March was a very busy month for Primary 2. We finished off term 2 with lots of great work and fun activities.

Maths

In Maths we continued to work on Addition. We used lots of concrete materials to help us to understand lots of different strategies for solving addition problems.

We also worked very hard on our topic about Fractions. We learned all about halves and quarters of shapes or amounts, and how to half/quarter numbers. Here are some of our superstars investigating which shapes can be quartered and which ones can’t.

When we studied Data Handling, we had lots of fun learning about bar graphs. We found out what everyone was having for lunch one day then made a huge bar graph on our class smartboard. At first we found Carroll diagrams difficult, but we quickly began to learn that they were easy!

Literacy

In Literacy we have been working through our programme of sounds and common words. We know that we should practise these lots at home to help us to get even better at reading and writing.  Here are some pictures of us practising our common words on a sunny March day.

We have been working hard on our independent writing again this month. Mrs Simpson can’t believe how neat our handwriting is! We have also been trying really hard to give things a go when we write our stories and recounts. If we are stuck on how to spell a word, we don’t let the word beat us – we try to think of all our strategies for spelling words that we have already learned. Here are some of our March Star Writers.

R.E.

March was a very special time in Holy Family Primary. At the beginning of the month we had Ash Wednesday which led us into Lent. During Lent we tried very hard to stick to the Lenten promises which we made. We also participated in lots of fun activities in order to raise money for Lenten charities. Here are some photos of all the fun things we did during Lent.

We also spent lots of time thinking about the Easter story. We felt very sad for Jesus that he had to face lots of pain and suffering. We thought of ways that we could be kind at Easter too.

This month we had Science Week. The focus for Science Week 2022 was Growth. We did lots of exciting activities based on growth during our week. Some of our favourite activities were going on a scavenger hunt, growing rainbows, growing cress and learning about the life cycle of a frog. Here are some pictures of our Science Week activities.

At the beginning of March we celebrated World Book Day. We came to school dressed as our favourite book characters or wearing dress down or pyjamas.  That day we did lots of book related tasks. We even went on a trip to visit our school library. Our favourite part of the day was when we had our Booknic in the afternoon with our friends from P1, P2, P3 and P4.

We had so much fun in our last month of Term 2. We can’t wait to start Term 3 and do more exciting learning! Please keep checking Twitter for regular updates from Primary 2.

Primary 2 have had a very busy but fun February.

In Maths we have been working very hard on addition to 20. We have been learning lots of strategies to help us with this, such as doubles, near doubles and bridging. The boys and girls have been playing lots of fun games and doing lots of work with partners and in groups to help them with this.

We have also been working hard on Shape and Money. We have been learning about 1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p and 50p, and have been working hard to decide which coins we should use to pay for things. Mrs Simpson says everyone should try very hard to use money in shops in order to practise their coin recognition skills. Here are some of our maths superstars in action.

In Literacy we have continued to work on more sounds and common words. We are getting very good at following Charlie Checker’s targets and have been trying hard to do our neatest work this month. This includes forming all our letters properly, fingers spaces and writing on the lines. Each of our reading groups have been working very hard on partner and group reading and our reading skills are constantly improving. Within Writing, we have been using our topic as a stimulus for our narrative and recount work. We have also had a little go at writing instructions this month. We wrote fantastic instructions for making a McCoo picture, and a super recipe for Empire Biscuits.

In February we finished off our R.E. topic ‘New Life’. Within this topic, we thought about the baby Jesus, and we also welcomed a pretend baby into our class. We then thought about Baptism and learned about what happens when someone is baptised.

We also began to learn about other world religions this month. We learned that many people have different beliefs, but that we are all special. We enjoyed learning about Islam, the qur’an and the Mosque.

We are now beginning to learn about Lent in preparation for Easter. We will do lots more work on this in March so keep your eyes peeled for updates!

In HWB we learned about being safe online through our story of Buddy the Dog. We learned a song which helps to keep us safe and we thought of ways to keep ourselves safe when we are playing with mobile phones, tablets etc.

In P.E. we have enjoyed creating our own games with a partner using a variety of P.E. equipment. Here are some of our groups showing off the games that they created.

We are really enjoying our topic about Scotland. We have been so busy learning lots about our beautiful country. We learned about Charles Rennie MacIntosh and created our own MacIntosh roses.

We also learned about the artist Stephen Brown. We loved looking at pictures of his McCoo pictures and we decided to try our own using wool. Here are some of ours. Do you like them?

We are beginning to focus on Scottish landmarks and this month we investigated Edinburgh Castle. We loved learning about it’s history. We even learned it used to be a prison and some prisoners escaped through a secret tunnel. We enjoyed having an afternoon of Purposeful Play based on Edinburgh Castle. During our play, we completed a range of castle themed challenges. Our favourite was when we created a new castle for the queen to stay in during her holidays in Scotland.

We really loved learning about Scottish food and drink in February. We picked some tasty Scottish dishes for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We then made our own Empire Biscuits using Scottish ingredients.

One highlight of our month was our trip to the school library. Thanks to Mrs Cooney and Primary 4, our library is looking amazing so we decided to go and have a little explore. We enjoyed spending time relaxing with a good book.

We also enjoyed having fun in the snow with our friends. We were so excited to build snowmen, have snowball fights and make snow angels. We even threw snowballs at our teacher!

We are looking forward to the better weather in March and beginning our Easter preparations. World Book Day is on 3^rd March and we can dress up as a favourite book character or come to school in comfy clothes. Keep an eye on Twitter for lots more adventures in primary 2.

January has certainly been a fun filled month in Primary 2.

We were so happy to be back to school after the Christmas holidays, and we enjoyed spending time catching up with our friends.

In Literacy, we spent some time revising our previously taught common words and sounds before we began working on new learning.

This month we have been working very hard on handwriting and making our jotter work as neat as possible. We have spent lots of time learning to be more independent with our writing and to remember Charlie Checker’s core writing targets:

Writing on the lines

Capital letters

Full stops

Finger spaces

As our new class topic is Scotland, we had a great time writing about the Loch Ness Monster. Here are some of our super stories.

In Maths, we have been working on addition within 20. We started this topic with lots of revision of our number bonds to 10. We enjoyed using a variety of objects/resources to help us with this. Here are some of our hard workers working out number stories for 6,7,8 and 9.

We have also been working on Shape. We found out lots about 3D shapes and we made our own creations using spheres, cubes, cuboids, cylinders and cones. We also learned about the properties of a range of 2D shapes.

We used our prior knowledge of the birth of the Lord Jesus when we began our new topic within the R.E. syllabus ‘New Birth’. Within the topic we learned about Mary’s visit to see Elizabeth. We learned about the words that Elizabeth said to Mary and we linked those words to the ‘Hail Mary’ prayer we often say in class. These children wrote the prayer in their jotters beautifully.

We then researched new babies and welcomed a new baby into our class.

This is baby Rosie. We all helped to choose a lovely name for her. Our next steps are to think about Rosie’s baptism. We would love to hear about our Baptism and see photographs from our special day if our grown-ups can find any at home.

We absolutely love our new class topic; Scotland. We have covered lots so far. We were very lucky to have access to lots of Scottish artefacts brought in by Mrs Stevenson. We saw lots of interesting things such as a Quaich, a bodhran and some very old Scottish money. Thank you to Mrs Stevenson for letting us have a look!

We have enjoyed learning about Nessie and even made our own Nessie pictures. Here are a few of our artists hard at work.

We loved learning the Scottish version of Wee Willy Winkie and we designed our own character puppets.

On Burns day we learned about Robert Burns, learned to dance the Highland Fling and we even tasted a yummy Scottish treat; a Tunnoch’s Teacake.

When we came back to school in 2022 we learned about New Years Resolutions and we created our own. Lots of us decided that we wanted to become healthier this year, so we have been learning about healthy eating. We learned some facts about the different food groups and then we worked in pairs to decide what foods we should eat lots of, and what foods we should only eat a little bit of. We made some very sensible choices.

In February we will continue to work very hard on handwriting and our core writing targets. We are also looking forward to learning about other world religions. Keep an eye on Twitter for regular updates from Primary 2.

November has been a very busy time for us in Primary 2. We have been learning lots and having so much fun.

Within Literacy, we have continued to work on new sounds and common words using a variety of tasks. We enjoy listening to stories which contain words with our phoneme, then trying to work out which words contain the sound. We also love using our magnetic boards and building our own words. Mrs Simpson tells us that we are super spellers!

In Writing, we are learning to be very independent. We plan our own stories (making sure they contain the important parts like who, what, where, when and why). We then try to use our ideas, plus the common words we have learned, to help us build our stories. Here are some of our Star Writers in November. Mrs Simpson is so proud of them all!

In Maths we have all been working together on Measure. We enjoyed learning about length and had great fun comparing the lengths of different flowers then putting them into the correct order from shortest to longest. Our Cubes group have worked so well on numbers to 20 and have revised addition to 10. The Counters group have been busy working on numbers to 100. Our next job is to start adding to 20. We are very excited!

This is a very special month when we remember all the people who have died. It is called the Month of the Holy Souls. In class we have been learning the ‘Eternal Rest’ prayer and saying it for all our loved ones. We have been praying that they are with God in heaven. On Remembrance Day we also paid tribute to the brave men and women who lost their lives during war. We made amazing pictures of poppy fields to mark the day. Mrs Simpson said we are little artists!

We have also started working on our school Nativity show alongside p1 and p3. We have learned our lines very well and we are amazing at singing our Nativity songs. We have been practising in the hall almost every day. We must remember to keep practising at home too, and hand in our outfits if we haven’t already done so.

This month we celebrated Bonfire Night. We learned how to keep safe when using fireworks. We also went on a bonfire word hunt in the classroom. Our favourite part of the day was making Rocket Fruit Kebabs. They were healthy and delicious.

This month we also celebrated Book Week Scotland. During the week, we had fantastic helpers from p7 come and read some stories with us. We also all received a special gift; a bag full of exciting books to read at home. We are so lucky!

On the last day of November we learned all about St. Andrew. We made stained glass window pictures in class. Later in the day we had a Scottish celebration with shortbread, Singing Kettle and stories about the Loch Ness Monster. We wore tartan too. We all looked so fancy!

We are looking forward to the fun month ahead in Primary 2. Don’t forget to check Twitter to keep up with what’s happening in our class.

We have had a very busy month in Primary 2. The children have been working so hard and have learned so much.

Within Maths we have been focusing on number. Our Cubes group have worked so hard within numbers to 20. We have looked at numbers before and after, larger and smaller and we have been ordering. Our Counters group have challenged themselves within numbers to 100 by learning about Place Value through working with tens and units. The children enjoy using concrete materials to help them with their learning. Here are some of our superstars learning through play.

Within Literacy, we have continued to work hard on our new sounds and common words. We enjoy building words using the sounds we learn and our great progress can be seen in our reading and writing. Here are some activities that we have enjoyed during our phonics lessons.

In Taught Writing we have been using a selection of spooky stories to help us to create exciting stories. We especially loved learning about the story ‘Room on the Broom’ and after writing, we made fabulous witches using a variety of materials including autumn leaves. Mrs Simpson loves to pick Star Writers each week. Here are a few of them showing their super work! This month we have been thinking about adjectives. We enjoyed creating adjectives for a range of different pictures and we used lots of these super descriptive words in our stories.

We enjoyed learning about the Month of the Holy Rosary in October, and we enjoyed paying visits to the gardens of the church where we participated in a decade of the holy rosary. We have begun to understand that the rosary prayer tells us about  the life of Jesus and his mother, Mary. It was a great time to learn about this, as we have been studying the topic Jesus’ Family and Yours within our R.E. lessons. Within this topic, we particularly enjoyed hearing about the story of the boy Jesus in the Temple. Pope Francis has called for us all to unite together and care for our planet. We have been learning about COP26 in Primary 2 and we discussed ways we could look after the environment. We made bunting to celebrate the conference. Here are some of our pupils showing off their promises.

Health and Wellbeing is extremely important to us and is a core part of our curriculum. This month we finished up our topic on People who Help Us. We carried out wonderful solo talks about someone we know who has a job helping people. Mrs Simpson was delighted with us. She said we had prepared so well and we demonstrated lots of confidence. We made sure we were a super audience when others had a chance to speak, and asked lots of super questions when they were finished. More recently, we have been learning about the importance of sleep. We read the story of ‘Sleeping Beauty’, thought about how we feel when we don’t get enough sleep and we designed cosy onesies for bedtime.

Our recent class topics have been Traditional Tales and Halloween. We especially enjoy purposeful play and the challenges we solve in carousel activities. We studied stories such as ‘Goldilocks’, ‘The Gingerbread Man’ and ‘The Three Little Pigs’. We loved making the pigs from the story, then creating houses made of Lego for the pigs to live in. Here are some of our favourite activities from Purposeful Play afternoons.

We understand the need for fresh air and exercise in Primary 2. We love to learn in an active way in the great outdoors. We have been great team players this month and worked so hard to earn lots of Beat the Street points for Holy Family Primary School. We also enjoyed the lovely Autumn weather and went on an Autumn walk to discover what we could hear, see, smell and touch.

Mrs Simpson is so proud of us for all our hard work. She said we should give ourselves a tap on the back as we have been successful learners this month. We can’t wait to start our new learning in November!

We have had a very busy month in Primary 1/2.

In maths we have been working on time, addition, subtraction and data handling. Our counters group have been adding to 20 and have been using a variety of concrete materials to help them to explore subtraction. They enjoyed this simple game which they could play at home too.

We have also been learning about tally marks and horizontal/vertical bar charts. The children enjoyed finding out what flavour of ice cream their friends like best then creating their own bar chart. Here is one of our Cubes group members completing a bar chart.

Within literacy, the children have been making good progress through the Active Literacy programme and have spent time revising previously taught phonemes as well as learning some new ones. The children enjoy partner spelling and the games we play to help us learn. Here is one successful learner who was able to match sounds to words which contain the sounds.

The children have also been working on instructions in Taught Writing. They wrote their own recipe for an Ice Cream Sundae as part of their Seaside topic. They also made their own Rainbow Fish and wrote instructions for Primary 1 to use when they made theirs.  Here is one of our budding artists showing off his Rainbow Fish.

One of our favourite times of the week is when we choose Star Writers each week. Here are a couple of our superstars in May.

We are really enjoying our topic in primary 1/2 and have participated in a wide range of lessons about the Seaside. We enjoyed our Seaside purposeful play when we were asked to design a new lighthouse for the lighthouse keeper. They children designed lighthouses using playdough and lego. They also created a pattern for their lighthouse and measured pictures of lighthouses. We had a ball being designers for the day.

We also showed off our creativity when we made octopus for our Seaside display in class.  Our topic wall looks awesome!

In Science, the children have been learning about living and non-living things. We also explored the habitats of living things. Here are some pupils matching a variety of habitats to the animals that live there.

We are ending May with our Health/Eco Week. The children have been busy sprucing up their playground. They did some weeding and will plant new seeds in our planters. This will ensure the playground looks beautiful in the next few weeks.

What a month we have had in Primary 1 / 2. We have had so much fun preparing for Christmas and learning all about the Nativity story.

We have had a special visitor in our class for the past few weeks – Snowball the Elf. Snowball has been a little bit cheeky sometimes. We laughed when he spilled the paper out of our paper recycling bin. We also enjoyed when he brought us a lovely story to read and asked us to write a letter to Santa. Our letters were amazing so fingers crossed they have reached the North Pole. Here are some pictures of us posting our letters to Santa.

We have also created lots of fabulous Christmas artwork in December. We have made penguins, Christmas puddings and Christmas cards to name a few. Mrs Simpson is delighted that our work is getting so neat.

Our target this month was to learn lots about the Nativity story. We have achieved this target by reading stories, story sequencing and doing artwork. We made lovely Advent promises and learned about the Advent wreath.

One of the highlights for our month was our Christmas Jumper Day. Look at how smart we all looked.

We loved our Christmas party. At the party we played ‘Pin the Carrot on the Snowman’ and the paper plate game. We did lots of party dancing and enjoyed a lovely snack. Our favourite bit was when Santa wrote us a letter and delivered some lovely treats to our class when we were out.

Looking back over the past few months we are so proud of everything we have achieved. This has been a very unusual year in our school but we have tried hard to follow the rules and still managed to work extremely hard. Mrs Simpson says we deserve a lovely rest with our families now it’s almost holiday time.

Looking ahead to 2021, we have so much to look forward to. We will continue to make lots of progress within literacy and numeracy as well as having lots of fun learning in other curricular areas.

Mrs Simpson and Primary 1 / 2 wish our families, friends, parish and school community a very happy and holy Christmas. We look forward to the year ahead and all the new things we will accomplish.

November has been so exciting in Primary 1 / 2. We have been working so hard and have learned lots.

In maths we have been working on Measure. We used a variety of different items to measure things on our desks. We also measured a huge octopus in the playground using our feet. We made estimations then compared our estimations to how long the octopus tentacles actually were.

We also weighed items from our desks using a pan balance and compared what items were lighter or heavier.

The Cubes group have also been working on ordering numbers to 10 and number names, and The Counters have worked so well on numbers to 100!

Within Literacy we have continued to work on new sounds and words. We have been learning how to do partner spelling and thought of lots of strategies to remember our common words. Within Writing, we have been working hard on narrative work and have produced some fantastic stories. We have even learned how to self-assess our work. Here are some of our Star Writers for November.

We have learned lots of new reading comprehension tasks recently and are getting so good at completing them independently. Here is one of our star pupils showing off her Beginning, Middle and End task.

During the Month of the Holy Souls we remembered those who have died and we thought about those people every day during prayers. We learned the Eternal Rest prayer and drew lovely pictures to remember them. We also learned about some Bible Stories this month; Jonah and the Whale and Noah’s Ark. We completed a variety of tasks and thought about how those stories could help us to be better people. We made our own Noah’s Ark with all the animals inside. Here are some of them on display in our classroom.

We have been working on three mini topics this month in our class; Bonfire Night/Fire Safety, Winter and Looking after the Planet. We loved hearing stories about Winter and our Winter Purposeful play sessions. where we enjoyed building ice castles for Elsa and writing our common words in the snow.

We also reflected on the story ‘The Lorax’ and thought about how we could help look after our planet too. Mrs Simpson is impressed as we are doing our bit to save the planet by always using our blue recycling paper bin in class.  The children have lots of other hints and tips to share with their grown-ups at home too!

Within Health and Wellbeing the children have been learning yoga. We have been learning to develop our strength, balance and confidence through lots of yoga poses. We understand that yoga can make us feel calmer and help us to regulate our emotions.

Some children have been finding homework tricky since we moved to our digital model. If you cannot find the homework, simply search for ‘Holy Family Primary and Nursery Class Glow Blog’ on Google. You select the first suggestion that appears which will take you directly to the correct website.

Each class has an individual tab at the top of the screen which you click on to select the current week’s homework. Please see photo as a guide.

If you have any questions or cannot find the homework, please either ask on Teams or write a note in your child’s diary. I have supplied a jotter for homework which should be handed in on Thursdays. Sumdog and Glow details were supplied again last week. They can be found inside your child’s diary. Homework is a very helpful tool for parents as this allows them to see what the children have been learning in school. It is also beneficial for pupils as it allows them to revise previously taught work.

We have been reflecting on November in class and the children have been thinking about the target they were set in their Learning Journeys. Please complete these at home with your child. Our new target for December is to reflect on the Nativity story. Please keep an eye on Twitter to see the children learning about the birth of our Lord.

Keep working hard primary 1/2. You are doing so well!

We have had a fabulous month of new learning in primary 1 / 2. We have continued to work hard on learning our new school routines and have tried so hard to show great behaviour and work. Mrs Simpson thinks we are superstars. Our Rainbow Reward chart, Class Dojo and winning lots of Golden Tokens encourage us to do our best every day.

Within literacy we have made excellent progress within the Active Literacy programme. We have learned lots more sounds and have been learning to use the sounds we learn to build new words.

Our reading is constantly improving . We have read lots of interesting reading books and have enjoyed learning a variety of Read to Write tasks. We love completing Sticky Sentences. This is where we sequence jumbled up sentences. We have created lots of interesting pieces of writing this month also. We have been learning about recounts and have enjoyed creating our own. We have written about our October holiday and a Halloween story recount. We have been trying hard to assess our own work by becoming Charlie Checkers. We have been checking our work to ensure we have included capital letters, full stops, fingers spaces and that we are writing on the line. We carried out solo talks this month in class. We shared lots of interesting information with our new friends. Mrs Simpson said that we prepared very well and listened so well to others. Here is one of us carrying our our solo talks.

Within maths, the Cubes group have made an excellent start to Addition. The Counters group have been working on Subtraction. Both groups have been using concrete materials to help them understand these concepts. We love practising our number formation on our ‘Show Me’ boards. Mrs Simpson says we are getting good at counting forwards and backwards from a range of different numbers.

Our class has continued to develop their emotional literacy through Health and Wellbeing lessons. We especially enjoyed playing the Emotions board game where we had the opportunity to discuss times in our life when we felt a range of emotions.

Our topics this month have been Autumn and Halloween. We have participated in a wide range of lessons based on both topics. As well listening to spooky stories, we have had the opportunity to create various pieces of Halloween artwork. Our favourite was making 2D shape witches. We also enjoyed going on an Autumn treasure hunt. We were able to find lots of things relating to Autumn including lots of brightly coloured leaves which we used to make Autumn hedgehogs. We praised God for creating our beautiful Autumn world by creating Autumn leaves with praise words on them.

Mrs Simpson has been teaching us lots of Spanish in class. We have learned lots this month including a range of colours, some classroom commands and we can also bless ourselves. Our favourite game so far is Spanish Eye Spy.

We have continued with new sounds and common words within Literacy, and Mrs Simpson is very proud of all of our achievements. Within Taught Writing we have been using a different fairytale each week to help us write. We have been learning how to write letters and have written exciting letters to our friendly dragon, Elsa and the king of Fairyland.

Within Maths we have worked very hard on addition, subtraction, measure and money. It’s been a very busy month indeed. We love when we do our Maths stations and enjoy learning through play.

As we are still doing Fairyland as our topic we have enjoyed reading and acting out stories. We have also successfully created a variety of artwork based on Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella and The Three Billy Goats Gruff. Our classroom is looking fantastic with all our creations! The highlight of our month was when we arrived in school to find that our beanstalk had been started by the characters of Fairyland.

Within ‘This is Our Faith’ we have spent time thinking about Lent and how we can properly prepare ourselves for Easter. We thought of Lenten promises and ways we can spread God’s love.

Fairtrade is a topic which we have explored this month. We enjoyed learning about what it actually means. We also learned about how chocolate is made, and enjoyed designing our own chocolate bars. We made bunting for our class and also did some home baking for our Fairtrade coffee morning. Our Tiffin looked and smelled delicious. We hope our visitors enjoyed it.