All posts by Miss Holwill

We love reading because…..

*It helps us to find answers to our questions

*helps me to learn words

*we have favourites

*it helps us with our own writing

*we can read stories in different languages

*we can do it with our friends

*we love going on adventures

 

This week we are starting to bring in our favourite stories from home to share with the class….we can’t wait 🙂

How tall were the dinosaurs?

Last week we have been linking our learning in maths to our new skills of finding out information.  We wanted to know how tall the dinosaurs were, so we asked our P6 buddies to help.  We had to look at posters to find the dinosaurs height.  We then asked our buddies how to measure in metres.  This picture shows how tall a brachiosaurs and a stegosaurus were.

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What did dinosaurs eat?

When we were planning for our learning context of Dinosaurs, we wanted to know what they ate.  This afternoon we pretended to be palaeontologists and studied dinosaurs’ teeth.  We concentrated on the differences between herbivores and carnivores.  We made models of the two different teeth, flat molars and pointy canines, as those were the teeth we saw in fossilised skulls.  We used flour to pretend it was another dinosaur and dropped our model teeth into it.  We then carefully measured how deep they went.  We learned that the pointy teeth went in deeper and so carnivores, dinosaurs that ate meat, had lots of pointy teeth.

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Some herbivores had comb like teeth, like the diplodocus.  They would strip the leaves and swallow them without chewing.  To help them digest their food they may have swallowed stones to help them break up and digest their food, as some birds do today.  We tried this using lettuce.  When we shook the cup with the lettuce and stones the lettuce did get mushier.

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Staying safe around electricity

We have been learning about how to stay safe around electricity, both indoors and outdoors.  Here are our top tips;

*don’t go into substations (if you kick your ball in phone the electrical company and they will get it for you)

*always keep cables tidy so you don’t trip

*don’t touch any broken plugs

*don’t put anything in sockets

*don’t put knives in toasters (if your toast gets stuck unplug it and turn it upside down)

*water and electricity do not mix

*don’t use too many extension cables in one socket

Dinosaurs….

We are busy planning and learning about dinosaurs.  Did you know that a dinosaur is only a dinosaur if…

  1. It must have lived during the Mesozoic Era
  2. It must be a reptile, although not all reptiles are dinosaurs. Lizards are reptiles, but they are not dinosaurs.
  3. Its legs must be located below its body, as opposed to sticking out from the sides like the legs of a crocodile
  4. It must have lived on land. There were lots of other reptiles that lived at the same time (plesiosaurs have flippers and lived in water and in the air like the pterosaurs).

We have also been thinking about what it might be like if dinosaurs lived today.  Hollie thinks they would kill us all but Keegan thinks they would be pets and we would walk them on leads.

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News from 1B

We have had a busy start back to school…we are already learning  about lots of new things.

One of the activities we are enjoying lots is learning Scots.  We love the story of The Gruffalo and at the moment we are reading it in Scots, we are trying really hard but sometimes we forget and say our favourite lines in English not Scots.  Our favourite words are tod, hoolet and hoose.  We also learned a poem in Scots and recited it to the class.  Miss Holwill was very impressed as some of us were a wee bit feart but she couldn’t tell.

 

We are learning how to make sure we get the right amount of change in maths.  Our P6 buddies have been helping us and making it lots of fun.

 

We are also learning all about electricity. We carried out experiments to learn about static electricity and have even been make simple circuits.  Next we are going to learn how to stay safe around electricity both indoors and outdoors.

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Our visit to the library

We were very lucky this week as we were invitied to the library as part of Scottish Book Week.

We had to listen to three stories, Never Tickle a Tiger, Moonlight School and Wanted.  We then had to vote for our favourite story and say why we liked it.  Our favourite story was Never Tickle a Tiger.

All of the primary one boys and girls were lucky enough to get a goody bag fills with lots of fun things, including the story books.

 

A big thank you to Roseann at the library.110_2561 110_2574

Our first week back…

This week we were lucky enough to have a visitor who taught us some Tae Kwon Do.

Sophie S liked punching the pillow (pads).

Luke and Max enjoyed kicking the circles (pads).

Grace M and Sara thought the stretching was a good idea.

Artjom thought we made lots of good suggestions about how we could be courteous.

Sophie M liked the punching.

Archie M and Fearne liked both the kicking and punching.

We all know that we are only allow to punch and kick during special lessons.

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In number work we have started looking at adding.

Hollie says adding is bringing two numbers together.

Keegan say you can put a circle round the picture to help you to remember to count everything when you are adding.

Artjom likes  ‘Add-em’ the monster.

Primary 1 is an exciting place…

Here are some of the things we are excited about…

Charlotte – I enjoyed playing maths games in the playground with my buddy

Sam – I liked playing maths games

Emily – I liked learning about circle patterns

Rhianna – I liked making new friends.

Hollie – I had so much fun making new friends and I was excited about learning how to write a story all by myself.

Grace Q – I was excited about learning tricky letters.

Lilyrose – I enjoyed drawing a picture of myself.

Sara- I liked doing numbers.

Grace M- I was excited about learning colour patterns.

Sophie M – I was excited about drawing a picture of me in art.

Eilidh – I enjoyed learning to write the letters m, i, a, t and s. I know excited has a ‘t’ in it.

Fearne – I was excited about painting.

Luke – I was excited about learning tricky number work. I had to count everything in the classroom.

Jude- I was excited to do jumping with Mr Jeffries.

Sophie S –I was excited when we learned to play tunnel tig at the gym with Mr Jeffries.

Archie G – I was excited when we got to play tunnel tig with Mr Jeffries.

Archie M – I liked playing tunnel tig too.

Max – I liked learning numbers.

Artjom- I liked playing with my friends.

Keegan- I liked learning to draw a picture of myself.

Our news from P1B

Bonjour! (we have been practicing how to say hello in french)

We can’t believe that we have been so busy.  We have started to learn our sounds and reading tricky words.  We have been listening to the sounds in words as this will help us with our writing.

We have had a fun time with our buddies making Rainbow Fish.  We read the story and thought that the Rainbow Fish was a good friend because she shared in the end, so the fish we made only had one shiny scale.  We have also read Elmer, we are all different too.  Miss Holwill set us a very tricky challenge….we had to make an Elmer with a pattern.  Miss Holwill was very impressed with what we have done so far.

We had to get our thinking caps on when we started a floor book all about road safety.  Some of the things we would like to learn about were;

How people with a disability can cross the road safely?

How we can be safe in different weather?

 

We are looking forward to next week so have a good weekend!

 

Our first days at school!

We have already been very busy in school.  Here are some of our thoughts so far…

Sam loves the dolls house.

Charlotte likes the sand tray.

Jude likes playing with the cars on the play mat.

Eilidh loves her new Frozen pencil and writing cards.

Archie M likes going outside with his buddy.

Archie G loves building pyramids in the sand.

Keegan has been busy practicing his drawings.

Rhianna has had fun colouring in.

Luke favourite thing in school is playing in the sand pit.

Sophie M can’t decide if she likes the sand or the cars the best.

Grace M likes drawing, doll houses and the sand.

Grace Q likes playing with her friends and buddy.

Artjom likes going outside.

Max likes the lego.

Sophie S liked the number and phonics work we have started.

Hollie loves her buddy.

Emily loves the story corner and the dolls house.

Fearne likes playing with her buddy.

Sara likes going outside.

Lilyrose likes playing with the lego.

Miss Holwill is so proud of all of her boys and girls…they are going to be great Balbardie pupils.

S.W.A.F.

This week Primary 1 had their class trip to the Botanics.  Here we explored the gardgens to learn about what animals need to survive in the wild – S.W.A.F. (shelter, water, air & food).  We hunted for clues and played lots of games to learn about each part.  At the end of the day we built an island to show everything we had learned.

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Our ‘bears’ finding everything they need to survive.  They could only have one of each so they did not use up all of the forest’s resources.

Below our finished islands.

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This is what we thought:

Ellis – I liked making the food for the animals.

Ellie Rose – I liked making the animal food too. We had a fire in ours. It was a project.

Orla – I learned about SWAF. It keeps you alive. My favourite bit was the squirrels.

Sandra – I liked seeing the three teddies.

Blaire – I liked seeing the grey squirrels.  They were eating nuts.

Kai – I learned how to stay still if I want to see wild animals.

Samuel – I saw hedgehogs under the trees.

Evan – I liked walking through the gardens. I saw a red spider mite on a tree.

Jay – I liked seeing the squirrels climbing up and down the trees.

Jamie – I saw purple flowers and they were beautiful.

Rory – I saw squirrels playing games.

Alexander – I saw blue, red, white and orange flowers that smelled really nice.  I saw roses too.

Alfie – I saw a bee collecting pollen from the flowers. It takes it to its’ home and makes it into honey.

Ross – I learned how to make islands out of food for animals and wood and leaves. I used a stick to make a flag.

Niamh – We played a game pretending to be a bear. We wore a coloured band and all the colours were the SWAF. It was fun.

Murray – I saw squirrels going up and down trees. They were in a big garden.

Brooke – I made a little village out of sticks and string and flowers.

Bryce – I liked having a picnic lunch. There were lots of trees and squirrels there.

 

Down in the garden

Today was our class assembly.  We were sharing all of our learning about plants and minibeasts.  We really enjoyed being the stars.  We had worked hard to learn our lines and the songs.  We enjoy singing the songs aith the actions.  We all liked our costumes.  But maybe best of all was seeing our family and friends and having juice with them.

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A big thank you to Josh, Ray and Lisa for helping us!

Chocolate Lollipops!

We have been busy linking lots of learning together in P1h this week.  In Health and Wellbeing we have be learning about the Eatwell Plate.  It sorts food into different groups and shows us how much of each we should eat to be health.  We have also been learning about plants – different parts of the plants, pollination and the lifecycle.  We have a herb garden in class.  On Monday Niamh’s mum came into to school and we made chocolate lollipops.  Chocolate is in the ‘treat’ section of the Eatwell plate so this means we should only eat a little of it to be healthy.  Niamh’s mum poured a little chocolate onto our plate and then we could add the different flavours to it.  We could choose from…..

*dried strawberries

*dried bananas

*bee pollen

*mint

*orange

*coconut

*raisins

 

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Ellie-Rose ‘I liked watching the chocolate going hard’

Jay, Ross & Alfie  ‘I liked making the lollies’

Evan ‘I added the dried strawberries and bananas’

Sandra, Blaire, Orla, Olivia & Brooke ‘I loved the mint’

Ellis ‘The chocolate tasted a little funny to me because it wasn’t very sweet’

Niamh & Noami ‘I liked eating it’

 

 

 

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A huge big thank you to Niamh’s mum from all of us!

How do we share our learning?

 

We have been being busy like Cassie Communicator this week in P1h.  We have been learning about the life cycles of frog, butterfly and plants.   To learn the stages for each of the life cycles we watched a video.  We then in small groups decided on how we would display the main steps in the life cycle.  We all used our printing skills, that we have been practicing in art, and had to write the labels.

One group was sligthly different, in Health and Well being we are thinking about healthy eating.  We read the story of ‘The Hungry Caterpillar’.  This group started our display by showing what the caterpillar.

We would love to show our  families the displays at our Shared Start on 26.05.15.

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Minibeasts

We wanted to tell you about our exciting afternoon.  

We went for a minibeast hunt in the school garden.  We each had a magnifying glass and a check list.  We looked everywhere for minibeasts.  They like to like in the dark so we looked under branches and stones.  They also need damp so we looked in the long grass and near the water.  Bees like flowers as there is nectar so we checked out the flowers.  We also looked in the leaves as it was a little darker.  We found spiders, flies, bees, slugs, woodlouse and other bugs (but we were not sure what kind).  We are going to make a bug book and see if we can find out.

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Problem solving..

This week in maths we had to use our group working skills.  Miss Holwill set us a challenge, we had to work together to solve  a problem.  We learned that there are different ways to solve a problem in maths and we thought that drawing a picture would help us this week.

Our problem was….How many different ways can you sort a deck of cards?  These were our ideas;

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How would you of sorted them?

The Science Lab

We have had a very exciting week in P1h.  We have a bug lab with microscopes, petri dishes and magnifying glasses.  We love looking at all the bugs and material under the microscope.  Murray loves the lab.

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We have also been learning about the water cycle.  We watched a video and learned that there is not a shower in the sky.  Water is heated by the sun and it evaporates turing the water into gas.  When it is high in the sky it gets cold, condensation, making clouds.  When lots of water drops come together it rains or snows, precipitation.  We also watched this happening in a bowl.

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Ellis thinks he would like to be a scientist when he grows up.

What’s the time Mr Wolf?

We have had a busy first week back at school with lots of new things to learn about.

In maths we have started to learn how to read a clock, we are all whizzes at this and are really enjoying it.  Miss Holwill has said we can wear our watches to school if we like.

Miss Holwill is also trying to teach us how to tie our shoe laces.  It is very tricky by Kai has got it 🙂

We have started our new learning context of Gardener’s World by looking at the Seasons and thinking about the weather.  We are all very excited about the sunny weather, in fact we have run out of suns for our weekly weather chart 🙂


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