This week the boys and girls have been very excited about the changes they can see in our environment. The trees have been changing colours and there have been lots of colourful and different sizes and shapes of leaves for us to collect. We took them into our classroom where we could look at them a little closer with the magnifying glasses. Today we are going to bring our favourite leaf home with us.

In our topic, under the sea we have been learning about what sea creatures eat. We now know that we can show this information in a food chain. Here Lucas and Dhruv have chosen an example of a food chain they believe would happen.

The block area has been a firm favourite area to play in and build some amazing creations this week. Both they boys and the girls have built some fantastic structures that have allowed them to work together as a team, to problem solve and to show off their creativity. Here we have some photos of the buildings created this week… ,  another castle by Zak and Dhruv where you can see fireworks from anywhere,

a castle by Sarah

another castle by Zak and Dhruv where you can see fireworks from anywhere,

Amaya made a shop called Morrisons. I think you will agree that the children have worked so very hard on their designs. I can’t wait to see what they come up with next.

We went on a 2D and 3D shape hunt in the school grounds to help us recognise what these shapes look like and help remember their names. We found loads of shapes in the woodland and our P1 garden. Here are some examples of the shapes we found:

We have come to the end of our possession games block. This term the boys and girls have been working hard to develop their control over the equipment, specifically throwing, catching and aiming at a target. We also enjoyed the warm up games where we had to listen carefully to instructions of how many body parts could be in the hoop. We look forward to moving on to gymnastics when we return after the holidays.

Here are some additional pictures of children in the play areas this week directing their own learning.

Our classroom is looking great thanks to the children helping Mrs Denholm develop the play areas further. After observations of the children playing and discussions as a class, we decided to move the block area as it was a little squished and develop our imaginative area. We now have a selection of materials that the children can use in their play where they can pretend it is anything they want it to be. This has proven to be popular and so far this week they have played zombies, built and played in their castles and created  a dinosaur land.

I hope you all have a lovely and well deserved rest over the October week. I look forward to hearing lots of stories upon the children’s return.

Mrs Denholm x

1. This week, we have been practising the sounds we know and have learnt three new ones r, m and d. We played some games and carefully tried to write the letters. We added lots of detail to our writing, which was all about kicking a ball. We took time to discuss what would be in our drawings which really helped us when we sat down to write. Mrs Denholm is keeping our writing in a special green jotter which we will get to take home later in the year to show you.

We were celebrating Maths Week in Scotland with the theme being ‘our world’. In P1b we decided to think about gathering and sorting. We were able to share our ideas of what jobs you would need to sort lots of objects including a postman, rubbish collector and supermarket. We collected lots of natural objects when we were outdoors and worked as a team to decide on the criteria to sort them.

We even had some time left to splash in the puddles.

For our topic this week we looked at sea and land turtles. We now know they have four flippers and a head if the live in the sea and limbs that can retract into their shell if they live on land. Sea turtles can hold their breath for up to 5 hours and they lay their eggs on the beach late at night. We made our very own turtles using paper plates, paint and collage. We can’t wait to hang them in our classroom for everyone to see.

We have had lots of fun building models out of junk materials this week. Lots of focus and creativity has went into them and it has been lovely to see the children working together on these mini projects. Can we ask if you have any junk materials (kitchen roll tubes, cereal bar boxes, tissue boxes etc) that you send them in for our junk box to enable our designs to continue. Here are some from this week…

Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Denholm x

This week we had lots of fun learning about sharks and dolphins as part of our under the sea topic. We couldn’t believe how high a dolphin can jump out of the water and enjoyed learning facts about the different types of sharks that swim in the ocean.

We have continued to develop control over our bodies and the ball in PE lessons. We mirrored what our partner was doing with their body before adding a ball in. We learnt how to dribble the ball, which was a little tricky, but we kept trying hard and it became a little easier.

Our sounds of the week were ck, e and h. We are enjoying listening to the jolly phonic songs and sing along at snack time to help us with our learning. Our activities this week saw us sorting magnetic letters, matching pictures to their initial sound and blending sounds together to make cvc (consonant, vowel, consonant) words. We even had hopping races, which gave us all a good giggle.

We are working hard to practise writing our names each morning when we come into class, paying attention to the capital letter at the start.

We continued our work on measure and explored numbers on a number line and number square to help us identify the order, patterns and missing numbers.

I hope you all have a lovely September weekend and a well deserved rest!

A special mention to our birthday girls of the weekend, Katrine and Blair Alba. Enjoy the celebrations.

Mrs Denholm x

This week in numeracy and maths, we were learning to measure using non standard units. We found items in our P1 garden to measure and were able to compare which was longest and shortest. Mrs Denholm then set us challenges to find items that were longer and shorter than others.

We learned three new sounds this week; i, p and n and the actions which go with the sounds. We will send a list of these actions home with the first homework pack. We practised writing these letters too.

We have had another great week in P1b with lots of fun in our play areas. We have had some fabulous pieces of artwork, volcanoes in the sandpit and deep concentration as models have been constructed.

Have a lovely weekend!

See you all on Monday for a coffee and chat at 10am (if you are able to make it)

Mrs Denholm x

This week we have been learning the sounds s, a and t. through games, songs and stories.

The boys are girls have been very good at recognising the initial sounds of words and coming up with some of their own. We have made some colourful snakes, used spaghetti in our play, played I spy and memory games, taking an item away, as our friends try to guess what is missing.

In Numeracy and maths, we have been focusing on the numbers 0-20. We have been ordering the numbers forwards and backwards, identifying the missing number and saying one more. We have also looked at different visuals that can represent numbers such as dots, finger patterns and tally marks.

During PE, we continued to practise our throwing and catching skills. Mrs Denholm was very impressed with the control we showed with the ball.

We had great fun exploring the P1 garden on a rainy morning. The ducks were chosen to come outside with us and had great fun playing in the puddles.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Mrs Denholm

It has been another busy week in Primary 1 with lots of fun and smiles all round. This week, we have tried hard to visit different areas within the bay to explore and play with each other. We have had many models, towers, creative designs and lots of amazing storytelling. A big thumbs up from Mrs Denholm for these hard working boys and girls!

This week we have been learning to listen carefully to the sounds we can hear around us. We have played with the animals to help with our description of them and mimicked the sounds they would make. We learned how to recognise the number of syllables in words and clap the beat of the word through games.

We listened carefully to number stories about greedy zero, penguin one, ticklish two and butterfly three to help us recognise what three looks like and how it can be represented. The stories were good fun to listen to and helped us when practising our number formation.

We took a trip to the MUGA and hall for PE this week and had so much fun playing with the parachute. It was smiles and giggles all round as we lifted it really high above our heads and listened to when it was time to run underneath and swap places with each other. We even managed to keep lots of balls from falling off it.

Our story of the week has been ‘The Colour Monster’ by Anna Lenas which explores how you can be feeling at different points of the day. It prompted some great discussion about times when we feel a certain way and it was lovely to see the boys and girls sharing their experiences with one another.

Finally, we had a little cuddle with Trumpet our class elephant who helps look after us and helps Mrs Denholm choose the star of the day.

We have all had a great first week in Primary 1. The boys and girls have had great fun exploring their new environment and have all been super excited to play with each other. We have spent lots of time getting to know each other and learning the routines of the school day. Here are some pictures from our first week together.