We’ve had lots of fun celebrating Halloween in P2/1. Yesterday we started planning our Halloween crafts. We painted our wands with acrylic paints and added the finishing touches this morning. We had to promise not to turn Mrs McGilp into a frog! We also painted and then decorated our Halloween masks and did some fantastic cutting and sticking. We also drew some scary pictures on our whiteboards and in our class floor book.

Earlier in the week we wrote some fantastic spooky stories, using a picture plan to help us. All of the stories were very different but equally creepy! We talked about how important it is to spell the common words correctly and to use our word wall to help us.

On Wednesday we did some problem solving, working together in a small team to put some flowers in order from smallest to tallest. We talked about how to work together, listen and be polite when we all have different ideas!

In outdoor learning this week we talked more about the different seasons and how this affects some animals, in particular hedgehogs. We made hedgehogs out of plasticine and then collected lots of leaves and twigs to make them more comfortable. We talked about how the hedgehogs are eating lots of food before they hibernate for winter.

P2 are continuing to learn to read and write rhyming words. We listened to a rhyming story and identified words with the same sound at the end. Our story writing this week was on the theme of kindness and we thought about who was kind in the story Dogger. We wrote stories about a time when someone shared or swopped something. We consolidate our learning through playing literacy games.

We read Ayla’s book Be Kind which showed us that there are many different ways to show kindness.

We painted pumpkins. Instead of using orange paint we used red, yellow and white and made beautiful shades of orange by mixing them together.

We did various Halloween crafts today; witches hats, straw skeletons and dancing ghosts,

Have a great weekend!

As part of Walk to School Week it was happy shoesday today and the children wore shoes that make them happy.

There were many different styles and colours, and even some odd shoes with matching hair bobbles!

Hello, it was great to see everyone back this week, to play and learn and hear all about the holidays.

In science we are learning about forces and we discussed what makes a paper aeroplane go. Many great ideas were explored including gravity, air pressure and aerodynamics. Then we made our own paper helicopter and had great fun dropping them and watching them spin outside.

We wrote an imaginative story about something that was made. The details and ideas are developing really well, as is spelling and handwriting.

In numeracy we consolidated  the number stories for 11 and 12 using materials and near doubles.

We painted Autumn leaves using a two colour brush stroke. Look very closely, can you see the two tone leaves?

In assembly we learned that we fill our own and others’ buckets through being kind. We are noticing and recording times we are kind. It’s very heartwarming!

We’ve had a lovely week back after the October holidays.

We’ve been doing some great reading and writing. We’re starting to focus on rhyming words and this week looked at words ending in -an. We wrote a silly story and have been writing real and nonsense rhyming words.

In numeracy we’ve been finishing our work on patterns – making tricky patterns with cubes and Cuisenaire rods and also with numbers. We’ve also started addition to twenty, using the base tens and cubes to help us.

On Tuesday we had a virtual Skipper assembly. Mrs Wilson spoke about the importance of being kind and Mrs Ward read us a story about ‘filling our buckets’. When we are kind to someone, or someone is kind to us, it fills our bucket. When we are sad or mean, or someone is unkind to us, this lessens our bucket. For the rest of the week we’ve looked for lots of opportunities to fill our own and others’ buckets.

This included voting for our favourite picturebook for the UKLA awards. We re-read the remaining books and did various activities. We read The Visitor about a lonely lady who lives on her own, who is cheered up when a little boy accidentally threw a paper aeroplane into her house. Like the lady whose bucket was filled, we filled our own buckets by making paper aeroplanes and flying them around the playground. We read If all the World Were about a little girls whose grandfather makes her a notebook. We then made our own notebooks and started drawing pictures of our own families. This morning we looked at Julian is a Mermaid and in circle time talked about how we are all unique. We then voted (in secret) and the winner was Aree Chung’s Mixed!

To finish our week our very own Mrs Ward shared her illustrations in an alpabet book that is being published.  We asked some interesting questions about how Mrs Ward drew the pictures and how the book was made before giving Mrs Ward a big clap!

We had a great end to a busy week making our leafy lions! In the virtual assembly this week Mrs Wilson spoke about courage, one of Kingsland’s four values, and read us a story about a lion and a mouse. We spoke about how there are some things we feel brave about and some things we feel nervous about and need to have courage.

To make our lions we went for a walk around the school grounds and collected leaves in autumnal colours. Sycamore leaves were our favourite lion shade. We mixed orange and yellow paint to find the right shade, painted paper plates and then glued on the leaves, eyes and nose.

In literacy this week we’ve been reading and practising our key words. We also read the picturebook The Suitcase, did a black pen picture of a Suitcase and wrote about what we would keep in our own suitcase. We also wrote some silly sentences with the Who, What and Where. In numeracy we’ve been adding and subtracting and have been using the Base Tens, numicon and Cuisenaire rods to look at the different ways to make numbers.

Have a great October break and see you on the 19th!

We had another busy week at the end of what has been a great term for P2. Everyone has worked very hard, learning and playing with such enthusiasm. Our sound this week was ie/igh, and many enjoyed writing and drawing lighthouses again. We wrote a three part imaginative story about something that was ‘found’, and they were indeed very imaginative! We worked on ‘number of the day’, writing addition and subtractions for the number, numbers before/after and spelling the number word. There were some ambitious sums, such as, 100-86=14. In science we collected different leaves and sorted them into groups using our own chosen characteristics.

Miss Muir taught us signs for big, small, what, where, soap and towel.

We continue to learn through play, using our imagination to consolidate our learning and solving our own challenges.

We play literacy and numeracy games to practise key words and number concepts.

Well done, boys and girls! Have a great October holiday and I look forward to seeing you all on 19th October.

We’re shadowing the UKLA book awards, which means we have the exciting role of reviewing the shortlisted books and then voting for our favourite. We’ve read all of the picturebooks and are now re-reading them and carrying out related activities.

First we looked at Mixed by Arree Chung, a colourful picturebook where blue, red and yellow stop living separately and ‘mix’. We talked about how we’re all different and this makes us interesting. Then we painted our own characters. We learned about the primary colours and then mixed them to come up with some creative shades, including fiery orange, midnight purple and evergreen green among many others! We then added black pen detail to bring our characters to life.

Today for our friendship topic we looked more closely at Lubna and Pebble. In the book Lubna gives her pebble to her friend who is sad when she has to leave. We painted pebbles with smiley faces and gave them to our friends. We said if we’re missing our friends in the October holidays we can look at our pebble, or like Lubna, we could even speak to it!

We started the week by taking a walk outside to be nature detectives and look for signs of autumn. We looked at the colour of the leaves, identified which type of trees were changing colour first and even saw a squirrel jumping from tree to tree! Photos by Isabella, Amber and Macaulay.

On Tuesday we had a virtual assembly which we watched from our classroom. We found out more about the school values and looked closely at the Kingsland badge.

In health and wellbeing we’re continuing to talk lots about being a good friend. We drew around Isabelle, coloured our person in and then labelled it with what we think a good friend does.

We’re also continuing to talk about whether different scenarios are a big deal or a little deal. We agreed that losing our pencil is a little deal, but falling off our bike and banging our head is a bigger deal!

In literacy this week we’ve done lots of writing. We drew a picture of a pet (either ours or someone else’s), labelled the picture and then used it as a plan to do a longer piece of writing. We’re also doing a great job with our reading. We read to the teacher, to ourselves and to our reading partners.

In numeracy this week we’ve enjoyed doing some data handling. We asked the class whether they preferred dogs or cats, pizza or chips and apples or bananas and discussed how to present this information. We then did our own mini surveys and shared our results.

We’re also reading lots of picturebooks for a very special role – more to follow next week.

This week we revised the ee and ea sounds and used them to write sentences such as ‘The sea is deep.’ Our descriptive writing was about a favourite toy. It’s great to learn more about the children through their writing.

Miss Muir taught us Signalong signs for ‘wash, here, there, up, down, boy and girl’.

We were busy creating an art piece too. Part one was to draw a large lion and decorate it with fine details. Next, we mixed warm colours to paint a sunset. Lastly we cut out black silhouettes and placed them all together on the background.