Author: WLCarolyn.Ewart@glow

A Mysterious Visitor…..

It’s been a very exciting week in Primary 1/2! On Monday a very curious and strange thing happened. During our wet lunch time we returned to the Primary One classroom where we found a sparkly glitter trail leading into the story corner! It was such a surprise! At first Mrs Fleming and Mrs Stevenson thought it was us children! Some of us even thought we had a ghost in the class. Tadas thought it was a glitter monster and Ashley thought it might be a robber! Upon further inspection we discovered a very smoky smelling and burnt letter addressed to us. This letter was from a very sad dragon who has nowhere to live,  his home Fairyland has been destroyed because people aren’t reading enough fairytales and believing anymore. It is so sad.  Primary 1 and Primary 1/2 have decided to help this poor dragon out. We are going to help rebuild Fairyland and give the dragon and his friends somewhere to live one again.

We wasted no time in getting straight to work. In the letter, the dragon spoke of Jack not having a beanstalk anymore, so our first job was to read Jack and The Beanstalk.  We had  couple of different versions of the story which we have been reading and listening to over the course of the week, we discovered that there are many differences between each one. We definitely love the ‘Stinky’ Jack one the best. Euan loved that he had to sleep outside in the barn with Daisy the cow!

In Primary 2/1 we are all fantastic artists and very creative, so we decided to make Jack his very own beanstalk in our classroom. We used lots of different materials to create textured leaves to add to the vines. We even used fine black liner to add little beasties. Watch this space as our beanstalk grows over the next week, it is going to be amazing!

    

Reading the fairytale Jack and the Beanstalk got us talking about whether we would climb a beanstalk or not, or what we would trade for some magic beans. I must say we are all very brave in Primary 1/2 as most of us said we would definitely want to climb up!

Belle wanted to see the view and Ashley fancied a golden egg so she would be rich!!  Kayden said he would trade his Xbox for some magic beans to be rich.  Nathaniel said he would trade his toilet!!! for some magic beans because he has two already!

We practised our writing skills and as we are focusing on extending our sentences we used the word ‘because’ in our writing to explain our reasons. We created a lovely display of our work by adding dangling legs and clouds to our pictures. We think Jack would be impressed. We also added some pictures of Daisy the cow to our display. We worked really hard on our listening skills to follow instructions to draw a cow step by step. Jordon thinks our display looks good and is excited to add more to it.

    

Later on in the week our friendly dragon delivered a shiny mail box to outside our classroom, we have had great fun writing letters and drawing pictures to him to help cheer him up.

In Numeracy and Maths this week we have still been working hard on our tools for subtraction. We are getting really good at using a number line to help us jump backwards to take away. The friendly dragon must want to help us with our learning too, as he left us a little maths measuring challenge. We had to find classroom objects longer and shorter than the giants footprint. This was a great activity for estimating and using a variety of non standard units and of course getting us used to using this mathematical language.

   

Other learning highlights this week.

Andrew really enjoyed making a castle in the Den this week, he used pencils and pens and made sure to colour in the lines.

Elkie loved building the leaves for the beanstalk, because she liked painting and even added ladybirds to hers.

Euan loved making the giants legs in our writing task.

Kayden felt really proud of himself this week for writing so many oo words by himself.

Belle really challenged herself when writing the oo sound and joining the two letters together.

We are really excited about what is going to happen in Fairyland next week.

 

Primary One Science Club

Today in science club we finally got to make our own volcano eruption.

We started off by learning a little bit about volcanoes and what makes them erupt. Did you know that lava starts off as magma when it is below ground? We also learned that there are many different types of volcanoes, the one we found most interesting was an underwater one!!

The experiment was really simple and one that can be easily tried out at home. All we needed was bicarbonate of soda and some vinegar ( we added some food colouring …just for fun!)

We made some predictions about what we thought was going to happen and took turns to put the ingredients into plastic bottles. It was great fun watching the volcanoes erupt. Not every volcano erupted and we had some super discussions about what we would change and do differently next time to ensure a more dramatic eruption.

It was lots of fun watching the eruptions and learning about volcanoes.

    

Primary 2/1 Weekly Update.

Let’s start off our blog with our learning highlights this week from the children.

Elkie – My highlight was making my Highland cow because  I loved making it.

Sai liked making his fact file about highland cows, his favourite fact was that their hair is so long it goes over their eyes, but it is there to protect them.

Jordon – I liked drawing Nessie because she goes under water.

Nathaniel- I liked learning about the sound x because it was easy to write!

Tadas – I like the daily 5 because it is easy for me!

Robyn – I liked learning all of our sounds, every Monday I look forward to seeing all the new letters for the week.

It’s been another busy week where we have been learning all about the Loch Ness Monster! We watched the Nessie cam but unfortunately didn’t catch a glimpse of her this time, why not have a look for yourselves at home!

Use this link       https://www.lochness.co.uk/livecam/

This led to a very interesting discussion about whether we thought Nessie existed or not….. Most of us are believers! We made our own Nessie to decorate our Learning Journey wall. We had to use our scissors very carefully and we came up with some amazing Nessie designs.

In writing this week we wrote postcards to Nessie, telling her all about ourselves and the things we like to do. We all wrote at least 3 sentences all by ourselves. After reading the story, Hamish the Highland Cow by Natalie Russell, we also designed and wrote our own fact files about Highland cows and created a pastel drawing using a smudging technique to create a ‘hairy’ effect!

   

We are still working on the topic of Time in Maths. This week we have been looking at how we measure time. We talked about seconds, minutes, hours, days and weeks. We discussed how long we thought it would take us to complete certain activities. We had a team work challenge where we had to match up activities with how long we thought they would last. 

Lennon thought this was a good challenge and Erica said it was lots of fun.

We have also been discussing the seasons and which season we like the best!

Euan’s favourite season is Summer because that’s when his birthday falls.

Jordon loves Winter the best because the snow comes out.

Ethan loves Autumn  the best because you can collect all the leaves.

Kayden loves Spring because you can start to play outside.

We designed some posters to show different changes  which take place in each season.

As part of our numeracy we have been examining how to double numbers. We are getting really good at doing this mentally and talking about our answers. One of our focuses this week has been how to use a number line to help us solve addition calculations by counting on. Its really easy when you know how!

Just a little reminder for the children to bring their red homework folders to school every day with their reading books. Many thanks!

Primary One Science Club

This week in science club we have been investigating,  how do clouds make rain?….how very appropriate for today’s stormy and unpredictable rain showers!

We made our very own rain cloud in a jar. We used shaving foam to represent the clouds and blue food colouring to represent the rain or precipitation. We made predictions about whether we thought the clouds would sink to the bottom or whether the water will turn blue.

What we found out was that the food colouring went through the cloud to make rain and it was blue.

We watched this clip…..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncORPosDrjI   and had a discussion about how rain is formed. We even had a go at saying some very impressive scientific words like – precipitation, condensation and evaporation.

   

The children have decided that next week for our focus we will be making a volcano explode! It’s going to be great fun. The children are all showing so much enthusiasm for conducting our experiments week on week, we really hope we are fostering a real love for all things science.

Primary 2/1 Weekly News

First of all thank you to all the parents and carers who attended last Friday’s Scottish assembly. We very much value all of your support.

Let’s start off our blog this week with a Homework Superstar. This wonderful model of Edinburgh Castle has been created with such attention to detail that all of Primary 2/1 think it deserves pride of place at the start of our blog. There are so many wonderful details which reflect all of our fabulous learning, from stained glass windows, the Scottish Thistle to Mons Meg the famous cannon! I think you will all agree that it is simply fantastic!

We have had an incredibly busy week in Primary 2/1 with all of our continued learning surrounding Scotland and our little friend Hamish. This week we got our thinking caps on and wanted to send Hamish off on another adventure. We all used our imaginations to think of places in the world that Hamish might like to visit.

Robyn wanted Hamish to visit Disneyland.

Ethan wanted him to visit the cinema to see Toy story.

Kayden wanted him to visit Legoland.

Here are some examples of our wonderful work. We are really getting to grips with writing extended sentences using full stops, capital letters and finger spaces and also being able to sound out the trickier words all by ourselves.

We have been working on a few new sounds, h, g and v. The boys and girls are all very eager to lead our learning when we are focusing on a new sound. We take it in turns to stand up beside the smart board and sound out each letter to help each other blend them together to make a word.

In maths we have been learning to tell the time to the hour and half past. Mrs Stevenson set us a challenge to make our own clocks to use. We worked together to position each numeral in the right place and to arrange the minute and hour hand correctly. We then had to change the hands to reflect the time which was called out.

Euan was happy with this activity because he took turns with his team mates, everyone having a go at writing the numbers and changing the time.

We then had a go at playing a whole class Time bingo game, it got quite competitive in the end, but it helped us to read the time with more accuracy and speed!

Robyn loved this game because everyone took turns.

This week we have also been busy applying our artistic skills. Lennon articulately shared the story behind the Thistle becoming Scotland’s national emblem. We had a go at creating our own thistles using chalk and a picture on the smart board as a stimulus. The end result looks fantastic and they are now proudly displayed on our classroom wall.

Elkie said that she loved her thistle once she had made it.

Ashley commented that she loved hers too and felt proud of her work.

Keeping with the same theme, we tried our hand at weaving to create a mini kilt effect. It was super tricky and really required us to use our fine motor skills and concentration. We really enjoyed the challenge and found that it was actually not that difficult. Some of us even created a pattern with the colours.

Sai found this task very very hard, but in the end he did a great job! Well done Sai!

Lastly, we have enjoyed joining in with  Primary 1 this week to take part in some Health and Wellbeing and some emotional literacy. We have been discussing ‘Success’ and what it looks and feels like. We all happily shared our own successes with each other and talked about how we can reflect this in the classroom. One of the main messages that came across was that we should never give up! We watched the story of Robert the Bruce and the spider who kept trying to build her web, it took her 7 attempts! It really made us think about when we find something tricky we should keep going and see it as a challenge! We then moved on to learn the Fischy Music song ‘Encouragement’ we enjoyed singing along and performing the actions. We were able to suggest ways in which we can support or encourage our own friends in the classroom.

 

 

Primary One Science Club

This week in science club we wanted to have a go at making our own play dough.

This was a messy business indeed. Mrs Stevenson scoured her cupboards and finally came up with the right ingredients.

Did you know that there is science behind all of the ingredients in your cupboards?  In this play dough recipe the dry ingredients, salt and flour are physically combined to create a mixture. When the liquid ingredients, water, cream of tartar and vegetable oil  are combined with the dry ingredients they create a solution. We are getting very good at using our scientific vocabulary!

Thankfully all of our mixing and creating solutions, worked and we were able to go home with a little bag of our very own play dough.

 

Hamish McHaggis visits P2/1

What a mysterious week we have had!  Late last week our friend Hamish McHaggis unexpectedly disappeared without a trace. It was the most peculiar thing. Nobody knew where he had gone to!!!

We made lost posters using fancy adjectives to describe him….but still no Hamish…..  

 

We were beginning to get worried when all of a sudden Mrs Stevenson got an email from him. What a relief!

It turns out he’d been off on an adventure to Edinburgh…lucky Hamish. He sent us loads of pictures which helped us learn about some famous Edinburgh landmarks.

We especially loved the story of the Greyfriar’s Bobby dog. Some of us even decided to write our own stories about the little dog.

All of this drama has helped us to prepare for our class assembly. We have also been learning our national anthem ‘Flower of Scotland’ and have come up with some very imaginative actions to go alongside the words. As well as a song we have also learned to perform a Scottish country dance, it was great fun. We can’t wait to share it all with you tomorrow.

 

 

Primary One Science Club

What a fun session we had today.  We were very lucky to have budding young scientist, Bella, come along to help us out. Thank you Bella for being such a great help.

Today we had a go at the skittles colours diffusion experiment which has been very prominent on the internet lately. First off we tried spacing the skittles out around a paper plate and then adding water on top of them, hoping to see the colours soak into the middle. This didn’t quite go to plan. We discussed some alternatives and decided to try warm water in the middle of the plate to see if it made a difference. We found out that when the water was warmer it worked much faster. It’s all about trial and error. It didn’t look quite how it did on the internet but we gave it our best and tried to improve our work when it didn’t quite work out! That’s what science is all about!

Terrific Teamwork in Primary 2/1

This week we have been focusing on improving our collaboration or team work skills.

Mrs Stevenson set us a challenge where we had to work in small groups to make a days of the week poster with all the days in the correct order. We started off our challenge by discussing what a successful team would act like. Here are some of our ideas.

We will help each other.

We will share and take turns.

We will listen to each other and take turns to speak.

We will always follow our class charter and remember our school values.

We will all try our best to finish the task together.

We then got to work on our posters.

There were some excellent examples of collaboration such as…

Emma  -‘ It’s Nathan’s turn now’.

Elkie ‘ Tyler can go first then we can all take turns’.

Andrew ‘I shared the pencils with Ethan’.

Alfie ‘Friday begins with F so it goes next’.

Well done boys and girls for such a super afternoon of collaborating with each other. Our fantastic posters will go on our Maths working wall to help us with the rest of our learning on Time.

Here are some of the finished posters. The boys and girls even all helped to hold the poster together for the photos because that was fair.

Primary One Science Club

Today we had our first ever session of science club and it was fantastic!

We were investigating solids and liquids. We carried out an experiment using cornflour, water and a little food colouring. We made some predictions as to what we thought would happen.

Euan – I predict that it will bubble up.

Robyn – I predict that it will go even whiter.

Oliver – I predict that it will explode!

After making our predictions we set to work. What we found was that when we mixed the flour and water together it looked like a liquid but when we felt it with our fingers it felt like a solid! How puzzling.

We had great fun writing our sounds and names in the ‘gloop’ and watching it disappear before our very eyes!

We can’t wait to find out what experiments we will be doing next week!

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