Autumn Festivals

November 4, 2011 Mrs Lynch 1 Comment

We have had another very busy week. We have been going over our sounds and words every day and are trying hard to make words with all the sounds we’ve learned. The boys and girls who have been given a reading book, took home another 2 books over the course of the week. The other children will be receiving their book soon too. Keep learning your words!

Our two new sounds this week are ‘b’ and ‘j’.

The action for ‘b’ is to pretend you’re holding a cricket bat and away to strike the ball. The action for ‘j’ is to jiggle your body like jelly on a plate!

We have been busy again this week in Mrs Lynch’s room and we have been working hard using all the sounds we have learned to complete these jiglets and to make 3 letter words.

We continue to revise all the numbers from 0-10 and have been practising writing them on our whiteboards. We have been working on the Teddy bear washing line, sorting and matching all the numbers.

This week we have been working on ‘one more than’. We have been using hoops, beads and cubes counting on one more.

Luke has been helping us too. We had to put his lily pads in the correct order. Our teacher said a number and we had to jump on ‘one more’ to the next number. Luke thought we all did this very well indeed!

There were more footprints in our classrooms and maps arrived in each room. We worked out that it was a map of the Land of Me! We looked at the map and saw the desert, the hot springs, the loch, Bramble Woods, the mountain tops, the river bank and Me River. Our teachers gave us pictures of squirrels, bears, beavers, camels, canoes, suns etc. We talked about where they would go on the map. Would they go on a hot part, a cold part, where there is water or mountains? We had to think hard and work it out.

We now know our adventure is to be in the ‘Land of Me’, but where about and when……..

Our teachers also introduced the topic of Autumn and Autumn festivals. We discussed that different people in different parts of the world and of different religions celebrate different festivals. We found out Hindus celebrate Diwali, the festival of light. Diwali was last week (26.10.11) and we made our own clay diva lamps and put tea lights in them.

We also made rangoli patterns using black paper and chalk. Rangoli is a traditional way of decorating walls, courtyards and places of worship and is done during Diwali. We made our own, don’t they look splendid?

As Bonfire night is this weekend, we found out about Guy Fawkes and his attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament in London on the 5th of November 1605. We talked about why we celebrate this day with a bonfire and fireworks,but we also talked about how important it is for us to keep safe and how dangerous fireworks can be if you’re not sensible. We made a firework using wax crayons and an ink wash and we put different coloured paper on the end!

Miss Simpson, Miss Bonnar, Mrs Rooney and Mrs Lynch would like to take this opportunity to thank all the parents/carers for supporting the children and providing a gift for our Christmas shop. We were overwhelmed by your generosity and have an abundance of fabulous gifts. Details of the opening times of the P1 Christmas shop will follow. Thank you again.

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. There will be no open doors on Thursday 10th November, it will resume the following week on Thursday 17th November.

In-service days – Thursday and Friday, 10th and 11th November. School will be closed to pupils on these days.

Autumn Walk – 8th November – sponsor forms were put in the childrens’ bags on Monday 31st October. Please remember to wear wellies and bring a carrier bag for collecting leaves etc.

Parts for P1’s Christmas show to be given out on Thursday 3rd November. Please start learning lines.

Glad to be Back at School!

October 28, 2011 Mrs Lynch 2 Comments

A warm welcome back to Longhaugh Primary 1 blog after our 2 week October break. We are all delighted to be back at school and are already working very hard!

We also welcome Mrs Rooney to Longhaugh Primary School, she is P1C’s new teacher. We are sure she will be very happy here and is a wonderful new addition to our school family.

We have learned a further 2 sounds. This week’s sounds are ‘l’ and ‘f’.

The action for ‘l’ is to pretend you are licking a lolly and say ‘l l l l‘and the action for ‘f’ is to put one hand above the other and slowly bring your top hand down to meet the bottom hand as if you were squeezing the air from an inflatable toy saying ‘f f f f’.

As we have been away from school for 2 weeks, we have spent time this week revising our sounds and words. Some of us knew all our words and we have been given our first book to take home! This is very exciting and we will be reading our new book with our families every night!

We have also been revising all of our numbers from 0-10. Singing our number songs and rhymes and practising all the numbers on our white boards. We sang the song ’10 Green Bottles’ and we filled the bottles with the correct amount of cubes.

We met a new friend the week. Our teachers introduced us to Luke. Luke is a very special frog and he comes to visit us with his lily pads. Luke jumps on his lily pads in 1’s and he will be helping us with our numbers. After meeting and working with Luke, we drew what we had learned in our thinking books. We will hopefully meet Mummy Frog soon, she jumps on the lily pads in 2’s.

We started the topic ‘Land of Me’ this week. Lots of different animal footprints were left in our classrooms. All the footprints led to a backpack inviting us on an adventure! Who left us the backpack? Where are we going to go? What will we need? Over the next few weeks we will be finding out!

We all thought about what we would need to take with us on an adventure and our teachers wrote all our ideas on a large piece of paper and we wrote our ideas in our thinking books. We also designed our own backpacks.

We also started to look at Autumn and Autumn festivals. We will soon be going on a sponsored Autumn walk and will be looking at the way the trees and plants change around us.

As Halloween is on Monday, we had our school Halloween party today. We made paper plate lanterns to decorate our classrooms.

We had fabulous fun at our party. We all dressed up in spooky costumes and had a fancy dress parade. Mrs Jenkins chose the winners although she said it was very hard to choose as we all looked fantastic!

the winners!

We played musical bumps and musical statues, we ducked for apples and had to put our hands into gooey jelly and sticky spaghetti to find creepy eyeballs and skulls! Yuck! After all that hard work we were ready for our drink of juice and snack.

Pirates have arrived in Mrs Lynch’s room! We have to find buried numbers and sounds in the sand tray, then record our findings on a grid. We are making pirate hats and masks at the art and craft area and in the role play area we count our loot in the treasure chest. Shiver me timbers!!

I’m sure you’ll agree, what a busy week we’ve had?

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 4th November. Please bring in a gift instead of a fine.

Autumn Walk – 8th November – sponsor forms will be in the childrens’ bags on Monday 31st October.

Parts for P1’s Christmas show will be given out on Thursday 3rd November. Please start learning lines.

October Holidays

October 7, 2011 Mrs Lynch Leave a comment

This is our last blog for 2 weeks as we are off for the October holidays from Friday 7th October!

We have learned another 2 sounds this week, this brings our total so far to 15! Our new sounds are ‘o’ and ‘u’.

The action for ‘o’ is to to move you finger backwards and forwards as if you are putting a light switch on and off. The action for ‘u’ is to clench your fists and put one fist on top of the other. Lift the top hand up and down as if you were opening up an umbrella.

We also looked at our next book, A Monster For Miss Owen, and added two new words to our list and word wall. Our new words are ‘yes’ and ‘you’.

We revised all our numbers to 10 this week. We added numbers and teddies to our number washing line and practised ordering and writing the numbers.

Our teachers read us the story Ten in a Bed and they made a bed up in the classroom with teddies in it and we acted out the story. We sang the song and we had to take a teddy out of the bed one at a time and then see how many were left in. We drew the story on our white boards.

To finish off our topic for this term we all went for a walk around the school. We looked at the building, the shelters, all the play grounds and went out the bigger boys and girls door to see where they lined up. It was nice to see parts of the school that we don’t usually see.

It is with great sadness that we are saying goodbye to Mrs Weir this week. Mrs Weir has been appointed a Principal Teachers post at St Fergus Primary School in Dundee. Although We wish her all the very best in her new job, the boys and girls of Longhaugh Primary and especially Miss Simpson, Miss Bonnar and Mrs Lynch will miss her very much.

Good luck Mrs Weir! We hope that you will let us know how you’re settling in at your new school.

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. Open Doors will resume after the holidays on Thursday 27th October 2011.

End of term – Friday 7th October 2011. School will re start on Monday 24th October 2011.

People Who Help Us

September 30, 2011 Mrs Lynch 2 Comments

Hello and a very warm welcome to our blog!

We have been revising all our sounds this week, singing the songs, doing the actions and reading the flash cards. We have learned another 2 sounds, they are ‘d’ and ‘g’.

The action for ‘d’ is to move our hands up and down as if we are playing a drum and say “d d d d d d.” The action for ‘g’ is to move our hand in a swirling action like water gurgling down the drain and say “g g g g g.” Here we are doing the actions for the sounds and also looking at the water ‘gurgling’ down the the drain!

We have looked at our Pattern Bear books this week, admiring all the pictures of the patterns that the boys and girls have taken. We have also been making lots of patterns using cubes, beads and pegs.

We have been revising shape. We read a story all about shape and we made a rocket using squares, rectangles and triangles. We then had to think of something we wanted to make and make our own picture only using squares, rectangles, triangles and circles. Here are some of the pictures we made below, I’m sure you’ll agree we made a very good job! It was tricky cutting all the shapes out!

We learned number 10 this week! We read the number 10 story, sang 10 green bottles, put number 10 on our teddy bear washing line and practised writing number 10 and all our numbers on our white boards.

As part of our topic we have been talking and learning about all the people who help us at Longhaugh Primary School. Mrs Lynch took a group of children around the school to interview some members of staff. We had to think up some questions and we recorded our interviews on a microphone and a flip cam. We were very professional!

We then had to choose a member of staff from our school and draw them in our Thinking Books.

Our P7 boys and girls are holding a laughathon on our school playing fields on Saturday1st October to raise funds for our school. They will be running around the playing fields 15 times. If this is not difficult enough they will be running in fancy dress!! Please come along from 10.00 am to 12 noon and support our primary 7’s. Refreshments will be available.

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.

Two children from each class have been chosen to be their class gardeners and help in our school garden. Please ensure your child brings in old clothes to school to wear whilst gardening.

P1A – Daniel Owler and Annalise Edwards

P1B – Brandon Ringsell and Courtney Keil

P1C – Robbie Gibb and Megan Wilson

End of term – 7th October 2011

Healthy Eating in Primary 1

September 23, 2011 Mrs Lynch 2 Comments

Hello and welcome back to our 4th blog of Primary 1. We have had another very busy week and have been working very hard.

We looked at the book “The Lost Storybook” and learned the words, can, see, it and is. We put them into our blue packets and circled them on our word wall.

We also learned the sounds ‘r’ and ‘m’. We read the Jolly Phonics story and sang our Jolly Phonics song. We first of all practised with our magic writing finger then wrote the new sounds on our white boards.

The action for ‘r’ is to pretend we are a puppy who has got a rag in his mouth and say r,r,r,r,r. The action for ‘m’ is to rub our tummy with our hand pretending we have just eaten something extremely tasty and say m,m,m,m.

In Mrs Lynch’s room we have again been practising all our sounds and trying to use these sounds to make new words. We have also been putting the words we have been learning for homework every night onto the floor and practising making sentences. We also use the rhyming boxes to match all the rhyming objects together.

We have been going over all the numbers from 0-7, practising them on our white boards, sorting them on our number washing lines. we also learned the numbers ‘8’ and ‘9’. We sang the rhyme 8 Little Fingers and 9 Little Fingers and used our magic writing finger to form the numbers correctly in the air and then practised on our white boards before completing our El Nombre number sheet.

We have been learning to play dominoes with Mrs Lynch. We have to divide the dominoes equally between us and whoever gets the double 6 starts! We have to remember to count the spots and match them. It takes a lot of concentration.

This week we have been talking about our tuck shop and healthy playpieces. Our teachers set out play pieces and we had to decide which were healthy and which were unhealthy and they explained why certain foods are good for us and why certain foods are not. Mrs Johnstone, our Healthy Eating Assistant, made up fruit platters and we all got to taste some healthy snacks. She told us about all the things that are in our own school tuck shop and we put a price list into our blue packets.

We continued our healthy eating theme into our art this week. We tore up coloured paper into little pieces and stuck them onto the outline of fruits to make a fruit collage. We had to make sure we chose the right colour for the fruit, leaves and stalks. We then carefully coloured in a fruit border around our collage, again, making sure we chose the correct colours very carefully.

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.

The photographer will be in school on monday 26th September. Please ensure your child is wearing full school uniform.

Going Home With Pattern Bear

September 16, 2011 Mrs Lynch 2 Comments

This week we have been revising all the sounds we have learned so far. We’ve been singing our Jolly Phonics songs and practising writing on our white boards. We have also learned 2 new sounds! They are ‘e’ and ‘h’.

The action for ‘e’ is to hold our hands as if we are cracking an egg into a pan and say “e,e,e“. The action for ‘h’ is to pretend we have run a very long race and are very tired and put our hand up to our mouth, panting and say “h,h,h,h”.

We have also been revising all the words we have learned so far. Our beebot helps us to remember all our words.

We have also been working very hard in Mrs Lynch’s room. We have been looking at all the sounds on the wall and practising writing them on the big white board. Mrs Lynch has sounds cubes and she helps us to make words using the sounds we have already learned and some sounds we will be learning soon. It is great fun to find the correct sounds and make new words!

We learned the numbers ‘6’ and ‘7’ this week. We sang the songs 6 fat sausages and 7 little fingers and practised writing the numbers on our white boards. We also revised and practised the numbers 0-5.

This week we have been talking and learning about patterns using 2 colours. We all made caterpillars using 2 different coloured circles making sure we were sticking them down in a pattern.

Here is our finished wall display, doesn’t it look fantastic?

To carry on with our pattern work, each class has a very special Bear to take home. Every night one of us from each class takes Pattern Bear home and he helps us look for all different sorts of patterns in our own home. He comes with his own camera and we take pictures of all the patterns we find. Below is a picture of the first children from 1A, 1B and 1C to take their bears home for the night. Don’t they look pleased?

Mrs Johnstone, our Healthy Eating Assistant, started toothbrushing with us this week. We well be brushing our teeth every day after playtime. To explain the importance of having strong, healthy teeth and to eat healthy play pieces, Mrs Weir read us a story and introduced us to Trigger! Trigger showed us the proper way to clean our teeth.

We have a very large 100 square in our corridor. It is there for us to mark and count our first full 100 days at school. Every day our teachers take us and we have to look and see how many days have been turned over and then we look and say what we think the next number will be and when our teacher turns it over, we then can see if we chose the correct number! We will be counting all the way to 100 days.

We had our first “Open Doors” this week. Every Thursday from 3.00pm – 3.15pm our parents and carers can come into our classrooms and Mrs Lynch’s room and we show them all the things we have been doing during the week. We also have a Library area and we are allowed to take home a book to read and bring it back the next week. Our P7 pupils write down our names and the name of the book we are borrowing and our parent/carer signs their name. It’s just like a proper Library!

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.

The photographer will be in school on Monday 26th September. P1 class and individual photographs will be taken.

Our First Full Week at School!

September 9, 2011 Mrs Lynch 2 Comments

Hello and a warm welcome back to Longhaugh Primary 1 Blog!

This was our first full week at school. We all did very well and settled into the lunch time and afternoon routines quickly. We have enjoyed staying at school for lunch and we are well and truly settled at Longhaugh Primary School.

We learned another 2 sounds this week, they are ‘n’ and ‘c’ ‘k’.

The action for ‘n’ is to put our arms out wide pretending to be an aeroplane and say, nnnnnnn. The action for ‘c’ is to click our fingers as if we were holding castanets and say, cccccc. The ‘k’ action is to wave one hand in the air pretending it is a kite flying in the sky. We practise singing our Jolly Phonics song for these sounds every day.

This week in numbers we learned the numbers ‘4’ and ‘5’. We read the number stories and sang 4 current buns, 5 little ducks and 5 little monkeys. We added the numbers 4 and 5 to our Teddy Bear washing line and practised writing the numbers on our whiteboards.

P1A, P1B and P1C all joined together to learn and talk about our class and school rules. Our teachers told us the way that Mr Munro and Mrs Jenkins would expect us to behave. To be kind to each other, to share and to take turns. They would be very disappointed if we were unkind to other pupils or used our hands or our feet to hurt other boys and girls. We agreed that we would never be unkind or hurt each other.

Longhaugh Primary School has 4 houses that are named after castles in the local area. All our pupils belong to one of these houses. They are Mains, Broughty, Claypotts and Dudhope. We all found out what house we belong to and got a coloured badge to wear representing our new house. We were all very excited and are wearing our new badges with pride!

As part of our topic, “We Belong to Longhaugh” and to help our work on pattern, we laid strips of green and blue paper in the pattern of our school tie and made a display for our corridor wall.

We painted our portraits with Mrs Lynch this week and they are displayed in our infant corridor. Don’t we all look splendid?

Our family and friends came into school to look around our classrooms and to see all the hard word we’ve been doing and to discover some of the activites we do and the routines we follow. We had a wonderful turnout and everyone was very pleased with our progress. Many people left lovely comments in our visitor books and Miss Simpson, Miss Bonnar, Mrs Weir and Mrs Lynch would like to thank all family and friends for making it a very successful afternoon.

We made our first visit to our Local library in Whitfield this week. We get to look at all the books and the librarian reads us a story. We will visit the library every Friday and we are looking forward to our next visit already!

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.

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.

On the 7th of September there was an extra AGM of the Friends of Longhaugh (Parent Council). Unfortunately there was a disappointing turnout and there are still several vacant positions to be filled on the committee. It would be beneficial to the school if some of our new P1 parents were willing to donate some of their time and join our parent council group. It does some wonderful work and can help to make positive changes for our children, school and local community. Please contact the school with you interest.

Settling In

September 2, 2011 Mrs Lynch 7 Comments

Hello and welcome to P1’s second blog of the new term! This is our last week of coming to school in the mornings only. We have all settled in very well at Longhaugh Primary and are looking forward to coming to school full time from Monday!

This week we have learned 2 new sounds. Our new sounds are ‘i’ and ‘p’.

We read the Jolly Phonics stories for ‘i’ and ‘p’ and sang the Jolly Phonics songs. We looked at our sounds table and all the objects that begin with ‘i’ and ‘p’. We then used our magic writing finger and then practised our sounds on our whiteboards.

The action for ‘i’ is to put our hands to our face, on either side of our nose and wiggle our fingers, pretending they are the whiskers of Inky the Mouse. The action for ‘p’ is to put our finger to our mouth and pretend we are blowing out the candles on the pink, pig cake.

When we learn any new sound or number in P1 we always practise with our magic writing finger first before using our whiteboards. Our magic writing finger is very important and we always use it to ‘write’ in the air so we become familiar with the formation of any new sound and number.

We also talked about the number ‘3’. We read the number 3 story, sang 3 Little Speckled Frogs, put the number 3 on our number washing line, wrote the number 3 with our magic writing fingers and then practised our new number and the numbers we already know on our whiteboards.

We also learned about shape this week. We read a shape story and talked about all the shapes that are around us every day. We had feely bags filled with all different shapes and we had to say what shape it was by only touching and not peeking into the bag!

Our teachers read us the big book “The New Children.” We were then all given a small book of our own and our very own book markers and we followed the story using our markers as our teachers read the big book again. As soon as we have learned all the words that we are given home in our blue packet, we will be given our very own book to take home and read. Keep practising those words!

We also had lunch at school on Friday. This was a chance for us to eat in our dining hall so we could see where we sit and what we have to do before we all start full time next week. The cook makes a yummy lunch!

Several of our blog followers have told us that they are unable to leave a comment. We are aware of this and are trying hard to rectify this problem. Please bear with us and don’t let this setback put you off leaving comments, the children are looking forward to seeing all your positive comments when they look at our blog every week.

Notices for parents:

Gym – P1a (Wednesday & Friday), P1b (Thursday & Friday), P1c (Wednesday & Thursday). Please ensure you child has a full gym kit in school on these days.

Open Afternoon – Thursday 8th September at 1.30pm

Children will be at school for a full day from Monday 5th September.

School lunch menus have been issued, please discuss these with you child and help them make their lunch choice.

A Brand New P1!

August 26, 2011 Mrs Lynch 3 Comments

A very warm welcome to Longhaugh Primary 1’s very first blog of our new school year!

Our new term started on Wednesday 17th August 2011 and we welcomed 50 new P1 pupils to our school family. I’m sure you will agree from the photograph below they look very smart indeed!

We were all very excited to start the new term and are all looking forward to a brand new school year, ready to work hard. Our new P1’s were no exception and already they have settled into the routine of school very well.

We have learned 3 sounds already! ‘s’, ‘a’ and ‘t’. We have read the sounds stories, sung the songs, looked at the sounds tables in our classrooms and practised writing our new sounds on our white boards. As we learn more sounds we are looking forward to being able to make words. We are very excited about that!

As you can see from the pictures above, for every sound we learn we also learn an action. The action for ‘s’ is to move our hand like a snake and say ssssssssss. The action for ‘a’ is to pretend that ants are on our arm and we say a a a a a a ! The action for ‘t’ is to move our head from side to side as if we are watching a tennis match and say t t t t t t t .

We have also been looking at the numbers ‘1’ and ‘2’. We have read the number stories and sung number rhymes and songs. We sorted out the numbers on our number washing line and practised writing the numbers on our whiteboards.

We also worked on all our colours. We sorted and matched coloured objects into hoops and matched colour words written in coloured and black ink. We were all very good at this job!

Our topic for starting school is ‘We Belong to Longhaugh Primary School.’ We started this by walking around the school looking at all the rooms we will be using and meeting all the people who work and help us in the school. We took some photographs which we will be using later.

We went to the gym hall for the first time this week. As this was our first time we talked about being safe and not bumping into others. We moved around the hall in different ways, e.g., hopping, jumping and running. we made sure we were moving very carefully and when our teacher shouted STOP! We all found a good space of our own. As we all did this so well, we finished by having a game of tig.

Miss Simpson, Miss Bonnar, Mrs Weir, Mrs Lynch and all the boys and girls of P1 hope you enjoy and will continue to enjoy reading about all the activities and hard work that goes on at Longhaugh Primary School.

Please feel free to leave comments as the children are looking forward to looking at our blog every week!

Notices for Parents:

The Evening Telegraph photographer will be in school on Monday 29th August 2011.

Sample School Lunch – Friday 2nd September 2011 – Please complete invitation with your child’s choice for lunch and return it to school a.s.a.p.

Gym – Please ensure you child has a full gym kit (shorts, t shirt, gym shoes) in school next week.

All P1 pupils will be in school all day from Monday 5th September 2011.

Summer Holidays are Here!

June 30, 2011 Mrs Lynch Leave a comment

Welcome to the last P1 blog of 2010/20111

The boys and girls have been completing the last of their jobs and tidying their trays and taking home gym bags etc this week. They have been helping their teachers put things away and generally being very good helpers.

We had our Celebration of Achievement awards on Wednesday. Parents and carers were invited and this allows the school to recognise all the hard work and dedication that the pupils of Longhaugh Primary put in every day. Daisy Thomas in P1a and Calum Howe in P1 b got the P1 prize. Well done to you both!

The end of term is always an emotional time of year in school. All our classes move on and we say goodbye to P7’s. Miss Simpson, Mrs Adams and Mrs Lynch hope that you have enjoyed following P1 at Longhaugh Primary and you will continue to follow their progress as they move on to P2.

We have 50 new P1’s joining us in August and I hope you will enjoy reading about all the activities they do and all the wonderful learning that happens every day at Longhaugh Primary.

Have a fabulous summer and we’ll see you again in August!!