This morning we used our magnetic boards to practise our phoneme “ai”.  We love working with our partners to help us learn.  In the afternoon we were practising our Scottish dancing.  We hope we can do it at our Christmas party.  A big thank you to Kayla Agnew for a piece of her delicious birthday cake!

Today p2 were challenged to decorate a Christmas tree and make the design symmetrical.  It seems we have a class full of symmetry experts because the results were fantastic!  The pupils got a chance to peer assess their partner’s work to check if they had fulfilled all our success criteria.  (These are a few of our “buzz words” in school – your children should be able to explain what they mean).  Well done p2!

To keep warm we have been using our brain energy. We have all read our new books very well today and are becoming more fluent and expressive readers. We are discovering new phonemes all the time and some silent letters ( what are they all about?).

This afternoon we tried the bgfl interactive keyboard and had great fun making up tunes using the sounds of different instruments- the pan pipes and steel drums are brilliant.

In number we were finding the correct coins to match the value of items.

 

Why not try this at home with real coins? Have a lovely weekend everyone and keep warm.

 

At last a dry day when we could go for a listening walk! Last week we had a listen out for sounds inside the school as we were walking to another classroom. Today we walked in the school grounds and listened for different sounds, this is what we heard:

There are sounds that we like and some that we don’t like. What are your favourite sounds?

We used the outdoor classroom to listen to noises from the road.

 

How heavy are coins? We compared the weights of coins up to £1.

We agreed that the heaviest was £1, but is 1p or 5p the lightest? It was difficult to decide without using weighing equipment.

Continuing our learning all about sound, we listened to an orchestra tuning up and to the strange sounds that it made. We then learned about the different sections of the orchestra: brass, strings, woodwind and percussion and some of the instruments in each section.

Next we began an experiment exploring how different sounds are created. Look at our learning in these photos-

 

It’s amazing what you can learn by putting different sized elastic bands around different junk!  Some of us used our non-fiction reading books too to link different types of learning together. I wonder what we will use for our next experiment?

In primary 2 this term we will be looking at ways in which people celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah.  We will find out why people celebrate these festivals and in what ways they are similar and different.  We started today with ways people celebrate Christmas and we even decorated our class tree!  (I KNOW it’s only November – sorry!)

Homework from 17/11/15 until 27/11/15

Language

Phonemes

We have been learning the phonemes ay and ai saying A as in play and sail

Homework ideas:

• Create rhyming patterns and poems using ay and ai words.
• Write phoneme words in the shower or in bath bubbles
• Look for the phoneme in your reading books and any other texts – comics, recipes, instructions etc. and print in the environment; signs in shops, street signs, etc.

Try these games to reinforce spelling/phoneme patterns

http://www.spellzone.com/games/

 

Common words:

Keep practising previous words and add in your new ones;

see, for, now, down, look,    too

he,   she,   we,   me,   be,   was

This is a great site for recognising sight and spelling words.

http://www.ictgames.com/wordreader.html

 

Onset and rime

We are continuing to practise the onset and rime revised and introduced so far this year:   at   an   ap   am   it   in   ab

• Why not time yourself to see how quickly you can think of 5 words for each set?
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/wordsandpictures/clusters/blender/game.shtml

 

Reading

A new reading book will usually be given each Friday. The days for reading are Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, so please make sure that pupils have their reading books in their bags so that they can complete reading activities.

• Look at the differences between fiction (story) and non-fiction (fact) books. How many differences can you find?
• Look for facts around the house. There will be notices on electrical goods, on food packaging and flyers through the door. Make a note of some facts that you have found in your jotter.
• http://www.crickweb.co.uk/Key-Stage-1.html Toys, past and present.   This non-fiction site includes a contents and index page.

Number

Talk about money

Discuss with your child at home or at the shops about how you use money. Encourage your child to choose an example and record this in drawings and/ or pictures.

Using coins

Ask your child to choose an item from a shop with a price shown on the item. Ask children to record the coins that could be used to pay exactly for this item. Can they make up a different combination for the same total? At first choose prices up to 20p, increase the price if your child is confident totalling to a higher number.

 

Price list

Ask children to choose a type of shop and think of items that the shop is likely to sell. They think of three items costing less than £5 and three items costing more than £5. They write these in order from lowest to highest price to make a price list for the shop.

Here are some websites that you may find useful to use with me!

Money Splat – http://www.ictgames.com/moneysplat.html

Price Challenge – http://www.ictgames.com/moneypayer.html

Interdisciplinary Learning

We have been learning how sound is created and how we can make different sounds. There will be more experiments during this fortnight showing how we can change the pitch of sounds.

Try this site – it is amazing for budding musicians

http://www.bgfl.org/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks2/music/piano/index.htm

The children will be making a musical instrument model as one of the next homework tasks and bringing it into class to talk about it, so please start to collect any suitable junk materials.

Remember to tell us about any games you have played on the computer or any other ways that you have been developing your skills for homework.

Everyone had great fun today learning about Children In Need and how we can all help children who need support.  Primary 1 and 2 rotated around 3 activities in different classrooms with different teachers. We learned a song with dance moves and some freestyle opportunities. We created an eye patch for Pudsey- some of these are still drying, so will be given out next week. There was a hunt the Pudsey activity using clues and once the Bears were found, they gave clues to the Articles which relate to having : families, good food, healthcare, education, time to relax and play and finally shelter. All of the children in P2 have a great awareness of the needs of others. Thank you to everyone for their support today. Have a great weekend and we will see you on Tuesday.

 

UAfter a busy day, we had the chance to use percussion instruments in class. We were in three groups: the tappers, the shakers and the jingles/ others.

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We tried to play in time with our song and in sections. We were getting the hang of counting the beats and were very enthusiastic.

We had a show and tell of some models that had been made. The children spoke very well about how they had made their models, what they had used and any problems that they had to sort out.

If anyone else has a model that they would like to show us, then please bring it in- we would love to see it.

 

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This afternoon we were starting to learn about money- how we get it and ways that we can pay for things.

We took part in an experiment about sound. We made string telephones.

We talked to our partners. We found out what happened if the sting was slack or the string was tight and whether the cardboard tubs were better than the yoghurt pots.

 

 

Why not try this at home? Can you tell what your partner is saying?