We’ve had a lovely week in Primary 2/1.

We started the week learning the signs for the characters in the Gruffalo with Mrs Ryalls. We then watched the story and learned lots more signs including ‘terrible!’

One of our highlights this week has been taking our plants home. We were astonished to see how much they had grown over the weekend! On Wednesday we wrote instructions about how to look after these at home – they can now be planted in the ground or in a bigger pot. We have been learning how plants need water, sunlight and the right temperature.

Our sound this week was ‘er’ and we have enjoyed reading the Tiger who came to Tea and making our own Rosseau inspired tigers. We painted the tigers using black paint, cut them out and then added tissue paper leaves.

We’ve also being doing lots of reading this week – by ourselves, in our groups and to a grown up. We have also been sharing books with children in different reading groups.

We’ve had lots of fun this week learning about the benefits of walking for Walk to School week. We’ve been enjoying the videos and powerpoints from the JRSOs introducing a different superhero each day – we’ve had Super Strong, Super Smart, Super Smiley, Super Safe and Super Sustainable.

On Wednesday we worked together at our tables to draw a map of Peebles and discussed our different routes to school. We talked about safe places to cross and all of the lovely things we see on our walks to school.

At the end of the week we had great fun tinkering with the beebots. On Thursday we learned how to program them to go through or around obstacles and this morning we put them on our map and instructed them to go for a drive around Peebles!

This week we’ve also been planting, learning the ‘ue’ sound and writing about the rabbit in the school playground. In numeracy we’re continuing our work on subtraction and linking addition and subtraction facts. The children’s highlights include:

• Writing about the rabbit in the garden
• Playing with the beebots
• Planting pumpkins in the garden
• Making statues (for ‘ue’)
• Pressing the buttons on the beebots
• Drawing the statues
• Sharing and taking turns with the beebots

Primary 1 spend time everyday reading either with Mrs Collins, on their own, with their group, or reading with a partner.

Last week we were busy in the garden, more weeding and planting our runner beans.

This week in P2/1 we’ve been learning about sunflowers – we planted our own, drew very detailed black pen pictures and wrote a descriptive piece about their life cycle. We also did a sunflower collage in art that we’ve put up in the corridor.

This morning we planted some lettuce in the school garden and are keeping a close eye on the radish that we’ve already planted. Our mangetout seeds have germinated in the windows and the runner beans will shortly be coming home for the children to continue growing there.

This week we’ve also learned the ‘ie’ sound, as in tie, pie and fries.  In numeracy we’re coming to the end of our work on money, this week focusing on subtraction. We’re continuing our problem solving, this week using our communication skills to decide how to sort shapes.

In health and wellbeing we’ve been talking a lot about how things are constantly changing and while some change is expected, like moving house, some isn’t, like the coronavirus. We used the seasons as a starting point and then in circle time thought about what else is changing – we realised how much we are all changing – from height to hair to wobbly teeth to our intelligence!

In circle time we have been discussing how things change. We talked about the changes we have in our life such as getting older, starting school, moving house.

This year we have all  had to deal with many changes in our lives because of Covid-19.

Changes can make us feel happy or excited but sometimes they make us feel sad or worried. We thought about things we have in our “tool box” that we could use when had to face change that makes us anxious. We could ask our back up team for help, or stop and take a moment or we could use our peace button.

We read the story of The Koala  Who Could about Kevin the koala who learnt to deal with change and overcome his worries. 

This week we planted sunflowers. We talked about what our seeds would need to grow. We put our seeds into the compost and then we put them on the windowsill so they could get the warm sunlight. We now need to remember to  water them everyday.

We have been using our knowledge of doubles to help us with our subtraction.

This week our new sound was ie as in tie, pie, lie and magpie.

We’ve had a busy week of planting this week. On Tuesday we planted runner beans in pots and this morning we planted radish in the school garden.

We’ve also enjoyed learning the ‘ou’ sound this week and had lots of fun making a mouse in a house.

Some of our  highlights this week include:

• Making mice – Arthur
• Planting – Amber
• Making a house for a mouse – Finlay D
• I liked learning the ‘ou’ sound – Brooke
• Planting with Mrs Thomson – Daniel