We had such a wonderful trip to Summerlee Museum on Monday. The bus is always the most exciting part but once we arrived at Summerlee Museum there was no stopping us and we made our way to the Miner’s Cottages.

We enjoyed looking at and comparing living conditions from the 1880s right through to the 1980s.

The outdoor toilet gave us all a bit of a giggle.

It was then off to the play park where the climbing frame proved to be the most popular item. Some us loved to climb super high and there was lots of smiles on the swings!

After that we stopped for some lunch and Mrs Agnew was finally able to capture some pictures of us all now that we were still!

Once we were fed it was time to explore the museum. There was so much to see and do!

Our final part of the day was the workshop titled ‘When Gran was a Girl’. This links to our current learning about The Past.

We were able to explore some items and had to guess what they were and how they were used.

We then got to try some outfits that would have been worn in the past.

We learned how people would shop for their groceries in the past and also how they would do their washing. We then got to have a go at both…

The last part of the workshop was playing with some old toys from the past. These proved to be lots of fun!

There were some very tired children on the bus on the way home but from listening to some conversations it was definitely the ‘best day ever’!

A favourite video from the day, what a great example of teamwork!

On Monday we were very lucky to receive a visit from the Fire Service.

Soon we will be learning about ‘People Who Help Us’ so this was an excellent way to get us thinking about that!

We started off by listening to one of the fire fighters tell us about fire safety. We were also given the opportunity to ask lots of questions.

We then got to try on some of the fire fighters uniform and found it very funny! The helmet was very heavy!

The most exciting part of all…we got to go out to the fire engine and sit inside it and spray the hose! The fire fighters also showed us some of the equipment they use in emergencies!

 

This week we began an artist study about the artist Wassily Kandinsky. We learned that he was the first abstract artist and we discussed what this means.

We also learned that when Kandinsky heard music and sounds he saw colours and shapes and this is what gave him the ideas for his art.

We listened to a piece of music, just like Kandinsky, and imagined various colours, shapes and lines.

We then had a go at producing what we had imagined using black pen and coloured pencils. It was amazing to see the unique drawings produced by everyone.

We then explored one of Kandinsky’s pieces called ‘Squares with Concentric Circles’. We discussed the shapes and colours he used and then had a go at painting our square with circles. We will put all of our squares together next week to create a giant piece of unique art!

We have been very lucky to enjoy some lovely, sunny weather over the past couple of weeks. In class we have been discussing different types of weather and lots of us were keen to discuss thunder and lightning and tornadoes.

We kept a weather diary for a week and after reflecting on this, we wrote about our favourite type of weather. Thankfully no thunder and lightning or tornadoes were recorded in our diaries!

We have also been learning about electricity. We discussed what electricity is and how electricity works. We were able to identify items which use electricity and items which don’t by sorting them into two categories.

Some of us were able to describe different types of electricity and how various items are charged. We then discussed how to keep safe around electricity.

As part of our Technologies learning we used the Chromebooks to practise our mouse control skills. We had to use the mouse pad to move the dragon to his food. This meant clicking on the mouse pad and dragging our finger across at the same time. We found this quite tricky and will have another go in the next couple of weeks!

This term we are learning about living things. On Wednesday we discussed what we mean by a living thing and we compared these to non-living things.

We learned what livings things need to survive and how that can look different depending if the living thing is a human, animal or plant.

We then took our learning outdoors and went on a scavenger hunt searching for living and non-living things. To demonstrate our understanding we then had to identify the living things on our answer sheet.

    

Mrs Denholm has also been transforming our P1 garden with her Garden Club. She asked if P1A could move some of the bark that was delivered and there were many hard working volunteers.

There was also time for a little fun in the garden ☺️

This week we completed our castles and as you can see from our faces we are very proud of them indeed!

We’ve all worked very well within our groups and communicated well with each other. We’ve had to think about compromise and how to resolve something if we don’t all agree.

We put the finishing touches to our castles with some paint which took a lot longer than some of us thought!

 

Last week we celebrated Eid as a whole school. In class we have been learning about Eid with Mrs Dickie and the importance of Ramadan and Eid-al-Fitr to the Muslim religion.

In class, we had a go at some Arabic writing, created some Mehndi patterns and looked at the features of Mosques then coloured some pictures. One of us could even say some of the Arabic alphabet and enjoyed sharing it with others ☺️

   

This week we brought our learning about Food and Health to an end by making a fruit salad. We firstly discussed hygiene when preparing food and then discussed how to stay safe, particularly with a knife. We explored various ways we can cut food using the bridge and claw methods.

We each prepared our own fruit by chopping it and putting it into a cup then added some fruit juice.

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.