A very special visitor arrived in P1D this week! He is called Henry our Class Elf and he is here to help us get ready for Christmas.

As well as practising for our Nativity next week, we have been learning about the Christmas Story and then recreating the story using a knitted nativity.

We worked with our friends from another P1 class to draw a picture of our own nativity show.

In Maths we have been learning about money and  recognising  coins from 1p to £2. We played games with the coins to reinforce our learning.

We continue to learn new sounds and to use the sounds we have already learned in lots of different and interesting ways.

We had a visit from the community dental nurse who watched us brushing our teeth and then gave us a very informative talk about how to look after our teeth.

We would like to say a huge thank you to Keir’s dad who kindly sourced lots of materials for our outdoor learning areas and who delivered them (with the help of Keir) last weekend. We can’t wait to see what the children will create with them.

Finally, as a few of our classmates have been off ill this week, I thought they might like to see what Henry has been up to!

This week we went on a trip to Mearns Library and the librarian read us all three of the Scottish Book Trust shortlisted books. We voted for our favourite book and chose “The Station Mouse” (although in class when we voted, we liked “The Prince and the Witch and the Thief and the Bears” best and we even wrote our own ending to the story and acted it out in class. Everyone now has a copy of all three of the books to read at home.

We have been continuing to learn about data analysis in maths.

W

We had lots of fun creating “oo” words with Cheerios and drawing pictures of our “ng” words.

We are always being very creative in P1D, here are just a few pictures of our work over the last week or so.

On Monday we marked Armistice Day with a two minute silence. I was so proud of the children as they sat respectfully and thoughtfully. We watched the BBC film Poppies and I found some of the children re -enacted the story of the rabbit in the battlefields using LEGO and a toy rabbit in our library area.

Tuesday was Guru Nanak’s 550th Birthday and we learned all about his life story and how he became a Guru. One of our classmates shared how her family were celebrating at the Gurdwara. We then made pictures of the Guru in traditional Sikh clothing.

In Maths we have been working on Data Handling

And in literacy, we have continued to work on our new sounds, creating words in lots of different ways. 

We’ve been investigating what happens when you draw in crayon on and then water paint on top of it. 

Another busy week of learning. Next week we have our Library Visit on Thursday and Woodland Adventures on Friday, so remember to wrap up warm!

Yet another busy week in Primary 1.

In Maths & Numeracy we have been investigating addition in lots of different ways, for example, the children have been counting items into groups and putting them together, rolling dice and writing number stories, working with numicon to explain their number stories and we were all very excited to start to use our new Scottish Heinemann Maths workbooks.

We have also been learning all about gathering data with Miss Gourlay.

In literacy, we continue to look at books by Julia Donaldson. This week we have been reading Night Monkey, Day Monkey and learning about nocturnal animals and the differences between day and night in the jungle. We have been acting out stories, finding rhymes and are now starting to build all of the sounds that we have been learning into words that we can then use in our own story writing.

We turned shaving foam, glue, flour, paint and glitter into puffy paint and made firework pictures.

As part of our Keeping Safe Topic, we have been learning about Food Safety and Food Hygiene and this week we have been focusing on Road Safety in the run up to Road Safety Week. We have been practising crossing roads safely, created road maps with safe places to cross and then went down to the school cycle track and acted out being safe drivers and pedestrians.

I’m sure you will agree that we have had another busy week with lots of learning and lots of fun.

This week in Primary 1D we have been learning about how doctors mend broken bones, we made X-Ray pictures of our own hands and created skeleton pictures.

In maths we have continued to investigate shape and number.

Being a shape detective

Using the geoboards to create 2D shapes and discussing the properties of the shapes we have made.

Counting with spiders (well, it is Halloween)

We are focusing on the books of Julia Donaldson for story time. This week we are reading Zog, after we found him hiding in the pages of “Charlie Cook’s Favourite Book” and the “Smeds and the Smoos”.

We are very proud of our Wurpular Wood Collage, and we even managed to find Stick Man on one of our trips down to the school woodland.

Turning all of the new sounds we have been learning into words.

Outdoors making fires and cooking marshmallow and stew. We love to race the tyres down the ramp and cheer one another on.

We took the camera to PE this week. 

We have been learning to create shapes with our bodies, balance and use our core muscles.

Our classmates in Slessor were at the house rewards afternoon while the rest of the class were developing our life skills. We learned about Food Hygiene and the importance of clean hands and then we iced and decorated biscuits. 

We even made Central Station in the construction area. Another fabulous, busy week of learning in Primary 1.

Welcome back to Primary 1D.

This week we have been learning about shape and have found different shapes in lots of interesting places. We went on a shape hunt in the playground and then noticed that the airplanes in the sky were making lines and so we lay down and found even more shapes in the sky (and a cloud shaped like a dinosaur).

Before the holidays we made Sensory Salt Dough leaves. We added Cloves, Cinnamon and All Spice to the dough and so when we returned to school, the classroom smelled lovely.

In PE, we have started developing our gymnastics skills. we have been learning all about staying safe in the gym hall, working together to move the gymnastics equipment and making shapes with our bodies (with all the excitement of the children changing into gym kits for the first time, Mrs Dougall forgot to take the camera to the gym hall, but promises to take lots of photos next week!)

We had a special visitor in the classroom called Julien. He is a teacher in a school in Cannes and told us all about where he lives and the school day in France. We enjoyed practicing our French speaking skills and Julien enjoyed helping us with our writing lesson.

The whole school are now spending one afternoon each week Developing the Young Workforce and for the first block, we are working on Life Skills, starting with food, food hygiene and nutrition. We have been learning about the importance of clean hands and safe use of knives. We made spooky orange pumpkins. I was very impressed with how responsible the children were.

We are all proud of our fruit pumpkins!

Another fantastic week in P1D.

We have been making great progress learning all of our new sounds and have started to recognise when we can use the sounds to make familiar words.

Some parents have asked where they can access the songs that the children have been learning for each sound. These are available on Vimeo if you search for Jolly Phonics Songs – it might help to explain the actions that the children perform – especially the growling for “R”!

Each new sound is introduced and then followed up with

lots of fun activities. 

We have been developing our early writing skills through creating picture stories. 

Family and friends usually feature quite heavily in these pictures so look out for yourself when the picture books come home!

We explored the theme of “being different” on Wear it Red Day through reading Elmer the Elephant and creating our own Elmer Designs.

This week we have been reading the new Julia Donaldson book “The Smeds and the Smoos” . The children have loved hearing about Bill and Janet, mimicking the grumpy grandparents,  finding the rhymes in the book, learning about blending colours, searching for the hidden pictures (we’ve spotted Gruffalos and Zog) and creating a Wurpular Wood using different art materials.

Finally, I wanted to share a few pictures of our Outdoor Learning on Wednesday (possibly the wettest day of the year!). We all got dressed in our rain wear and spent a fantastic afternoon down in the cycle area at the front of the school, where the children practiced safely crossing roads, investigated the road signs, followed the road markings and splashed about in the puddles – a lot!

I hope everyone has a great holiday and I can’t wait to hear all the stories once we are back!

It is Scottish Maths Week and so the children have been searching all week for the Maths Menace and we have been trying out the new maths resources in our maths trolley.

“We were counting back from 10 to 1 using the numicon to help us”

“We were matching cards and putting them into sets”

“I can count the dots “

“I can splat count on in 2’s”

“We can clap count on in 2’s”

We have been investigating how helicopters are used to rescue people. We found out about the Coastguard and Mountain Rescue . We made our own helicopters.

“Helicopter starts with one of our new sounds H”

We can use our sounds to make our names

We all worked together outdoors to create a staircase number line using items we found in our playground.

It was hard work!

We’ve had another wonderful week of learning!

What a busy start to Primary 1! Everyone has settled in so well and we are now well on our way with our learning journey.

In Numeracy & Mathematics we have been working on developing our number knowledge, focusing on numbers up to 20, by creating a human number line, drawing our own number lines in chalk in the playground and by making the most of the lovely new maths resources in the classroom especially the numicon.

We have investigated fractions and now all know that a whole can be split into two equal halves and we have been finding out lots of different ways of measuring, placing items in order of length and weight.

In Literacy and English we have started looking at our Mr Big reading books and finding lots of words starting with our new sounds P, N to add to last week’s sounds S, A, T and I.

In Art we have been learning about Autumn colours by looking at the trees in the playground. We have painted trees in Autumn colours and have had lots of fun opening horse chestnut seeds and finding the conkers inside. We have created patterns with the conkers and leaves and pine cones.

Our conker patterns

Finger painting autumn leaves onto our handprint trees

We have taken advantage of the recent nice weather and have spent lots of time investigating our outdoor spaces. We went on a Nature Scavenger Hunt to see what we could find, working in pairs, we discovered  flowers, leaves, clover, clouds, birds and lots of insects. We’ve been building castles in the playground, working together to make sure our friends could all reach the top, stacking tyres to make a den and investigating volume using the rain water in the tuff trays and the mud kitchen.

Off on our adventures

Teamwork

Creating number lines

And the winner is…Building dens and castles

Can you find us hiding in the woodland area?

What a busy time we have had! I hope everyone has a fabulous holiday weekend and can’t wait to see what adventures next week will bring.