We had a fantastic time at the Autumn Party first with p2 and p3 for some party games and later with the rest of the school for some disco dancing before we had some snacks and a well deserved drink!
Here we are in our costumes (well most of us!) A few children must have forgotten to go to get their photo taken so apologies if your child is not here, sorry!
And here are some party action shots…
We worked with a partner on our spatial awareness and gross motor control in PE this week using Halloween balloons. It was very exciting and lots of fun!
In numeracy we have been focusing on learning about the family of ‘teen numbers’. These have 2 digits and the first is always a ‘1’. This ‘1’ means it has ‘1 group of ten’ and this is very important to remember. The other digit tells us how many more! For example 15 has 1 group of ten and 5 more. To help with this we took part in a batty number challenge- each bat had a teen number on its tummy and we had to add he correct numicon tiles and pom-poms to show the number in a visual way and check our thinking.
This week we were all about pumpkins and used these as a context for learning across the curriculum, incorporating literacy, numeracy and maths, science, expressive arts and health and well-being but more importantly we had a lot of fun learning!
In teams we became scientists and took part in a pumpkin investigation using many skills including turn taking, observing, explaining, problem solving, predicting, estimating, measuring, testing and recording our thoughts and findings. We could not believe that pumpkins actually sink despite being quite heavy! This led us into doing a more in depth learning about floating and sinking later in the week.
We used the book Pumpkin Soup to link our learning this week and decided to make some soup just like Duck, Cat and Squirrel in the story. But before we could do this we needed to write some shopping lists and look at lots of different recipes books. We even went into the garden and found some lovely carrots and potatoes to use in our soup! Miss Thompson was so proud of us all and the writing we produced. It was a challenging job but we can do anything we set our mind to in P1! 
Here we are enjoying our soup once and if the hard work chopping, cutting, stirring and cooking had been done.
Another pumpkin learning task we worked hard on was a S.T.E.M challenge in small cooperative groups. The challenge was to design and create a ‘pumpkin platform’ as a group. It had to be as high as we could get it but still steady and strong. Just look at some of the design ideas we had. The highest platform got the pumpkin 16 cubes high off of the floor!
Overall, we loved using pumpkins in lots of our learning and play this week!
Look at a few of the spooky changes to our learning environment which we have greatly enjoyed exploring, learning and playing in this week.
I wonder what next week will bring!!! 🤫
Click the link to view us having lots of fun creating ‘leaf rain’ or ‘leaf confetti’ whilst out on our walk to search for different colours, sizes and shapes of autumn leaves. Learning outdoors is lots of fun!
We spend time catching up with our big buddies at the Pod earlier this week. Some of the creations from this time were an obstacle course to help balancing skills and fitness, a team game with a ‘net’ to try to throw across to get points, a car used to drive us to work and lastly, a house which kept growing and growing. Very imaginative and creative ideas Primary 1!
Mr McLean will be visiting us in P1 every Tuesday this term to help us to learn about rhythm and how to use our voices as a tool to communicate through song. We loved our first session and are looking forward to next time already !
As part of our learning about the world around us and the changing seasons, lots of our learning across the curriculum this week has been themed to leaves.🍁
We learned about what happens in autumn and were interested in discovering why the leaves fall and change colour. We went out to collect leaves which we used for some different learning opportunities.
In numeracy we used leaves to sort and group, estimate and count and sequence. We even tried some leaf rubbings in the outdoor classroom and tried to choose autumnal colours.
We helped each other to make lovely leaf necklaces. It was very tricky to tie the string to the stick and to carefully poke a little hole into each leave as we added it on. We even made a nice headband for Mrs MacPhail and she was very pleased with it!
Finally through the story Leaf Man we developed our literacy and expressive art skills. We loved how all of the illustrations in the story are made from leaves and even created some of our own. They look great!
Overall, some lovely leafy learning to kick start term 2!
