We had lots of fun at sports day, trying our best, cheering each other on and then we’re very very proud of ourselves.
Bigton Farm and St Ninians
What better way to spend the first international day of play than to be outdoors exploring all day. We started our day at Bigton Farm where Amy showed us farm life, we fed pigs and were up close with many animals. We then spent time at St Ninians beach before eating lunch at Dunrossness school and heading to the park on the way home. We are so grateful to our hosts at the Dunrossness school and Bigton Farm for bringing learning to life for Primary 1.
Olympics Obstacle
As part of Health week, the pupil council asked for an Olympic inspired obstacle course. Our obstacle course developed agility, stamina, coordination, balance and many more skills athletes need to participate at a high standard.
Teddy Bears
P1A have been learning to mix colours and use templates. The children have worked hard to create lovely combinations of colours.
Hot Cross Buns – steady beat & boomwhackers
We have been learning a song about Hot Cross Buns. We practised keeping a steady beat and we suggested lots of different ways we could keep the beat like tapping our heads or shoulders, or clicking our fingers in time.
We have also learned about Boomwhackers and how they are used to create different sounds of different pitches. We worked out that the longer the boomwhacker, the lower the pitch of the note and the smaller the boomwhacker, the higher the pitch of the note.
In the clip below, you can see the class performing the song ‘Hot Cross Buns’ using boomwhackers.
Morning in the life of a Primary 1
We always start our day with at least 45 minutes of uninterrupted free play today we had over 70 minutes as the class were so engaged in their play. Children lead their learning in their play and as adults we join in to further their learning or when invited to share in their play. Following on from floating and sinking activities earlier in the week, pupils wanted to use junk modelling to create boats and asked for water to test if they float. Others created a fantastic block play and loose parts farm which they asked to include in our floor book.
We spent some time revising our tricky words in the messiest manner possible and visited the new school garden to enjoy reading with our friends. Learners were able to recognise their tricky words in real story books and were using their phonics knowledge to read independently.
We then sang our alphabet song and pupils practised writing capital letters in alphabetical order on whiteboards. Then we ate snack and had fun speaking about our best parts of Primary 1. ☺️
Wild Wonders – Flower Printing
Pupils had asked to do art outside for outdoor learning. So we took cloth and stones outdoors and used natural dye from flowers and leaves to dye the cloth into symmetrical patterns.
Pupil voice ‘wow look at those colours the purple is so bright’
‘This one is vibrant pink’
We’ve been learning about 3D shapes, here we’ve been using our magnetiles to create 3D models. We can name the basic 3D shapes and discuss some of their properties.
We’ve been doubling numbers using manipulative such as cubes and halving even numbers using our knowledge of off and even.
Lastly, we’ve been problem solving using our number knowledge on our online 100s square. As always we believe play is the optimum medium for learning and we enjoy the Freeform play offers us to explore and consolidate our understand of what numeracy and maths we are learning.
Meta-skill: Curiosity ‘carrying out self-directed learning and recognising problems and how to solve them’.
Munchkin, Crumpet and Bagel came to Visit
Our topic for Term 4 ‘On the Farm’ was finished in the most wonderful way with a visit from Bagel, Crumpet and Munchkin. Two of our pupils caddy lambs. We were so lucky their lovely Mum brought them in and taught us how to feed them and told us about lambing and crofting – we are grateful to learn about local professions through parent engagement.
Pupil voice:
‘I have never seen a lamb close before, I got to feed it some milk’
‘The next caddy should be called cupcake or toast… yeah maybe toast because it’s bread like bagel and crumpet!’
‘I love having pet lambs, they live in my house!!!’
Numeracy trip to Tesco
We’ve been learning about fractions and money. To consolidate our topic, we walked to Tesco to buy snack. Pupils wrote a shopping list of fruit, vegetables, crackers, cheese, butter and of course donuts. They navigated the shop by reading the signs and then decided what to buy based on calculating the amount they needed. Pupils paid, counted their change and prepared the snacks when back at school. We decided everyone would try at least a lick of each fruit and vegetable and even Mrs Sjoberg tried a blueberry.
Pupil comments:
‘If we cut the orange into half and then quarters we will get 8 bits from one orange, so we will need two because double 8 is 16’
‘If we buy 4 whole donuts and cut them into quarters then we will have 16 bits’
‘That says £2.10 but this one is on a yellow sticker and says £1.90 so it is less money, we should buy this one’.
