P1a had great fun today making fat balls for the garden birds. We started by squashing lard in a big bowl, then we added oats, bird seed, grated apple, pear, cheese and bread and finally raisins. After mixing it altogether we spooned it into plastic cups and put it into the fridge to set.

Today P1a went all over the school grounds bird watching. Before we went outside we made up our own  bird watching rules to follow such as not scaring the birds, keeping very quiet, not touching any nests and keeping calm! We talked about how we would be able to identify the different birds eg by the colour of their feathers, their legs and feet, the shape of their beak. We recorded our findings on our sheet. We saw blackbirds, robins, sparrows, wood pigeons, jackdaws, crows and a pheasant.

Back in the classroom we watched the pheasant eating some seed, we were able to get a really close look at his legs, feet, beak  and beautiful feathers.

Primary 1 have been improving their bat and ball skills and having fun at PE with our new PE teacher Mrs Edge.

We’ve made a great start to our RSPB Big Schools’ Birdwatch. We’ve been finding out what the RSPB do and why we need to do the birdwatch, as well as looking more closely at the birds in the playground.

We’ve set up our birdhide where we regularly spot our visiting pheasant, lots of crows after playtime and a very pretty Pied Wagtail.

To help feed the birds in winter we made fruit kebabs. We used cheese, apples, pears, strawberries and raisins. We hope you have been able to hang these somewhere the birds can get to.

We’ve been learning about the different types of birds and how to recognise them. On Thursday we read the story of Lucky Duck and learned how birds are all slightly different – the robin has a small beak to pick up insects, the duck has webbed feet to swim with and the blackbird has a beautiful song.

We then drew our own lucky ducks and wrote a few sentences to describe him.

Also this week we learned the ‘ee’ sound. We will learn ‘or’ next week. We’re continuing to do lots of word building and looking at what a sentence needs.

In numeracy we’re all getting very good at subtraction, this week rolling dice to make our own subtraction stories.

On Thursday we had a very special afternoon as the whole school enjoyed a piece of Mrs Clyde’s lovely shortbread whilst watching the Scots celebration. We sat very well and loved seeing ourselves on screen as well all of the older children in the school.

P1 had great fun today bird watching in their class bird hide. This afternoon we made bird feeders using fruit and cheese, we had to really focus when threading the fruit onto the wire.

Last week primary 1 had their first assembly in the Dining Hall with Mrs Hope.

Primary 1 have been continuing to learn their double sounds, oo, ch, sh and this week ee and or. We spend time building and reading words with the focus sound in them and using the words to make sentences.

We were very pleased with these scary sharks we made. We wrote a sentence about a shark and enjoyed listening to shark stories. Our favourite story was Don’t Eat The  Teacher about a young shark that gets so excited he eats everything in his way!

Ch is for Choukie Hen!
We had great fun learning our Choukie Hen poem. Mrs Collins was very proud of all of the class for standing up and reciting their poem either on their own or in a group. We worked very hard drawing Choukie hen with oil pastels.

Primary 1 have begun their first wild challenge, taking part in the Big School Bird Watch. We have been thinking about why this annual RSPB activity is so important in helping to find out which birds are doing well and which need some help. We have been talking about the different ways we can help our local birds. We shared our ideas about how we could identify the various birds for example by their size, song, shape of beak, colour of their feathers. Each P1 class has set up their own bird hide ready for bird watching and are getting familiar with the birds we can see in the playground.

We are recording our different activities on the learning wall.

Can you spot some familiar birds in our tree?

The children wrote the blog this week. Here is what they had to say:

We have had a busy week in P1b. The week was good. We did some great learning.

Today there was a fire alarm. We were playing outside in the playground and suddenly the fire alarm came on! We all went down to the playing field. We were in a nice straight line and had to listen.

Our highlights this week:

• We learned the sh sound. We drew a shark and we wrote some sentences about the shark.
• We were learning taking away.
• We all stood up in front of the class to say our poem Choukie Hen.
• I liked passing a clap in circle time.
• I liked everything!

Here are some pictures from this week:

We’re continuing our Scots focus this week. Thank you for practising Choukie Hen at home. Several children have enjoyed reciting the poem in front of the class.

We’ve also been reading lots of Scottish stories this week, including the story of Greyfriar’s Bobby. We did a black pen picture of Bobby and some fantastic descriptive writing. On Monday we made Scottish flags with Mrs Thomson using scrunched up tissue paper. On Wednesday afternoon we learned about tartan and how different clans and families have their own colours. There is even a Kingsland tartan! We then chose our colours and weaved paper to design our own tartan. This was quite a tricky task and we worked brilliantly together, helping each other and being very encouraging.

Also this week we’ve learned the ‘ch’ sound and had fun being reading detectives and finding lots of words with ‘ch’ in them.  

In numeracy we’ve started our block on subtraction, initially looking at the concept of taking away. 

The children’s highlights this week have been:

• Drawing Greyfriar’s Bobby
• Playing with the playdough
• Junk modelling
• Playing hotels
• The letter jigsaws
• Weaving tartan
• Having courage and saying Choukie Hen
• Learning ch
• Starting take away

Here are some pictures we have chosen to share this week: