We’ve had another great day with a very funny story! Today we read the story of Inch and Grub, two friends who try to outdo each other with their bigger houses and advancing technology until they see the error of their ways and see life was better when they lived in their caves and were friends.

This morning we looked at some cave paintings and then we tried our own. We used sandpaper as it felt like a little like stone, and carefully drew around some animals. We talked about how cavemen couldn’t pop to the shops or order paint from Amazon – they had to make their own! So we collected some dirt from our school garden, ground it up and removed the stones. We added water to get it to the right consistency. We then cheated a little by adding a little bit of red paint to get the colour we wanted.

First we painted our animal and then we used a template of our hands to draw around the outside. They worked really well, and was only a little messy!

This afternoon we looked again at Inch and Grub’s wobbly towers of belongings. We talked about building towers and got the foam bricks out.  We worked in groups of four and then all together to build the tallest and sturdiest tower. We worked hard to take turns and pretended we were on a real building site!

This afternoon in circle time we talked about how we could put things right if we fall out with our friends, like Inch and Grub did. We talked about being respectful, sharing and saying sorry.

Here are some photos from today:

Today we looked at another book in our book bag – My First Book of Woodland Animals.

We had fun reading about all of the animals and sharing our favourites. Then we all chose an animal and did a fact file. We drew the animal, their tracks and then with support wrote a fact.

This afternoon in reading time we looked at the hedgehog page and made our own plasticine hedgehogs. We thought about what a hedgehog has – a pointy nose, four legs and a little tail – and then added spikes. Mrs Wilson helped us collect leaves for our hedgehogs so they have somewhere cosy to hibernate.

Also this afternoon we also read a little more about the frog and started a frog picture. The first step was to sketch the frog. Next week we will paint it and cut it out.

Here are some photos from today:

Today we read Arlo, The lion who couldn’t sleep.

Arlo can’t fall asleep, he just can’t get comfortable. He meets an owl who sings him a relaxing song:

Think about the places where you’d like to be,

the things that you’d do there and what you might see.

Relax your whole body, slow your breathing right down,

imagine you’re sinking into the soft ground.

Today as we were listening to the words we felt ourselves feeling very sleepy and some of us even started yawning! We turned the lights off and had a little lie down and found the owl’s wise words helped us relax!

We talked about how grumpy we can be when we don’t get enough sleep and how cheerful we are (or not!) in the morning.

We then drew a black pen picture of a lion and together retold the story of Arlo and had a try at writing it. In our play we made beds and dens for Arlo.

Here are some photos from today:

For Book Week Scotland we’re looking at a different story each day.

Today we looked at The Last Wolf by Mini Grey. This year the whole school is looking at the same book and our taking inspiration from COP26 and looking at a book that encourages us to care for our environment.

In the story Little Red meets the last wolf, the last bear and the last lynx, who are staying together in a little house thinking about the ‘good old days’ when there were lots of forests for them to run, eat and sleep in and when they weren’’t the last of their kind. Little Red decides to help, encouraging everyone to plant more trees.

This morning we made posters to put up asking people to ‘Save our trees!’ We discussed why trees are so important not just for animals but for us too.

In the story there is lots of litter in the forest and this afternoon we talked about how dangerous litter can be for many animals. This afternoon we walked around the school grounds on a litter pick. We worked well sharing the litter pickers and were pleased we could do something to help.

Also today, we read books from our library and this afternoon made our own books to add to it! We talked about we can all be authors and illustrators and came up with stories about unicorns, trains, dinosaurs, a snowman and many more! These are now in our library corner for other children to read.

Here are a few pictures from our day:

We’ve had a Remembrance themed week in P1b this week.

We watched the Cbeebies Poppies video and talked about the impact that war has on animals.

We talked about how the poppies grew in the fields and how today we wear poppies to remember those who have fought in various wars. We also talked about parents, grandparents and great grandparents who have served in the Armed Forces.

We made plasticine poppies and made our own poppy field. We also took our time to make paper plate poppies to bring home. It was quite tricky bunching up as the crepe paper as we made a spiral and we did a brilliant job of being patient and taking our time.

On Wednesday we did black pen pictures of the hare in the Poppies video. Again we took our time and thought carefully about the background to our pictures and carefully drew lots of poppies. We then coloured the poppies in red.

On Thursday Mrs Thomson was very proud of our minute’s silence at 11am.

Next week we are very excited that it is Book Week Scotland! We are going to look at a different book each day before the children bring the bags home on Friday – please check back to see what we’re up to.

We’ve had another lovely week in P1b.

Our sounds this week were ‘b’ and ‘j’. For ‘b’ we wrote some brilliant ‘b’ stories and had lots of fun outside playing with a bat and a ball. For ‘j’ we made a jellyfish and thought of a huge number of ‘j’ words! We’re doing well with our blending and are starting to write short words and sentences independently.

In numeracy we’re starting to write our own addition sums, talking about the + and the = sign. We’ve had fun pretending to be the teacher and giving sums to our friends.

On Wednesday we did a great job of clearing one of the beds in the school garden. It was hard work and more than a little muddy. Thank you for sending in wellies.

Reading is slightly different this week and children came home with a new book on Thursday. We will return to our usual reading routine next week. Thank your for practising reading at home and please remember to send children in with their reading folders each day.

This morning the children talked about Bonfire Night safety with Mrs Thomson, including how to use sparklers safely and what to do if you find an unused firework. We then used pastels to create our own firework pictures.

Have a safe weekend and see you next week!

We’ve had a spooky week in P1b!

We’ve been getting in the mood for Halloween with our Funnybones inspired town and have started to set the streets up. We painted our boxes and stuck on windows and doors. We had another play with the beebots – programming them to move along the street and being careful to avoid a collision! We’ll continue this next week.

This week also did a fantastic job of drawing black pen pictures of pumpkins. We looked carefully at how a pumpkin is shaped and then drew triangles and diamonds for its nose and mouth. We then very very carefully coloured in our pumpkins before proudly displaying them in the window.   

This morning we’ve had lots of Halloween fun with Mrs Thomson. We’ve been building Halloween words, reading spooky stories and dancing along to the Addams Family!

We also enjoyed admiring the fantastic pumpkins and were very excited that Violet won a prize for the best pumpkin!

In phonics this week we’ve learned the u and f sounds. We’ve also started reading in our groups and reading books have started coming home. We usually read on Monday, Wednesday and Friday in class but please bring reading folders in every day. If there are any issues or questions please note them down in the reading record.

In numeracy we’re now looking at addition, initially looking at two sets and asking how many altogether.  We’ve also started to look at length, using the terms ‘longer’ and ‘shorter’.

Have a great Halloween weekend! Here are a few photos from this week:

We’ve had a busy week back. Thank you for the boxes for our junk modelling. Next week we’ll start making our ‘dark, dark town’ for the Beebots and use the skills we’ve learned this week as part of EU Code Week.

We’ve had lots of fun learning about sequencing and the instructional language we need to help us create our own codes. First we followed a simple set of instructions – walk forwards, turn, backwards, turn, clap, thumbs up etc. –  and had great fun giving our friends instructions in the playground to get to various places. We then had a tinker with the Beebots around the classroom and practised programming them to manoeuvre around obstacles.

Today we wrote our own codes for the whole class to follow. We used this knowledge to help the squirrel find its nuts, avoiding the many obstacles in its way – a snake, a giant spider and a curious cat among others!

Also this week we have learned the sounds ‘o’ and ‘l’. For ‘o’ we made an octopus and for ‘l’ a ladybird and a ‘leafy lion’. We’re doing a great job remembering our phonics, please continue to practise these at home.

In numeracy we’re finishing up our block on numbers to 10 and are starting to move on to addition.

In our outdoor learning we were excited to see all the leaves that had fallen in the holidays. We’ve been collecting lots of leaves and identifying the deciduous trees that they’re from. We used these for our leafy lions and for leaf rubbing. We worked particularly hard with our leaf rubbing and were amazed at the different parts of the leaf we could see. We put the leaves on our autumn tree in the window and discussed how it will change through the seasons.

Here are some pictures of our learning we’ve chosen to share this week:

We hope you have had a lovely break.

For Halloween this year we’re going to read the story Funnybones and do some junk modelling and make our very own ‘dark, dark town’. For this each child will need a small box (e.g. cereal box) to turn into a house. If you have anything like this please can your child bring it in by Friday 22^nd October. Don’t worry if not, we’re sure we’ll have spares.

Also, from Wednesday 28th October we’re going to start going to the school garden on Wednesday afternoons to clear the beds and plant spring bulbs. Please send wellies or shoes you don’t mind getting a little muddy and a warm coat.

Mrs McGilp and Mrs Collins

We’ve had a lovely final week before the October holidays.

At the start of the week we learned the g sound and spent the rest of the week revising and blending our sounds. For g we made a goat and a gruffalo. We had great fun making gruffalo noises!

In numeracy we’ve been practising adding one and two more, using pasta to help us. We also been looking more closely at the number ten and have been problem solving and seeing what we can make with 10 lollipop sticks and art straws. We were so imaginative – we had a fairground, rockets, a guitar, Christmas trees, a badger and even the Tweed valley!

In health and wellbeing we talked more about Skipper and his river of life. In circle time we made plasticine Skippers and put them in the river. We talked about the different obstacles that might be in the river and some of us shared a time when our own rivers were a little bit choppy. We’re starting to talk about the tools Skipper has in his toolkit that can help us when things are a little choppy.

We’ve also had lots of fun playing this week – the writing table have been having fun will stencils and lots of cutting and gluing and we’ve had lots of fun role play in the kitchen and camping area. Below are some of the pictures we’ve chosen to share this week.

Have a lovely break and we’ll see you again on Tuesday 19th October.