Is October really over already?!  Suddenly the pumpkins are gone and thoughts have turned to winter and all the fun it may bring, including the P1-3 nativity performance for which rehearsals have already begun.  We can’t wait to welcome you all and hope you enjoy the show.

Everyone has done incredibly well in recognising the single sounds and digraphs (two letter sounds) that have been taught.  We will continue to reinforce these in class and will soon start working on blending sounds together as well as looking at rime.  We are busy learning to use the sounds we are confident with to make words and develop our independent writing skills.  Halloween brought lots of fun where we played with lots of yucky ingredients such as goblin guts, fish eyeballs and zombie blood to create our own bubbling potions.  Afterwards we had a go at writing ingredients for our own potions that did all sorts of wonderful or horrible things!  Having a fun experience first of all helps us think of good ideas for writing.  One windy day we went for a walk around the school.  Our hair was blowing everywhere, leaves were flying all around and trees were dancing.  This led to some fantastic report writing.

“I liked making up the ingredients for my own potion that turned slugs into bats!”  Ana

“I added zombie blood, children’s bones and tears from naughty children to the potion.”  Amina

We are continuing to use our Communication Code to help us have group discussions where everyone listens well to others and shares their ideas.  As we get better at this we will start to show whether we agree or disagree with the ideas of others.

Through our active learning, we have been developing our understanding of shape properties.  Using a bag of shapes, we have been testing our friends by describing the shape, telling them how many sides and corners it has, for them to have a guess at what it could be.  We are getting better and better at it and are even working with pentagons, hexagons and octagons now.

“I liked it when I described my shape and Jonathan guessed it!  It was a circle with one looping side.”  kaitlin

We’ve also been investigating addition through our play, using classroom materials such as dice, buttons, rekenreks (like an abacus) and building blocks to make adding stories.  We are learning how to say an adding story and exploring different ways of writing it down.

“Harry, Thom and I were making adding stories using the rekenreks and number lines.  We made ten add ten is twenty.”  Josh

Through our People Who Help Us focus, we have created some artwork to show the different jobs people do and how they help us.  We thoroughly enjoyed our visit from PC Traynor who told us all about his uniform and how it helps him, including his baton which surprisingly doubled up as a microphone?!  We’re not entirely sure if this is true though…  During his visit, Easa had his legs bound to stop him running away and Miss Stead was arrested!  We are looking forward to a visit from our local crossing patrol officer soon and finding out more about his job.

“I would like to have a turn at holding the lollipop man’s sign.”  Easa

Our role-play corner has evolved as we have learned about People Who Help Us too.  After consultations lead by Lyla, it was decided we would create a children’s hospital and that it would include a cinema room, just like the one at the Hospital for Children in Glasgow, which some of us have spent time in.  Currently showing is The Greatest Showman, Lego Ninjago and Moana.  Lots of children were also keen to try being police officers so we plan to compile a role-play box of items to allow this too.   Do you have anything that we could use?

“I’m excited to dress as a police officer and take baddies to jail!”  Poppy

Recently we have enjoyed using the large outdoor building blocks.  There have been obstacle courses with balance beams and stages for performing on (The Greatest Showman of course) through to giant broomsticks with room for all!  During these activities we work on our teamwork skills by learning to cooperate and accommodate the ideas of others as well as sharing resources and working towards a common outcome.

“Next we could build a spooky castle with the blocks.”  Amina

Having developed an understanding of our school values, we are now very excited to be earning house points to try to win an extended break each week!  If we get caught being respectful, kind, friendly, inclusive, determined or honest we are rewarded with one or more points from adults throughout the school and playground.

“We have house tokens so we can have fun and get extra playtimes and make the school more fun.”  Harry