This week we have started creating a pet shop in our classroom. We had the choice of making different pets for our topic wall. We made spiders, birds and turtles. We will be making more pets next week when our parents come to join us for shared start.

We also talked about how to care for different pets and then we wrote instructions about how to do this for a book to go on our wall display.

In Maths we have been learning how to sort numbers into 10s and 1s. Kiara was awarded pupil of the week for problem solving linked to our learning. Well done to Kiara.

Remember p2 shared start is on Wednesday 26th November at 8.55am. We look forward to seeing some of our parents and carers then.

This week with Mrs Waddell we have been working on telling the time. We enjoyed making our own little clocks to help us. We also were doing different activity stations for our topic of Houses and Homes which involved research using information books, trying to make windproof houses and making our own houses from Lego and Playdoh.

With Mrs Gallagher this week we have made snowglobes to sell at the Christmas Fayre. The look really great! We also started our topic ‘The Great Pet Sale.’ We have lots of ideas about animals we would like to make for our classroom pet shop and are really excited about starting this display next week.

Our pupil of the week was Denholm for excellent work on numbers beyond 100 and for making a really great snowglobe. Well done Denholm!

This week we have been doing some Halloween themed activities. We created wax resist drawings of Haunted Houses and then did some writing about Haunted Houses. We had to describe what the Haunted House looked like. We did a great job of describing the spooky and scary houses!

We were very excited to come into school dressed up. Here we are looking a bit different from usual:

Well done to Katie who achieved a MVP certificate from Mr Jeffries for being pupil of the month for October in PE.

Amy was our pupil of the week for coming into school with a smile this week, keep it up Amy!

We have been setting new targets for this term. Lots of people would like to get into the Golden Club this term.

Next week we will be starting our new topics of Houses and Homes (with Mrs Waddell) and Shops and Shopping (with Mrs Gallagher).

P2bg blog entry 3

This week Mrs Gallagher has been really impressed with the class addition skills. Lots of children in the class are very confident in adding mentally which is superb! We have been learning a strategy to help us to add numbers called counting on. We know that we have to start at the number before the + sign and count on from there using the number at the other side of the + sign. We practised being animals that jump like frogs, rabbits and kangaroos to get from one number to another on a number line.

We have also been practising our recall of maths addition facts and are looking forward to our first BIG Maths challenge next week where we have to try to answer 7 questions in 20 seconds, it’s going to be tricky!

Gemma was awarded pupil of the week for making links in Maths. She spotted that if you know that 6+7 = 13, you can work out the answer to 6+8 by adding on 1 more to that answer. Mrs Gallagher was really impressed with her thinking. 🙂

Please find Miss Boyle’s blog from this week attached to this post.

This week in p2bg we have been learning new things. With Miss Boyle we have been learning about 3D shapes and trying to find some 3D shapes in pictures and the environment. We have also been learning about our senses and have learned about how our eyes and ears work.

With Mrs Gallagher we have been learning about Celebrations. We talked about weddings and our experience of weddings.  Teighan, Alfie and Gemma knew lots about weddings and gave us lots of information about their experiences. We learned that there is a special book called a register that people sign when they get married and that people who are getting married exchange rings. Lots of people mentioned the fancy cars you sometimes see at weddings and there were lots of drawings of limousines.

We were delighted to get our first fireball with Mr Jefferies and hope to achieve another one next week too.

Well done to Alfie who is our pupil of the week for always trying to write words beside his drawings, Mrs Gallagher was very impressed with this.

We are delighted that we have 6 pupils in the Golden Club before Christmas. Well done to Robyn, Lucy, Daniel, Sophie, Ava and Kelsey. We hope you enjoy the Golden Club event next week. We also have lots of people on step 3 and 4 so they will hopefully make it to the next Golden Club event.

This week we have been finishing off our Senses topic. We learned about taste and did some taste testing. Most of us didn’t enjoy tasting the lemon juice and the salt water! Mrs Jamieson used food colouring to paint our tongues and we were able to see our taste buds. We liked having green and blue tongues! Mrs Stewart also came in to show us some sign language and we learned to say some words using sign language including hello, please, thank you and goodbye.

Another highlight from this week was Christmas lunch on Wednesday. We enjoyed lunch with our friends and Mrs Gallagher and loved seeing the teachers in their Christmas jumpers.

Unfortunately our visit to the library was cancelled due to the bad weather but we did get a chance to have a sneaky peak at the P1 nativity performance and we thought they did a great job.

Next week we are looking forward to going to see the pantomime on Thursday.

This week the Foxes reading group have been reading the story “The Big Pancake.” On Wednesday Mrs Jamieson took the children from this group to do some baking and they made pancakes for the class. They also made some enormous pancakes too. We all enjoyed eating the pancakes and were glad that they didn’t run away from us like the one in the story did!

Also on Wednesday we had our Shared Start. The activities at Shared Start were all related to Our Senses topic. At the end of Shared Start we had a listening activity where we had to guess what some sounds were. Some of them were really hard to work out.

We have also been busy making Christmas decorations for the fayre on Saturday. We have some personalised and decorated baubles available at a bargain price of 50p each. We hope to see you coming along to buy some 🙂

Next week we are looking forward to our Christmas Lunch on Wednesday and visiting the library again on Thursday.

We have been learning about the sense of sight. We have learned about the different parts of the eye and how they work. We thought about what it must be like to live without being able to see. We did a blindfold assault course in the dinner hall where a partner had to lead us around and through different obstacles. This helped us to understand how blind people might feel using their guide dogs. On the way back from the library today we were lucky enough to meet a lady who had a guide dog. She was very kind and stopped to talk to us about how her guide dog helps her. Here are some pictures from us doing the assault course and some of our thoughts about what we experienced:

“Doing the blindfold assault course was scary because I couldn’t see.” Ava C

“I didn’t feel safe when I couldn’t see.” Demi-Leigh

“It was hard to do the obstacles when you couldn’t see.” Jessica

“I liked seeing the guide dog and asking the lady questions about it.” Isla

Part of our homework for this week is to find out what Braille is and we will be doing some activities to do with this and the sense of touch.

On Tuesday we went to Karate and enjoyed learning some of the basic moves from this sport. PC Arnott also came to visit us. He talked to us about how what we have been learning in Health (Being Cool in School programme) can also be used when we grow up. He told us how he uses the same principles as part of his job as a police officer. We liked hearing about ‘Happy hands,’ which tell people that you do not want them in your personal space without being aggressive or unkind.

We now have some people on step 3. Well done to Ellie, Breanna, Ava Wood, Evan, Daniel and Lucy. We hope that we will have some people ready to go into the Golden Club before Christmas and we are working hard on our listening and talking skills with both Mrs Gallagher and Mrs Innes to help us to get there.

Next week we will be visiting the library on Thursday so remember to bring in cards and books that need to be returned.

This week we have been very busy. Here are some of the things we have done this week:

• Destination Judo with Marky Mark and Yoyo on Tuesday
• our first visit to the library on Thursday 
• Maths and Writing in our Profile jotters
• We practised songs and ribbon twirling for the Harvest Service at church next week
• We learned about the seasons of the year and how these are affected by the movement of the Earth
• We finished our Paul Klee style art work that we have been working on over the last 3 weeks

Here are some pictures of us enjoying Destination Judo:

Here are some of our class highlights from this week:

“Using the ipads in Maths.” Emma

“The body parts game in PE.” Ben

“Learning about animal homes.” Rhuan

“Maths.” Ava Wood

“Playing Maths games with Mrs Jamieson.” Demi Leigh

“Watching a DVD in French.” James

Mrs Gallagher has been impressed by:

• Liam who did a great piece of independent writing.
• James who remembered the name of a squirrel’s home and helped others to remember this too.
• Annabelle who has shown great mental maths skills in addition and subtraction within 10.
• Kai who has shown kindness to others several times this week.

Next week we are moving on to a mini topic focus on Seasons and Day and Night. Please remember we need outdoor PE kit for Wednesday.