Good morning!

Yesterday was just as exhausting as our first day of activities! We spent the day Burn Scrambling, Abseiling, Orienteering, Night line and Archery. Dinner was a delicious choice of fish and chips or mac ‘n’ cheese (yum yum!) with a creamy cheesecake for pudding.
Our night activity was a walk in the pith black up a hill, base camp could hear us laughing all the way up and down.
Quote of the week so far was during a terrifying climb up a rock face, “I’m not experienced enough for this!!!” Can you guess which primary 7 announced this?

Hello Everyone

We have had a great day today so we thought we would tell you about it. There were three extra special things, firstly it was our first time of getting changed for P.E and going up to the hall with our P.E teacher, Mr Jefferies. Everyone did a great job of getting changed and we only have a few wayward socks left behind.

We lined up with our bubbles in and went up to the hall to see Mr Jefferies. We worked really hard following instructions about how things work in the Gym Hall.

The second special thing was that we have all started our reading books. Everyone was very excited to get their books. We have been looking at how we hold a book, where we start to read and using the pictures to help tell the story.

This week we have been looking at the story of The Little Red Hen. Today Mrs Jamieson came in and like the hen she helped us to make some bread. We made two huge loaves then we ate them and they were delicious.

Bye for now from P1l

Hello Everyone

This week has been a very busy Balbardie week. Monday we had the school photographer then on Tuesday we were photo stars again this time for the Courier, keep your eyes peeled for the special P1 edition. We also had a special visit from the SSPCA talking to us about what we should do if we find an injuired animal. We started our ‘Once Upon a Time’ topic and looked at the story of Golidlocks and the Three Bears. In our phonics work we have now learned 4 sounds m,c,s and p. Our buddies came to visit on Thursday and we played some games with them. In our Learners Journeys we have set ourselves targets for the term. Lots of us chose things liked being able to write our name, read some words or learn 10 sounds. We are going to work very hard to achieve our targets. Here are some of our thoughts of things we enjoying doing:

I like lunchtime and lining up with my bubble in. Rory

It is good going on the trim trail at play time. Ruby-Anne

I like seeing my buddy Cameron at lunch time. Charlie

I like playing with the stickle bricks. Kyle

I was pleased when l used our rhyme to write a 4. Brandon

I like going outside to play. Zara

My favourite area is the house corner. Keilija

It was great to see lots of people at ‘Meet the Teacher’ on Wednesday, thank you for coming. Here are the Shared Start dates for this year.

7th October, 2nd December, 24th March and 26th March

Apologises but think l had an information overload and just to confirm homework will normally be given out on a Wednesday and returned on Mondays, l think l may have said Tuesday.

Bye for now from P1l

Hello from P1l

It is very exciting doing the first blog post for P1l. We hope lots of people read it and leave us comments.

It is hard to believe that P1 have only been at school for two weeks as everyone has settled into school life so well. This was a big week as we stayed all day and had lunch at school too. This week we started to learn our sounds and these are going to help us learn to read and write. We have learned two already and they were ‘m’ and ‘c’. We have been looking at where the sounds comes from in our mouth to help us remember what the sound is. Here are some pictures of us working on our sound activities.

We have been learning about our school and we looked at our uniforms and why we wear them. We have some great pictures of us in our uniform up on the wall in our classroom.

On Wednesday we watched the story of the Rainbow Fish. It helped us to think about how we make friends and feel happy. We then got together with our buddies and made our own Rainbow Fish.

Mrs Leamy is very proud of how hard everyone has been working already – well done to you all.

Hello Everyone

P1l had a great afternoon at the park this week and we were so lucky as the sun shone all the time we were there.

We started our visit with a park scavenger hunt. Everyone did really well at hunting for things and Mrs Leamy was quite surprised because a lot of people crossed off squirrel. Each time she looked she couldn’t see one but there were lots of promises that people had definitely, definitely seen squirrels in Balbardie Park, so next time you are there keep your eyes peeled:)

We had a quick snack and a creepy crawly quiz then it was off to the play park. Before we went in we all had to look for something which was moved by a push force and something that we pull. We discovered that the park is a very good place do this as there were so many things that move.

Then it was fun time.

Hello Everyone

We had a great day yesterday at the Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh.

We were all very excited when we got on the bus and it didn’t take to long to get there.

We began the day in the Education Room which was like being inside a big tree. We learned about S.W.A.F which stands for Shelter, Water, Air and Food which are the things we need to survive. We also heard about Edward Bear who was hiding in the woods and it was our job to follow clues and find him.

We started our quest looking for Edward in the big garden and learned about how people are chopping down trees where bears live and it is making the bears angry and sad.

Then we went on a Rainbow Chip hunt looking for plants to match the colour of our chip. We walked through the woods finding clues from Edward as we went. We were very good at answering his questions and we all remembered what S.W.A.F stands for.

Eventually we found Edward Bear, he was guarding our packed lunches and thankfully hadn’t eaten them.

After lunch we went back into the gardens and put all our new knowledge to the test when we built magic islands using S.W.A.F to help us.

We had a great day on our trip, Mrs Leamy was very proud of us and there were lots of tired boys and girls on the way home.

Hello Everyone

This week we are blogging our highlights of the week,

Alex – l really enjoyed the skipathon because l learned to skip.
Maisey – wrestling was good because it was fun.
Jacob – l thought wrestling was fun.
Catriona – l liked the skipathon because l like to skip.
Jess – l enjoyed the skipathon because once l learned how to skip l really liked it.
Lucas – l liked the bowling because my team won!
Suvi – the skipathon was good because it helped me skip.
Alfie – l liked using my senses in the smelling test when we were learning about nocturnal animals.
Joshua – the skipathon was good because l skipped backwards.

As you can see the skipathon provided to be very popular. We had another sporty week with bowling, wrestling and skipping. In health and wellbeing we were looking at how to wash our hands properly and in our Gardeners World topic we looked at nocturnal animals that come into our garden at night.

Bye for now P1l

Reminder – Botanics trip on Thursday please remember your teddy and packed lunch.

Hello Everyone

P1l are all thoroughly enjoying our Commonwealth Fitness Fortnight so far. On Monday Miss Henderson worked with us to make some delicious fruit and vegetable smoothies. Everyone worked on different combinations and they were very yummy, we were learning about how we can eat things in different ways. On Tuesday we had P.E with Mr Jefferies and we started to practise our skipping skills ready for next weeks skipathon. In the afternoon we were had a super gymnastics session with our instructor Amy. We did crocodile kicks, forward rolls, jumping, small balance beam and much to Mrs Leamy’s initial worry a high balance beam. It was a great session and everyone made it across the beam and some people didn’t even hold Amy’s hand! Wednesday was super sports day with everyone taking part with great enthusiasm. Today was another busy one with curling in the morning and in the afternoon we had boxercise with Mr McGregor from Bathgate Academy. We finished the day by making thank you cards to give to the instructors who have all been so great.

Hello from P1l

It has been a while since we blogged and apologises for this. Each week the blog has faithfully been updated but unfortunately when it has been posted nothing has been showing up. We are hoping things have now be resolved and you will be able to see our blog in all it’s glory.
We have all been enjoying our Gardener’s World topic and our classroom is looking like a garden paradise.

Last week we looked at the life cycle of a tree with Miss Boyle and this week were very busy bees learning all about the good work bees do and what they look like. With the help of Mrs Jamieson we have planted some lettuces, potatoes, tomatoes and carrots outside and they are all growing very well. We all got to take our pea plants home today. On Monday we looked at some paintings by an artist called Georgia O’Keeffe, she paints beautiful big flowers and we had a go at doing our own.

Here are some of our highlights from this week:

Catriona and Summer enjoyed the flower painting.

Maisey enjoyed all of it!

Katie liked painting a worm.

Suvi enjoys the mini beast colouring.

Jess liked working with Miss Boyle on the life cycle of a tree.

Bye for now P1l

Hi Everyone

It was great to come back on Tuesday and hear all about the exciting things people had been doing in the holidays. We started our day back with a Circle Time to share our holiday news. Everyone got straight back into the swing of things and Mrs Leamy was very impressed with how well we were all reading after the holidays. This week we have continued to practise our French skills looking at bonjour and salut. On Wednesday we impressed Mrs Leamy again with how well we could say hello in French as she hadn’t heard us before. In writing we wrote about what we would like to do when we grow up. There are quite a few of us hoping to the teachers, a nurse, some policemen and fire fighters. Some people are inspired by their mums and dads and are looking to follow in their footsteps. We also made a start on our new topic ‘Gardeners World’ and drew the garden of our dreams.

We currently have a junk modelling area in class and there are some amazing creations being made. Please could you keep and send in any boxes, kitchen roll tubes etc.

There is a Primary 1 Shared Start next Thursday 1^st May, hopefully see you then.

Hello Everyone

Today has been a very tasty day with a visit this morning over to the Sports Relief Bake Sale. Everyone enjoyed a tasty treat and we helped raise money for people who didn’t have the same things as us.

Because of the horrible weather yesterday we didn’t get to do our Sports Relief Mile but we did go up to the gym hall and ran round it 10 times which was hard work and a lot of us were tired afterwards.  Mrs Leamy did take some pictures but because we were running so fast they came out all blurry – sorry.

This week we have been practising our painting skills.  On Tuesday in our Superheroes topic work we were looking at real-life superheroes and how some people can do amazing jobs helping people all the time.  We spoke about the emergency services and how we get in touch with them and lots of people spoke about their family being their superheroes.  Then we got painting and used very thin brushes to paint pictures of people from the police, fire fighters and paramedics.  Mrs Leamy was very impressed with how well we painted with the little brushes. We practised our skills again on Thursday when we drew and painted pictures of people from the Wizard of Oz linking into this years float theme.

On Thursday we had a new challenge developing our listening skills, we were listening for instructions. We all had a picture and then Mrs Leamy read out an instruction and we had to follow it.  We all did very well and listened carefully.

Next Thursday we will be at the library for our final visit.

Hello Everyone

Lots happening this week, Mrs Leamy was sure she actually saw smoke coming out of someones ears because their brains were working so hard.  We have all moved on in maths, some of us have been looking at number facts for 5 and some have been looking at subtraction.  We have been using cubes to help us with take away sums and we learned the take away sign. 

In our Superheroes topic we looked at villains, we looked at how they look and thought of words we could use to describe them. We all created our own villain and described them.  We followed this up by looking at how sometimes in real life people can not be very nice and how this makes other people feel.  We then got rid of our worries by drawing them on a ‘worry bag’ and let go of them with everyone elses.

We also started to look at the alphabet and have started to practise writing some capital letters.  We know that names and days of the week have a capital letter.

Next week we are going to the library on Monday and doing the Sport Relief Mile on Thursday.

Bye for now from P1l

There was great excitment today at our Open Morning with lots of mums, dads and grandparents coming to visit our classroom and taking part in a range of activities.  Thank you to everyone who came and we hope you enjoyed it.

This week we have started our new topic ‘Superheroes’.  The topic came from the children’s  own  interests and is proving to be a great success.  On Tuesday we created our own superhero character and we will develop these further next week.

Mrs Leamy returned on Thursday to find that Superhero Mission Control had landed in our classroom.  We are going to add things over the coming weeks to make it a superhero base.

During outdoor P.E on Thursday we enjoyed some superhero time showing lots of our superhero skills.  We will keep you posted of our superhero developments and if you are in an emergency and need some superhero help you know where to call:)

Thank you to everyone who commented on last weeks blog, it was great to read everyone’s comments.

This week has been a mix of Katie Morag, Internet Safety and Building Safety.  The week started with a safety talk about the building works which began this week.  Steven from the building company came and told us all about the possible dangers and what we have to watch out for during the building works.  Mr Welsh does not need to worry because straight after the talk lots of people came back to class and had the new gym hall built before we knew it and followed all the safety advice along the way.

Tuesday was Safer Internet Day and we learned 4 top tips to keep us safe when we are using things connected to the internet.  We watched a film which helped us remember the tips and made puppets to help reinforce the message of not giving away any personal information.

This afternoon we had great fun ending our Katie Morag topic with a Grannie Island Ceilidh with singing, dancing and a story.

Hello Everyone

Hooray! Today was our assembly and we were brilliant.  Everyone was amazing at remembering their lines, actions, songs, music and movements, it was great.  We would like to share with you what we liked best and some pictures from this morning.

Alfie – I really liked being a dove and singing the Rainbow Song.

Emily and Liam – We were good at making the rain noise.

Jay – My favourite songs were Who Built the Ark and the Rainbow Song.

Callum – Being Noah was good and l liked everything.

Maisey – It was good to see my mum.

Megan – When we first did it l felt nervous but when l saw Mum l was happy.

Enci – I loved all of it, especially holding the rainbow and when Jacob walked with the rain.

Suvi – I liked being a narrator because l had lots of things to say.

Lucas – My favourite songs were Rain, Rain Go Away and the Rainbow Song.

Alex – It was great to get my certificate and Mummy see me.

Well done to everyone, you were brilliant and  Mrs Spence, Miss Fisher and l are very proud of you.

Hello Everyone

Friday again, the weeks seem to go so quickly.  This week we enjoyed lots of different activities.  On Monday we listened to the story of Katie Morag and the Tiresome Ted and talked about the different emotions Katie felt.  We had a circle time and shared our own experiences before drawing faces of Katie Morag as she goes through the story.  On Tuesday morning we all had the chance to bake porridgies with Mrs Jamieson and in the afternoon we ate them, they were delicious.  We had a great time on Tuesday afternoon when Mr MacDonald came to talk to us about his life growing up on a Scottish island.  He had some super pictures and we asked him lots of great questions.  It turns out Mr MacDonald has seen a lot of sharks and dolphins. With Mrs Spence we followed on from our work on Katie Morag and wrote about a time we had felt angry, it turns out a lot of us can get quite angry with our brothers and sisters! Thursday morning was buddy time and this week we read our new books with our buddies, they were all very impressed with how well we are doing.

Bye for now.

P1l

This week we have been looking at the Isle of Struay and we have created part of it in our classroom.

Our first task was to work with a partner to create one of the houses from the island.  We tried to include lots of detail from the pictures we had.  When we started our topic Alfie asked what kind of animals might live on the Isle of Struay. On Tuesday Mrs Leamy asked us what kind of animals might we see round Bathgate and as well as lions and chinchillas we thought maybe squirrels, foxes and rabbits.  We then had a look at the animals that Katie Morag might see and we found out she could see puffins, otters, seals and even basking sharks.  We drew them and added them to our display and we are sure you will agree it looks great.

We also thought about the weather on Struay and how it would effect people getting there.  We used the internet to look at the weather in Bathgate and on the Isle of Coll.  We found out that often it was warmer on Coll but also windier.

Bye for now P1l

  Happy New Year from P1l

 It is great to be back at school and hear about what everyone has been doing in the holidays and it seems that Santa Claus visited everyone’s house 🙂

 We started the year with a new topic looking at the Katie Morag stories.  We began with a task called I see, l think, l wonder where we looked at some pictures of a Scottish Island and shared our thoughts.  Some people wondered things about the island like what kind of animals live there, which we will try and answer during the topic.

 We also drew pictures of Katie Morag and we had to work on including lots of detail.  We took our time to look at a picture from a book and then tried to put all the things we could see in our own drawings.  Our pictures were amazing, Mrs Leamy couldn’t believe how much our drawing skills have developed already.

 With Miss Henderson in R.M.E we looked at the story of Noah’s Ark and we are going to be working on the story for a few weeks, ending with our assembly on the 7th February.  Please put this date in your diary as it would be great to see lots of mums, dads and family there.

 In maths we are continuing with addition and this week we look at the number facts for 6.  We found out there are 7 different ways you can make 2 numbers add up to 6.

 We had lots of fun outside on Thursday for our P.E slot, it was a lovely afternoon and some of us even took our jumpers off! We were practising travelling around obstacles, following people and stopping really quickly. Let’s hope the weather stays as good for next week.

 Bye for now p1l