Author: WLCarolyn.Ewart@glow

It has been another quick week in P1 and P2/1. We are super excited by the arrival of some new friends including a new teacher called Mrs Anderson who is going to be working with us all on Wednesday afternoons. We are very happy to welcome her to our school. We had a little taster of some yoga as Mrs Anderson has special skills in yoga.

Lexie – I loved yoga even though it was my first time doing it!

Lennon – I really enjoyed the monkey poses.

Kyle – I enjoyed the lion pose.

We have been learning to ‘take away’ . Mia enjoyed using the numicon to support her learning. Kayleigh has been practising independently using a dice to make up her own take away calculations. She was able to remember to always put the big number first. Brendan thought that crossing out was a good strategy and helped him find the answer.

Writing this week.

We have been learning 2 new tricky words – want and went. We decided to write about what we wanted to be when we grew up. The children did a fantastic job and we hope they achieve their dream careers.

Lennon and Charlie explained that when you grow up up need a job to earn money. Here are some of our career dreams…..

Brendan – I want to be a police officer or a firefighter.

Chloe – I want to be a teacher to help my friends.

Scarlet- I want to be teacher.

Charlie-  I want to be fisherman so I can make fish fingers, I love fish fingers.

LLLLLLL ladybugs.

This week our new sound was the letter ‘l’. We made ladybugs to remind of the sound and shape of the letter.

Isla – I liked the task. I put 3 and 4 dots on and I knew that made 7 altogether.

Chloe – I liked the red shell on mine.

Destination Judo.

Today we were lucky enough to have Jake from Destination Judo come into school and give us a half hour judo taster session. We had to wear cool judo jackets and take off our gym shoes. It was great fun, we played lots of games with a partner and had to be really good listeners to play the games safely.

Mia – I liked playing the ‘get the bean bag’ game, it was fun being a starfish.

Sophie – I liked trying to push someone over onto their back, it was a turtle game and you had to protect the bean bag.

Lexie – I enjoyed getting to be the referee.

If you would like any further information about Destination Judo or to book a free introductory session call – 0131 467 9054. Classes are held on a Monday at Elim Church, Deans.

Reminder!

Monday and Tuesday are holidays for the children. Enjoy the short break and we will see you all back on Wednesday.

We have had even more exciting new resources to explore in our classrooms. Kayleigh has used one of our amazing new writing logs to practise writing sentences and she has even included a describing word.

This week’s sound has been ‘d’ which has driven us dotty!! We hope you like our dotty d’s. We have had lots of fun building words and exploring the sound. We know we have to be careful not to be tricked with the sound b! We know that d has a tail just like a dddog.

The primary 2’s have been practising their dictation skills and writing sentences independently using d words. Well done Primary 2.

Scarlet  – I liked all the busy start jobs this week especially making d words with the play dough.

Ashley –  I liked practising writing my d’s on paper with a writing pencil.

Aayan – I liked my dotty d because it was really really spotty.

In numeracy we have been exploring number friends and counting in 10’s. We have had a great time using numicon to make 10 in different ways.

Lewis made the pattern 6 + 4 =10 using his numicon and Aaron was able to write all of the tens numbers up to 100. Wow! well done.

Daniel wowed Mrs Stevenson this week because he counted in 5’s all the way from 0 to 100.

Lexie – I liked counting in 10’s and making patterns with the numicon.

Aaron – I have enjoyed my  number work this week and found that counting in 10’s with the numicon is easy.

This week sees the beginning of Fairtrade Fortnight. We have been exploring the symbol and learning all about where chocolate comes from. We read the story of Pablo the Fairtrade Super Banana and decided to create our own super hero bananas. Tadas thought it would be a good idea to include the Fairtrade  symbol in our class shop to help promote Fairtrade.

Aayan – I loved making my Super Banana, mine was a bit like Batman-  batbanana!!

We have been using our imagination in our role play areas. We have been performing fairy tales and using our voices to retell the story in a dramatic way and in the right order!

Sophie – I loved using the finger puppets to retell Little Red riding Hood. It’s one of my favourites.

Our Homework superstars this week are Harrison, Calvin and Sophie. They boys made fantastic mini beasts using recycled materials.  Sophie made her very own dot patterns and wrote the calculations to go with it. Well done everybody. Thank you to everybody who sent in pictures of your home learning, we thoroughly enjoy looking at them together.

Primary 1 and Primary 2/1 have had another busy week in school.

Primary 1 got a surprise with their classroom getting a mini makeover!

Scarlet – I like the new drawing area.

Lucy – I liked that the tables have been moved.

Tadas and Charlie enjoyed sharing a dinosaur non fiction book in the new library area.

Aayan commented ‘I am enjoying my new book and I love that I can read it.’

This week we have been writing all about what we can and can’t do…..yet! We read the story of Giraffes can’t Dance by one of our favourite authors Giles Andrea.  The boys and girls have been working hard to use capital letters, finger spaces and full stops and draw detailed pictures.

Calvin and Lucy did a great job!

Our sound focus this week have been the letter ‘g’. We made glittery golden g’s by gluing and sticking. Don’t they look gggggggg great!

As part of our Scotland learning, we found out about Scotland’s national flower, the Thistle. We looked at pictures and used describing words to say what we saw. We used pastels to blend the colours together to create a our own thistles.

Brendan said – I liked drawing the spiky flowers and I really liked making the spikes.

We learned a bit more about Scotland today from being part of an audience with the Scottish Opera. It was fantastic!

Kayleigh – I liked the opera, especially the songs. I was very proud of Ryan.

Maison – I liked the fighting scenes.

Scarlet – I liked when they showed off the baby Prince Charlie at the end.

A great big thank you to Ethan’s Granny who kindly planted a French Marigold for the class. We are going to take turns to water and care for it in the classroom. We are going on a name for our plant next week.

A special mention needs to go to Lucy and Grandma this week, who presented the class with an outstanding piece of homework. Lucy made a book for the class library called ‘Biff, Chip, Kipper, Mum and Dad – Halloween’ based on her class reading book, Fancy Dress. Well done Lucy and Grandma we really enjoyed reading it.

This has been a busy and exciting few weeks.  It has been great fun rehearsing with our other friends in Primary 2 and 3. We are so proud of our show and hope you will be able to come and watch us perform.

Our first performance will take place on Thursday 13th Dec at 2.15pm and our second performance will be on Friday 14th Dec at 9.30am.

Today the ladies in the kitchen made our special Christmas lunch. It was delicious and there was even Christmas music to create a special festive atmosphere.

Lexie liked the turkey but wasn’t so keen on the sprouts. Elkie was impressed that there was a special treat of a little chocolate reindeer from the kitchen staff…Primary 1 and 2/1 say a great BIG thank you for such a lovely lunch. Tyler is already looking forward to next year!

We have been scientists this month. We have been learning how to take care of our teeth. The big science question was… Why are sugary drinks so bad for our teeth?  We conducted an experiment using eggs and made predictions  about what might happen to the shell on the egg when it is left in a sugary drink and also when left in water.

Lennon predicted that the shell would melt in the sugary drink. Scarlet said it might break in half. Kullyn thought the egg might turn black. Elkie said the egg would change colour.

Aayan predicted that the egg would stay the same in the water. Finlay said it would get mashed. Kayden thought it might break and Lexie thought it wouldn’t crack.

Primary 1 tried cola and water and primary 2/1 tried Irn Bru and water. We then shared our results.

The eggs in the water hadn’t changed at all but the results of the eggs in the sugary drinks was pretty yucky. The eggs in cola and Irn Bru changed colour and began to crack and after giving them a good brush they began to crumble. This made us think about the effects of sugar on our teeth. We decided sugar is nice for a little treat now and again but only if we remember to brush our teeth after.

Don’t forget….next week is another exciting and festive week with  our class parties. Dust off your dancing shoes! Remember to keep opening the windows of our school Kindness Advent Calendar.

We have been enjoying exploring rhyming words this week. We read lots of stories with rhyme and had fun predicting what word would come next using our awesome rhyming skills.

Kullyn confidently made a set of ‘at’ rhyming words during busy start and was able to explain why they rhymed – they all had the same end sound.

Charlie kindly brought a rhyming book to share with the class. It was called ‘A Commotion in the Ocean’. He was able to explain it was a Julia Donaldson book and that she was also an author we had read before. Next week the children have requested that we read more Julia Donaldson books. We made a floor book to display all our ideas. We are even going to try to write to Julia and see if we get a reply. We are SO excited.

As Sunday was Remembrance Day we researched why we wear poppies on this day. We couldn’t believe that they used to be made by just 2 people and all by hand!! We had a go at making our own poppies. We are glad we don’t have to make millions by hand, it would take a VERY long time!

We have been having a go at being Authors. We are learning what makes a sentence and we are trying to use the target stamps to help us when we write. This week we wrote about things which we have lost and our feelings.

We have been using formative assessment techniques to help us improve our writing. This week we learned all about ‘Tickled Pink’ and ‘Green For Growth’.  Finlay and Lucy were able to look at their Green For Growths and correct them to turn them into Tickled Pinks. Well done to both of you!

During purposeful play, Aaron spent a lot of time practising his letter t formation.  He didn’t give up and look at this amazing work… We are so proud, Aaron.

As part of our new data handling and analysis topic we have introduced different ways of gathering and displaying information. We have started to answer a ‘Question of the Week’ and look forward to learning more next week.

What a Spooky Spidery week! We have been busy in Primary 1 and Primary 1/2.

We read the story of  Aaaaaaaaaaargh Spider! We decided to make some spider webs. We used our cutting skills and glued the art straws down onto paper. Lexie said ‘ It was easy to do and I’m proud of my work’.

Later in the week we read the story of Robert the Bruce and the Spider. Chloe explained, we learned it was ever so important not to give up just like the spider in the story.  Kayleigh said  ‘We made spider webs by putting a painted marble in a tray  and rolling it backwards and forwards then putting it in some glitter’.

Charlie – We used our fingers to print some spooky spiders then drew 8 legs on the spiders because we learned that spiders have 8 legs. We also learned the amazing fact that they have LOTS of eyes!!

Sarah Louise – This is a picture of us sharing our home learning with our friends. We went on an Autumn scavenger hunt  to find lots of Autumn natural materials. It was really tricky to find acorns!!

And of course this week was Halloween. We worked hard using our cutting skills to make pumpkins.

Joseph – We used white paper to make the eye balls and then added on the pupils. We drew all the different parts by ourselves.  My pumpkin is called Lewis!

In numeracy we have been learning all about the number 6.  The rhyme says ‘ down we go and make a loop, number 6 makes a hoop’. We found it tricky to give it a curvy back, we need to keep practising and not give up like the spider in the story!

In literacy we have begun to learn vowels. We learned the story of Inky’s Vowel House.  This week we focused on the sound a and we decorated the a’s with ants and a leaf and used the rhyme,

‘Around the apple and down the leaf’

We did a great job at practising in the classroom.