This week in P2/1 we’ve been working around the weather to get the garden ready for our planting. We’ve been weeding, talking about what plants need to grow and have discussed what we might plant. We’re continuing to look after the wormery and the compost bin and are looking forward to getting some compost to help our plants.

In our greenhouses on the classroom window we’ve been excited to see that many of our mange tout seeds have now germinated! We will now plant these in the garden where (we hope) some might be ready before the end of term.

We’ve had lots of play in the classroom this week. The children turned the building blocks into our very own cinema. They made tickets and designed posters and were very excited when Mrs Ward joined us to watch a short film we had made.

In literacy this week we’ve been looking at stories with three in them, in particular the three little pigs, or our class favourite The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig. In our writing on Thursday we re-wrote the story in our own words, first describing the big bad pig and then writing about how he tried to blow the houses down. The houses were a little different to the traditional tale, being made of bricks, concrete and metal bars and chains, and the big bad pig needed the help of a sledgehammer, a pneumatic drill and some dynamite! We then had great fun working together to make a collage of each house and then retelling the story to make into a film for our class cinema. The children negotiated the roles and supported each other to remember their lines.

We’re continuing with our problem solving each week – this time the challenge was to make the longest marble run they could with just ten pieces. The children did a brilliant job of taking turns, listening to everyone’s ideas and working together to find the best way forward.

We’ve had a lovely sunny week back.  We’ve been revising the ‘oa’ sound this week. On Monday we made plasticine boats and then tested to see whether they would float. Only three boats floated and we looked at what they had in common – thin walls, sides to hold air in and water out, no holes and a large surface area or a big bottom! We then tried again on Tuesday when many more boats floated.

Also for the ‘oa’ sound we’re writing a three part story about a goat with a new coat. We’re making up the story together. First the goat is walking through the forest in his new coat. Then he meets a pheasant with a twisted ankle! We’ll finish the final instalment next week. Today we made plasticine coats for goats, using tools to help us.

In our writing this week we’re also looking again at the ‘th’ sound and making sure we put full stops in the correct places. We’re also continuing our rhyming words.

For the next part of our RSPB Wild Challenge we’ve started planting and composting. We’ve been saving our fruit peels and collecting the vegetable peels for the kitchen to feed to the worms in our compost bins. For our planting, first we are germinating seeds in the classroom in our makeshift green houses. We’re hoping the shoots will start sprouting soon. Next week we will start planting seeds in our school garden.

In numeracy this block we’ve moved on to money – looking at the different coins and adding them up. We’ve set up a book shop in the classroom to practise addition and subtraction through paying for things and getting the correct change.

Some of the highlights from the P2s this week have been:

‘Making the goat’s coat.’

‘Testing the boats and putting the seeds in the greenhouses.’

’Feeding the worms.’

‘All the stories.’

We’ve had a lovely day celebrating Mrs Wilson’s retirement. This morning we watched the assembly and loved the singing, story and some famous faces!

This afternoon we had a special ice cream treat from followed by an egg hunt and some Easter crafts.

The last couple of weeks Mrs Ryalls has been teaching us the signs to an Easter song, we hope you enjoy it!

Have a lovely Easter and we look forward to seeing you back on 19th April.

We’ve had great fun in P2/1 learning the signs for our daily routine with Mrs Ryalls.

We’ve had another busy week in P2/1. We’re spending a lot of time thinking about how to work together, share and take turns and have been playing games practising these skills . We’re also continuing to think about how we’re similar and unique – this week in circle time realising how much we all have in common.

We had fun reflecting on the week at the end of today and looking at some of our photos. Here are some of the children’s highlights:

‘Making wiggly worms’ Isla

‘Playing Snakes and Ladders’ Amber

‘Playing games’ Noah

‘Making new friends’ Eva B

‘Making the alphabet’ Daniel

‘Building with the cuisenaire rods’  Finlay B

‘Making snails’ Leah

‘Playing games in PE’ Charlotte

The highlight of our busy week was starting the next part of our Wild Challenge and finding out all about worms and setting up our wormery. On Wednesday afternoon we learned some interesting worm facts – like worms have five hearts and are covered in tiny hairs – and then looked at some worms through our magnifying glasses to identify the different parts of their body. We then went outside on a worm hunt, using warm water, stamping on the ground to encourage them up and looking under logs and stones. We found lots of worms in our outdoor classroom! We had a chat about being respectful to the worms, handling them as little as possible and returning them to where we found them.

In literacy this week we’ve been looking at the rhyme patterns -un (bun, fun, run) and it (sit, fit, admit). We also did a great job of our recount writing about our afternoon looking for worms. We’ve also revised the ee and or sounds, thinking of words with these sounds and making our own plasticine donkeys. The children did a great job of listening and following instructions and we were all very impressed with the finished result!

In numeracy we’re continuing with our subtraction and numbers to 100, looking a lot this week at the language of numeracy and words like less than, count back and the difference between numbers.

We’re continuing our signing with Mrs Ryalls and are learning to sign along to an Easter song – check back again next week to see how we’re doing! 

We’ve made a good start with our Wild Challenge in P2/1. We’re regularly spotting chaffinches, great tits and blackbirds among many others on our bird table and in the playground.

On Tuesday afternoon we learned about what birds and other animals need – Shelter, Water, Air and Food (SWAF). We talked about where the birds could find each of these things and then made our own fat balls and kebabs for the children to take home for the birds where they live.

We had great fun with the fat balls in particular – squidgy, slimy and absolutely disgusting were just some of the words used to the describe the texture!

Also this week in literacy we’ve been doing recount writing, reading and writing lots of rhymes and have been practising spelling some tricky words. We’re also doing lots of reading with the grown ups in the classroom and to others in our group.

In numeracy we’re continuing with our subtraction, linking subtraction and addition facts and sequencing numbers to 100. We’ve also been doing some problem solving, working on our communication skills and working together as a team.

The highlight of this week has been World Book Day on Thursday. The bell rang at 10 o’clock and everyone in school stopped to read. We have been reading books all week including some silly stories from The Stinky Cheese Man including Chicken Licken, the Princess and the Bowling Ball and Little Red Running Shorts. We then spent some time talking about our favourite stories.

After break we did some descriptive writing about the Stinky Cheese Man (an alternative of the Gingerbread Man story). In the afternoon we read another version of the Princess and the Pea and drew some fantastic pictures using oil pastels. We then painted them using watercolours before adding a little glitter for the crown. We learned lots about using these different materials, including how the pastels resist the paint.

At breaktime we did a book trail around the school, looking for characters from some well known picturebooks. We had lots of fun and found all the clues.

This week the children helped to write the blog. Here are some of their highlights of the week:

‘The book trail was exciting and everybody loved it!’ Isabella

‘I liked reading The Princess and the Pea’ Kyle

‘I liked reading The Stinky Cheese Man’ Leah

‘I loved subtracting’ Rowan

‘I liked painting’ Finlay B

‘I enjoyed reading A Child of Books’ Finlay D

It’s great to be back together in the classroom and see everybody again. We’ve had a lovely but tiring week.

We’ve been getting used to being back in the classroom and remembering our routines.  We’ve been talking lots about good listening skills and have been doing lots of activities to encourage us to problem solve and work together.

In literacy this week we’ve been looking at spelling patterns and continuing with our rhyme work – writing some real and nonsense words. We’re focusing on using our sounds to help us with our spelling and also that there some irregular words that we need to try and remember.

We’ve also been revisiting some of our double sounds.  We looked at the ‘sh’ sound, reading Julia Donaldson’s Sharing a Shell and used our plasticine to make our own friends sharing a shell. We’ve also been reading and writing lots of ‘ar’ words, focusing on a shark theme. We read lots of shark stories, learned lots of shark facts and even have a shark in our classroom! We  started an underwater shark scene and did some great black pen shark pictures which we labelled to help with our descriptive writing. We’ve also been doing lots of reading and practising key words.

In numeracy we’re continuing with our work on subtraction as well as looking at numbers to 100.  We’re spending a lot of time discussing the language of numeracy and the different ways of wording things, for example how ‘one less than’,  ‘the number before’ and ‘subtract one’ all mean the same thing! This gets trickier when working with bigger numbers.

This morning Mrs Collins told us about the RSPB Wild Challenge which we’re taking part in for our outdoor learning. This coincided with us being very kindly donated a bird table by local trademan Mr Lee Darker. We’re setting up bird hides in the classroom so we can see which birds we can spot – we’ve already spied a curious chaffinch!

Good morning Primary 2! We hope you’re all well and enjoying the snow.

Here is Chapter 6 of our story:

For an extra task, have a chat to your grown about your favourite character that Plop has met so far. If you want, draw a picture of them and share it with your teacher. Think about:

1. Who is the character?
2. Why do you like them?
3. Think of three adjectives (describing words) for them.

Take care,

Mrs McGilp and Mrs Lloyd