During circle time we have been talking about our school rules. We were thinking this week about how to behave safely. After we had shared our ideas we cooled down with some belly breathing.

Building with loose parts

Sharing Books

Crafting at the Art Table

Using Tweezers

Making s

Primary 1 have been focussing on number 3, thinking about where it sits on the number line, 1 more, 1 less and it’s formation. We shared the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears and then we went into the playground to make the different things from the house of the Bears.

We were painting trees in P1 last week, we built up our pictures in stages, we added the leaves by painting with our fingers and then used cardboard  to print the grass.

We had to control our paint brush very carefully to paint these pictures of Percy the Park Keeper.

a as in ant 🐜

This week P1 were learning  about the a sound as in ant, alligator and  apple. Michael the puppet told us a story about a picnic at the park when his sandwiches were full of ants! We practised writing a on our whiteboards, sang the a song and made an ant door hanger.

Meet Mr Tall

Learning about the t sound, Mrs Collins told us a story about Mr Tall learning to play tennis with Mr Tickle! We thought about words that had the t sound in them and made our own Mr Tall!

Word Building

We have begun to learn to put sounds together to make words.

We’ve had a fun and busy full first week in P1b.

We’ve now learned three sounds, s, a and t. Please practise these sounds and actions at home. The Jolly Phonics songs can be found here. We’re doing lots of fine motor activities, practising our cutting and sticking and getting strong fingers using plasticine and playdoh.

In numeracy we’re practising number formation, so far focusing on 1, 2 and 3. We’ve been building number lines and using cubes and natural materials to help us with our counting.

We’ve also enjoyed adding to our painting which we started last week. We added finger print leaves to show all of the autumn leaves falling off the trees and added a black pen picture of a badger tidying them up, like Pete the badger does in our story Tidy.

In our outdoor learning this week we’ve been acting out the story of Pete the badger tidying the forest and pulling the trees down (before replanting them again). We’ve been looking more closely at oak trees, going on a tree hunt around the school grounds where we spotted seven oak trees! The children are doing a fantastic job of recognising the shape of the leaves. We also talked about all of the different animals that might live in and around an oak tree. We looked around our playground and thought about the different places that animals might like to live, including mice on our pirate ship!

We’ve also been doing lots of playing in the classroom, doing a great job of sharing and getting to know the toys and each other.

We’ve made a great start in P1B. Last week we spent a lot of time learning where everything is and getting used to the routines of Primary 1.

We tend to start the day with fine motor tasks like threading, playdough and picking things up with tweezers. On Thursday we learned our first sound – sssssss! The children did a great job cutting and sticking their snakes and thinking of lots of words beginning with s – including some dinosaurs the grown ups had never heard of!

We spent a lot of time playing – indoors and out. We also went for a walk around the school grounds and were impressed with the view of Peebles from the top of the hill.

The story for our topic is Tidy by Emily Gravett, about an overzealous badger who likes tidying a little too much. Through this we are learning about trees and the oak tree in particular, animal habitats and how we can look after the countryside.

Primary 1a are reading the stories of Percy the Park Keeper by Nick Butterworth. We started with the story of After the Storm. In the story the tree where the animals live comes down in a storm, Percy helps the animals to find a new tree to live in and under!

We began by talking about the special qualities Percy had for example kind, helpful, caring and then we drew a picture of him using our black pen.

We went outside and built homes for the different animals in the story. We had to work together sharing our ideas.

Primary 1 began to learn their Jolly Phonic sounds. They met Stanley the snake and thought about words that begin with s. They learnt the formation, Jolly Phonic action and song for s as well as making a snake!