The Lighthouse Keeper

February 3, 2012 Mrs Lynch Leave a comment

Hello everyone!

Apologies that there wasn’t a P1 blog last week, Mrs Lynch was ill and unfortuately wasn’t able to post any of our news. Here is a brief snapshot of what we learned last week:

We learned the sounds ‘ou’ and ‘oi’. In our number work we continued to use our ladybird maths box and coat hangers and pegs to help us with our adding. Our teachers introduced our new water topic and we talked about lighthouses and how they help ships in very stormy waters. We talked about the Bell Rock lighthouse that is near us and we watched a power point. We will be reading the ‘Lighthouse Keepers’ books and Mr Gringling, the lighthouse keeper, left his large wellies in our classroom!! Each of the classes made a lighthouse for their room. We also read the Rainbow Fish and cut out scales from shiny paper and stuck them on to our fish.

Now on to this week.

We learned the sounds ‘ue’ and ‘er’ this week.

The action for ‘ue’ is to point your finger at people and say, ‘ue,ue,ue,ue.’ The action for ‘er’ is to roll your hands round and around each other as if they were a mixer and say ‘er,er,er,er.’

In number we met Luke and the lily pads again and he helped us with place value. We worked on ordering numbers and finding the number before, after and in between. We also used our Teddy Bear washing lines to help us with this too.

We still continued to work on our addition but this time we were using a number line, and……we are getting very good at it!

This week in our water topic we did a floating and sinking experiment. Our teachers gave us lots of objects. We talked about what they were made of and we had to predict whether we thought they would float or sink. After the experiment we recorded our findings on a sheet.

We read a factual book about sea creatures, specifically star fish and we learned how many legs they have and that their mouths are on the bottom of the starfish and not on the top. We made a star fish by tearing and scrunching tissue paper and carefully gluing it on.

In health this week we looked at healthy eating and the foods that are good for us and give us energy and the foods that are not so good. We designed a healthy sandwich for Mr Gringling, the lighthouse keeper. We drew the filling and then wrote what we had chosen for him.

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

Two Letters Arrive!

January 20, 2012 Mrs Lynch Leave a comment

A very warm welcome back to Longhaugh Primary 1’s blog.

This week we learned another 2 sounds. They were ‘th’ and ‘qu’.

The action for ‘th’ is to stick your tongue out and pretend you are a cheeky clown and say “th,th,th.” The action for ‘qu’ is to open and shut your hands pretending they are a ducks beak and say ‘qu,qu,qu.’

We have continued using the ladybird maths box and divided circles this week helping us with our addition to 10. We have also used our flip flop books. They are very clever books that help us work our the different number stories to 10 when we fold them in different ways.

In the Land of Me this week we received 2 special letters. The first one was from Yama San, the monkey. He invited us to look at shape, size and colour with him. We changed Buddy Boo, Willow and Eric into different objects. We played a game of pretend and play and talked about what we would look like if we changed our shape, or our size, or our colour. We drew our ideas in our thinking books.

Our second letter was from Anthony the aardvark. He and his ants live in the desert and build lots of things using lots of different materials. He invited us to try and build things with him using all sorts of materials, e.g., a castle made from jelly! We discovered that some materials are no use for building. We found out that a pedalo made from paper would sink in the water. That’s no use. We drew our own pictures. Some of us drew things made from strong building materials like brick and wood and some of us drew pictures of buildings made from jelly or custard or something very silly.

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.

Your child has received a copy of the scottish poem, “Pussie at the Fireside”. Please help your child to learn this poem.

Happy New Year!

January 13, 2012 Mrs Lynch Leave a comment

Happy New Year and a warm welcome back to Longhaugh Primary 1’s first blog of 2012.

Since coming back to school after the holidays we have been going over all our sounds and numbers to refresh our memories.

We have, however, learned 2 new sounds this week. They are ‘ch’ and ‘sh’.

The action for ‘ch‘ is to move your hands in circles at your sides mimicing the movement of a steam engine and say ch,ch,ch,ch. The action for ‘sh‘ is to put your finger to your lips as if telling others to be quiet and say, sh,sh,sh,sh.

We have been revising all our number stories this week and using our ladybird box and our divided circles working out stories of 9 and stories of 10.

Cole was very clever and consolidated his learning in Mrs Lynch’s room and drew his own divided circle and and made his own number story.

We had 3 visitors from the Land of Me this week. There were different footsteps outside our classrooms and we had to try and work out who had made them! We met Mr Rigby an eagle. We looked at eagles and we explored different lands. We talked about which land we would like to go to on an adventure and recorded our ideas in our thinking books.

Bernard the crocodile also came to visit. Bernard likes to sing songs and we sang songs with him. We sang fast songs and slow songs and songs about Buddy Boo, Willow and Eric.

Our last visitor was Dodo the otter. Dodo likes to dance and we joined him in dancing the way other animals may dance. We danced like a crocodile, a tiger etc.

Full details of the Land of Me and activities/videos etc of the children can be found on the wiki, the link can be found on the right hand side of the blog.

In art this week we made a snowman in a snowy scene. We had to rip paper into the correct shapes and carefully glue them into place, don’t they look good?

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.

Your child will receive a copy of the scottish poem, “Pussie at the Fireside” on Monday. Please help your child to learn this poem.

Merry Christmas!

December 20, 2011 Mrs Lynch Leave a comment

A warm welcome to Longhaugh Primary 1’s very last blog of 2011!

We are only at school for 3 days this week then we are off for our Christmas holidays.

We have been revising all the sounds we have learned so far. We sang the songs and did the actions and wrote them on our whiteboards. We also revised all our numbers to 10. We sang all our number rhymes and practised writing them on our whiteboards. Hopefully we will remember them all over the holidays.

We made party hats to wear at our Christmas party. We decorated them with sequins, stars and pieces of tinsel to make them look extra sparkly. I’m sure you agree they look quite splendid!

We had our Christmas party on Monday and we all put on our party clothes and had a wonderful afternoon! We played pass the santa hat, musical bumps, the corners game and the Hokey Cokey, danced The Bluebell polka and the Shoemaker and had a drink and something to eat. We also had a very special visitor who gave us all a present. We were very excited, behaved beautifully and had a super afternoon!

Miss Simpson, Miss Bonnar, Mrs Rooney, Mrs Lynch and all the boys and girls of Longhaugh P1 wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! We look forward to reading all your comments in 2012!!

“We Three Kings”

December 16, 2011 Mrs Lynch 1 Comment

Welcome back to our last full week at school before the Christmas holidays.

This time of year is very busy and we have been fighting colds and sickness bugs to get all our activities done!

We learned 2 sounds this week, they were ‘ng’ and ‘oo’.

The action for ‘ng’ is to pretend you are a weight lifter and push your hands above your head as if your were lifting a dumb bell and say, ‘ng ng ng ng’. The action for ‘oo’ is to move the top half of you body backwards and forwards mimicing a cuckoo coming in and out of a cuckoo clock and say ‘oo oo oo oo’.

We continued working with our ladybird maths box again this week, this time working on the stories of 8. We used playdough spots on the ladybirds then wrote our number stories on our white boards.

We received another letter this week from Buddy Boo, Eric and Willow from the Land of Me. They thanked us for taking them on so many wonderful adventures and that they will see us after the holidays. They are going back to Bramble Woods and are getting ready for winter there. It is very cold and they set us a challenge. We had to design winter clothes for Buddy Boo, Eric and Willow to wear and Granny Olive was to judge the best designs!

Here are our designs and here are the winners from the three classes with Granny Olive.

We still had some Christmas craft to finish and we made our Christmas cards and our calenders. As you can see we made a very good job of both!

Finally, this week we performed our nativity, “We Three Kings” to our families. We had 2 fully booked performances and everyone thought we did a splendid job. Everyone remembered their lines and the singing was fantastic! Our parents and families joined us after the performance for a cup of tea/coffee and mince pie in the dinner hall.

Well done P1a, P1b and P1c of Longhaugh Primary School, you are all stars!

Notices for parents:

Open Doors – Every Thursday 3.00pm – 3.15pm. Open doors will start again in the new year on 12th January 2012.

Christmas Party – Monday 19th December – Please give your child 50p towards party food.

The school will close for the Christmas holidays on Wednesday 21st December at 12.00 noon. It will re-open on Thursday 5th January 2012.

Our Christmas Shop is Open!

December 9, 2011 Mrs Lynch 2 Comments

Welcome back to our blog! We have been incredibly busy this week and have managed to fit a lot of exciting learning into the last 5 school days.

Even though it is very close to Christmas we still managed to learn more sounds. This week we learned ‘ie’ and ‘ee, or’.

The action for ‘ie’ is to put your hand to your forehead and pretend to salute and say “ie,ie,ie,ie“. The action for ‘ee, or’ is to put your hands on top of your head and make donkey’s ears. Make the ears stand up and say ‘ee’ then make the ears flop and say ‘or’.

We continued with our ladybird maths box this week and we worked on the stories of 7. We put the dots on the ladybird and then wrote the sum on our white boards.

We have been extremely busy this week with our Christmas activities. Our Christmas shop opened and all the classes came down on a rota basis and bought lovely gifts for their family and friends. We even provided a wrapping service! We have made a lot of money for the school through our Christmas shop and we’d like to thank all the parents/carers and children who donated and bought all the wonderful gifts.

We also made snowmen paper chains to decorate our classes.

We have been rehearsing for our nativity, We Three Kings, every day this week and we had our dress rehearsal on Friday which we performed to the whole school. We did very well and everybody thought it was marvellous. We have 2 productions next week for our families.

We were also very lucky and went to visit Santa in his grotto. We listened to a Christmas story and sang lots of Christmas songs. we all got to have a chat with Santa and he gave us a gift. We had a marvellous afternoon!

Notices for parents:

Open Doors – Open doors will resume on Thursday 12th January 2012.

Christmas show – Tickets for the show will be on sale from Monday 28th November – Dates of show Tuesday 13th December at 9.45am and Wednesday 14th December at 1.45pm. Tickets cost £2.00, this includes tea/coffee and programme.

Christmas Party – Monday 19th December – Please give your child 50p towards party food.

St Andrew’s Day

December 2, 2011 Mrs Lynch Leave a comment

Hello and welcome back to our blog. Only another 3 more blogs until Christmas! my goodness where has the time gone? This is a very busy time of year at school and we have been very busy indeed!

We have learned another 2 sounds this week. They are ‘ai’ and ‘oa’.

The action for ‘ai’ is to to put your hand behind your ear as if you were hard of hearing and say, ‘ai ai ai ai’. The action for ‘oa’ is to but your hand to your mouth in surprise and say, ‘oa oa oa oa’.

We continued to work with the ladybird maths box this week. We put spots on the ladybirds to make our sums and wrote them on our white boards. It’s tricky but we’re getting the hang of it!

We’ve also been using our number buses to help us too. We draw the passengers on the top of the bus and some more passengers on the bottom deck of the bus and then we write our adding sum counting both decks altogether.

In the Land of Me we know that Granny Olive loves to tell stories in her story cave. We can’t go into the woods and build our own cave, so we thought it would be a good idea to go into the hall and build our own story caves for Granny Olive using our construction material. I think you’ll agree we made a very good job!

It’s getting nearer to Christmas and there will be a great many things going on over the next few weeks. Our Christmas shop opens on Monday so we had lots of things to do for that.

We priced all the gifts.

We put them all on the shelves in the shop.

We made decorations to hang in our shop so it looked Christmasy and inviting! We made snowflakes, paper chains and we printed wrapping paper.

Our Christmas Nativity is in 2 weeks so we have been rehearsing for that and also practising the dances for our Christmas party!!! My goodness we have been busy.

St Andrew’s day was on Wednesday the 30th November. We talked about St Andrew and that he is the patron saint of Scotland. We weaved some of our own tartan from paper and we listened to bagpipe music and scottish songs. To end our celebrations we had a drink of juice and some shortbread.

It has also all changed in Mrs Lynch’s room. We now have a festive Christmas room. We set the table for 4 people, remembering where the cutlery goes and we decorate the tree with baubles but we have to make sure we put them on in a pattern! Our number line is now Christmas crackers and we put them in the right order. We wear santa hats to put us in the mood for all our Christmas writing jobs.

Another very busy week in P1 at Longhaugh Primary School!

Notices for parents:

Open Doors – There will be no more open doors until we come back after the holidays. It will resume on Thursday 12th january 2012. Please return any outstanding library books a.s.a.p.

Christmas show – Please give your child their costume in a plastic bag with their name on it by Friday 9th December as this is our dress rehearsal day. Also please help your child practise and learn their lines for the show.

Tickets for the show will be on sale from Monday 28th November – Dates of show Tuesday 13th December at 9.45am and Wednesday 14th December at 1.45pm. Tickets cost £2.00, this includes tea/coffee and programme.

Christmas Fayre – Saturday 3rd December – 10.00am – 12 noon.

Christmas shop opens to pupils on Monday 5th December. Prices ranges from 50p to £5.00.

Ladybird Maths Box

November 25, 2011 Mrs Lynch 1 Comment

Hello! Welcome to Longhaugh Primary P1 blog.

We have learned another 2 sounds this week. Our new sounds are ‘y’ and ‘x’.

The action for ‘y’ is to lift your hand to your mouth as if you are pretending to eat yoghurt with a spoon and say ‘yyyyy’. The action for ‘x’ is to pretend you’re holding an x-ray gun and say ‘xxxxx’.

Our teachers introduced us to the ladybird maths box this week This box helps us with our addition. We had our blank ladybird sheets and we also had playdough. We made spots out of the playdough for our ladybirds and then we added both sides together to find our how many spots the ladybird had all together. We then wrote our sum on our white boards. We know how to do this as our teachers have been talking to us about the + sign and the = sign.

Our Ladybird Maths Box

In the Land of Me this week we received another letter. This time it was from Granny Olive! Granny Olive is a turtle and she reads stories. We visited the Land of Me and we listened to Granny Olive telling us a funny adventure story about Buddy Boo, Willow and Eric. It was very exciting!

Granny Olive!

We’re starting to get ready for all the activities that we have planned for Christmas. We are rehearsing for our Christmas show and we have been learning all the songs and all our lines. We have also been designing tickets and programmes for the show.

We started to make our Christmas craft ready to sell at our Christmas Fayre.

We have also been writing out price tickets to put on all the gifts ready to sell at our Christmas shop. We have been painting Santa and the elves with Mrs Lynch, ready to decorate our shop and printing paper to make gift wrap ready to wrap all the presents that the other boys and girls are going to buy from our shop! Phew!!!

We also have a P1 display to make for our Assembly Hall. This year each class or stage have to make a picture about a Christmas song. We have chosen ‘When Santa Got Stuck Up The Chimney!’

As you can see we have been very busy indeed and this will continue right up to the end of term!

Notices for parents:

Open Doors – Every Thursday 3.00pm – 3.15pm. Come into class and let your child show you all the hard work they’ve been doing.

Christmas show – Please give your child their costume in a plastic bag with their name on it as soon as possible. Also please help your child practise and learn their lines for the show.

Christmas Fayre – Saturday 3rd December – 10.00am – 12 noon.

Three Special Visitors

November 18, 2011 Mrs Lynch Leave a comment

We have had another busy week in P1 at Longhaugh Primary School!

We learned 2 more sounds this week. They were ‘w’ and ‘v’. We listened to the stories, sang the songs, looked at all the objects on the sounds table, wrote in the air with our magic writing finger and practised the sounds on our white boards.

The action for ‘w’ is to put your hands to your mouth and pretend to blow like wind and say ‘wwwwww’. The action for ‘v’ is to pretend you’re holding a steering wheel and driving a van and say ‘vvvvv’.

We have been continuing to practise our sounds and words every day and we have been practising sounding out and writing words in Mrs Lynch’s room.

In number work this week we have been counting on one and two more. There are large number leaves in Bramble Wood and we have been practising our number recognition and the number before and the number after with Mrs Lynch. We had to think hard to jump onto the correct ‘leaf’.

We were also counting on 2 more. We used hoops and added 2 more children, we made a tower of cubes and added 2 more and put beads on a string and added 2 more. We then wrote the number on our white boards. We also met Mummy Frog, she counts in two’s so she was helping us. We will meet her again over the course of the school year.

Three very special visitors from the Land of Me came to visit us. They were an owl called Willow, a bear called Buddy Boo and a raccoon called Eric.

They told us that they love to go on adventures and they wanted us to take them home and go on imaginary adventures with us! Well, we thought this was a fantastic idea. Willow went into P1A, Eric went into P1B and Buddy Boo went into P1C. Willow went on an exciting adventure with Keira, Eric went on a fun adventure with Warren and Buddy Boo went on a scary adventure with Megan. The boys and girls wrote and drew their adventures in the ‘Book of Adventures’ so we can all share them. We can’t wait until it’s our turn to go on an adventure too!

We also painted hedgehogs to put in Bramble Wood. We used sponges and brown paint to make them look spiky.

It’s only a few weeks until we open our Christmas shop and have our Christmas party, so this week we have started to make gift tags for the shop and we have have been practising our dances in gym for the party. We think we’ll soon be as good as the dancers on Strictly Come Dancing!

Notices for parents:

Open Doors – Every Thursday 3.00pm – 3.15pm. Come into class and let your child show you all the hard work they’ve been doing.

Non Uniform Day – Friday 25th November. Please bring in a tombola gift instead of a fine.

Sponsor Money – Please hand into school all sponsor money.

Christmas show – Please give your child their costume in a plastic bag with their name on it as soon as possible. Also please help your child practise and learn their lines for the show.

A Short Week!

November 10, 2011 Mrs Lynch 1 Comment

Hello everyone and welcome!

This is a short week for us as the school is closed to pupils on Thursday and Friday for staff in-service training. We have, however, managed to fit a lot of exciting learning into 3 days. I’m sure you will agree.

We learned one sound this week and that was ‘z’. The action for ‘z’ is to pretend you are a bee. Tuck your elbows to your side, flap your hands and say “zzzzzzzzzz.”

We have continued to practise our words and sounds every day, and more of us have been able to take a book home to read. We are working our way through the ‘Miss Owen’ stories.

In number this week we have been using number flashcards and practising writing our numbers on our white boards. We have been counting to 10 and putting spots on laminated sheets to help us count.

On Monday we were very lucky to have M&M Productions at school and we all watched Sleeping Beauty. It was super fun! not too scary! We all sang along with the songs.

Strange things have also been happening! Bramble woods arrived along with a letter from the animals who are going to share our adventures in the Land of Me. We don’t know yet who they are or where they came from, but we watched video clips of animals in their natural habitat and looked at information books that they’d left us. We recorded our learning in our thinking books.

: Bramble Woods

We went on our sponsored Autumn walk. Unfortunately, it was a dark, drizzly day but it didn’t stop us from having fun. We looked at all the changing colours on the trees and bushes and we picked up some interesting leaves etc.

We then had a sheet of paper headed – “What I found on my Autumn Walk” and stuck on all the interesting bits and pieces we had found.

Here are some of them.

We won’t be at school on Remembrance Day, so we talked about why we remember all the men and women who have died fighting for us and why we remember them with a poppy. We also talked about the fact that it wasn’t just about remembering wars that had happened a long time ago, men and women were still fighting and being killed and injured in Afghanistan. Some of us knew people who were out in Afghanistan.

We made poppies of our own to remember them.

Notices for parents:

Open Doors – Every Thursday 3.00pm – 3.15pm. There will be no open doors on Thursday 10th November, it will resume the following week on Thursday 17th November.

Land of Me story bags will be handed out on Monday, please go over them with your child.

Please continue to practise the speaking parts for P1’s Christmas show with your child.