Here is our curriculum overview for this term.
Tag Archives: Hands On
Crafty cutting
We do a craft activity for every sound in our phonics. This activity always involves cutting as it helps us to improved our cutting skills and strengthens our hands. It also helps us to focus and builds on listening for instructions. Look at the concentration we put in.
Chasing those blues away and starting the day with a nice easy task
Soft start activities are important to help ease into the school day. These help with pre-handwriting skills, strengthening hands, grasp etc and most importantly they are fun.
These type of activities may be going to the Dough Disco, which we do regularly. That is great fun! It might also be the ‘Cheerio Challenge’ where the children have to try and thread cheerios onto a skewer in a set time. Then, they have to try and get faster and improve on this skill. They love it. Here are some pictures.
Soft start
We get to have soft start activities in the mornings before we begin any writing. Sometimes our learning begins outside, sometimes it begins inside. Here are some photos of us with a soft start activity. This helps us to build up our fine motor skills and is a pre-handwriting activity. It helps to strengthen our hands/fingers to help us with our pencil grip, writing etc. We loved it. What we had to do was build a tower using lego, but we only had a set amount of time to do it in. Then we got another go at it, the same amount of time and we had to see if we could get more blocks built on our tower to make it even bigger.
Have a look at the concentration while we were doing it! It was great fun and we rose to the challenge!
What the ladybird heard
We listened to the story called ‘What the Ladybird Heard’ and then we followed it up with ‘What the Ladybird Heard Next’
It got us thinking that we could be quite creative and make some ladybird stones while we were doing outdoor learning. We had great fun, here are some pictures. We learned about colours, symmetry, numbers, ladybirds, language and many other things. All whilst having fun and working with friends.
Imagination is key
We’ve used our imagination in many ways. We’ve been explorers looking for treasure, finding long lost animals and even hiding from robbers.
Exploring hasn’t been everyone’s cup of tea so there have been some inventive cooking classes and meals made during our time outside. From grilling sausages and pasta……
to making soup and other glorious recipes…….
with all ingredients foraged from the forest!
Then cooking hasn’t been for everyone either. Being in the south mainland and having many farming opportunities, the hairst has been a very busy time!
Tractor and combine harvester designs were discussed before the final model chosen and made. Crops were harvested and taken in and the staff were given many lessons on what to do and how to help with this busy time.
Next, the sheep have to be ca’ad…..
The Three Little Pigs
Some of us tried to make a house of straw for the three little pigs.
There were a lot of helping in different ways and teamwork was key.
Then we decided the wolf might be hungry and need something to eat, hopefully not one of the three little pigs!
So a group set to to make delicious soup that the wolf would like. With a little bit of this and a little bit of that, the soup was made and the trap was set!
Other people in the class set to building different types of houses for the three little pigs. These were made of branches or pallets of wood.
They thought if there were leaves on the branches, the wolf might think it was a home!
The wolf fell for the trap, climbed down the chimney and ended up in the pot so we were able to make wolf soup! It was delicious!
Here are some architects, planning their next houses to build. I think they decided on houses made of tyres!
Settling in, exploring and setting up our play area
We got to explore and settle into our new class and school area. That was very important since we had been away from school for a little while. Here are some photos to show us having fun and doing exactly as the title says. 
Anyone for tea?
Primary 1/2 were learning how to write instructions. Before they began writing, they made some tea so that they knew what to write. They also took the pictures of them making the tea. Have a look, they really enjoyed it.
Scholland Farm Soup
We made soup using the vegetables from Scholland Farm. First we washed the vegetables ready for peeling.
Then we carefully peeled the carrots and parsnip. We peeled away from us to help keep our hands safe from harm and we did it carefully.
We added the onion to our pan. Mrs Inkster chopped that for us and it made her eyes water!
Then we chopped some carrots and parsnip.
Some of us watched while others prepared the vegetables.
Then we chopped and added some neep .
Next it was the broccoli and cauliflower.
Then we put the soup on to cook. We decided to have vegetable soup and lentil soup using the vegetables too.
While it was cooking we were being good listeners and following instructions for our activity.
We had a break and tried some raw carrot and raw neep. Some of us had never tasted raw neep before and it was delicious!
Once the soup was cooked we tried the lentil soup first. We thought that was delicious.
Then we tried the vegetable soup. Some of us didn’t like it but some of us like it so much we had another bowl!
It’s been a busy morning in our class but we really enjoyed using the vegetables that we got from the farm and we all agree that it tastes great when we know and have seen where the produce comes from.
