Merry Christmas boys and girls. I hope Santa and his reindeer managed to find their way to your house okay . . . I hope the Reindeer Dust helped. I’m looking forward to hearing what you got from Santa when you come back to school.

I’d like to say thank you to you all for your cards and generous gifts. I was so excited to open them, but kept them under my tree until this morning.

Enjoy the rest of your holiday!
Mr Cook

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Mr Cook

That’s us reached the Christmas Holidays – what a quick two terms in Primary 1. I think we’re all looking forward to a much deserved Christmas and New Year break.

In Literacy we’ve learned now learned the first 33 phonic sounds inside the Sound Pouch in your child’s homework folder. We’ve worked hard learning the ‘Look and Say’ words in our Word Pouch. Some of us have begun the ‘Look and Say’ Word Sheet. We’ve been writing stories, lists and letters – learning how to overwrite and underwrite. We learned how to form the letters g, q, e, b, p, h, n and m. We’ve all begun reading the Oxford Reading Tree books with words.

In Numeracy we’ve been continuing to count objects within ten and we’ve learned how to form numbers 6-10. We’ve begun using the language of ‘more than’ or ‘less than’ to identify numbers, as well as beginning adding two numbers together within ten.

Through our topic ‘Mr Benn’s Fancy Dress Shop’ we explored role-play in terms of playing a character. We learned how to use money to pay for objects, and really enjoyed using our real till. ‘The Nativity’ topic investigated the Christmas Story and was brought together by our fantastic Nursery – P3 Nativity. The Nativity is currently being edited, and will be available to watch on a password protected website next term. We’ll be in touch with more details after Christmas.

We have said goodbye to our Fancy Dress Shop and our Santa’s Grotto where our busy elves have been working. We have an exciting link with P3 for our next topic which you’ll hear more about after Christmas.

Your child should have arrived home today with a 2014 Calendar and  a Christmas Card which they’ve been busy making this week. There’s also some Reindeer Food to leave out – helping Santa and his reindeer to find your house on Christmas Eve.

To continue to support your child’s development over the Christmas break, you may wish to practise:

•  ‘Look and Say’ words either within the Word Pouch or Word Sheet
•  Phonic sounds and actions (Sound Pouch)
•  Word building using cards within Sound Pouch e.g. c – a – t = cat
•  Writing letters ‘o’, ‘c’, ‘a’, ‘d’, ‘g’, ‘q’, ‘e’, ‘b’, ‘p’, ‘h’, ‘n’ and ‘m’
•  Writing numbers 0 – 10
•  Ordering numbers 0 – 10, including asking questions e.g. ‘What is 1 more than/less than?’
• Adding two numbers together to make a sum of 10 or less

Have a FABULOUS Christmas and New Year. I look forward to seeing you all back on
Monday 6^th of January at 9am.

Mr Cook

We had a FABULOUS time at our Christmas Party. We played party games, danced to fantastic party music, and we can’t forget the amazing party food that we ate.

Thank you to the parents/carers for their food donations.

Christmas Service tomorrow at the Culduthel Christian Centre. Please make sure you have on suitable clothing for walking to and from the CCC.

Today we got together with Mrs McArthur’s class to read ‘The Toys’ Party’. But this time Mr Cook had a bag of treats. He thought it would be fun to make the cake from ‘The Toys’ Party’.

Mrs McArthur and Mrs Paul thought he was playing a trick on P1, but out of his bag came a mixing bowl, cornflakes, tomato ketchup, milk, jam, sugar and baked beans.

We gave it all a massive stir – and a few of us even tried it. It tasted YUMMY!

Mr Cook has put it in the fridge . . . all ready for our Christmas Party tomorrow. I hope he remembers to take it out.

CHRISTMAS PARTY TOMORROW – please remember to wear your party clothes to school. Children will get changed after they have finished their party.

Yesterday we learned how to fold paper and use the scissors to cut out shapes. When we opened our bits of paper, we were left with these beautiful snow flakes.

They look fantastic on our windows – especially when the sun is about to come up.

Looking forward to another fabulous day in P1,
Mr.Cook

What a FANTASTIC two performances of ‘Hey Ewe!’ today. Every single child from the Nursery through to Primary 3 did such a FANTASTIC job.

Everyone looked superb in their costumes. With over 200 children involved, it really was a phenomenal show.

Thank you to all of the staff and pupils who assisted with the organisation of such a massive event.

We will keep you posted as to when the video is ready.

Thank you,

Mr Cook and Miss Shimmield

We did our two Dress Rehearsals of our Nativity to the P4/5s and the P6/7s. We loved being in our costumes. We really were the coolest Kings in town with our crowns and shades on.

We want to keep it a surprise for Mums and Dads tomorrow – so no photographs will be going up today!

Showtimes tomorrow:
AM – 10am
PM – 1.45pm

Please remember to bring your ticket with you.

See you tomorrow!
Mr.Cook

This afternoon we went to see ‘Mission Ugly’ – the pantomime which was written and directed by the P6/7s. It was fantastic. It really made us laugh. We were SO shocked when we saw Mr Cook jump onto the stage. We had no idea that he was one of the people in the pantomime.

We wish them good luck for their shows tonight and tomorrow!

Mr Cook

This week in Primary 1, we’re learning how to make the letter ‘m’.

When you’re practising at home this week, why not try putting some shaving-foam in a dish and attempt writing the ‘m’ in it? It’s a fun way of learning the shape of a letter.

Mr.Cook

We have chosen Harry this month because whenever you’re feeling down, and needing cheered up, he’s always there with a joke to make you laugh and smile. Thank you for keeping P1C bright,  Harry!

Today we learned about the Jewish festival, Hanukkah. We learned that Jewish people celebrate it for 8 days every year. We found out that they have a special candle holder called a Menorah that holds 9 candles. Jewish people light the middle candle on the first night and use that candle to light the first candle. On the second night they use it to light the second candle . . . and so on . . . and so on. By night number 8, all candles are lit.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/3VfChLAADS8" width="425" height="344" allowfullscreen="true" fvars="fs=1" /]

Sesame Street – Hanukkah – CLICK HERE!

We then made our own handprint Menorahs. It was quite tricky, because we have ten fingers, but we only had to make 9 candles. I wonder if you can figure out how we did it?

Today we had our first full rehearsal of ‘Hey Ewe’ with the Nursery, P1M, P1/2, P2 and P3.

Everyone clapped when we finished our songs, so we know that we did good.

We’re going to continue practising our actions over the next week, so that we’re PERFECT when we show the Mums and Dads.

Mrs Sutherland will be in class the next two days, so Mr Cook will see you on Monday.

Mr.Cook

When we arrived in the classroom today, we found that Mr Benn’s Fancy-Dress Shop had disappeared, and had been replaced with Santa’s Workshop in the North Pole. We have been given the job of Santa’s Elves . . . making sure that we help him with all his duties in the run-up to Christmas. It’s very exciting inside Santa’s Grotto.

We also started our advent calendar. Each day one lucky P1 is chosen to find the correct number. Inside the calendar is part of the Christmas Story, and a special gift for the boy or girl who opens the calendar.

Over the next few weeks we’re hoping to learn:

Who was Jesus?

How do we stand when we are on stage?

What is the ‘Christmas Story’?

How do Christians celebrate Christmas?

REMEMBER: Nativity clothes for tomorrow

Mr.Cook