We visited the new Menziehill library for the second time with our p7 buddies. We chose a story for them to read to us and even tried to read some of the words ourselves using our sounds learning to decode words. We spoke about he characters, what happened and our likes and dislikes.
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!
We developed our listening and reading skills by responding to questions about a story and working together in small groups to order the events into the correct sequence. We also had lots of fun writing, making and wearing our creative hat designs!
We have been working hard on our understanding of rhyme. We know that words that rhyme sound the same at the end and we hear them lots in stories, nursery rhymes and in songs. We listened to rhyming stories, did some rhyming word matching jobs and worked with partners to spot the odd word out- the one that didn’t rhyme! Our funny rhyming hats helped us to stand up and explain to the others why we made our choice using the words and pictures to help.
We have also been trying hard to write our sounds and names in lots of different ways and our new favourite was water painting these outside. We had to be fast before the sun dried them up and made our hard work disappear!
As part of our literacy learning we went out and about hunting for sounds. When we found sounds we knew hiding in the print around us, we practised writing them on our check list. We shared jobs with our partners. We found lots and lots of sounds everywhere!
To end our first full day at school we walked down to visit our local library with our Buddies. The next time we go (in a few weeks) we might be lucky enough to visit the brand new building! Whilst there we learned a little about using our ‘little library voices’ and chose a story for our buddies to read to us. There were lots of books to choose from!
We have been working hard to learn some of our very first sounds. Here we are even trying to blend together or ‘squeeze up’ these sound to read a whole word! Luckily Fred the frog was there to help us and we did a great job! When we weren’t working with our teacher, we were trying to represent some of our sounds using different things, like the Kapla (wooden blocks) shown in the photo. Libby made a fantastic 3D ‘m’ and turned it into a garage for some cars and Emily even made her whole name!
