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;

How would you of sorted them?

This week we have been learning more about parts of a plant and we watched a video that told us lots of information about why plants are important and what we can use them for.

THREE very interesting things that we can use plants for are:
1. Plants provide oxygen. If there were no plants in the world we would not be able to breathe!
2. You can grow cotton plants that we can make clothes from.
3. You can use trees for shade which is very important in the hotter months.

We also learned about 4 different parts of a plant. These are:
1. Petals
2. Leaf
3. Stem
4. Roots

We got to make our own plants and next week we are excited to get to label them! Here are some pictures of us making our own flowers…

Article 28: The right to an education

This week we were learning more about the 4 seasons in the year. The 4 seasons are:
1. Winter
2. Spring
3. Autumn
4. Summer

We wanted to showcase our learning by making beautiful seasonal pictures. Here are the steps that we took:

1. The page was divided into 4 and we had to get a pencil and draw around our hands to make it look like trees. We coloured these in brown because that is the colour of the branches and trunks on trees.
2. Next we used the technique of pointillism to match the trees to a season. We chose appropriate colours to match the seasons, for example, we used white paint to make it look like snow in the winter season.
3. We did this for all the seasons and we made sure that we added lots of detail to our pictures to make sure that it was clear what season each one was.

This week we have been learning about the weather and seasons. We were in groups of 4 and worked together to discuss different types of weather at different times of the year.

FIRST, we were given questions such as “What time of year do the leaves fall?” and we had to stick them onto the right season. The answer is AUTUMN.

NEXT, we stuck pictures of things we do at certain times of year onto the right seasons too. We had pictures of things like Santa Claus (WINTER), lambs (SPRING), flowers (SPRING and SUMMER), etc.

We all worked very well in our groups and made sure to include everybody so that we all participated!

NEXT TIME we are going to be learning about the months of the year and putting them in order in our groups. We are then going to stick the months of the year onto the correct seasons to show our understanding.

We are also very excited that we have our very own Weather Forecast Station and we can do our own weather charts and talk about the different clothes we wear for the weather.

Home learning task: Can you watch a weather forecast at home and try to do your own?

Have a lovely weekend and we hope the weather is beautiful!
-Primary 1w & Miss Wilson

Article 28: The right to a good quality education

We’ve been bees in P1l!  Below are some comments from the children about what they have enjoyed about school this week or about school in gerneral.

I like doing Maths, we’ve been learning to take away (Rory).

I like doing Maths too, continuing a shape and colour pattern is fun (Ammie-Leigh).

I like phonics, we were learning the ‘sk’ sound in my group this week (Brandon).

I like the activities we do in phonics, like jumping into the hoops and saying the sound (Mia).

I like practising the letter shapes in phonics (Charlie).

I like working in school (Zara).

I enjoy P.E. with Mr Jeffries, I like playing tig (Liam).

I enjoy Drama with Mrs Innes (Keilija).

I like phonics and Maths (Jamie).

I like P.E the most (Ruby).

I like going outside for P.E. with Mrs Laidlaw (Cameron, Shelbi, Callum and Alistair).

I like my teachers (Ruby-Anne, Annie and Owen).

I like lunch time and play times the most (Charlotte).

Golden Time is my favourite (Kyle).

Doing aerobics in the classroom on a rainy day is fun (Brooke).

I like lunch time the most (Jackie).

I like home time (Lucas).

Today is Autism Awareness Day and all the children in Balbardie Primary School wore blue to celebrate this day. It was very funny going to the Church Service this morning wearing all blue! We have really enjoyed our last day of school before the Easter holidays and are all excited for the time off!!

We watched a video made by the ARB children and staff and really enjoyed being taken on a tour of the classrooms and learning more about what Autism is. We also really loved the task where we had to see what was the same as our classroom and what was different.

We noticed some of the things that were the same were:
-We have a visual timetable of our day too
-We also have a sticker chart
-We have our own trays
-We have a weather chart

We noticed some of the things that were different were:
-We don’t have our own individual timetables
-We don’t have a monthly calendar with all the events on it
-We don’t have very quiet classrooms!

We all really enjoyed learning more about Autism and we all feel like we know more about the children who have it. We worked with an elbow partner to think a little about what makes us unique and special like children who have Autism. Some of the things that make us unique are:
-I play with my friends and they make me feel special (Kaycee)
-I like playing my zombie games on Xbox (Lewis)
-I have lots of friends (Erin)

We are all unique and different and that’s what makes each one of us special 🙂

Have a lovely Easter break and we hope you don’t eat too many Easter eggs!
-Miss Wilson & P1w

We have had such a great week that we couldn’t pinpoint just one thing to talk about! We decided that it would be nice to tell everyone our highlights of our week. Some of these are:
-Making bunny rabbit hats with our buddies and doing Art (Jodie)
-Making the Easter bunny with its tail sticking out (Katie)
-Watching Primary 2’s ‘Honey’ rehearsal
-Seeing the ‘Honey’ show and learning new sounds in Phonics (Eva)
-Going to The Hub (Shaun)
-Watching Primary 4m’s Assembly and learning more about The Vikings (Lewis)
-Going to Phonics and learning the sound “sh” (Arran)
-Learning initial sounds in Phonics “tr”, “sc”, “gr” and “pr” (Max)

Our class did fantastic this month and got lots of certificates! Here are a list of the children who got a certificate and what they got it for:
Primary 1 MVP – Donna Forsyth
Drama Pupil of the month – Katie McFarlane
Following our class charter and keeping others safe in the playground (RRS) – Max Taylor
Article 33 – THE RIGHT TO BE SAFE

Note from the teacher: Primary 1 Learners Journey Jotters (pink) are going home today and once you have filled out the achievements at home page (at the back) and the Highlights of the term page (blue) and sign this, please return by 1st May. Thank you!

In teams, P1L had to create their own pirate ship using the resources given. The children were very creative, using either wooden blocks, lego and collage materials. They did well working together and had fun whilst they were learning!

Please find some photos below:

-I liked playing with the drums (Archie)
-I enjoyed playing the triangle (Katie)
-I liked playing the jingle bells (Lucas)
-I liked playing with the drums (Eva)
-I liked Golden Time (Erin)
-I won Pupil of the week for working really well as part of a team! (Donna)
-I liked going to The Hub (Shaun)
-I liked play time (Arran)
-I liked Art this week making our fruit collage pictures (Jodie)

Lots of us enjoyed watching Primary 3b’s assembly on Ancient Egypt. Something we enjoyed about their assembly was:
-I liked the singing (Eva)
-I liked seeing my friends (Max)
-I enjoyed hearing everyone talking (Jodie)
-I liked when they were speaking really funny (Katie)
-It was funny when they were making the boy into a mummy (Lewis)
-Someone was dressed as Tutankhamun (Hannah)

P1 parents are invited to Shared Start Tuesday morning to come and share in our learning! We hope you can make it and look forward to welcoming you to our classroom 🙂

Article 29: Education should develop each child’s personality and talents to the full. It should encourage children to respect their parents, and their own and other cultures

This week in 1w we have been learning more about making collage pictures. Last week we made flowers out of tissue paper and this week we made forrest pictures. Some people even started to add the Gruffalo and the little brown mouse into their picture.

We really enjoy Art in 1w and are becoming fantastic artists! Here is a list of our favourite pieces of art we have made so far in Primary 1:

Jodie – Making my Caribbean beach picture
Katie – Making my 3D parrot as part of home learning
Donna – Painting pictures
Max – Making my 3D parrot out of paper mache
Eva – Drawing pictures of dinosaurs
Lucas – Drawing a pirate portrait
Farrah – Colouring in pictures of our favourite books
Lewis – I enjoy drawing
Anna – Painting pictures

*Article 29 – We have the right to learn to be the best we can be*

This week we did a very exciting experiment! We first tried predicting whether certain objects would float or sink. We had to cut out the pictures of the objects and stick them under the heading of FLOAT or SINK. After we made our predictions, we carried out the experiment by filling up a bucket with water and placing the items in it.

We found out that these items floated:
-beach ball
-paper
-pen
-pencil
-loom bands
-ruler
-dice
-plastic cup
We found out that this item sunk:
-rubber

Archie said that he thinks the rubber sunk because it was heavy. So we decided that lots of things that are heavy will sink!
If we predicted correctly, we gave ourselves a smiley face 🙂 If we didn’t predict correctly then we gave the picture a sad face 🙁

To carry on thinking about floating and sinking, we decided to make art pictures of a pirate ship!
FIRST we painted the sea blue
THEN we drew a boat and cut it out before sticking on the picture
THEN some of us drew on portholes
FINALLY we stuck down lollipop sticks and our sails on top to make a jolly roger flag

We think our pictures look fantastic! What do you think?

To go along with our pirate ships, we listened to instruction on how to make pirate hats! We posed for our picture saying “ARRRRR!”

We have been very artistic this week and made another fantastic picture. We made collage flowers and layered different coloured tissue paper on our picture to make it look very interesting.

We have had a great week in Primary 1w and are looking forward to learning more next week. Next week we are looking forward to learning more about mermaids!

-Miss Wilson & P1w