Willowbank School, KilmarnockIt was the start of Chinese New Year this week and the Transition class were Successful Learners when they made some dancing dragons. They cut out heads and tails and folded paper to make the flexible body. They assembled the dragon on lollipop sticks to make it into a puppet.
This week in the Pine Room we have been celebrating Chinese New Year. We painted fans, decorating them with Tigers, and made Dragons with long colourful tissue paper tails. We watched exciting videos of dancing Chinese Dragons and listened to some tranquil Chinese music. In cookery we made our version of fruit sushi (we know that is Japanese – but oh well!!)
Links below to some stories about Chinese New Year.
In Literacy we have been working on the Letter J, and made some colourful Jellyfish pictures for our alphabet books, and searched for words beginning with that letter – how many J words can you find at home?
SQA Communication we continued with Inside Out and focused on the emotion Anger this week.
We have been rounding up our Scottish Theme ‘Hamish McHaggis and the Edinburgh Adventure’ and looked at the last character ……the Pine Martin.
We read the story for the last time, laughed at some funny Scottish words, watched some Highland dancing and listened to some traditional Scottish Music – we like the bagpipes in the Pine Room.
Today we did some Winter Art and then watched the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics, the colours and the music were fantastic!!!
Sorry we have no photos this week BUT Wilson has been posting too many and we have run out of space!!!!! But our IT Superhero Mr Campbell will be coming to our rescue!!
Have a lovely weekend everyone
x
We celebrated Chinese New Year on Tuesday. This year is the year of the tiger we created some tiger bunting for our board by colouring in a tiger picture and we created a tiger face using different pieces of paper. The children were confident individuals looking at the image on the board and then using the pieces to create their own face.
We cleaned the classroom, made lanterns and used black and orange icing to crate tiger faces on biscuits.
Well Hello Pinettes! How are you all?
Well again – what about this weather???
This is LGBT+ Awareness Month and if you have driven or walked past the school you will have seen the LGBT+ Flag proudly displayed.
So this week’s blog is all about our differences and our similiarites
Literacy, Nature, Art and Craft.
Below is a suggestion for a couple of books, some we have read before, but they all have a silimar theme that we are all different in some ways, the same in others but we are all unique.
The Flamingo that didn’t want to be Pink
What about making yourself a Flamingo – the only rule is it cannot just be PINK!! Maryland Zoo has a Caribbean Flamingo called ‘Bumper’ you can learn all about him, find out what he eats and how tall he is, and even watch him and his friends on the live web cam. Maryland Zoo
Next the Rainbow Fish, in this link it is read by Ernest Borgnine (he has been in a lot of Movies!) The Rainbow Fish
What about making a colourful sparkly fish, I will send you all some instructions. What about going onto the internet and seeing if you can find any real rainbow fish.
Last year in class we read Tango makes 3 we really enjoyed this story, so thought you would like to hear it again. This is a lovely story all about two boy penguins called Roy and Silo, then baby Tango comes along. You can look up loads of information on penguins.
One last story The World made a Rainbow 
In the first Lockdown we all made Rainbows for our windows, think about making another one like the little girl in this story. What about a sensory Rainbow with different materials for each colour? ArtBar has some really great ideas!
Singing and Signing
Lets practice signing all the different colours
Numeracy 
What about a colour hunt?
Which colour did you find the least of and which the most?
Now don’t forget it is Valentines Day on Sunday, so what about making a card for someone special – cards are always nicer when they are hand made.
And Friday is Chinese New Year – Year of Ox! Red Ted Art 
has loads of crafty ideas for you to try, you could make a dragon or an Ox.
BBC Facts about Chinese New Year
Remember to check out the sensory sessions below if you haven’t already done so.
Well have a lovely week Pinettes!!
Love the Pine Ladies
xxxx
Hi everyone, I hope you are all well. This month is LGBT month, and we would have been reading a book all about different families. This book is called “The Family Book” by Todd Parr. Click the link to hear the story being read on YouTube.
Literacy
Rainbow hop
Let’s continue the rainbow theme. Make giant letters in different colours and place them on the floor. You could start with (s a t p i n), someone at home can help, then they can shout out a letter and you have to run and jump onto the correct letter. You could even do it with the letters of your name and then find each letter in the correct order to spell your name.
Numeracy
Shapes are all around us and we had been exploring different shapes in the classroom. Look around the house and see what shapes you can find. You can also play this Shape game .In the game you need to feed the monsters the correct shapes.
Health and Wellbeing
Make a pizza
Make your own pizza at home. Try using a wrap, pitta bread or pizza base. Spread the sauce over the base, then add your toppings – there are lots of things you could add to your pizza. Why not have a go and create an LGBT rainbow pizza. Is your pizza round or square? Did you enjoy your pizza?
Chinese New Year
This week is also Chinese New Year. You could try different Chinese foods at home such as noodles, prawn crackers and prawn toast. Email me and let me know what you liked.
This year is the year of the Ox. I was born in the year of the Goat. Use this website to find out which animal you are and more information about Chinese New Year.
You could make a colourful lantern by folding a piece of paper in half making some slits not quite to the end of the paper, decorate then twist into a cylinder shape and secure with glue or staples and add a strip of paper to the top to create a handle. You could place a battery-operated tea light in the bottom and see the light shine through.
Hello, hope everyone is doing well! We are all really missing you and hope that it is not long now until we are all back together again. Here are some activities for you to try at home and enjoy.
Numeracy – Number Pairs
You Will Need: A4 paper, scissors and a pen
Literacy – Chinese New Year Story
On Friday, it will Chinese New Year. Click on the link to hear the story all about it. We have previously read the story of The Great Race in class. Each year a different animal is celebrated. Can you find the year you were born? What animal is associated with your birth year? This year it is the year of the Ox.
Health and Wellbeing – Dressing Games
Expressive Arts – Chinese New Year 2021 Song for Kids
Have a listen to this song about the Chinese New Year. Enjoy!
Expressive Arts – Chinese Cupcake Cases Dragon
Click on this link to see how to make a Chinese Dragon out of paper cases.
We would love to see photos of all your activities! Have fun!
Team Sungazers 
The Sungazers have had a busy first day back after the Christmas break. We enjoyed our session with Centrestage – using the parachute, singing songs and dancing catching the bubbles.
We have also been busy doing lots of number work and made a number line based on the Chinese New Year ‘Great Race’ story. We then used our number lines to find out what order the animals finished the race in. We also made Chinese Dragons using a variety of different shapes during maths time.
*Confident Individuals *Successful Learners *Effective Contributors
This week we have been learning all about Chinese New Year. We enjoyed going to the Sensory Assembly where we tasted different foods, made Chinese shapes, watched the Chinese dragons dancing on the big screen, got to beat the big Chinese drum and play on the Magic Carpet. In class we listened to the story about how Chinese New Year began, worked out which animal we were and made some Chinese lanterns. In cookery we made Sweet and Sour Chicken, and also Krispy Cakes with Gold Coins for good luck – yummy!! We also did some hard work this week too!!
