This week in P2/1 we’ve been working around the weather to get the garden ready for our planting. We’ve been weeding, talking about what plants need to grow and have discussed what we might plant. We’re continuing to look after the wormery and the compost bin and are looking forward to getting some compost to help our plants.

In our greenhouses on the classroom window we’ve been excited to see that many of our mange tout seeds have now germinated! We will now plant these in the garden where (we hope) some might be ready before the end of term.

We’ve had lots of play in the classroom this week. The children turned the building blocks into our very own cinema. They made tickets and designed posters and were very excited when Mrs Ward joined us to watch a short film we had made.

In literacy this week we learned the ‘th’ sound. We linked this to stories with three in them, in particular the three little pigs, or our class favourite The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig. In our writing on Thursday we re-wrote the story in our own words, first describing the big bad pig and then writing about how he tried to blow the houses down. The houses were a little different to the traditional tale, being made of bricks, concrete and metal bars and chains, and the big bad pig needed the help of a sledgehammer, a pneumatic drill and some dynamite! We then had great fun working together to make a collage of each house and then retelling the story to make into a film for our class cinema. The children negotiated the roles and supported each other to remember their lines.

We’re continuing with our problem solving each week – this time the challenge was to make the longest marble run they could with just ten pieces. The children did a brilliant job of taking turns, listening to everyone’s ideas and working together to find the best way forward.

This week each group has to build a marble run. They have to build the longest marble run they can using only 10 pieces of run out of a possible 20. They have to begin by measuring and comparing the different pieces before fitting them together.

Primary 1 are continuing to watch the different birds visiting the bird table, it is always very busy with chaffinches, coal tits, robins, sparrows, great tits and blue tits. We also have a lot of pigeons and a blackbird! The oyster catchers are back on the school roof hopefully getting ready to lay their eggs.

Today we were being creative in our play, the girls made this beautiful bird out of the linking elephants!

It was so lovely to see everyone’s smiling faces last week. Everyone looked refreshed and ready to learn after the Easter break.

We have a busy few weeks ahead of us and if anyone is keen to follow up on anything or do a bit extra at home here is a little bit more information.

This week P4a’s root word spellings for this week are:
boil

foil

spoil

coin

boy

toy

annoy

joy

Your child will have a personalised list on their iPad. Please feel free to practise these at home.

In science we are looking at plants. So far we have looked at naming the various parts of plants and flowers. We have been learning about different types of pollination; wind and insect pollination as well as self pollination and cross pollination. We’ve been ‘busy bees’ distributing pollen around the various flowers in our garden. (P4 you can tell your families how that worked) and we will continue to look at: Fertilisation and dispersal, What plants need, Plant adaptation and the life cycle of a plant.

We have been revising our times tables over the last couple of weeks and the children are doing really well – they beat me 10-1 in beat the teacher today!!!!
For the next couple of weeks we will be looking at missing number sums using all 4 number operations. Some examples:
23 + __ = 51
__ – 12 = 10
6 X __ = 18
42 __ 7 = 6

The children all have their Sumdog logins and should be able to access a wide range of maths (and literacy) activities from home.

Our pet monster stories are coming on beautifully and we can’t wait to share these with you.
Next week we are moving on to exposition writing and we are looking at an email that has been sent from a class of children to the local council.

We have been learning to use a thesaurus and we have been finding exciting synonyms for some standard everyday words. (e.g. nice)
In reading we have been exploring the difference between fact and opinion.

Our health and wellbeing focus is: Expect the unexpected and you should have all received an email with a flyer explaining all about this topic.

We are looking forward to a lovely final term in P4 and we will keep you updated over the coming weeks.

Last week we had to work together, in our group, to sort a set of  flowers. We decided to sort them in height order. We had to talk together about which was the longest and then the shortest. After comparing the flowers we arranged them.

We have been using our coins to make different amounts of money. Today we played a money game with our partner, we had to guess what coin our partner had by asking them different questions such as what colour is it? Is it round?

Primary 1 spent some time weeding in the garden this afternoon, getting it ready for planting.

Primary 1 and P2/1 have been putting their banana skins and apple cores into the compost bin. The dinner ladies have been giving us their fruit and veg peelings to put in our bin.

Enjoying healthy snacks at playtime!

The compost bin is filling up!

We’ve had a lovely sunny week back.  We’ve been looking at the ‘oa’ sound this week. On Monday we made plasticine boats and then tested to see whether they would float. Only three boats floated and we looked at what they had in common – thin walls, sides to hold air in and water out, no holes and a large surface area or a big bottom! We then tried again on Tuesday when many more boats floated.

Also for the ‘oa’ sound we’re writing a three part story about a goat with a new coat. We’re making up the story together. First the goat is walking through the forest in his new coat. Then he meets a pheasant with a twisted ankle! We’ll finish the final instalment next week. Today we made plasticine coats for goats, using tools to help us.

For the next part of our RSPB Wild Challenge we’ve started planting and composting. We’ve been saving our fruit peels and collecting the vegetable peels for the kitchen to feed to the worms in our compost bins. For our planting, first we are germinating seeds in the classroom in our makeshift green houses. We’re hoping the shoots will start sprouting soon. Next week we will start planting seeds in our school garden.

In numeracy this block we’ve moved on to money – looking at the different coins and adding them up. We’ve set up a book shop in the classroom to practise addition and subtraction when we’re paying for books and getting the correct change.

Some of the children’s highlight’s this week have been:

‘Writing the goat in the coat story.’

‘Reading the story about the fox who fixes things.’

‘Watching the assembly.’

‘Making the boats.’

It’s great to be back after the holidays! P7 have been enjoying being able to eat their packed lunched outside on the balcony or near the MUGA.

We’ve been straight back into learning with lots to keep us busy and engaged.  Here are a few of the things we’ve been up to this week:

• Learning about Grit and Resilience in our Online session with Jen and Ian from Live’n’Learn
• Identifying the features of a ‘Response’ Text
• Exploring a visual text and looking for themes/hidden messages
• An introduction to algebra and algebraic expressions and developing our ‘Maths Mindset’
• Converting and Understanding 12 and 24 hour times
• Learning correct terminology for parts of the body
• Researching life cycles of various plants and animals

Which of Skipper’s Tools have you used this week?

Here is a quick reminder: