This week we were extremely excited to get started with our castles.

On Monday we split into small groups and started designing our castle. We had to think about communicating with each other by sharing our ideas and opinions. We all added lots of detail to our designs and it was lovely to see added extras such as fireworks or a crowd of people in our drawings.

On Friday afternoon we started building our castles. We again had to think about talking to each other along with sharing resources. This is just the beginning and we will continue to work on our castles next week…

On Thursday afternoon we received a visit from our P6 buddies organised by Miss Lamb. The buddies had very kindly written us all a short story and we enjoyed listening to the buddies read their story to us, we even featured in the some of the stories! It was lovely to spend time with our buddies and we even enjoy a little play in our classroom before it was time for them to head back to class.

This week we enjoyed an afternoon of Scottish food tasting. We all had the option to try shortbread, oatcakes, vegetarian haggis, porridge and potato scone…yum!

Most of the us tried all of the foods, even if we were a little unsure. Shortbread was the clear favourite and there was a very mixed view amongst the class about the haggis We had a discussion afterwards about likes and dislikes and were encouraged to explain why we liked or disliked one of the foods, this really got us thinking about the taste!

The following day we collected data about our food tasting and used this to begin our learning about tally marks, We practised tally marks on our whiteboards and then completed the data from the food tasting on them.

On Friday, we displayed this data in a table using tally marks.

We have started learning about money and have chosen to turn our home corner into a shop. There was lots of excitement as we chose what our shop should sell and the most popular choice was toys.

On Thursday afternoon we split into small groups and each completed a different task for our shop. Some made the sign, some prepared opened and closed signs whilst others created the opening times. We also cut out and made labels with various prices to attach to the items we have for sale. P1a’s Toy Shop will be open and ready for customers on Monday !

Thursday was a very exciting day in P1A as we celebrated World Book Day. Many of us took part in the Book Swap and were delighted with the new books we took home.

We also enjoyed looking at the ‘Stories in a Jar/Box’ and working out what story they are representing. Well done to everyone for demonstrating so much creativity however a special well done to Cara and William who were winners from P1!

On Thursday morning we were beaten by the weather for PE so we stayed in the classroom and did some Yoga. We of course had to link this to World Book Day and our Yoga session was based on ‘We are Going on a Bear Hunt’.

We were extremely lucky to receive a visit from Mrs Syme who teaches P6. Mrs Syme is trained to deliver Bookbug Sessions and gave up her time to come and deliver one to us. She based it around our story of the week, The Gruffalo. We remembered lots of the songs from previous sessions we had attended at nursery or the library and all loved the very shiny lycra at the end!

In the afternoon, we listened to a story except Mrs Agnew didn’t tell us the title or the show us the front cover or pictures. We had to listen very carefully to the story because we were then tasked with choosing a title for the story and designing a front cover. Once we had completed this, we then had to retell part of the story in our own words. The story hasn’t been revealed yet…we will find out on Monday!

We also took part in a class competition to ‘Snap a Story Scene’. We chose Paper Dolls and went outside to take photos to see if other children at assembly could guess which story we were acting out. We were extremely enthusiastic about this and loved that our story was a secret!

Here we are creating four scenes from the story, Paper Dolls.

This week we started learning about the different states of water. Lots of us could explain that you can turn water from a liquid state to a solid state by making ice! We were all intrigued to find out that we could reverse that process by melting the ice to turn it back into a water!

We also discussed that we can turn water from a liquid to a gas and shared that they have seen this when the kettle has boiled at home and the steam rises out of it!

We took our learning into the garden and explored with water and ice!

The large cubes of ice didn’t last long.

We loved feeling how cold the ice was in our hands.

‘Look, it’s melting!’

We experimented with how quickly the ice slid down the tubes.

The ice was very slippy and hard to keep in our hands.

We used the ice in our ‘cooking’ and were very surprised that it stuck to a pan.

We also explored with water, moving it between various containers and pouring it down the tubes to see how far it would go.

Once all the excitement if the ice was over, some of us made a train with the crates. It was free to go on the train and everyone had a very lovely trip! Look at those happy faces 🙂

One of our ‘big questions’ about Scotland was ‘What are some Scottish words?’

Together we read ‘There was a Wee Lassie who swallowed a Midgie’ and found it very funny that we are also known as lassies and laddies!

We all know ‘Head, Shoulders. Knees and Toes’ but we didn’t know ‘Heid, Shudders, Knaps and Taes’.  We had lots of fun learning the words and doing the actions.

In small groups we then read some Scottish words and had to guess it’s meaning. There was lots of giggles and we were all very keen to find out the Scottish word for bottom.

This week we started our block of learning about painting. We started by exploring the colour wheel and discussed the primary colours we can mix to make secondary colours. We had a go at mixing blue and yellow and used these skills to paint some balloons in blue, yellow and green.

We then discussed the technique of blending and using this and our skill of mixing we created our own seascapes. We still need to add our fish to them!

On Friday, we mixed two different colours to make orange. We painted red, yellow and orange squares which we will turn into houses.

We also completed our learning for now about time by exploring time on a digital clock. We matched analogue and digital times together and then had a go at writing our own digital time on whiteboards by looking at an analogue clock.

We love to solve problems in P1A and this week we had a go at making numbers using a variety of resources. We were challenged to make a number in different ways and then had to think if there is a way we can show the number by using two numbers together or even three!

During PE on Thursday we brought the parachute out to finish our lesson with some fun games. The parachute always causes lots of excitement but makes us think about working together as a team and the games also require lots of listening!

This week we started learning about Scotland. Most of the photos we received have been shared with the class and some children enjoyed presenting their photo to the class. There was lots of excitement when the children realised they had also visited the same place!

We used Google Earth to help us understand where each of the places were and this allowed us to see if it was close to home or much further away. We have already managed to visit the North of Scotland on the map and also as far South as you can go. There were lots of amazing locations in between to discuss too!

We would love to see some more places you have visited so if you have not sent in your photo there is still time!

As we bring our learning about animals to a close we enjoyed learning about different animal habitats this week. We explored various habitats and each chose one to draw. We had to consider what the habitats looks like and also the animals that would live in that habitat.

We also loved watching the live cameras at Edinburgh Zoo and enjoyed looking for penguins, tigers, lions and giraffes and looking at what their habitats look like in a zoo. We were extremely excited when the tiger appeared and some of us cosied up and waited patiently to see more.

We also spotted the penguins sliding on their tummies and decided to try and move like them.

We also started learning about ‘o’clock’ this week. We have explored this on an analogue clock and practised making the time together. Next week we will complete our learning about Time by looking at digital clocks.

Welcome to our first blog of 2026!

It has been lovely to welcome the children back to school and hear about their time over the Christmas break. Everyone has settled back into the routine of school after our first full week back and it has been lovely to see the enthusiasm the children have shown towards their learning.

We have been learning about Time and begun this by discussing the seasons.

We sorted pictures of things that happen during the year and placed them in the correct season.

We drew pictures to show that we understand what happens in each season.

We then learned about the months of the year and discussed what a calendar is and what it is used for.

Next week we will be moving onto telling the time using o’clock.

We used our knowledge of the seasons to create a calendar which we will be bringing home next week to share with our grown ups. We painted a tree and then used tissue paper to show the different colours we see on trees each season.

This week we brought our Health and Wellbeing topic about Growth Mindset to an end by reading Giraffe’s Can’t Dance. We have created our own amazing art work based on the front cover of the book but also discussed what we can do  and what we are proud of in Primary 1A. We then wrote a sentence so we can share all of our amazing talents on our class display!

We will keep discussing a Growth Mindset in class and using this to help us think positively when we find something tricky!

On Wednesday we had a lovely afternoon at our Christmas party.

We enjoyed party games, a snack and a drink and a special visit from Santa himself!

We sang Jingle Bells and then all of a sudden we could hear sleigh bells!

We listened to Santa tell us how busy he has been recently and then sang him a song from our Nativity and another couple of Christmas songs.

We were delighted when we found out Santa had brought us all a gift and enjoyed showing each other which book we had received.

After the excitement of Santa it was back up the hall for some party games (sorry about the light in the photo).

Wishing you all a lovely festive break!