This week we have been marking Neurodiversity Week with various activities each day.

After lunch we have been completing a mindfulness activity and this has got us thinking about our breathing and ways in which we can let go of any worries we may be feeling.

We received a visit from two Neurodiversity Ambassadors who showed us the Kit Bags that the school have. We were intrigued to find out what was inside and loved the wolf and robin finger puppets along with the smell of the calming oil!

We spent Thursday afternoon with our P6 Buddies. We read the story ‘A Superpower Like Mine’ and then started thinking about our own superpowers. Some of the superpowers we discussed were kindness, creativity, bravery, strength and having a good imagination. We drew a picture of us demonstrating our superpower and the P6 buddies helped us complete this. We then made a card for a ‘superhero’ in our own lives 🙂

We marked World Down Syndrome Day by wearing odd socks to school. Just look at those happy feet!

This week we have also started learning about data handing. We discussed what data is and how data can be sorted. We explored a variety of 3D shapes and discussed different ways we could sort the shapes. In small groups, we were able to sort them by colour, shape and size.

We have been enjoying the better weather this week and even managed to get outside to the P1 garden on Friday afternoon. We loved having the choice to explore outside or in the classroom and have our fingers crossed for more sunny days.

On Thursday the whole school participated in Meta Moments, organised by Miss Brodie and Miss Tenby. We had lots of visitors who have a range of different jobs and they spoke to us about the Meta-skills they use to do their job.

In Primary 1, we firstly listened to Dr. Eilidh tell us about the skills she uses in the hospital. Dr Eilidh uses the skills of communicating to speak to both her patients and her colleagues and the skill of collaborating as it is important she works alongside others  to ensure her patients get better.

Dr Eilidh also brough her stethoscopes in for us to try and there were some very amazed faces when we could hear our own, or others, heart beats.

     

We then enjoyed a visit from Alan Potter who is an artist. Alan shared that he uses the skill of creativity in his job as an artist every day. He has to think carefully about how he can turn his customer’s ideas into reality and what materials he can use. He brought the smaller models of some very large sculptures that he has previously made which we really enjoyed exploring. Alan also uses the skills of curiosity as he is often curious if something will go to plan. He shared the important message that it’s ok if things don’t work out and he just tries again.

Earlier on in the week we had a go at some number problem solving. In small groups, we read the word problem and then had to think about what we needed to do in order to solve it. We worked effectively  together and used our whiteboards to write down any working we thought would help.

This week we celebrated World Book Day.

We received a visit from some P7s who had written and illustrated some beautiful stories. It was a pleasure to listen to their stories and see the hard work that had went into them.

     

     

     

     

     

      

We then read a story together in class and created a story map to show our understanding of ‘Norman the Slug with the Slug with the Silly Shell.

In the afternoon, Mrs Agnew read us another story but this time she hid the front cover. We had to pretend we were illustrators and design a new front cover for the book. The title of the book was ‘Freddie and the Fairy’. Some of us thought Freddie was an animal and some of us thought he was a boy. The mystery was revealed at the end of the day.

 

We had a very successful trip to the Summerlee Museum on Monday. The trip linked in with our topic about The Past and the workshop, titled ‘When Gran was a Girl’ focused on exploring items from the past. We all had an amazing time and enjoyed each of the different parts of the museum there was to explore.

We started off by visiting the Miner’s Cottages. The cottages show what living conditions were like in the past. There were many cottages to explore and they started from around the 1840s to the 1980s. We could see a big difference as we moved from cottage to cottage!

     

     

     

We then went for a walk along the canal which led us to the park.

We spent quite a while exploring the park and had lots of fun, especially on the pyramid climbing frame.

     

     

Before lunch, we had time to explore the different areas of the museum. There was lots to see and do…

     

The final part of our day was the workshop. We were first shown three items from the past, a record player, camera and telephone and discussed what item our grown ups now use today that do all three things these items did.

We were then invited to explore the three stations. One was a green grocer’s and this allowed us to discuss where food was bought from in the past.

Another station consisted of toys from the past such as skipping ropes, a cup and ball and a hoop and stick.

     

     

Probably the most fun of all was the washing station. We had to scrub the clothes to make them clean, then dry them using the wringer and then hang them to dry. We had to be very strong to turn the handle on the wringer!

     

     

     

The last part of our afternoon was learning some moves from the 60s. We learned three different dance moves and got to perform them with some music. We even got to dress up in some outfits from the 60s!

     

      

Thank you to our parent helpers who came along to the trip and also to those who offered their time, we couldn’t have done it without you 🙂

 

 

Thank you to everyone who brought in an item from the past to share with the class. It was so lovely to hear about each of the special items and the history of them. We very much took ownership of our presentations and loved showing the items to our audience.

Whilst presenting we had to consider our audience by making sure we faced them and used a clear voice. As part of the audience we had to look, listen and show respect to the person who was presenting. We all did a great job!

   

    

     

     

     

     

     

     

This week we completed our last painting. We mixed the colours red and yellow together to make orange. We used these colours and the skill of blending to create a sunset. Next week we will add some birds to finish off our artwork.

Look out for our display showing all of our hard work in the corridor next week!

We have been focusing on functional writing over the past couple of weeks and linking this to our Food and Health topic. This week we wrote a set of instructions explaining the steps needed to brush your teeth properly.

There are lots and lots of photos this week because we have just had so much fun and excitement!

On Wednesday and Thursday our grown ups came to our Open Afternoon. We have been learning about The Past and have shown a particular interest in toys and games from the past. We learned about different games and how old they are, some were even 2000 years old!

To prepare for our open afternoons we made a cup and ball game. We decorated our own cups, attached the string and then made the ball with kitchen foil. We found it tricky to get the ball into the cup and had to learn to give it a good swing!

 

Thank you to the grown ups who attended our open afternoon. We loved having you in to visit and hope you enjoyed playing the games we had prepared.

On Thursday we had a lovely surprise! The Fire Service came to visit us with their fire engine. We learned what it is like to be a fire fighter and also what we should do if there was a fire. We were able to explore the fire engine and learned about the different equipment they have on the engine. The most exciting part was holding the hose, there were many excited faces and even a few trying to secretly soak themselves with the hose!

Thank you very much to Mrs Denholm’s husband and his crew for bringing the fire engine to Crookfur.

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

    

On Friday we celebrated Valentine’s Day by thinking about kind compliments we could say to each other. We could take a heart to someone in the class if we felt it was a complement we wanted to give them.

We also had the option to make a Valentine’s Card for someone special.

It was not just Valentine’s Day on Friday but also BREAK THE RULES DAY!

We were so excited to break the rules and show each other what we were wearing and share the rules we had broken with each other.

Mrs Agnew, Mrs Denholm and Mrs Wotherspoon got a little mixed up about the message and wore school uniform, silly us!

In PE this term we are learning about Rebound Games. This involves thinking about how we move our body and control it and also using a variety of equipment. This week we explored this with tennis racquets and tennis balls. The main focus was controlling the tennis ball either with our hands or with the racquet.

We started getting used to controlling the ball by rolling it to our partner and back. Some of us realised we had to give it more of a push and others realised they had pushed the ball too hard.

We then used the racquets to do the same thing.

It was then time to work on our own and really focus on holding the racquet properly and then balance the tennis ball on the racquet, this was tricky, especially when we started moving too.

We completed this lesson by moving the ball around the Muga with the tennis racquet. We again had to think about the amount of power we were using to ensure the ball rolled but didn’t roll too far away.

We have continued with our block of learning about painting and over the past couple of weeks have made a Seascape. We stuck with blue and yellow to make green and had a go at blending the colours to make it look like the sea. We then drew and cut out fish to add to the Seascape and are looking forward to creating a display with our amazing art work very soon!

The children had shown an interest in birds whilst exploring in the garden area and had made many comments about not many birds visiting us there!  We decided to make some bird feeders to attract the birds to come. We learned about the importance of helping look after birds in the winter time and how it can be harder for them to find food on their own.

We have been using different non-fiction books to find information and learn facts about different types of birds, their features and how we can help look after them. We have been exploring the internet using websites such as BBC bitesize and Earth Kids to help us learn. The children have shown a keen interest in learning about David Attenborough and have many questions about him and his role as a biologist! Many were curious if I (Mrs Dickie) was of a similar age!!!

The children participated in some experiential bird experiences outdoors on the school grounds. Our games focused on listening, looking and attention skills to help us become better bird watchers! The children collaborated well together.

We spent some time as a class discussing what we already know about birds and creating a list of some questions that we have that we’d like to find out on our learning journey together.

“Do all birds fly?”

“What do they eat?”

“How do they open their eggs when they hatch?”

Before heading out to do our bird watching, we carried out some data handling experiences so that we could record our information whilst bird watching using tally marks.

Then we headed outdoors for some bird watching! The children found a spot on top of the hill that was particularly good for bird watching, some children climbed trees to get a better view and others used binoculars to look closely for them. We looked for gulls, magpies, starlings, crows and robins as these tend to be the most popular around here. As a whole, gulls and crows were spotted the most on this day!

Today we had a visit from the Dams to Darnley Country Park Ranger Rennie. He explained all about the important work he does to help look after the animals and wildlife. He shared lots of very interesting facts about different types of birds that are found at the nature park – 141 in total! The children were able to share some of their own knowledge of birds and ask questions to further their understanding. Many of the children are now keen to have a visit there, if you are looking for anywhere to go at the weekends 🙂

We’ll be continuing our learning journey next week by carrying out some drawing and writing about our visitor and recording some key facts that we have learned.

On Monday we linked our writing with our Health and Wellbeing topic, Food and Health. We shared with each other what our favourite food is and what we like about it so much. We then put this information into a sentence or two. We are becoming more independent when writing and use sound mats and common word mats to support us plus our own phonological knowledge.

We have continued exploring money and this week we had to match the coin to the amount. We did this in a fun way by building a tower with the cups. The cups had the amount written on them and we had to match that to the picture of the tower with the coins. We enjoyed the challenge!

We don’t use money very often now, so we also discussed different ways to pay for items in a shop and what we see our grown ups use.

We have started a block of learning about painting. The focus is colour mixing and developing the knowledge of the colour wheel to support us with this. This week we mixed blue and yellow to make green and painted our own picture of blue, yellow and green balloons.

Giraffes Can’t Dance…oh yes they can! P1B can also do lots of amazing things and we shared this with each other at the beginning of the week during a Circle Time. We used this as our context for writing and we each wrote a sentence or two about something we are proud of that we can do.

We then created the front cover of the book by gradually mixing blue and white together to create a moon effect and drew our own giraffe to glue onto our beautiful backgrounds. We had to use our cutting skills to cut neatly around our giraffes!

This week we started learning about money. In small groups we explored different coins and looked at their size, shape and colour. We learned the value of each coin and then put these in order starting from the smallest. Lots of us put the coins in order by size but this prompted an interesting discussion and together we were able to put the coins in the correct order by their value.

    

     

We continued our learning about Food and Health by looking at The Eatwell Guide. We learned about the different food groups and why each one is important and how it helps our body to stay healthy. In pairs, we then sorted the foods into the correct food group.