Tag Archives: Creativity

Expressive Arts, Health and Wellbeing, Listening and Talking, Social Skills, STEM

Go Furt Fridays

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The children get a focused loose parts and outdoor play session on Friday mornings. The water trays with pipes, half pipes, containers and connecting parts are always popular. The skills the children demonstrate here are fantastic.

They also learn how to climb and play safely in the trees together.

Imaginative play outdoors creates so many opportunities for developing social skills. it is particularly important for developing and establishing new friendships amongst the children.

Art and Craft, Expressive Arts, Health and Wellbeing, Listening and Talking, literacy, maths, numeracy, Social Skills, STEM

First Day

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What a busy and fantastic first day you the children have had. Here are some activities captured on camera today for you to see.

……….building, problem solving, co-operation

…….fine motor skills, focus and concentration, patterns

Counting, number bonds , creating Penguin One for number formations,

outdoor fun, collaboration, mark making, following instructions

Imaginary play, dinosaurs, curiosity, interactions, communication

Routines, structure and lots of listening

The children also had a music lesson today and the activities in the photos just show some of what the children were doing during their first day of school this session. They are a busy bunch.

 

 

Art and Craft, Expressive Arts, Health and Wellbeing, Listening and Talking, literacy, Social Skills

Bucket Fillers

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After reading the Story ‘Have You Filled A Bucket Today’ the children created this display.

They spoke about how everyone has an invisible bucket which can be filled up or emptied by the words and actions of others.

They practiced filling each others buckets in school by being kind, giving compliments, good manners, showing respect etc.

Around their posters they added words and drawings of examples of how to fill and empty peoples buckets.

Expressive Arts, Listening and Talking, Science, Social Skills, Socila Studies

Science Workshop

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The children were treated to a fantastic science show from ‘Sunbeam’ and ‘Raindrop’ from the Edinburgh Science Centre.

They spoke about the different kinds of weather in the different habitats around the world. They explained how the earth has many layers and how the atmosphere protects the earth.

They demonstrated the importance of the Ozone Layer and spoke with the children about how we need to look after our planet.

The characters of Raindrop and Sunbeam were really engaging and the children loved the experiments and interactive parts of the show.

The parachute became the atmosphere and all the children are inside. It got quite hot in there with all the p1-3 children tucked in nice and cosy. demonstrating how the atmosphere holds the heat in.

The children also got to play games using the information they had been learning about.

Art and Craft, Expressive Arts, Listening and Talking, Social Skills

There Was An Old Lady

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The children loved the Song called ‘There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly’. We read the story in class, then watched a video which allowed the children to compare and chat about the differences. They sang the song in Music with Mr Travins earlier in the week too.

The Children did Drawing Club about the story and enjoyed playing with the puppets afterwards.

They set up their own puppet Show in Class during Golden Time on Friday. It was amazing to see the organisation and cooperation amongst the children. They provided seats for the audience, as well as tickets and ‘snacks’.

The whole audience joined in with the singing. I shall try and share a little video on here for you to see.

 

Listening and Talking, maths

Measuring Length

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With the lovely weather the children have been outside doing some measuring as part of their maths lessons. They have been comparing objects

There have also been lots of opportunities in the classroom for measuring using different non-standard units and activities on the Interactive Whiteboard.

The Primary 2’s have been learning about metres and have also enjoyed being outdoors to do their maths this week.

They have made their own metre strips to take home. These will be helpful for next weeks homework.

Art and Craft, Expressive Arts, Listening and Talking, literacy, Social Skills

World Book Day

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The children have had a great day today. They are so excited by books and reading, which  fantastic.  They were keen to share their favourite books they had brought from home.

They looked so lovely in their costumes and pyjamas at school today.

They enjoyed World Book Day activities in the classroom.

The afternoon was really special as the whole school came together and shared books in a paired reading session.  There are photos on the School Blog.

The adults had a lot of fun too!

Art and Craft, Expressive Arts, Listening and Talking, literacy, maths, Social Skills, Social Studies

The Class Airport

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The children have really enjoyed creating an aeroplane and airport to play in this week. They have been talking about all the different jobs and have been really good at taking turns and playing together in this area.

They love being the pilot and co-pilot and its good to have cabin crew ready to help passengers with safety and snacks. They have made tickets and passports to take on their flights with them.

Air traffic control have been guiding the plane safely and they are taking the security very seriously. They have been asking the passengers lots of great questions to see where they are going on holiday and what they have packed in their suitcases.

Art and Craft, Expressive Arts, Listening and Talking, literacy, Social Skills, Social Studies, STEM

Nesting and Girlsta Jarl Squad Visit

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The children have been building up to this visit. They have made shields, axes and helmets for their own class squad and have been practicing marching and singing in class. Some of them made this amazing galley boat with the loose parts and have enjoyed Viking related play options in class.

They looked and sounded fantastic when they all grouped together for this photo.

They were really excited about doing their quiz which they had prepared for the Jarl. They drew big posters of things linked to the Jarls real life and then had fun choosing random things to draw for the answers to questions.

We managed a quick rehearsal before the Vikings arrived.

We didn’t manage to get many photos during the visit. I shall add more if I get any.

 

Expressive Arts, Health and Wellbeing, Listening and Talking

Gym with Mr Kirkness

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The children were so excited when they saw the set up in the gym hall today. This term they are exploring balance, rotation, travelling, jumping and flight in different gymnastics contexts. They are using a variety of different apparatus and floor situations to build confidence, resilience and improve their skills.

So many skills are being developed during their PE lessons, including creativity, communication, core stability and strength and collaboration etc. They learn to take risks safely and build confidence to try new things.

Art and Craft, Listening and Talking, Modern Languages

un village enneige en France

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The Primary 1 and 2 class created this beautiful  frieze of a village in winter using coloured paper and pens.

As part of their French lessons the Primary 3,4,5 class have been learning vocabulary relating to seasons and places.  They added labels to the picture and also drew their own villages to label in class. Turning the frieze into a snowy village in France.

Art and Craft, Expressive Arts, Health and Wellbeing, Listening and Talking, literacy, maths, numeracy, RME, Science, Social Skills, STEM

Back to School

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The children were delighted to be back at school this week. They are always excited to see what is new in the classroom but mostly they are excited to see their friends.

The train set is always a huge hit in the classroom. The children work together to build some really good layouts and play together so well with the trains

As part of their numeracy work the primary 1’s have been learning about Ordinal Numbers. They did this with the primary 2’s lined up and then they had their own little tub of objects to set out in an order of their choice. They practiced using the words 1st, 2nd, 3rd …….10th to say the positions of the items in their lines.

This term the IDL topic is titled ‘Here, There and Everywhere’. The children  worked in groups to discuss and plan what they would like to learn about this term. Their drawing show lots of fantastic ideas and they are very excited about leading their learning through this topic.

 

Art and Craft, Expressive Arts, Listening and Talking, literacy, maths, Social Skills, STEM

Shapes

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The children have had great fun using different materials and resources to create symmetrical designs. They have been using mirrors to check for symmetry indoors and outside and also painted wonderful symmetrical abstract designs.

They have also been learning about the 2D shapes and practised counting sides and corners. They designed their own pictures using different shapes.

We are very lucky at Whiteness to have so many fantastic resources for the children to use…..some modern technology mixed with some very old puzzles.

The Primary 2’s have been learning about which shapes can tile and which ones can’t. they found examples in and around the school and might find examples at home too. They investigated tiling using the different shapes they had been learning about.

The children have also been learning about 3D shapes and using their knowledge of 2D shapes they can describe the faces they can see. They have been learning about flat and curved faces as well as counting  the vertices on the different shapes. They loved using the ‘feely box’ to describe and guess the shapes.

Again we found lots of examples of 3D shapes in the school and outdoors.

They used shapes to build models and the p1’s practiced sorting shapes into ones that could roll or not roll and ones that could stack or not stack.

 

Art and Craft, Expressive Arts, Health and Wellbeing, Listening and Talking, literacy, maths, numeracy, Science, Social Skills, STEM

To Start the Term…..

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The classroom has changed around a bit and they are very excited and enjoying the Halloween Shop and messy activities set up for them this week.

The children have been having fun playing literacy and numeracy games and going over some of the learning from last term.

 

 

Expressive Arts, Health and Wellbeing, Listening and Talking, Social Skills, STEM

Go Furt Fridays

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Most Friday mornings in Term One have been spent outdoors in our Loose Parts Zone. This gives the children opportunities to develop so many skills like co-operation, problem solving, teamwork, collaboration, etc.

Each time we go out there are different ideas, children go into different groups, different friendships develop, they get more confident using the materials available and allow their imaginations and creativity to take over.

The parent council provided us with some new resources, including half round guttering pipes and some very sturdy stands to support the pipes at different levels. This has led to some amazing problem solving and water courses in the playground.

The tree area is great for the children to learn about taking risks but being safe. They love building Dens and climbing in the trees.

On these mornings we usually have our snack outdoors which has been lovely while the weather has been good this term.

And we get to play too………

Art and Craft, Expressive Arts, Health and Wellbeing, Listening and Talking, literacy, Social Skills, STEM

Our Towns

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The children started building houses in the junk modelling area and got really into it, making floors, rooms, furniture etc. They began including ‘mini-me’s into the houses too.

From this they decided to make a big town with roads between the houses.

They then began to create other buildings and areas in their town. There was a park, hospital, school etc.

The toy cars were brought out so they then built garages and even a multi-story car park.

They worked in pairs to draw plans of their towns and include all the buildings they thought should be included. It was great to see the primary 2’s labelling parts of their plans and writing names on their buildings.

The children have also been learning about different aspects of safety, including crossing the road. They did some role play in the games hall and had turns at being the lollipop person.

They then re-played crossing the road safely in their ‘town’, using the toy cars and mini-me characters.