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:

Today we continued to work on coding. We made a plan of the Dark Dark Town from the Funnybones book using pictures under a Beebot mat. We then planned the code the Beebots would need to take them from the start of the mat to the different places in the town.

This week Primary 1 began reading in groups. In our groups we talk about the different books by looking at the pictures, we use our sounds and keywords to help us read the books. As well as our books, and keywords we will be bringing home lists of rhyming words to practise. Please help your child to remember to bring in their reading book, and reading record in their sound packet everyday.

In numeracy we have begun to add numbers. We have been laying out sets of objects and then adding them together. We have talked about what happens when you add numbers and the importance of ordering and pointing at the objects as you add.

We have been using  towers to help us compare numbers. We talked about which tower was taller and how many more cubes were in the taller tower, and  which tower had less cubes in it.

Primary 1 continue to practise their sounds and word building everyday, we talk about the sounds we can hear in words, where about in the words the sounds are, and the number of sounds we can hear. We say the word, using our fingers to help us break it into the different sounds

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We use magnetic letters to build words.

We work together to build and read words.

Primary 1 have been working hard on learning the l, o and u sounds. We have been thinking about words that have these sounds in them and then building three letter words with the sounds such as dog, let, and hut.

l is for lion 🦁

o is for octopus

u is for umbrella

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:

Today Primary 1 were thinking about how to write a code to program a toy. We looked at a battery operated toy and talked about how we could get it to move, for example pressing different buttons to make it walk or stop.

Task 1

We  did a robot dance activity  which involved us moving like a robot by following a set of instructions.

Task 2
We talked about how these instructions could be shown as symbols, an arrow for moving forward and a round arrow for turning (a quarter turn). Mrs Collins arranged the symbols into a “code” for us to follow.

Task 3

Mrs Collins had laid out different pathways for the wheeled toys to follow. We had to match the correct sequence of symbols to it’s matching pathway.

Task 4

Mrs Collins then “cleared” her codes and we had to write our own ones. We tested them with a partner to see if we could write a code that took you from the start to the end.

Task 5

To finish the afternoon we had some fun, using what we had been learning to program the Beebots to move around the classroom. We had to work nicely with a partner sharing and taking turns.

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

Last week we were working on our fine motor skills, we were drawing with pens and chalk, painting, using plasticine and play dough, cutting and building.