Welcome to our P1A blog. We have had another really busy week in Primary One. The children have used a number of different materials and techniques to create some fantastic Autumn art . Some pictures below.
The children finished our Autumn display by creating acorns. They made them by using sponge paints and collage.
We had great fun making Autumn Sun-Catchers. The children cut and sorted tissue paper and arranged the paper inside a leaf shape. I laminated them. All we need now is some Autumn sun to create the desired affect!
To create the prickles for our hedgehogs the children used plastic forks dipped in paint. We think this technique was really effective.
Literacy –
This week we have focused on the “p” sound as well as common words “the, A and I”. We have played “p” bingo and used our coloured cats to determine where in a word we hear the “p” sound.
Writing –
This week the children were asked to draw a picture of themselves. They had to add lots of detail e.g. eyebrows, fingers, etc. and the picture had to have all the relevant body parts. The aim was to get them to think about using descriptive language e.g. I have long brown hair/ blue eyes etc. Some examples below.
We have also been busy making our own zig-zag books which sequence the life-cycle of an oak tree.
Numeracy –
In numeracy we are continuing to focus on numbers to 10. This week we have been exploring different ways to make numbers using a variety of concrete materials.
Health and Wellbeing
As part of our Jigsaw recovery programme the children were asked to think about what they are looking forward to learning now they are back at school.
Katie said “I am looking forward to writing more numbers and I feel happy when I do this”
Liam said “I am looking forward to learning how to draw and add more details and I will feel good and happy”
Conlon said “I am looking forward to learning how to write all my letters correctly and that will make me feel good and happy”
I hope you all have a lovely weekend! More updates next week.
This week we learnt about historical number systems. We learnt about Egyptian and Roman numerals.
Bailey – I was surprised that the Egyptians used a frog to represent 1,000,000.
Some of us liked the number systems but some of us didn’t.
Robbie – It is way better.Much easier to do.
Lily-Elen – It is tricky. Our numbers are easier.
Maths
We learnt about the different types of triangles such as equilateral, isosceles, scalene and right-angled.
Literacy
In our grammar lesson this week we learnt how adverbs can make our writing more interesting.
When writing we wrote another descriptive piece – this time all about ourselves.
Topic – Europe
We started our new topic and enjoyed the map work.
Sophie S – I didn’t know there were 7 continents
Jaxson – I enjoyed learning how to greet people in French.
Science – The Solar System
With a partner, we have started to research an area of the solar system that we are interested in. In our first session, we used non-fiction books and practised making notes from them.
Bella – I did not realise Neptune has 8 moons
Robbie – I was surprised Uranus has 15 moons.
Bailey – I didn’t know there was a dark side of the moon.
This week in health and well being we have been talking about the word ‘Achieving‘, what is means and how it can make us feel. We explored some pictures of different people achieving something, someone had just climbed a mountain and another person was working hard on completing a writing task. We had a discussion about all the things we would like to achieve during our time in Primary One. Here are some of the things we discussed.
Arianna – I would like to be able to write a story by myself.
Saatvik – I would like to be able to read all the books in our class library.
Finlay – I would like to be able to work with very big numbers.
Mikah – I would like to be able to learn how to write all of the letters in the alphabet.
We discussed how achieving these different things would make us feel. We were able to use words such as, happy, proud, excited and someone even said they would feel crazy!! We drew pictures and shared with Mrs Stevenson our ideas. Here are some photographs of our work.
Rhyme Time!
This week as a focus during our busy start activities we have been focusing on identifying rhyming words. We now know that rhyming words have the same or nearly the same sound at the end of the word, like cat, bat and mat…they all end in ‘at’. We have had lots of practise matching rhyming pictures and listening to lots of rhyming stories. We even have a special game to play on the smart board, here is the link to have a go at home if you like.
Here are some photographs of the different types of activities we have been working on this week to help us develop this skill.
We have enjoyed reading this book and searching for the rhyming words.
This week’s school value – Challenged
This week’s school value focus has been on the word ‘Challenged‘. We have discussed what this word means to us in Primary One and have made a pact with each other to keep challenging ourselves when we are working on a task. We decided to always ask ourselves the question ‘what I can do better?’ and ‘How can I improve my work’. We have been reminding each other and giving each other tips to challenge ourselves to always be looking for ways to improve.
Our Autumn focus continues…..
We have been reading lots of Autumn inspired stories during our literacy time and building up our Autumn vocabulary. One of the stories we explored was ‘The Very Helpful Hedgehog’ by Rosie Wellesley.
After this story we made our own salt dough hedgehogs. We were able to follow a recipe to make the salt dough using the required ingredients. We mixed salt, water and flour together and then kneaded the dough into the shape of a hedgehog. We were able to use lots of fantastic describing words, such as thick, lumpy and runny. Someone even said that the dough looked like porridge and cookie dough. We then added spikes using spaghetti to make the spines. Check out the end results below.
Subitising in Number Time
This week we have started to introduce number talks into our numeracy hour. We begin each number lesson with a number talk. This is a short session where we explore how to develop our number sense. This week we have been investigating using a five frame and discussing how we see the dots. Here is an example below.
As a class we explore what number we can see (3)and how we see it. Some children explained this as follows –
Kaleb – I counted one, two and three and I knew it was three.
Jake – I saw two and then another one so it was three.
Kellan – We are missing two dots from the frame so that is three.
As we become more confident we will be able to work with bigger amounts of numbers and move onto using a ten frame and even exploring dot patterns.
We are constantly learning that numbers can be represented in all manner of ways. We have been playing number match bingo this week, where we roll the dice and if we have the number on our bingo board we cover it up. Here is an example of the number board we use. We have become much faster and more confident when recognising which number is being represented.
We hope that you all have a lovely weekend and we will be sharing our learning highlights again next week on the blog.
