this week we have re-capped on time, we have been looking at o’clock again. We discussed the routines of the day and played sequencing card games. We have also discussed the months of the year, looked at which months our birthdays’ fall in and what things happen in certain months, e.g., Christmas, Easter, Halloween etc.

We have been continuing with our water topic and did another experiment. This time we looked at dissolving and not dissolving. We all had a tub each and put sand in some of the tubs, salt in some of the tubs and sugar in the rest. We then put water in them and gave them a good stir. We looked to see which of the substances dissolved in water and which did not. We recorded our findings in our experiment booklets.

In our art time we looked at the artist Georges Seurat. We looked at several of his paintings and we noticed they all looked dotty! We found out that this type of painting, using dots, is called “pointalism.” We painted our own sea scape pictures in the style of Seurat. We used cotton buds to make the dots.

Wow! We have completed 100 full days at school and we had our party on Friday! We read the book “How big is a Million” and we talked about “100” and how much is “100”. We all then went to the hall and one class laid out 100 pennies. Another class laid out 100 bricks and the other class laid out 100 straws and we looked to see which made the longest line. Which do you think?

We then made party hats with 100 on them and we made a centipede cake with 100 legs. We had 100 candles made into the shape of the number 100!

In the afternoon we had our party. We hopped 100 hops to music, we skipped 100 skips to music and we jumped 100 jumps to music. We clapped 100 claps and to cool down we walked 100 steps around the school. After all that exercise we sat down and ate a piece of the centipede cake we made. We are all very pleased we have been at school full time for 100 days!

Notices for parents:

Open Doors – Every Thursday 3.00pm – 3.15pm. Please come in to school and see all the hard work your child has been doing.

Valentine’s Week

February 17, 2012 Mrs Lynch Leave a comment

This week we have been revising all our sounds. We have been practising using flashcards and playing sounds games. We have also been writing all our sounds on our whiteboards.

This week in number we have started to learn about time. We talked about why we tell the time and we looked at all the clocks and watches in the classroom. We looked at the hour hand, the minute hand and o’clock. We then made our own clock. We wrote the numbers on small squares and made the hour hand and the minute hand and put them on our own clocks.

This week we didn’t just make a sandwich for Mr Gringling, we made our very own real sandwich! We talked about healthy fillings and what would be good to put inside a sandwich. We chose our own fillings, made our sandwich and then tasted it. We then recorded our thoughts. We also wrote instructions on how to make a healthy sandwich.

As Valentine’s day was this week, we made cards. We painted our hand and put in on a pink heart. We wrote a special message inside to someone we love.

We also made hanging hearts from pipe cleaners decorated with beads.

Notices for parents:

Open Doors – Every Thursday 3.00pm – 3.15pm. Please come in to school and see all the hard work your child has been doing.

Mid Term

February 9, 2012 Mrs Lynch Leave a comment

Hello and welcome everyone! A short week at school this week as we are closed to pupils on Thursday for staff in-service training and also on Friday and Monday for the mid term holiday!

We learned our last sound this week, we have learned 40 sounds in total! Wow! This week’s sound was ‘ar’.

The action for ‘ar’ is to open your mouth as if the doctor is checking your throat and say ‘ar,ar,ar,ar’.

This week in our number work we have continued to practise recognising and writing our numbers to 10, ordering them and finding the number before, after and in between. We have, however, also been learning our number doubles and near doubles.

In our water topic this week we did a “waterproof and not waterproof” experiment. We had an object each and we tested it in the water to see if it was waterproof or not waterproof. We found out that a raincoat was waterproof as the water just ran off but woolly socks, although they would keep us warm, were not waterproof and they soaked up the water. We recorded our findings on a sheet.

We also looked at another sea creature this week. We read a factual book about an octopus. We found out they have 8 legs called tentacles and they squirt ink when they feel threatened. They do this to scare off other creatures that want to attack them. Miss simpson made a playdough octopus and put it into a glass bowl filled with water. She then squirted ink into the water just as an octopus would do if it got scared. The ink transformed the water and the octopus was completely hidden!

We made our own Octopus by tearing and sticking pieces of paper on to a plastic cup, then curling paper strips and gluing them on to make the 8 legs.

We read the Lighthouse Keeper’s Picnic and added this to our storybook chain. We drew a picture about this story and wrote a sentence in our thinking books.

Notices for parents:

Open Doors – Every Thursday 3.00pm – 3.15pm. Please come in to school and see all the hard work your child has been doing.

The school will be closed on Thursday 9th, Friday 10th and Monday 13th of February for in service training and the mid term holiday.