We have had a very successful September, with the boys and girls becoming more independent during their school day and learning lots of new skills. We are learning more about the school and class routines and rules and are trying hard to follow these.

In literacy we have been continuing our active literacy programme and already know how to read and write s  a  t  p  I  and n. We have been listening to jolly phonics songs to help us to learn our sounds. You can access these on YouTube by searching for ‘jolly phonics songs in order’. Boys and girls, you can sing your songs for your families and teach them the actions! We have now learned 10 common words and we are continuing to practise these words every day in school and at home.

Our listening and concentration skills are improving every day. We are giving Oscar 5 when we come together as a class – eyes watching, mouth quiet, hands still, legs crossed/mountain/mermaid and ears listening. Keep up the great effort Primary 1!

We have introduced Star Writers to our classroom and we are working hard to meet our targets when we are over writing, under writing and writing on our own to get our work onto the classroom wall! We know that our letters have special places on the line and can tell if our letters are grass, ground or sky letters.

During our numeracy learning experiences we are continuing to learn how to read, write and count the numbers up to 5 and beyond. We are practicing our number formations every day and should do this at home too. We are learning more about numbers before/after and in between by using our number line. In the coming weeks we are going to learn even more about number stories and adding our numbers together to make a bigger number. To help us we will use lots of counting resources and have lots of fun!

Our class topic has been People Who Help Us and we have enjoyed talking about the people who help us in school, at home and in our community. We love learning about the emergency services and in particular the Police and Fire services. We even made our own Police vehicles. In class we have been talking about the importance of being safe when we are in the community, and how to be safe when crossing the road.

We are looking forward to another exciting month in Primary 1. We are so excited to be entering into October because we know this is an Autumn month and ends with Hallowe’en. Lots of fun to be had!

Welcome to our first update from Primary 1! At the end of each month, we will share some of the exciting things we have been learning in Primary 1.

The children have settled very well into school life and have been having lots of fun with new friends and buddies! We are beginning to remember our friend’s names and are playing so well together in the classroom and playground.

The boys and girls are learning to follow new routines and are working hard to take care of their own belongings when at school. The children are being supported in unpacking and packing their own bags, taking home their own reading book and making choices for lunch.

We have had our first PE learning experiences and our buddies helped us to get dressed into our PE kits. We will keep practising this and will get even faster at getting ready all by ourselves.

In literacy we have been working with our class puppet Oscar and he has been showing us how to sit well and concentrate when we are together at the front of the classroom during teaching time. This is helping us to develop our important listening skills. We have been exploring our reading books every week and using our reading fingers to read from left to right and jump underneath our words. We love reading books from our class library and sharing stories with our friends. We have met Percy the Park keeper and will be exploring lots of his stories over the coming months to help us to develop our skills in literacy.

We have been working hard on learning our numbers to 5 since starting school. The number puppy stories are helping us to learn the numbers 0-5 and we have been so busy learning how to read, write and count these numbers. We use lots of resources and play to help us to learn more about numeracy and mathematics in Primary 1. Ask us to tell you our number rhymes and songs at home.

On Friday we are attending our first whole school mass and we can’t wait to become part of the Holy Family Parish Community. We are going to listen Father Brown celebrate mass and talk about what we see and hear when we come back to school. We are so excited!

The month of May has been a busy one in Primary 1, with some lovely days off to recharge and then come back to school ready for our challenges. We have particularly enjoyed spending time with the nursery children who will join Holy Family in August and are looking forward to showing them what it looks like to be a big school boy/girl. We have been excellent role models so far and have had lots of fun playing with the children at the park and in the classroom.

Literacy

We are working so hard to learn all our phoneme sounds in Primary 1. So far we have learned sh, ch, th, ng, oo, ee, wh, ph, oy, ai and oa. We have been able to find our sounds in stories and recognised them when reading our books. When we are writing our wonderful sentences we are trying hard to include capital letters, finger spaces and full stops. We have learned about joining words and can add and, so, but and because to our great work too. What an achievement! At home we should continue to learn our common words, practise our sounds and reading to help us to keep up this great learning.

Mrs Stevenson has been delighted with the excellent listening and concentrating we have been doing during our literacy tasks. We really have gained some fantastic skills since joining the school. Well done Primary 1!

Numeracy

In Primary 1 we continue to extend our knowledge of numbers and are trying really hard to learn more about numbers beyond 20. Some of our class can even use the 100 square and count with 3-digit numbers. We have been practising adding and subtracting with numbers up to 20/30 and enjoy our daily challenges, like daily 10 and number of the day to help us to learn more. We like to talk about our mental strategies with our classmates and this can help us to share our great ideas and learn more about number.

We have been learning about sharing numbers equally and dividing amounts. Ask us to tell you what half looks, we know it looks like this ½ and can colour half of a shape.

We loved learning about time and are able to read o’clock on digital and analogue clocks. It has been fun learning about time in our daily lives and talking about time during our school day. Some boys and girls can read half past. At home we should keep practising this and if we have one, we could start to wear a watch to help us to learn more about time.

Interdisciplinary Learning

This term our class have been learning all about minibeasts. We have been hunting for minibeasts in the school grounds and have learned song, listened to stories and made mini beast crafts.

We have been visiting the ICT suite on a Thursday and have been learning how to log on to a laptop, navigate websites and use games to help our learning. Primary 1 have some excellent IT skills already and they will be very useful to us as move through the school.

In PE we have been enjoying the wonderful sunshine by getting outdoors and using all our equipment. We know how to use the different balls, racquets, hoops, bean bags safely and like to learn new skills every week.  We have been increasing our fitness to help us during our Sports Day. We enjoyed attending the Nursery Sports Day to cheer on our friends and can’t wait for our turn in a few weeks.

We have been learning how to be safe in the sunshine and all about being safe in and around the water as the summer months approach.

We have been practising all of our prayers in class and our hymn singing has been wonderful. All the children have been really trying to sing out loud during our celebrations of mass. Keep up the great work boys and girls!

As we begin our last month of Primary 1, we are beginning to think about own personal targets for moving forward into Primary 2. We are so excited to be moving to our new class after the big Summer break.

On returning to school after our Easter break, we have been delighted to have Miss Walker working with us in Primary 1. She will be with our class for most of the month of May. We are really enjoying working with Miss Walker and all the fun and exciting learning experiences she has planned for us.

Literacy

In Literacy we have begun to learn our phoneme sounds and have looked at phoneme stories and become text detectives to find our phoneme words. We continue to use our skills in reading and writing to explore our phoneme sounds and words. So far, we have learned ch, th, sh, ng, oo and ee. Ask us to spell some words with these sounds or find them in books at home.

We are continuing to build our classroom word wall with the common words that we have learned so far in Primary 1. In class we read, write, make our words every day from magnetic letters and other materials. At home we should continue to learn our words and practise them every night.

We are learning how to write short, independent sentences. When we write independently, we are being encouraged to use capital letters, finger spaces and full stops. Some of our class can write independent sentences using joining words like and, so, but and because. Great job!

In class we enjoy listening to and reading stories and talking about what we have read with our friends. This month we have been able to ask questions about the texts we share and like to share our opinions on the texts that we read. When we read at home ask us to sound out each sound and blend the sounds together (eg c – a – t , cat). This will help us to improve our reading fluency.

Numeracy

In Primary 1 we continue to extend our knowledge of numbers and are becoming confident when discussing numbers beyond 20. We have been practising adding and subtracting with numbers up to 20 and enjoy our daily challenges, like daily 10 and number of the day to help us to learn more. We like to talk about our mental strategies with our classmates and this can help us to share our great ideas and learn more about number. Some of our friends are counting up to 100 and can talk about numbers before, after and in between. Fantastic job Primary 1!

We have begun our Time block and are learning how to tell the time. So far, we have talked about analogue o’clock time and we will continue to learning more about this in the coming weeks. We will be playing time games, making our own clocks, and having fun! At home we could look at clocks and talk about time with our families.

Interdisciplinary Learning

This term our class have been learning all about the Seasons and in particular Spring. Ask us to sing our ‘Spring is Here’ song for you at home. We have enjoyed looking for signs of spring in our environment and have begun to learn more about Minibeasts. We have been on our Minibeast hunt and found lots of different creatures outdoors. We have learned about the life cycles of the caterpillar/butterfly and enjoyed listening to the story of the Very Hungry Caterpillar. We are looking forward to learning more about minibeasts and working on our classroom display.

In Primary 1 we are showing a keen interest in learning more about the human body. We will be learning more about our body parts and organs in the coming weeks. In PE w will be preparing our bodies and updating our skills for our Sports Day activities.

Our Muslim friends have been celebrating Eid Mubarak this month and we have really enjoyed learning all about Ramadan and Eid celebrations. Thank you to our friends for sharing their knowledge of their faith with us so well. You are all stars! In the coming weeks we will be learning more about Mary, as May is the month dedicated to Our Lady. We will continue to practise the Hail Mary prayer and learn more about the mother of Jesus. We will attend first Friday mass this week and look forward to celebrating with our whole school community.

Primary 1 January Update

Happy New Year from Primary 1! We have settled back into our school routine and have been thinking about our new year targets and resolutions. With our friends we are continuing to learn to co-operate with others, listen carefully and take turns,

Literacy

In Literacy we have continued to learn our alphabet sounds. We have almost learned the whole alphabet and our next step will be phoneme letter sounds (eg ng, sh, ch) to help us to read and write with even more confidence. We work so hard during our school day to learn our sounds and take part in games and daily challenges, sometimes even beat the teacher!

We are continuing to build our classroom word wall with the common words that we have learned so far in Primary 1. In class we read, write, make our words every day from magnetic letters and other materials. At home we should continue to learn our words and practise them every night.

We are learning how to write short, independent sentences. When we write independently, we are being encouraged to use capital letters, finger spaces and full stops. Some of our class can write a sentence and include a joining word (and, so, but). Fantastic work Primary 1!

In class we enjoy listening to and reading stories and talking about what we have read with our friends. This term our target it to ask some questions about the stories we hear and to learn more about sharing our thoughts and opinions with our classmates and teachers.

Numeracy

Primary 1 love learning about numbers, and we have been extending our number knowledge by learning all about teen numbers. We are learning how to read, write and count numbers to 20. Some of us are confident in reading number names and this is something we are continuing to work on. We are becoming very quick at reciting our number stories up to 10 and can add numbers in our heads from 0-10. This term we are going to be learning more about subtraction and will be able to subtract from 5 and then 10.

In addition to our number work we are going to be learning all about Money and this is something that we can practise at home with our families. We want to learn how to recognise coins up to 20p and be able to add small amounts of coins to buy from our class shop.

Interdisciplinary Learning

Our class learned all about Robert Burns this month. We liked hearing the funny Scots language and we thought it was very funny that Mr Creilly uses lots of these words at school! We had so much fun learning our Scottish Song ‘Oh you cannae shove your granny off the bus’ and we performed this at our Burns Assembly. The whole school performed for each other, we clapped and sang along. It was brilliant!

Our topic for this term is Under the Sea. We began our topic by talking about the things that we already know about under the sea, then we made a plan together about the things we would like to do or find out about. The children really wanted to learn about sharks. We were looking forward to showing our families our shark hats that we made this week! Over the coming weeks we are going to learn lots of interesting facts about sea creatures and life under the sea.

August ’22 Update – Primary 1

Hello and welcome to our first update from Primary 1! At the end of each month, we will share some of the exciting things that we have learned in Primary 1 and some photographs so that our families can see us having fun at school. The children have settled very well into school life and have been having lots of fun with new friends!

The boys and girls are learning to follow new routines and are working hard to take care of their own belongings when at school. The children are being supported in unpacking and packing their own bags, taking home their own reading books, and making choices for lunch. We are learning to change into our PE clothes and back into our uniforms, this is something we must keep practising at home with our families. Here we are enjoying PE with our P6 friends.

In Literacy we are learning to use good listening skills. Percy the Park Keeper has come to our class to help us to do good sitting and concentrating. We take turns to listen to our friends and share our thoughts and stories. We listened to Percy’s book ‘The Rescue Party’ and talked about the story with Percy. He asked us to make a book with our name and things we like. We loved becoming authors! Percy will be coming to visit us with different books in Primary 1.

Our Smart pal helps us to practise our letter and number formations. We use these in the morning to help us to focus and concentrate. Every day we practise writing our names too, even in the playground with chalk.

We have been learning how to form our numbers in Primary 1. We read the number puppy stories and talk about what our numbers look like and how to write them. We can count together in 1’s, forwards and backwards. So far, we can read, write, and count 0,1,2 and 3.

The month of March has been a very busy one for Primary 1. We have been working very hard but also having lots of opportunities for fun!

We started the month with World Book Day. On this day we dressed up as our favourite book characters or in our pyjamas. We brought our favourite books in to share with our friends and talked about why we liked them. We made bookmarks and read books with our buddies. The highlight of our day was the ‘booknic’ that we had in the hall. We took our blankets and relaxed with our friends from other classes, read books and heard a story being read aloud. What a fantastic day we had!

We have been learning more about how to write our own stories. We are able to use a plan to choose a When, Where, Who and What for our own imaginative stories and are creating fantastic characters! We are working very hard to include our core targets when we are writing independently. We must remember to include capital letters, finger spaces, full stops and write all of our words on the jotter lines. Keep working so hard Primary 1!

In spelling we have been learning our phoneme sounds and we can read and write words that have sh, ch, th and ng in them. Great job! We must continue to learn all of our common words at home so that we can read, write and spell them when we are making our sentences. Our teachers are so pleased with our hard work and can see that some children are reading books at home and doing lots of extra homework. Fantastic!

Primary 1 are really enjoying our number work this month because we are completing chilli challenges using adding and subtracting. We are becoming so confident when asked to complete our challenges and we do not give up if we find something tricky. We are learning to count in 2’s, 5’s and 10’s. We now know odd and even numbers and are able to sequence numbers from highest to lowest/lowest to highest. Ask us to try to count to 100 – some of us can even do that! We like to count to 100 together, during circle time, so that we can listen for the big numbers before and after.

We have enjoyed learning about volume and shape this month. After our holiday we are going to be focusing on Time and this is something that we are excited and to learn more about. If you have a watch at home maybe you could even wear it to school to help you learn more about time.

In RME we have been learning about Lent and have taken part in lots of different Lenten activities. We know that during lent we focus on almsgiving, prayer and fasting. We made Lenten promises and have tried really hard to stick to them. With the rest of the school we have raised important funds for charity and had fun while we are doing so. We came to school with crazy hair/ mad scientist, a p7 funday and cake and candy. We can talk about the Easter Story and have been learning about why Easter is so important to us. We are looking forward to our Easter Eggs on Easter Sunday!

It really has been a very fun month for us. Here are some photographs of the highlights. We really enjoyed Science and Eco Week, making empire biscuits and pancakes with our buddies.

We are looking forward to our Easter holiday and spending time with our families. See you in April!

Primary 1 February Update

Welcome to our February update. This month we had a lovely holiday from school which allowed us to rest, recharge and spend time with our friends and family. Here are some of the things we have been working on in Primary 1 this month.

In Numeracy we have been continuing to learn more about numbers. We have been focussing on teens numbers and have been practising reading, writing and counting 11-20. It is important that we remember a teen number is made up of a ten and units. In Primary 1 we can even count up to 100 and beyond. We asked to learn more about big numbers and have been exploring a 100 square to learn even more. Your teachers are so proud of you, Primary 1!

We especially enjoyed learning a number song to help us remember all of the special things we can do with numbers. Here we are singing our number song with a little help from the teacher. Ask us to sing it for you at home.

We are continuing to learn about money and counting coins to make amounts. This is something that we could work on at home to help us to understand money even more. It can be a little bit tricky to add lots of coins together to make an amount up to 20p. Keep practising Primary 1! Our next challenge will be to learn how to tell the time. Show us clocks at home and see if we can tell you what time school starts and ends.

In Literacy we have been so excited because we have now learned every single sound of the alphabet! We can say the sounds name, what it sounds like and use our alphabet sounds in lots of different words when reading and writing. Ask us at home to recognise and write some of our letter sounds and you will be so surprised. Our next challenge will be to learn our phoneme sounds (eg sh, wh, th) but we are feeling very confident! Our teachers have asked us to remember to practise our reading books every single night at home. This will help us to become even better at reading our books and recognising our sounds and words. Here we are doing our partner read in class.

Lots of the boys and girls in our class can now write sentences independently and our teachers are asking us to ‘have a go’ when we try to spell uncommon words. We know that it doesn’t matter if we make mistakes because that is how we learn and get even better. When we are writing we have a special personal dictionary where we can write words that we would like to use in our writing. Our teachers help us to fill it with lots of great words! We know that we must keep practising our common words so that we can use them in our writing and when we are reading too. Here we are having fun and practising in class.

In Primary 1 we love to get outdoors and explore our surroundings. We have been learning all about creation and how God created everything, including the animals and birds. So, when the RSPB asked us to take part in a school big bird watch we couldn’t wait to get started! Here we are recording what we found in our environment. We were really surprised by all of the different types of birds that we could see.

We have been continuing to learn about Scotland and in particular about castles, famous Scottish Artists and Scottish food. We are planning to make our very own McCoo after learning about the Artist Steven Brown and some delicious empire biscuits.

We are very excited about the coming weeks as we have lots of things to look forward to at school. Next week is Shrove Tuesday and our P7 buddies are going to make us delicious pancakes. During lent we have special activities at school every week. 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. We will really enjoy reading lots of different books and have great fun with our P7 buddies and friends.

See you in March for another update!

Happy New Year from Primary 1! We were excited to get back to school, to see our friends and get back to our learning. To begin 2022 we talked about the things that we would like to get better at in our learning. We talked about this with our friends and teachers.

In Literacy we have been continuing to learn our alphabet sounds. We only have 4 sounds left to learn until we know all of them! We need to continue to work on our sounds at home to make sure we know them very well. Our magnetic boards help us to use our sounds to build words. Lots of our children can now read independently and Mrs Stevenson and Mrs Byrne are delighted that the children use their reading finger to jump from word to word, read from left to write and sound out their letters to blend/read their words. Fantastic work! We love reading and pick stories from our library every day. We are learning to write sentences independently and can write our own ideas in our stories. Our teachers remind us to write on the line, use finger spaces and full stops. We are continuing to learn more about capital letters and how to use them in our sentences. Here we are working hard on our literacy tasks.

In Numeracy we have been continuing to learn more about numbers. Some of us can even count all the way to 100! We are learning to count in 2’s, 5’s and 10’s. Ask us to show you how we can do this at home. Our teachers have been helping us to remember to write our numbers facing the correct way. We need to practise this every day. We have been learning all about money and can recognise coins up to £2. Over the next few weeks we are going to learn even more about adding coins, giving change and playing in our shop. Mrs Byrne has been helping us to learn more about measuring and we have had so much fun measuring in the classroom and playground.

We love to be healthy in Primary 1! We talk about how we feel every day and ‘check-in’ with our adults to talk about our emotions. Fuzzy Wuzzy our worry monster eats up all of our worries so that we can be happy and healthy at school. We have been enjoying getting fit and working as a team to play games and improve our skills. We created our own games and made rules for our friends to follow.

In RME we have been learning about how God created our world for us. We know that God created the seasons, plants and animals.  We will continue to learn about the 4 seasons that God created and thank God for his wonderful gifts. During our prayer time we are continuing to learn the Our Father, Hail Mary and praying the rosary together. We are very good at saying our Holy Family Prayer. Ask us to say our prayers at home to help us get even better at them.

We have chosen Scotland as our topic for this term and have enjoyed learning about Scottish Hogmanay. We talked about Scottish traditions and why Hogmanay is special for us. With our teachers we planned what we like to learn about during this topic. Mrs Stevenson’s dad let us borrow lots of exciting Scottish artefacts that we loved learning more about. Our favourite thing was the plaque with William Wallace on it.

We asked to learn about the Loch Ness Monster first. Here are our very own Nessie’s!

On 25^th January we had a Burns celebration with our friends. We enjoyed Tunnock teacakes and some country dancing. We learned all about the Scottish Poet Robert Burns. After listening to 2 of Burns’ famous poems we coloured in some pictures of a rose and a mouse. We thought some of the Scots language was very funny and we are going to learn more about this.

We hope you enjoyed our update this month and will look forward to sharing what we get up to in February!

The boys and girls in Primary 1 have been very busy learners in the month of November. Here are some of our highlights.

In Literacy we have been learning more alphabet sounds and we now know an amazing 15 sounds! We are using our magnetic boards and letters to help us to build our words. Using the 5 finger approach, we say/make/break/read and write our words. Here we are being independent learnings during our literacy tasks.

Primary 1 children love to read! We were really excited to bring back our classroom library and have had so much fun exploring the different genres and authors. Some of our children have learned to read independently and can blend the sounds to read words. What successful learners! We are using our stepping stones to help us to look at the first letter in a word and other special tricks to make reading easier.

For Book Week Scotland our buddies came to read to us. We really enjoyed listening to different stories and having fun with our friends from upstairs.

In Primary 1 we can now read, write and count the numbers to 10. We have been learning lots of new strategies during our numeracy time that help us to add our numbers and we love to use all of our concrete materials to help us with this. Adding is so much fun! We like to play number games and beat the teacher. We have been learning more about shapes and measuring too.

We love music and dancing in Primary 1. Our friend from Primary 7 came to play his instrument and we had a concert. We were so delighted to learn more about the accordion and listen to the wonderful music. Thank you!

On Remembrance Day we took part in lots of activities that helped us to learn more about Poppy Scotland. We made poppy crafts and prayed for the people that fought in war. We also prayed for the holy souls and our loved ones who are no longer with us.

We know how to be safe in Primary 1. We learned all about firework and bonfire safety when it was Guy Fawkes. We learned the story of Guy Fawkes and created our own firework pictures.

Here we are celebrating the feast of St Andrew. We wore tartan and Scottish clothing to school. We learned all about our Patron Saint and had lots of fun eating shortbread and dancing to ceilidh music.

As it is now Winter we have been investigating the changes that happen to our environment during this season. We went on a Winter walk with our friends and spotted lots of signs of Winter.

We have been working really hard to prepare for our Nativity show ‘Wriggly Nativity’ with our friends in Primary 2 and 3. Primary 1 have all been given a role to play and we are really looking forward to our show being posted on the Holy Family Youtube channel. Our singing and dancing is amazing!

December is going to be a very exciting month for us and we can’t wait for all of the festivities. Look out for our photographs on Twitter!