As we say a fond farewell to all our preschool children we are delighted to welcome back our returning children and all our new little ones who are due to start at St Nicholas ELC.  We are very excited to meet everyone and provide the children with lots of quality learning experiences.  This is such a wonderful time of the year for everyone.  At St Nicholas we pride ourselves in providing a warm and nurturing environment for our little ones to thrive and grow.  Our main focus over the next few months is to settle everyone into St Nichols ELC.  We are very excited to see where our learning takes us.  Staff are always on hand to answer any questions or queries you may have.  We are are looking forward to meeting everyone and excited for the year ahead.

Many thanks

St Nicholas ELC

As we reach the end of our summer term the staff at St Nicholas ELC would like to wish all our pre-school children lots of luck as they start a new and exciting chapter.  We know all our little learners will embrace the learning experiences Primary 1 has to offer.  We are truly delighted the children experienced a successful transition.  The experience helped the children to prepare and feel confident about making the transition from nursery to Primary 1.  All our little ones welcomed this experience and particularly enjoyed meeting their buddies.  We would also like to take this opportunity to thank all our parents, carers, grans and grandads for all your support throughout the year, it is very much appreciated.

Good luck to everyone on your first day of school, we will miss you lots.

This week we have spent time working on our assembly about friendship and forgiveness. You can watch our assembly here: https://sway.office.com/DK0PO3VlvcOZQw23?ref=Link

In maths we have been learning about Venn Diagrams. We used hoola hoops to help us understand.

In Literacy our teacher introduced Exposition writing. This is a one sided argument. We have decided to use this style of writing to write a letter to Elida (the fairy that has arrived in our classrooms) to convince her that it is safe to stay!

In health and wellbeing we discussed the zones of regulation. We were talking about our face and body clues for the emotions we feel.

Thank you for reading about our short but sweet week!

Literacy

This week we were working on spelling words with magic e and the vowel a. We had fun playing four in a row identifying and reading words that had this new sound. Our narrative writing was based upon the story Little Lumpty who had a problem when he climbed up the great wall that Humpty Dumpty had fell off. How could he get down safely? In reading we used the story wands to answer questions about the books we had read and to make predictions about what will happen next.  We have been reading Scottish stories and poems this week and were brilliant in our recital of Choukie Hen which we learned to celebrate Robert Burns birthday. This week we started collecting words from our story time for our Word Boost wall this week we selected: scunnered, admitted, truce, darted and shoo.

Numeracy

We were using a numberline to make backwards jumps to help us come to the correct solution to our subtraction problems. We then had to tell an alien the steps to finding the answer as he had never heard of subtraction before.  In time this week we focused on telling the time using o’clock and half past through games and activities.

Life in the Past

Our new topic will be based upon life in Linlithgow Palace during the 15th century.  This week we were finding out about the location of the Palace and devising key questions that we would like to find out the answers too. We created a huge painting of the Palace for our classroom wall.

Expressive Arts

This week we made a link between the song we have been learning with our music specialist and our art lesson. We made a paper collage of ‘Three Craws sat upon a Wa’. We enjoyed singing the song as we created our art.

RERC

This week we discussed the special celebration of baptism and the symbols relating to this special time.

HWB

We completed our well-being check in for this term and discussed any concerns with our teacher. We set ourselves learning goals for this term for literacy and numeracy. We shared the book ‘Oh, the places you’ll go’ by Dr Seuss linked to our resilience work and everyone shared the job they would like to do in the future and a place they would like to travel to in the future. Lots of great ideas ahead for these P2 pupils.

It’s been a fun, fast and fantastic week at St Nicholas nursery with lots of quality learning taking place.  The children have all settled back in amazingly well and our new little children are making the most of their nursery experience.  Everyone is doing great at establishing and following nursery routines.  Following on from last week the children have enjoyed continuing with the lots of chat about Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  In order to extend the children’s learning further we have had lots of interesting discussion about bears, which has been lots of fun and most enjoyable.  Following on from some group discussion the children were eager to make their own little bears.    They loved taking part in a little transient art activity which involved using various art and craft materials to make a bears face.  The children found this activity very enjoyable which involved developing concentration as well as expressing their creativity.  The children have also engaged well with a little literacy activity which involved using the letter pebbles to make the word ‘bear’.  It’s been fantastic to see the children match and become familiar with the letter sounds.  The children have also enjoyed listening to a wide range of Bear stories, they have listened well and have loved sharing their thoughts and feelings, which has been lovely to hear.  As a little extension of this we decided it would be a great idea to sample some of the snacks that were in the stories we listened to.  I think it’s fair to say this went down a treat.  The children loved sampling porridge with various toppings as well as pancakes and honey.  Some of the children have even used large bricks to build a house and the bear’s beds.  They have been comparing sizes and have used a good range of mathematical language to describe their work.  They have also enjoyed drawing pictures of bears which are displayed in our art gallery alongside there wonderful writing.  It has been fantastic to see this topic develop and the children extend their own learning.

The children have also had the opportunity to celebrate Burns Day, we have all participated in Scottish Highland dancing, sampled Scottish food such as Haggis, neeps and tatties, homemade Scotch broth as well as oatcakes and cheese.  The children have embraced all things Scottish and it has been great to see them engage with lots of Scottish activities in order to learn about their Scottish culture.  It has certainly been a jam packed week of fun and lots and quality learning and interactions.  Our children have all been fabulous, they are all super little learners.  Great work everyone and very well done.

Here are a few pictures of what has been taking place in nursery this week.

This week the children were inspired to have a teddy bears picnic after hearing the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  They had great fun engaging in role play and created their own imaginative stories, which was lovely to hear.  The children enjoyed pretending to be different family members using the bear masks and they enjoyed playing with the toy food.   We also explored mathematical language such as, big, bigger, biggest, tiny, small, smallest and middle sized.  We explored size through a game using 2D porridge bowls where the children put porridge on the small bowl, middle-sized bowl or large bowl.  They were very successful with understanding mathematical language, but found identifying the middle-sized bowl the trickiest.  Well done boys and girls.

We are pleased to be back at school and have had a super week! We have been revising some of our trickier sounds (ai, oa, sh, ch etc.) and using them to write short sentences. Our teachers are very impressed that we can do this, remembering to use finger spaces and full stops. Wow! We have been reading our new books at home and in school, and we are noticing our sight words in the stories.

In Numeracy, we have been learning to count forwards and backwards to 30, and have had a go at writing the numbers between 21 and 30. We can use tools such as Rekenreks and Numicon to build numbers to 20 and add to 10, or more. Some of us can now do this independently. We are successful and confident learners!

We have also enjoyed some Science this week, learning about day & night. We learned that the Earth moves around the sun, and when we have daylight, other parts of the world are sleeping. We used a torch and a globe as an experiment to show this before we went outside to create chalk drawings. You can see some photos of our drawings below.

In Music, we have been listening to Scottish tunes and practising keeping the beat with different percussion instruments. We are looking forward to learning more about Scotland and our culture over the next couple of weeks with our teachers.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…

December has certainly been a fun, busy, enjoyable and magical time in St Nicholas ELC.  We have all had the best time preparing and celebrating Christmas.  The children have had a wonderful time engaging in lots of fun Christmas activities which have been on offer in the ELC.  They have embraced every moment which has been great to see.  They all had a fantastic time at their party and danced their little socks off.  It has been a truly magical time in St Nicholas ELC for both our children and staff.   We would like take this opportunity to thank everyone for their continued support and kindness over the festive period, it’s been fantastic and we are so very grateful.  On behalf of all the staff at St Nicholas ELC, we would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.  We look forward to that start of a new and exciting year with your little ones.  Stay safe everyone and Many thanks.

The ELC Team

Here are a few pictures of what has been happening throughout the month of December.

We have had another busy week in P3 and P3/2. Here are some of the things that we have been up to:

Literacy:  This week our cheeky classroom elf came along and popped his picture on the mighty writer wall. We all worked so hard to create a super story about the elf. Our stories had beginnings, middles and endings. We also tried hard to include lots of adjectives and commas.

Maths: In maths this week we have been learning about weight. We know about the words light and heavy. We learned about different kinds of scales and we know that the unit of measurement is grams and kilograms. We weighed some wrapped up presents, models that we made and other things around our classroom.

Art/ RE: We learned about the 3 wise men and we created some amazing art work with them in it. Look out for our art work in the Christmas carol concert! We learned that their names are Casper, Melchior and Balthazar.

RE: On Monday it was St Nicholas day we learned all about his life and his generosity.  We attended mass on the computer.

We are looking forward to another busy week next week with lots of lovely Christmas activities. 🎅🎄

Literacy

This week we learned two new sounds the ‘au’ and  ‘ew’ sound. We read and spelt these words in various activities.

This week we wrote an information report on African Elephants, we learned that they are the largest animals on land!

We have been focusing on our comprehension skills in reading by answering questions in relation to our reading books.

Math

This week in math we continued to recognise the value of money and used various coins to make certain amounts.We have also been playing shops using money to buy various items.

We also explored weight by comparing objects on a scale, reading a scale on ipads, and drawing heavier and lighter objects.

Wider curriculum

In our senses science topic we explored our sense of ‘touch’.  We felt various textures; smooth, squishy and soft in a bag and had to guess which texture it was. In art we made stain glass windows as it is catholic education week.

Literacy

We have had lots of fun this week learning our new sounds (‘g’, ‘v’ and ‘z’) through play activities. We have developed lots of skills across the curriculum with our class Garden Centres and Vets. We created ‘Super Veggies’ using real vegetables after being inspired by the Supertato series of books! We really enjoy role play in Primary 1 and many of us choose to play with these activities everyday.

Our teachers are also very impressed that we are all progressing with blending sounds together to read and write words, and some of us can write short sentences with the teacher’s help. We have all been very excited to take reading books home this week for the first time too. We have spotted lots of common words in our books and we had a go at reading the sentences. Well done!

Numeracy

This week we have been learning to count forwards in 2s and recognise doubles.

We have used lots of materials in the classroom to help us: Numicon, Rekenreks, dice patterns, cubes, toy teddies and toy dinosaurs! We enjoy singing along to songs and playing digital games to practise our numbers too.

Learning Across the Curriculum

We discussed Bonfire Night and how to keep safe if we are near fireworks. We are looking forward to seeing all the bright colours in the sky and created some firework art using neon paint and black card. We learned some of the words we can use to describe what fireworks look and sound like, such as ‘pop’, ‘bang’ ‘whizz’ and ‘explode’! As a Laudato Si school, we have been learning that our planet is beautiful and God-given. We enjoyed ‘Eat all your lunch’ day and tried very hard to eat everything on our plate. Food waste is not good for our planet. We also painted pebbles with flowers to contribute to our school display, showing how much we love our environment.

Primary 1

This week the children have engaged amazingly with our Autumn Topic.  There has been lots of discussion about observations they have made.  It has been lovely to see the children bring in lots of different Autumnal pieces they have collected.  We decided to make a little sorting and matching area.  The children have been amazing at sorting all the autumn pieces out and putting them into little baskets.  They have also been using the magnifying glasses to take a closer look.  There has been lots of quality discussions about texture, shape, size and colour.  The learning opportunities with this have been endless, covering all curricular areas.  We also set up a little transient art activity for the children so they could use the autumnal pieces in a creative way.  I think you will all agree the children’s art work is beautiful.  This activity allowed the children to explore shape, space, pattern, positioning and texture.  There has also been lots of discussion about Fireworks night and as a result the children have been learning how to keep themselves safe.  They have enjoyed a range of stories and have made some amazing firework pictures in the art and craft area. The children have also noticed how dark it is outside.  This led to lots of discussion about how we need the lights on in order for us to see.  To  develop the children’s learning further we decided to go outside just to see how dark it was.  We all agreed it was very dark.  This was a fantastic opportunity for the children to use the torches.  They had lots of fun and explored different areas of the garden using the torches.   It certainly has been another busy, fun filled week at St Nicholas ELC with lots of quality learning and interactions.  Well done everyone!

“I’ve used conquers and leaves to make my picture”

“The leaf has brown spots on it”

“This feels jaggy”

“My daddy lights the fireworks”

“I need to stand back to be safe”

What super fun we’ve had this week in Primary 1!  What have we been doing?

Literacy

We learned three new sounds this week: h, u and d. We are learning to recognise, write and hear these sounds in words. We have been blending the sounds with other ones to make words and we even had a go at writing some sentences together with our teachers! We are learning that we need a capital letter, finger spaces between each word and a full stop at the end. We are becoming more confident with reading our first ten common words and next week we will take home our next set of ten.

Our writing lesson on Thursday was linked to our topic, Dinosaurs! We had to use our fantastic imaginations to create a dinosaur pet. We discussed what it would look like, what size it would be and what its name would be. We drew detailed drawings of our imaginary pet dinosaurs and our teachers helped us to write down our great descriptions.

Numeracy

We have been using the Rekenreks to help us develop our number sense. A Rekenrek looks like a small abacus with 20 beads (10 on the top and 10 on the bottom), and we use it to count and to visualise numbers. We explored different ways to make numbers to 10. For example, 6 could be made from 3+3, 5+1 or 4+2. We also continued to practise counting forwards and backwards to 20 and used number lines to help us say which number comes ‘before’ and ‘after’.

Learning Across the Curriculum

We are learning lots about dinosaurs! We know that some were carnivores and some were herbivores. We have labelled different parts of a dinosaur and are taking good care of the special ‘fragile’ boxes the Edinburgh Professor Alexander sent us. We hope to find out more about what’s inside soon! In Music we have been learning songs about dinosaurs too – lots of fun! On Friday we enjoyed dressing up in our Halloween costumes. We danced to spooky music, printed pumpkin art, made masks and monsters, and were grateful to the Parent Council for our bags of sweeties. Thank you!

Primary 1

Wow we have had a busy week!

In math we have been learning about patterns. We learned that patterns follow an order and that they are all around us. We made patterns with various objects including numicon, lollipop sticks and lego. This week we also learned about the properties (sides and corners) of 2D shapes.

This week we were preparing for our class mass and we chose to focus this on St Francis of Assissi. In our preparations we made lots of animal pictures and dog biscuits because St Francis of Assissi is the patron saint of animals. Our class mass was on Wednesday afternoon with father Jeremy, at the end we sang ‘He’s got the whole world in his hands’.

In literacy we were learning to read and spell words with the ‘qu’ sound such as queen and quick. In writing we have been focusing on writing a description, and the key element of descriptions which are adjectives. In our writing we described our halloween costumes. We wore our halloween costumes to school on Friday and our teachers were really spooked out by some of our costumes!

We have had a very busy week in P3 and p3/2. Here are some of the things we have been up to:

Number: In number we have started to learn about adding and taking away. We have been focussing on 1 more,  1 less, 10 more and 10 less.  “My favourite was doing the 100 square jigsaw”. ” My favourite job was using the numicon to make 10 more and 10 less”.

Literacy: In literacy we have been looking at description pieces of writing. We know a descriptive piece of writing needs a Title, adjectives, an opening sentence and lots of description. ” This week we were writing a description of our school bags”.

Art: In art this week we have been making some spooky pictures. We made some symmetrical spiders and then we made web pictures using oil pastels and watercolour. “The oil pastel did not get mixed with the watercolour, it repelled it”.

Music: In music, we learned some songs for Halloween and learned how to use clapping to keep a steady beat. ” I liked the song about the pumpkin turning into a jack-o-lantern”.

PE: In gym this week we have been learning ball skills. We learned to control the ball by rolling and bouncing. We liked playing all the games with Mr Muldoon.

We are looking forward to celebrating Halloween over the weekend and returning fresh and ready to go again on Monday. 🎃🕸

Welcome back to all our families who have been lucky enough to have a little holiday over the October break.  It’s lovely to have all our children back and have the opportunity to catch up with all our little ones and hear all about what they have been up to.

The main aim of this week has been to settle everyone back into nursery with the main focus on establishing routines.  The children have all been wonderful and they certainly have had a great first week back.  We have had lots of outdoor play and there has been lots of opportunity to look for more signs of autumn.  The children have also been very busy making an autumn display.  They used their finger prints to make some beautiful autumn trees.  The children have loved chatting about the observations they have made.  The children have also been busy collecting various autumn pieces such as leaves and conquers.  The children have been fantastic at bringing in autumn pieces they have found whilst out and about.  Great work everyone!

The Autumn Leaves are Falling Down

The children have had a lovely week in nursery with lots of fantastic learning taking place.  The main focus has been looking for signs of Autumn.  The children have been making lots of interesting observations and they have all had the opportunity to discuss seasonal changes they have noticed.  The weather has been very kind to us which has been great as the children have been able to get outside to make lots of interesting Autumnal observations.  The children have also had the opportunity to go on a little walk to look for signs of Autumn.  They collected lots of leaves and we have been busy looking at the shape, colour and size of the leaves.  Some of the children have also brought in leaves which they have collected.  We have also enjoyed a range of Autumnal stories and chatted about Autumnal animals, which the children have loved and engaged well with.  After lots of discussion with the children we decided it would be lovely to make and little autumnal woodland den for the animals.  We have also made an interest table to display the leaves we have collected.  This is to allow the children to add any Autumnal pieces they collect and give them the opportunity to investigate and inspire their curiosity further.

Children’s voice

“This leaf feels crispy”.

“The leaf is green with yellow bits”.

“I love the little hedgehog, I saw one in my garden”.

“It feels cold today, I need by hat”.

“The leaves are falling down”

Here are some pictures of a wonderful week in St Nicholas ELC.

It’s been another very busy and enjoyable week at St Nicholas ELC.  The children are continuing to settle in and are doing great at becoming familiar with all our routines.  It’s been such an enjoyable time for everyone.  The children have now had the opportunity to sample some of our healthy and nutritional snacks which are offered to children mid-morning and mid-afternoon.  The children are encouraged to visit the snack table as it’s a great opportunity for them to try new foods and follow good table manners.  Healthy eating and physical activity is essential for growth and development therefore we take great pride in preparing and offering a full range of healthy snacks.  Children’s early experiences of food play and important part in shaping later eating habits and good eating habits support healthy growth and development.  The children have also had the opportunity to sample our lunches.  The children are coping very well with this routine and they are sitting beautifully during lunch.  Our lunches are offered in a caring and warm environment in order to make it an enjoyable experience and to expose the children to healthy eating patterns from an early age.  The children are encouraged to take their time and enjoy the experience of sharing a meal with their friends.   Here are a few pictures of the snacks we offer and the children enjoying the lunch experience.

Primary 6 have had a very busy fortnight and definitely deserve a long weekend of rest.  We have been learning all about Fractions.  We have been using the cuisennaire rods and outdoor games to help us understand the concepts.  We have written persuasive letters to Design Engineers to try to persuade them to choose our creative designs to build.  We have worked collaboratively in teams to create amazing videos about ways we can prevent adverse climate change.  We have also written Manifestos and created campaign speeches for our mock elections on Tuesday.

P6 are enjoying being back at school.  We have had a very productive and fun week.  We enjoyed learning about BODMAS and the order of Operations.  We worked together to help each other to understand this new concept.  We worked in teams using our IZAK9 cubes to consolidate our knowledge and understanding of BODMAS.  We got a little competitive.😀.
We researched Earth hour and we created posters to demonstrate the importance of taking action to sustain our planet.  P7 kindly helped with some brainstorming ideas.
In art this week we recreated sunflowers in the style of Van Gogh.  We really enjoyed this activity.
We also created handy hints posters for BODMAS and for Plural Spelling rules.
In Outdoor Learning P6b were crowned the winners of a tactical defence game.  It was very close and next week P6a are determined to snatch the title.  Will they succeed?

Primary 6 have been learning about Article 27. We watched a video of a girl in Kenya and compared her school day to our school day. Some things were the same but some things were very different. We felt emotional watching the living standards that some people have to live in.

We then made little paper houses and wrote words on them to show the things that we would expect as our rights. For example :shelter, love, food and clean water and a cosy bed.

It was very interesting learning about article 27.

Authors: P6a

Another busy week in Primary 6. We had an introduction to grid references and continued our work with factors in numeracy.

On Tuesday, we investigated online safety during Internet Safety Day. We are making sure that we were keeping ourselves safe by using age appropriate apps and not sharing any personal details online.

We now have our team selected for the West Lothian Euroquiz competition. We completed our studies on Europe by studying the Dutch artist, Vincent Van Gogh and creating art work in his style. We have also been learning how to count to 50 in Spanish.

We are all set now to enjoy a snowy half-term holiday!

As always we have had another very busy week full of learning. This week we have been learning about:

“We have been learning about symmetry. Symmetry its the same on both sides”

“We painted butterflies and folded them in half to make them the same on both wings”

“We listened to some Spanish songs”

“We played basket ball and it helped us to practise our bouncing and throwing. It was so much fun”

“We learned the sound e, f and b in Primary 1”

“In P2 we learned igh, oi, oy and we kept practising ai from last week because it was still hard for us”

“We played some games with Mr Muldoon at gym time”

“For science the other P2 came up and we were still doing forces. Pushing and pulling and twisting and we went outside and did it with the hoops and the tyres”

We have had another busy week in Primary 1 & 2! This week we have learned about:

“We have been learning about different shapes”

” We have been making patterns”

“A pattern does the same thing over and over and over again, it repeats”

” we learned about k and ck, we learned about o too”

“One afternoon we did some planting”

“We learned about plants in science, we know that they all have roots”

“A plant has flowers and leaves too”

“The long bit next to the root is called the stem”

We have had a busy week and have learned lots of  new things! This week we have enjoyed:

“We learned about lots of different shapes and made shape pictures.”

” We know about 2d shapes, they are flat and don’t stick out like 3d shapes”

“3d shapes are like cubes and cones and cylinders and stuff not the flat ones like circles”

“When it was sounds time we learned about t, i and n” -Primary 1

“We learned hard sounds this week we know about ai and the other ay and oa too” – Primary 2

“We found a wiggly worm in the garden and looked at him close in the bug finder” p2/1

“We did lots of learning outside the week and some of us made an obstacle course”  

Primary 1 have had another great week enjoying their fitness fortnight challenges! This week we have :

– Researched the importance of exercise and made an informative poster.

– We continued to take part in our virtual sports day- Forth house were the winners!!

-Made a healthy smoothies and wrote instructions for someone else to follow.

-We took part in lots of fun fitness maths activities. Using exercise is a great way to help us improve our numeracy skills.

-Joined in on Basketball drills by following online videos.

-We also took part in some relaxation activities to help us focus on taking care of our mental health.

Well done everyone! We have had a fantastic year teaching you all and want to wish everyone a happy and fun filled summer holidays. We can’t wait to see you all back at school in August when you will be big Primary 2!

Miss McKeown & Mrs Gardiner ☀️😊

Primary 6 have been very busy this week with our online learning.

Maths – Currencies  The children have been learning about Currencies.  They have been trying out activities to convert Euros to Pounds – initially without a calculator then by Thursday using a calculator for some fun Currency Challenge cards.  The children were also provided with a Foreign Exchange Instruction Card for the Thursday task.  The activities were enjoyed by the children.          Great use of division strategies, Primary 6.

Literacy – Informative Writing  The children really do enjoy writing and this week we looked at Informative Writing – a piece of non-fiction writing which gives information about a particular thing.  This week’s task was to write about camping.  We provided a video about a family setting up in a campsite in a national park near Florida.  Some great pieces of writing were done using topical vocabulary and great camping facts.  Well done, Primary 6.

Topic – Our Government  Primary 6 have been learning about Our Scottish Government this week.  We started off with describing the job of a politician and we looked at their responsibilities and what a day in the life of them would be like.  We then looked at the role of the Scottish Government and created a list of priorities a government should have.  The children were asked to explain their pecking-order of priorities.  We also had a look at manifestos and the children became a politician and wrote their own manifesto creating slogans and three ideas that they thought would be important to the people of Broxburn and Uphall.  I think we have some budding politicians in the making!!

Art  The children looked at some artists’ work that expresses how the artists feel lockdown affects us.  The children then thought about how lockdown is affecting them and created their own pieces of art choosing from abstract, naturalistic or paper cuttings collage.  Each piece of art is a story about how lockdown affects them.       Great creative expression, Primary 6!

Virtual Camp  On Wednesday the children participated in ‘virtual camp’ activities to compensate for missing their camp this month.  The children enjoyed Mini Raft Making, Star Gazing, Den Building, Timing A Bed Change, Tracking Animals, Futuristic Tent Design and cooking S’mores.  The children sent us some great photos of these fun activities.  Great work, Primary 6.

Well done Primary 6!  As always we are very proud of your dedication to completing your tasks and thank you to our supportive parents too.

Well done Primary 1 for another week working hard from home. We have been busy with our home learning packs and grids and are almost ready to become big Primary 2’s now! Here are some of the things we have been learning about:

Writing: During writing time we have been learning about functional writing. This week we were focussing on writing lists and learning what a list looks like and should contain. We wrote a list of 10 things we love to hand on to our new teacher to help them get to know us better.

Phonics: We started to learn about the magic e and how he changes the sound of the vowels! This was quite tricky and we will continue to work on this next year. We watched videos and completed a sumdog spelling challenge to help us with this.

Maths:  In maths we continued our learning of money from last week. We gained a better understanding of how to make amounts using different coins and we learned to pay for things and work out basic change. We even started to learn about budgeting and used our budgeting skills to plan our own lunches online!

Topic: We have had lots of super feedback from talking to parents about how much the children are loving their dinosaur topic! This week we played some dinosaur exploring games and made dinosaur artwork from our hand and footprints!

Hi everyone,

Please find attached this week’s home learning grid. Remember to send us lots of pictures of your learning and let us know what activities you are enjoying.

We are really proud of you all and hope you are all well 

Mrs Alexander and Mrs Koziel

P2 Home Learning- Week 9

Primary 6 have been very busy this week with our online learning.

Maths – Coordinates and Symmetry  The children have been learning about Coordinates :- X and Y axis, points on the grid and reading coordinates to help us use maps and find places.  The children have also been learning about Symmetry:- Finding lines of symmetry, how some shapes have more than one line of symmetry and some items have no lines of symmetry at all.  The children had fun trying out their knowledge on maps and rangoli patterns.

Literacy – Instructional Writing  The children really do enjoy writing and this week they learned about Instructional Writing.  We reminded them that Imperative Verbs (bossy verbs) need to be used e.g. Stir, Mix, Put etc.  We also showed the children how the writing should be laid out – in two parts using sub-headings; the first part for the list of items needed and the second part for the detailed steps on how to do the activity.  The children enjoyed writing an instruction on how to make a sandwich with great results!  There was an additional challenge at the end for the children to ask someone at home to follow their instructions to the word.  Well done, Primary 6.

Science – Pollination – Primary 6 have been learning about how important insects are in pollination and about the male and female parts of a flower.  They then went onto learn about different insects and animals that are pollinators and what would happen if there was no pollination.  The children created some great Sway and Powerpoints presentations sharing the dangers that bees face and how our world would change without them.

Spanish  The children watched a video that showed how Spanish children celebrate their birthdays.  They learned how to sing Happy Birthday in Spanish “Feliz Cumpleaños” and then created their own Spanish birthday cards with a special message in Spanish.  Bien hecho, Primary 6!

Drama  The children used a clip of a Doctor Who episode to take notes on character traits for three characters.  They then went onto writing their own scene for a new episode of Doctor Who and they typed their scripts up. Great work, Primary 6.

Well done Primary 6! We are very proud of your dedication to completing your tasks and thank you to our supportive parents too.