The highlight of our busy week was starting the next part of our Wild Challenge with P1 and finding out all about worms and setting up our own Wormeries. On Wednesday afternoon we learned some worm facts – like worms have five hearts and are covered in tiny hairs – and then looked at some worms through our magnifying glasses to identify the different parts of their body. We then went outside on a worm hunt, using warm water and stamping on the ground to encourage them to come to the surface as well as looking under logs and stones. We found lots of worms in our outdoor classroom! We had a chat about being respectful to the worms, handling them as little as possible and returning them to where we found them.

In P1 this week we’ve also learned two double sounds – ee and or. The action for these sounds is to pretend we have donkey ears, and one of our activities was to make our own plasticine donkeys. The children did a great job of listening and following instructions and we were all very impressed with the finished result! We also made bees for the ‘ee’ sound and designed some shorts for ‘or’.

Also this week we’re continuing our subtraction work and have also been starting to think about numbers to 100. We’ve also been enjoying our play in the classroom – one group making a chain of 250 cubes!

We’re continuing our signing with Mrs Ryalls and are learning to sign along to an Easter song – check back again next week to see how we’re doing! 

Today in Primary 1 and 2/1 we began the next part of our Wild Challenge, setting up a class wormery. We started by talking about worm characteristics, thinking about how they move, what they look like, where we would find them, what they eat, the dangers they might face and why worms  are so important.

We looked at worms with our magnifiers and used our charts to help us identify the different parts of the worm’s  body. We then went on a worm hunt looking for places that worms might choose to live, under leaves, logs and in the soil. After we had studied them we put them back carefully.

As we carried out our activities we had to take turns to use the equipment, we had to share our ideas and listen to others.

We’ve made a good start with our Wild Challenge in P1 and P2/1. We’re regularly spotting chaffinches, great tits and blackbirds among many others on our bird table and in the playground.

On Tuesday afternoon we learned about what birds and other animals need – Shelter, Water, Air and Food (SWAF). We talked about where the birds could find each of these things and then made our own fat balls and kebabs for the children to take home for the birds where they live. The children have said the birds are eating the kebabs but they’re not too sure about the fat balls!

We had great fun with the fat balls in particular – squidgy, slimy and absolutely disgusting were just some of the words used to the describe the texture!

Also this week in phonics we’ve learned the long ‘oo’ (as in pool) and short ‘oo’ (as in book). We worked together to create a plasticine zoo, sharing our ideas with our friends and listening to other’s suggestions to all make a different animal. We’ve also been doing lots of reading and practising our key words.

In numeracy we’re continuing with subtraction and linking subtraction and addition facts.

Primary 1 and 2/1 starting working towards achieving  their  bronze certificate in the RSPB Wild Challenge.  We began by talking about SWAF, what animals and birds need to survive, SHELTER WATER AIR and FOOD. We thought about  how our school grounds provide this.

To help our playground birds we decided to put out water and bird food. We made bird kebabs by threading  apples, cheese, sultanas, and  strawberries onto wire and fat balls, which was a very messy job!

In primary 1 we have building subtraction facts.

Primary 1 had great fun on World Book Day. Throughout the day we shared lots of different stories, we did a fairytale quiz and went on a book trail around the school grounds.We made stick puppets of some of the characters from Chicken Licken and used them to retell the story and to create a new ending for the story.

Primary 1 have been continuing to focus on forming their lower case letters, thinking carefully about how to hold their pen and where to start each letter.

Primary 1 used oil pastels to create their own fox art.

After reading the story of Chicken Licken primary 1 chose the character of the fox to write about. We thought of different words to describe to fox and what we had learnt about his character from the story. We then used these words to help us write sentences about the fox. Before we wrote our sentences we said them out loud thinking about all the little words that we needed to link our ideas.

Primary 1 have been learning the ch and the ck sound. We have been reading and building words using these sounds. We enjoyed listening to the story of Chicken Licken and made our own chick to help us learn  our new sounds.