We’ve had a great week doing lots of reading in P2/1 looking at the books for the Bookbug Picturebook Prize.

On Monday we started reading My First Book of Birds. We talked about our favourite birds and birds we have seen in our gardens and on walks. Later in the week we went for a bird watching walk around the school grounds. We learned how we have to be still and very quiet when we’re looking for birds. Around the school we saw a robin and crows and on the hill we could see some birds in the distance in the trees at Hay Lodge Park and seagulls over the parish church.

On Wednesday we read Brenda is a Sheep. In the story Brenda pretends she is a sheep but secretly plans to eat her sheep friends with mint sauce! We all enjoyed the story and were not fooled by Brenda’s antics. We did black pen pictures of Brenda, taking our time on the detail of her jumper, and wrote about the story, focusing on the who and what and using finger spaces and full stops in our writing.

On Thursday we read This is a Dog! We made our own dog masks and while they were drying we did some drama, acting out the different animals in the story and thinking how the different animals might eat, drink and play.

This morning we voted for our favourite picturebook, watch here for the winner…

Also this week we’ve been doing some more rhyming. We’re reading Scat, Cat! and are looking at the rhyme patterns. We’re making up real and nonsense words and writing sentences with lots of rhymes in them.

We’re doing lots of reading, with our partners and with Mrs McGilp and Mrs Ward. Finlay and Rowan have been reading a book about magic tricks and today showed us all a magic trick with a spoon!

On Tuesday afternoons Mrs Thomson is teaching us all about time. This week we made some fantastic clocks to take home. Also in numeracy this week we’ve been looking at how to show numbers to 100, odd and even numbers and are trying to use strategies to add up in our head (for example. for 7+8 you could do a double 7 and add 1).

It’s been a busy few days in P2/1. We’ve been learning about Remembrance and why we all wear poppies. Yesterday we did a great job making our own poppies to hang in our windows. Today we watched a short video about the effect the First World War had on animals and it inspired our own pictures and writing.  At 11am we sat quietly to remember those who have lost their lives fighting in the various conflicts and those serving in the Armed Forces today. We all enjoyed listening to Mr Johnstone and Archie play the pipes.

Also this week we revisited the pictures we took six weeks ago of the trees around the school field. We knew the leaves had changed colour and were falling but we were quite amazed at the difference (photos by Daniel, Noah and Amber). We also did an autumnal scavenger hunt, looking for something autumnal that makes a noise and evidence of wildlife around the playground.

Enjoy the long weekend and we’ll see you on Monday!

We were inspired by P5’s Kindness Boomerang video and came up with our own ‘chain of kindness’. When someone is kind or helpful we add a link to our paperchain. We’re hoping it will soon reach across the classroom!

We’ve had lots of fun with fireworks this week. We designed rockets and fireworks with 2D shapes. We then painted these onto our black fabric with acrylic paints. We were so excited to see all of the brilliant banners in the field! We learned about why we celebrate Bonfire Night, who Guy Fawkes was and why put him on the bonfire! We also had a chat about bonfire, firework and sparkler safety.

In numeracy this week we’ve been doing lots of addition, looking at the different ways to make 11, 12 and 13. We’ve been doing this inside and out, using cubes, stones, conkers and imaginary sheep! We’re also still practising our numbers and making sure they’re all facing the correct way.

We’ve been concentrating on –et rhymes this week, for example, vet, met, wet etc. We wrote a list of real and nonsense words and a silly story with lots of –et words.

In our writing we’re concentrating on imaginative writing. This week we wrote three part stories with an introduction, a problem and a solution. Our title was ‘The Broken Toy’. We’re trying really hard with our capital letters and full stops.

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.

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’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.

We’ve had another busy week in P2/1. In health and wellbeing we’re continuing to talk lots about being positive in uncertain times and also being kind to each other. In circle time we made an ‘Appreciation Station’ where we said nice things about our friends. We talked about how we feel when we are kind and when people are kind to us.

We’ve used all the techniques we’ve learned the last few weeks to paint stickmen for a school display. We used thick brushes for the background, a thinner brush for the stickman and a black pen for the finer details.

In literacy this week we’ve done some fantastic writing about Kingsland Primary School as well as some writing ‘All about me’.  We’re also revisiting some of the phonics that are frequently mixed up, starting with b and d.

In numeracy we’ve been finishing our block on numbers to 20 and subtraction, looking at words like difference, less than and more than.

We’ve also had a couple of birthdays in P2/1 this week and have all enjoyed a birthday dance and making cakes and presents with playdough!

We’ve had a lovely week in P2/1.  We’ve had lots of chats this week about how we all have different thoughts and can see things differently, looking at stories from different perspectives and also looking at some optical illusions – how many animals can you see in this picture?

We’ve spent more time outside looking at trees, and on Monday collected more leaves from sycamore, oak and lime trees. We then painted roots, trunks and branches and when they’d dried did some leaf printing. We talked about the different parts of the tree before labelling them. We’re also getting very good at recognising the different trees in our stories!

In phonics this week we’ve learned the final Jolly Phonics sound ‘ar’. We’re doing a great job with our writing, this week writing a descriptive piece all about Floppy the dog. In numeracy we’re continuing with subtraction, numbers to 30 and ensuring correct number formation too.

We’ve had lots of fun in PE this week. We are doing running, jumping and throwing in athletics and playing games to build stamina.

We’re also enjoying playing, inside and outside the classroom. This week our play seems to have had a robot theme!