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.
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. ☺️
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’.
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!!!’
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’.
Primary 1A have been learning how to create colour with different mediums. This week we dyed paper using tin foil, pens and water. Pupils decided they wanted to draw themselves and represent all the things they love.
We’ve been learning about sharing parts equally and the terms whole, half and quarter. Today we used real cupcakes to create halves and quarters and of course we ate them!!
Our new diagraph sound is ‘wh’ today we had a fantastic time reading wh words by having a balloon party and then reading our balloon when the music stopped. 🎶
We love outdoor learning in P1 and really wanted to share our love of the beach with P3. Pupils were really interested in finding ‘treasure’ and all found some interesting items at the beach. We were using our adapting meta-skills of being curious about the world around us and asking questions.
Pupil comments:
‘my sea glass looks like the Shetland flag!’
‘I found a rusty nail, a smooth stone and a piece of pottery.’
Both classes have been using adjectives in their writing. This week after our beach trip pupils suggested we both write about her sea treasures then pupils were keen to share their writing with the other class so we did a writing pair and share. We’ve really enjoyed learning together.
Pupil comments:
‘I loved seeing what P1 can write, they had some good adjectives in their writing!’
‘I like the P3s writing, they read it to me and I knew some of the words myself!’
‘Can we do more together? I liked sharing mine and reading the P1 writing to see what they thought the beach looked like.’
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