As it is digital learning week this week, some of the Crookfur Digital leaders visited P1 to help with some coding. We used sequencing and loops to solve coding puzzles.

We practised our throwing, catching and travelling skills in athletics.

Lots of learning through play was observed in all of the areas this week including the ‘scissor game’ (actual scissors were not used in the playing of this game, witches’ potions in the sandpit and using number lines to help identify the missing number in calculations.

We took full advantage of the good weather and had to balance very carefully on the activity trail.

We built Pokemon houses, coloured polar animals in the sunshine and made up a show on the pallet stage that involved a lot of wiggly walking and pouting lips.

I can’t believe my last day is finally here. I’ve had the most amazing year with the children and I’m going to miss them all very, very much. I will pop in and see them all with the baby before the end of the year.

Thank you for all of your support over the year and for your very kind gift for the baby. I really hope to have another group of parents as supportive and welcoming as you all when I return.

Have a great Summer when it comes.

Love Mrs denholm x

Our sunflower seeds are growing well at the window and have been a great stimulus for discussion each morning as the children discuss the tallest shoots, how dry the soil looks and what the weather will be like for the day.

The magnetic tiles have been a big hit this week and some interesting designs and patterns have been explored as the children play. Here are some of the photos they have taken themselves.

We have been practising counting in 2s and completing missing number sequences that go up and down in 2s.,

We have been working on our spelling, handwriting and phonics  and Mrs Denholm has been very pleased with our progress.

We have been learning all about polar bears and seals, developing some new and interesting vocabulary along the way. It has helped tremendously with our writing as we have written a fact file for each animal we have been learning about.

We had lots of fun exploring the woodland area just beyond our garden, climbing trees, swinging on the tyre swing and discovering lots of different bugs.

We have also led our own learning as we play with our friends and develop new skills on a daily basis.

As always, have a lovely weekend! I very much look forward to next week, which will be my last week with the pupils, before I go off on maternity leave.

Mrs Denholm x

This week has been a short week in class but we have still had lots of fun learning through play. We have been carefully exploring the 100 square, ordering, identifying numbers and solving tricky challenges. We have also continued to use our knowledge of addition to create number bond stories.

Today we revised our knowledge of 2D shape names and used them alongside some inspiration from abstract artist ‘Kadinsky’ to create some pieces of art. The children were very creative with their designs and enjoyed overlapping shapes and adding colour to their pictures.

We learnt lots of interesting facts about arctic foxes and watched some cool video clips of them following a polar bear, looking for scraps of food. We discussed what they looked like and decided we could recreate this using our hand prints as the legs, body and tail for a picture.

We celebrated Eid this weekend learnt about some traditions that take place during these celebrations. Yusaf and Raaina shared some of the things they did at home to celebrate with their families before we sat down to make some paper lanterns.

Some of our pupils worked with Mrs Grieve to make some yummy tuna pasta. Unfortunately, the pasta was not ready in time but they were excited to take home the veg and tuna they had prepared.

We are continuing to observe and look after our plants and there has been great excitement when the sun shines through the window on their pots. The children will take them home in the next couple of weeks where they can continue to look after them.

Have a lovely weekend and I will see everyone on Monday morning.

Mrs Denholm x

This week in Literacy and English we have been revising the th sound so we are confident identifying it as we read and can use it to spell words.

We continued our work on rhyme. This time we tried to generate our own rhyming words, using the alphabet to help us with the starting sound.

We worked on recalling number facts for the number 8 using addition and found it useful to try and write these facts in a list, so we don’t miss any out.

We continued developing our understanding of addition and subtraction at the tuff spot through a game.

We learnt how to care for sunflower seeds and how even planted our very own seed. They are sitting at the window, ready to grow in the sun. Here are some things the children learnt:

Give them water and sun – Lucas

We need to protect them at the start. If it gets so rainy we have to bring them inside –  Kiera

Take care of the flowers and give them lots of water on sunny days -Aviraj

We focused on jumping in PE through various stations that were set up and quickly realised you could jump further if you had a little run first.

We continued our learning on snow creatures by exploring the Antarctic. We explored the various animals that survive there and what happens on the coldest continent on Earth. Here are some things the children learnt about penguins:

Their feathers are waterproof- Katrine

They can walk different ways and funny ways- Freya

They blend into the water. It’s camouflage -Sarah

I hope you all have a lovely long weekend and look forward to welcoming all the boys and girls back on Tuesday.

Mrs Denholm x

This week we started our new topic, ‘snow creatures’, chosen by the children. After a class vote, the pupils shared questions they would like to find out the answers to and we will carry out our research over the next few weeks to develop our knowledge and understanding of life in the polar regions. This week, we looked at where the Arctic is located in the world and the types of animals that can be found there. The animals were a big hit in the water tray and some interesting noises were coming from this area over the course of the week.

We are focusing on athletics this term in PE and enjoyed some competitive relay races in the hall and MUGA this week.

We took on the role of characters in our reading books this week and took turns to ask these characters questions. It helped the children think about events that had happened in the story and develop their understanding of the characters further. We continued our work on numbers within 100, specifically looking at sequencing, counting forwards and backwards in twos and more and less.

We have continued to work on building designs in the block area, experimented with chalk, found some wiggly worms and moved them into the bug hotel and built a zoo for the safari animals, all whilst enjoying the sunshine and playing with friends. P1 is such a lovely place to be.

We enjoyed sharing our ideas about we can look after the planet and watched a short video about how paper can be recycled. We are all going to try and think carefully about how we can recycle and reuse in our everyday lives.

Well done to Morgan and Dhruv who received a certificate for their efforts in the Easter craft competition. Here is a picture of them with their certificates that were presented at today’s assembly.

Have a great weekend!

Mrs Denholm x

We have made it to the final week of the term! I hope you are all looking forward to a well deserved rest with your family and hopefully we will enjoy some good weather too!

This week in Literacy and English, we have worked hard to read our storyworld books and discuss the text. We have been skimming and scanning to locate key information and have enjoyed some games and activities within the play areas to help develop our spelling skills.

We enjoyed our time in the garden this Thursday, hunting for Easter words, making music and crafting Easter chicks in the sun.

The pupils had another great week leading their own learning in the play areas with many interesting discussions, imaginative games and creativity on display, as the children played.

Happy Easter everyone! See you all on the 19th!

Mrs Denholm x

This week in maths we have been looking at the properties of 2D shape. This has involved sorting and classifying the shapes according to specific criteria, making 2d shape patterns on snakes and designing monsters, using the shapes as templates for parts of the body.

In PE, we put our throwing and catching skills to the test whilst trying to score goals for our teams. We will continue to work on creating some space to make / receive a pass and communicating with each other before passing the ball.

We have thoroughly enjoyed the good weather and enjoyed playing in the glorious sunshine on Thursday in the garden.

There have been lots of budding designers in the block area in this week, with the buildings becoming more complex and detailed as the weeks go on. The finished designs really are quite spectacular!

Have a wonderful weekend and I will see you all next week.

Mrs Denholm x

This week we have been celebrating British Science Week at school and the theme this year has been growth.

During maths, we discussed how our bodies can grow at different rates  and used comparative language to describe our heights in relation to one another.

We worked in our groups to order our bodies from tallest to shortest.

We measured each other using string and then investigated what items in the room were shorter and longer than our bodies.

We had great fun drawing around our bodies too to see who was tallest in the class.

In the garden, we discussed how seeds can support humans and animals by producing oxygen. We decided we could make our own bird feeders using recycled toilet roll tubes, lard and sunflower seeds. It was very messy but lots of fun was had as the boys and girls worked together to cover the tube and get as many seeds as possible to stick. We hung them on the fence for the birds to come and enjoy when they get hungry.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend and enjoy the good weather. Long may it continue.

I look forward to seeing everyone next week, well rested and ready to learn.

Mrs Denholm x

This week we have been learning about healthy eating and the five different food groups that contribute to a balanced diet. The pupils were able to design a healthy lunch using foods from each of these groups and discuss their choices with their partner.

In PE, we had some very competitive lessons to develop our awareness of space, making decisions about when to move and when to defend your space and coping with winning and losing. The pupils had to defend their own cone from being knocked over by a ball being rolled towards it. They also had to try and knock over other people’s cones when they could. There was lots of excitement and determination to protect their cones at all costs!

We have started to look at the order of the alphabet paying attention to what the capital letters and matching lowercase letters look like.

We have been learning our next alternative sound which is igh. We now know that igh and ie can make the long i sound.

This week we were celebrating World Book Day. There was lots of excitement as the teddies came to school. They had a great day having a tour of the classroom and joining in as we completed our work.  We listened to our story of the week ‘Ravi’s Roar’ which helped us to explore what different emotions would look like. In the afternoon we completed a book scavenger hunt, had a teddy bear’s picnic with snacks and music and read another story together.

As always, lots of fun was had in the play areas with the boys and girls leading their own learning. This week that involved dressing up as they took on roles around the house, creating menus with supermarket brochures and building some fantastic models.

It was lovely having the chance to speak with you all and seeing your faces at our online appointments this week. It was so nice to be able to share just how well the pupils are progressing and how proud I am of each and every one of them.

I am very much looking forward to a relaxing weekend and I hope you are too.

See you Monday!

Mrs Denholm x

This week our story of the week was ‘Bears make the best reading buddies’. We enjoyed the story so much that we decided to add some of our own fluffy friends to the library area so we could read to them. It has been a great success and the library has never been so popular!

There have been opportunities to improve our cutting skills, explore line through art and design, create fierce battles in dinosaur land, practise number formation, build and communicate with friends as we play.

To help support our writing, we made jam sandwiches to help us think of the order our instructions should go. Mrs Denholm was very impressed with our spreading and cutting skills.

We of course made time to have a good old play in the snow with snowmen creations and snowball fights in the muga.

We have been identifying patterns within a 100 square and identifying numbers before and after using the language of more than and less than. Some tricky challenges were set for the pupils to solve, which they did so with great determination.

We ended the week with a little dance in the hall as we pretended we were toy shoulders, marching along to the beat of the music forwards, backwards and on the spot.

As we were celebrating International Mother tongue Languages Week, I have uploaded a video of the pupils singing and using British Sign Language for Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on our Google Classroom (where I post the homework instructions). The boys and girls worked hard to learn the sign language to go along with the words and were very excited to be recorded and watch themselves in the video. Please if you have time, have a look at this wonderful achievement.

I hope you all have a lovely, relaxing weekend and I look forward to another week of fun filled learning next week.

Thanks

Mrs Denholm x