In the month of January, we said Happy 5th Birthday to three more of our class. Only two more birthdays to go until we’re ALL five! Well, not Mr Cook – he is a little bit older . . .

Have a good weekend,
Mr.Cook

This week we have been learning how to use marbling and materials to create these FANTASTIC Loch Ness Monster pictures. They’ve really brightened up our washing line.

This week we have been learning about how water can change.

We learned that when it is cold, water turns to ice.
We learned that when it is more than O degrees, ice turns to water.
We learned that when water is really hot, like when you put it in the kettle, it turns to steam.

We had lots of fun doing our water activities.

Today we started learning how to write the letter ‘t’ properly. We thought of lots of different things that started with ‘t’ – tiger, teacher, tunnel, tide, tap, table, tray and tiles. We used lots of litle tiles as one of our ‘t’ activites this morning.

We learned that there are two different ways that we can write t. Once of them has the line all the way through, and the other only has a half line. We practised both of these today.

Mr Cook will be out of class the next few days. Mrs Sutherland will be in on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this week.

Mr.Cook

This week in maths we have been looking at pattern and positional language. We have created our jigsaws of Nessie, showing where the pieces need to go in relation to another piece. Are they under? Next to? Inbetween?

For a first attempt I think they look super.

Have a great weekend,
Mr.Cook

This week we have been working on lots of different activities to help us form the letter ‘i’. One of the activities was a tissue paper mosaic. We liked them so much that we decided to put them on our door.

We’ve found that finding words beginning with ‘i’ is a bit tricky. I wonder what words you can think of at home . . .

Mr Cook

In the afternoon, P3FS visited P1C to start building our castle.

 We were fantastic builders today and we worked well as a team. We worked together in small groups on different tasks.  Some of us made grass and windows whilst another group started to try put the boxes together. Joining the boxes together was the tricky part! We used photos and drawings of Urquhart Castle to give us a rough idea of how we wanted the castle to look.

There were also some very helpful pupils in P1C and P3FS today! It was lovely to see pupils cutting sellotape for others, helping others by holding boxes, sharing scissors and doing lots of other kind things to help.

We think Nessie looks right at home behind our Urquhart Castle! What do you think?

Thank you to all the parents and pupils who brought in cardboard for our castle!

Yesterday we learned about the creatures – Sea Kelpies. Some people think that they live in the water in Scotland. They’re like a horse with flippers.

We learned how to use watercolour paints to make these Sea Kelpies. Mr Cook thinks they would be worth a lot of money in an art gallery.

Click the pictures to make them bigger!

Have a fantastic weekend,

Mr.Cook

As part of our topic, one of our aims is to have a Castle role-play corner. When Mr Cook found out that P3FS were doing castles as their topic, he kindly asked Miss Shimmield and Mrs Fraser if their class would be able to help up build our castle.

On Tuesday we started our construction, using a mixture of black and white paint with PVA glue to make the brick work.

We’ll continue to work with P3FS next Monday and Tuesday. We’ll put up more photos once it is built!

Mr Cook

This week we learned about the Hindu festival – Makar Sankranti.

We found out that in India, many boys, girls and grown-ups buy or make brightly coloured kites to fly in celebration of the festival.

Our kites have definitely brightened up our display board. We hope you get blown away by our wonderful work . . .

Mr Cook

We have finally finished our Nessie to go into Loch Ness in our Castle Corner.

Mr Cook and Mrs Paul helped us put it together and pinned it up after school. We think it looks super.

Nessie is now always watching us whilst we’re doing our work.

We begin our castle building with P3FS tomorrow afternoon. This is REALLY exciting.

See you tomorrow,
Mr.Cook

We chose Lily this month as she shared her prior learning of ‘The Christmas Story’ with the class, which helped when we were rehearsing for The Nativity. Lily has also worked hard to master her underwriting. Keep up the great work, Lily!

Thank you for the boxes that started to come in today. We begin to work with P3FS next week to build our castle. Any shoeboxes would be appreciated as they’re a great size. All boxes to be in for Monday.

Thank you!
Mr.Cook

Since our last Birthday Blog we’ve had 11 more 5th Birthdays in our class in November and December. Only 5 more until we have a FULL class of 5 year olds.

Mrs Sutherland will be in tomorrow, so I will see you all on Friday.

Mr.Cook

Today we started our ‘In the Loch’ topic by beginning to create our gigantic Nessie to go behind our castle. We used paint for printing, tissue and gummed paper for mosaic and crayons for patterns. We’re not quite finished making the patterned paper, and will finish with Mrs Sutherland on Thursday. We can’t wait to put it all together to finish our Nessie.

In our topic, we hope to find out the answers to the following questions:

If you have any books on Nessie or Loch Ness, please feel free to bring them in for our story area of the castle.

See you all tomorrow,
Mr Cook

Today we learned that the 6th of January (today) is a special day for people across the world. Some people celebrate Epiphany. On this day it is believed that the Wise Men/ Three Kings/ Magi visited Jesus, bringing him gifts. Once we learned about Epiphany, we created Wise Men Puppets. Our Wise Men came in threes and followed the star, before going into our folders and hopefully arriving home.

It only seems like yesterday we went on holiday. I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas and New Year. It’s great to have everyone back. The spring term is set to be another busy one in Primary 1.

PE

This term, we continue to have PE on a Monday and a Wednesday. If you’d prefer, they can wear their PE kit underneath their clothes on these days. For the first half of the term we will have PE with Mrs Campbell, our PE teacher, on Monday afternoon. This is a treat for P1.

STAFFING

Mrs Sutherland will continue to teach Primary 1 on a Thursday this term when I am out of class on management. Mrs Paul, our Pupil Support Assistant (PSA), will continue to work with our class and our neighbours – P1M.

LEO THE LION

Our class mascot, Leo the Lion, has been to quite a few houses for the weekend now. He will continue to arrive home with one lucky P1 on a Friday afternoon to take part in your weekend adventures. It would be great if you could write a few sentences in their home/school diary about what Leo got up to. You could also include a photograph if you wished.

IN THE LOCH

Our topic for the first part of this term is ‘In the Loch’. We will be learning about Scottish Myths and Legends and Urquhart Castle. The Medieval Castle within our classroom has started to take shape. We will be working with P3FS over the next few weeks to build the castle walls. This is an exciting opportunity to work with the older pupils. We’re hoping to go on an excursion this term also. More details will be made available later on.

SHOWING

Your child, if they wish, can choose something to bring along and talk about with the class on the following date during our ‘Showing Time’:

HOMEWORK

To continue to support your child’s development, please continue 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

Mr Cook