P2C 2021/22

We have been busy practicing how to measure using a variety of standard measuring tools such as rulers, tape measures and metre sticks. The children were set a design challenge where they had to work in collaborative groups to design a bridge using any materials they could find in our classroom.

The bridge had to be a particular height and width to allow for certain characters from the story to pass under. They loved designing these and then set about gathering materials and working together to build their super structures. Take a look at their amazing creativity and team work!

We couldn’t resist some snow day fun during our first few days back into the new school term.

I would like to say a big thank you for the lovely gifts I received on Friday. The personalised tree bauble was very thoughtful and I promised the children I would post a picture of it hanging on my Christmas tree at home. They were also very keen to see the dog tree ornaments I have told them about, as they know I am a huge lover of our furry friends! Merry Christmas Ms Doig x

The children decided they would like to enter the annual Christmas card design competitions sent out to every school in East Renfrewshire on behalf of Jackson Carslaw MSP and Kirsteen Oswald MSP.

All of the entries drawn by the children were terrific and I’m very proud to say we have superb artists in our class!

We were thrilled to be told that Anna Oates’ entry had been chosen as runner up in the card design for Mr Carslaw’s competition and Jamie Black was selected as the P1/2 category winner for Ms Oswald’s competition also. They were chosen from over 600 entries across the local authority.

The class and myself are extremely proud of their achievements and want to say a huge well done to both Anna and Jamie!

We love to create art in our class and Christmas is a time that we can really enjoy being as creative as we want to be. This week we have been very busy making stain glass Nativity scenes, pom pom Santas and tree hanging baubles amongst other things.

Art activities are a fantastic way to develop our fine motor skills, sense of colour and texture, explore different materials, as well as being a fun and relaxing way to enjoy our learning of all cultural festivals and celebrations.

Stain glass;

Pom pom Santa;

Tree baubles;

In the last few weeks we have been focusing on learning to add the suffixes; ed, er, est and ing to root words. The children have worked collaboratively in learning to match these correctly and to identify words that do not follow the spelling rule and are spelled incorrectly.

We are also continuing to develop our ability to construct longer and more complex sentences using a variety of concrete materials during active learning activities.

In mathematics we have been continuing to expand our knowledge and understanding of measurement by exploring non-standard and standard measurements of length and height. We started out by using non-standard tools such as cubes, straws, handspans and feet width to do this. Now we have progressed to standard measurements such as millimetres, centimetres and metres and have been using rulers and metre sticks to carry out practical activities in measuring the height and length of objects in our environment.

After carrying out our own experiment on how germs and bacteria can thrive on our skin, we furthered our learning by finding out about the famous Scottish microbiologist, Alexander Fleming and his accidental discovery of penicillin. The children were curious to know how this came about and what antibiotics were, how they are used and this led to an interesting talk on our general health and the medicines doctors use.

Having already discovered that we could not completely rid ourselves of bacteria from our hands, we learned that not all bacteria is bad and that we naturally have this living on our skin and in in our bodies to do the important job of keeping us healthy.

We decided to carry out a further experiment on hygiene by using 3 slices of bread. One slice was untouched by hand and was our ‘control’ in the experiment. Another was handled by children who had not washed their hands for a while, the third piece was touched by children who had just washed their hands before handling it.

We sealed all 3 slices of bread in plastic bags, labelled them and pinned them to the wall so we could observe any changes that occur over the following days and weeks.

As we start our day in school we always wash our hands as part of our daily hygiene routine. We carried out an experiment by washing our hands before we entered our classroom, then used a disclosing cream which highlights areas that have a high concentration of germs. We carefully checked over our hands using UV light torches and this sparked a fantastic discussion on what areas collected bacteria most and the possible reasons why.

The children then decided that the best course of action would be to wash their hands repeatedly and check them to see how long it took for these to show less ‘germs’. We recorded how many hand washes it took to achieve this and then through further discussion realised that washing your hands is very important but doing it this frequently was impractical and could harm our skin.

It became apparent to us that the quality of our hand washing and targeting areas we knew bacteria liked to gather, was the smarter and most effective way to wash our hands and maximize our hygiene.

We then used our experience and discussion points to write a set of instructions on ‘How to Wash Our Hands Well’, as part of our functional writing lesson that week. The children loved this lesson, as they were able to create important self knowledge and practice of personal hygiene, but also understanding how to do this without harming their overall health and wellbeing.

We have been learning to cross the road safely using the Green Cross Code. At first, we practiced this using the school cycle track and when we felt confident that we knew each step well, we crossed the road outside the school using the Zebra crossing.

After this experience, we were able to recount the steps and write a set of instructions on ‘How to Cross the Road Safely’, during our writing lesson that week.