This week our art lesson was inspired by our investigation into force. We used a push force to blow air through the straw to move the paint on the page.

We have been working hard on addition and subtraction calculations this week and are starting to explore the link between the two.

We have been looking at different ways to make the long a sound and so far have learnt about ai and ay. We know that ai mainly comes in the middle of a word whilst ay is kept for the end. We worked independently and with with a partner to try make some words that Mrs Denholm called out as well as some of our own.

We had fun in the play areas reading, drawing, building and making up new games with friends.

We played in the garden and tried hard in relay races where we were trying to work as a team to communicate, balance and work together to finish each race first.

Have a lovely weekend!

Mrs Denholm x

This week we have been learning all about force. We now recognise that an object needs a force in order to move. We have explored pushing and pulling through a variety of activities and this has helped deepen our understanding.

We had races with the toy cars and balls and then used non standard units to measure the distance our objects moved.

We started to think about the gradient could affect the movement of an object and discovered that the steeper the gradient, the faster the object will travel.

I hope you all enjoy your weekend together and I look forward to seeing you all on Monday morning.

Mrs Denholm

It has been another busy week in P1. The boys and girls wanted to change our small world area to sea creatures, so we used some blue material for the water and decorated our under the sea background to help us in our play.

There have been lots of fantastic buildings and creations in the block area this week with a movie theatre, castle and motorway being built.

Lots of creativity on show during our weekly dance lesson. This week the boys and girls had to think of all of the ways they could move their body using an imaginary ball. It was of no surprise how inventive their moves were with some imaginary throwing and catching, slam dunkin and spinning really fast whilst dribbling on display for the audience.

We are continuing to develop our understanding of money specifically ordering the value of coins, creating amounts using a specific number of coins and adding and subtracting with money.

We finished our week making some ‘midgie shortbread’ which was inspired by our story of the week ‘There was a wee lassie who swallowed a midgie’. It was a class effort to select and mix our ingredients before rolling them out to make our shortbread shapes. The classroom smells amazing and the recipe was a huge success!

Have a lovely weekend!

Mrs Denholm x

This week, we continued the story of Supertato to help us with our writing. We explored the idea that all stories have five key elements: character, setting, problem, action and resolution. This helped us to break the story down and develop our understanding further. After discussing the story in detail we tried our very own story map, where we retell the story using pictures, paying particular attention to the order of events and the way the story flows on the page. It was a huge success and the boys and girls were delighted to talk about their storymaps with their peers.

We had a busy week in Numeracy and Maths learning about number bonds to 10 (2numbers that add together to make 10). We really enjoyed the timed game to match the numbers together. We tried to make amounts to buy toys in the shop and explored a variety of ways to facts to make the same number. We also had time to subtract using a variety of language such as 2 less than 4 and take 3 from 5.

We enjoyed our time in the garden this week particularly using the ice in our play. We painted ice blocks and made some ice cream in the mud kitchen.

Lots of creativity was on show again this week in our play areas with huge castles being built, elaborate designs on the pin boards, volcanoes erupting on the animals and words being drawn in the sand. As always, it is a delight to see the pupils playing so kindly with each other and interesting to see the ideas they come up with the materials provided, as they lead their own learning.

Have a great weekend!

Mrs Denholm

We had lots of fun outdoors this week in our garden exploring and playing with our friends. There was some yummy vegetable soup being made in the mud kitchen and some dinosaurs trying to escape the lava in the sandpit.

This term, we are taking some time to move our bodies through dance. Today we moved our bodies in different ways thinking of wide, thin, high and low shapes that we could practice and move a streamer through the air. There were some very impressive moves on show.

We have developed some of the play areas within our class this week to take into account the children’s interests. The imaginative area has been very busy with costumes being made out of fabric and pegs and fancy dress props to act out games and stories. We designed a new playdough table using crates from our outdoor area and enjoyed adding herbs to the dough to make some interesting smells.

A reminder that all children require outdoor waterproof clothing on a Thursday, as we spend a good amount of time outdoors on this day. We are also outdoors for a little bit on a Tuesday but wellies and a jacket are suffice on this day. Hopefully that will mean a little less luggage being carried to school each day.

Enjoy your weekend!

Mrs Denholm x

We have really enjoyed our first week at school after the holidays. We have all settled back into class and enjoyed seeing and playing with our friends.

In Health and Wellbeing, we have continued to develop our understanding of growth mindset by learning about challenge. We now understand what it means to challenge ourselves in our learning and why that is important. We challenged our partner to copy a tower built out of lego. This was tricky as several factors had to be considered including number of blocks, colour and size. We have all agreed that we will try our best even if something seems quite tricky to start with.

We have been developing our understanding of doubles in Numeracy and Maths and enjoyed the game on the board which set us questions to be answered within a minute. It became very competitive but helped us learn our double facts to 20.

There was lots of imaginative play taking place this week as well as opportunities to develop fine motor skills through lego, cutting skills and colouring. We are all very glad to be back in P1.

The weather has provided some excellent outdoor fun this week. Not only did we have lots of fun and giggles jumping in puddles, we then thoroughly enjoyed snowball fights, making snow angels and snowmen in the school grounds. Who knows what the weather will hold for us next week…

We have had the best week in Primary 1 which started with our Nativity performance. The boys and girls were all absolutely amazing and worked so hard to learn and deliver their lines, as well as lots of lovely songs to share with you all. Here are some photos of our dress rehearsal for the P6 buddies in the audience and then the actual performance at the church.

We have since been busy getting ready for Christmas by making some salt dough crafts, cards, calendars and decorations which we will be able to take home soon. The boys and girls have been developing the skills of measuring, cutting, painting and drawing all whilst singing some merry little tunes.

Lots of other play has taken place which the children document themselves with the iPad. Here are a selection of their photos  this week…

We finished the week with our P1 Christmas party which was filled with some very impressive dance moves, party games and laughter.

We even had a very special visitor pop in to see us before we finished the week. There were lots of excited faces as Santa delivered a big bag of presents for us all.

Have a lovely weekend and I look forward to seeing you all on Monday morning for our last short week of the year.

Mrs Denholm x

This week, in Literacy and English, we have been learning the sounds qu, ou and oi through songs and stories. We have been working hard to make words using these sounds. We have been sequencing sentences from our reading books and creating our own helicopter stories which we have shared with our friends.

In Numeracy and Maths, we have continued to develop our understanding of money by adding coins together to work out the total amount.

Our imaginative area turned into a wrapping station with paper and sellotape EVERYWHERE! There were some interesting wrapping techniques, some deep levels of concentration and lots and lots of excitement as the children spoke about Christmas.

We finished the week with some Christmas themed yoga and a reflection on all of the fun activities we have taken part in this week.

I will hopefully see you all on Monday morning at 1115am for the Nativity performance (fingers crossed). Keep an eye on the weekly round up for any last minute updates regarding the performance.

Have a great weekend!

Mrs Denhom x

This week was very exciting in P1b. An elf was sent to us from Santa to check if we are making good choices and being kind to one another. He is going to stay with us until Christmas and we got to name him ourselves. After a class vote, we decided to call him Sparkles. He has been a little bit mischievous so far, trying to climb up the window blinds and being surrounded by the dinosaurs. (We wonder what he did to annoy them). He will fly back to the North Pole every night to let Santa know how we are doing.

To help us consolidate the sounds we have been learning, we played lots of games this week with our friends. We had to look carefully at the sounds the words contained in order to blend them together to read. Some of the games got quite competitive and it was fantastic to see how many words we are now able to read as a class. Mrs Denholm was very pleased.

In Numeracy and maths, we have been exploring the concept of addition using cubes and sorting circles to help us. The boys and girls have been working hard to record their ideas and solutions in different ways and recognising that there are many words used in addition such as add, and, makes, altogether , total etc.

We have also been exploring money each day and now recognise that money is used to buy items, there are a variety of coins that are worth different amounts and that can we put these coins together to make an amount. So far, we have explored making amounts with 1p, 2p and 5p.

The boys and girls are now very confident using the ipad to take their own photos when they are proud of something they have done in the class. Here are a selection of their photos for you to see.

Nativity practice continues to go well and we are beginning to look out our costumes to bring our performance to life. Not long to go now….

Wishing you all a great weekend!

Mrs Denholm

This week, we have made some yummy pizzas to develop our understanding of halves. We had to think carefully about where to split our toppings so we would have two equal parts. As we prepared our pizzas, we spoke about trying new foods and how our friends may eat different foods at home due to allergies or for cultural reasons. The boys and girls were very careful as they used the knives to chop their vegetables, creating a little bridge with their fingers for the knife to go under. The finished products looked great and I’ve been informed were very tasty.

In PE, we have moved on to rebound games and this week were working hard to develop the skill of throwing and catching,  controlling objects on a racquet and working with a partner to follow instructions.

Some of the Primary 6 children came down to talk to us about the work they have been carrying out as part of anti bullying week. They explained to us about the importance of being kind and asked us to reflect on times that someone has shown us kindness. They put us into groups and helped us to send a thank you note to somebody who been kind to us.

For our health and well being lesson this week, we spoke about Incy Wincy spider and how he had a growth mindset as he never gives up and keeps trying his best to get up the drainpipe. We discussed the importance of trying and what can stop you from trying and made some spiders that we will use to form a display for our next own personal targets that we would like to achieve.

Nativity preparations are well under way and the boys and girls are working hard to learn their lines and remember the words to the songs. We can’t wait to share it with all of you and are very excited by this already.

As always, I wish you all a lovely weekend and a well deserved rest.

Mrs Denholm