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Welcome Back Primary 1/2

Welcome back to term 4 of our school year. I hope you all had a lovely Easter holiday and didn’t eat too many chocolate eggs from the Easter Bunny, like I did! oops!! I’d better get logged onto Joe wicks everyday at 9am!

I hope everybody had a go at Mrs Stewart’s Easter STEM challenge this morning, I can’t wait to see all of your creations, you can email any pictures you have into the school email address.

wldeans-ps@westlothian.org.uk

You should now be onto week 3 of your home learning packs this week but as usual I will be posting additional activities on here on a daily basis.

Science/ Talking and Listening

With the appearance of the sunshine at long last, we have well and truly entered into the season of Spring. Spring officially starts on March 1st and runs until April 31st, although it’s been so cold lately that it’s only now that it’s beginning to feel like Spring to me. Today, on your daily exercise, or if you’ve already been out to stretch your legs go into your garden or open the window, I would like you to think about Spring and what happens during this season of the year.

Here are some key questions to discuss with an adult whilst on your ‘Spring Walk’.

What changes do you notice from the previous season (Winter)?

What do you notice about the trees, grass, flowers, fields…etc?

What sounds can you hear as you walk?

Look up! what can you see in the sky?

Look down! What can you see on the ground?

How does this season make you feel?

What can you smell in the air?

What is your favourite thing about Spring?

What foods do you like to eat during Spring?

What type of clothes do you wear?

What different activities do you do during this season and how are they different to other seasons like winter?

Once you have been on your walk, take a look at this short clip from the BBC outlining some of the changes in behaviour of plants, animals and the natural environment during the season of spring.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/class-clips-video/science-ks1-ks2-seasonal-changes-behaviour-animals-growth-cycle-plants/zfynvk7

Music/Art and Design

Here is a link to one of my most favourite ‘Fischy Music’ songs. Primary 2’s you might remember this one from last year. Have a listen… can you join in with the words and even come up with some actions.

Can you make your own spring chick? A really easy but effective technique is using a fork and some yellow paint. I might even try this today with my little boy, although I think it might have to be a blue chicken as we’re all out of yellow paint, if you can use real life colours that would be great but don’t worry if you are low on resources like me! I will post a picture tomorrow to show you how we get on!

Good luck with all the tasks for today. I will be back tomorrow with some more activities for you all. Enjoy the sunshine.

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!

Christmas Countdown in Primary 2/1

We’ve made it to the last week of term and we have been truly embracing the holiday spirit in our classroom. We have still been busy with numeracy and literacy in the mornings (with a Christmassy twist) but in the afternoons we have been working hard to create a number of festive pictures, decorations and take part in various festive activities.

Here are some pictures of what we have been getting up to…..

We made Christmas wreaths using paper plates, green paint and a variety of sparkly decorations. The finished wreaths look fantastic and we are very proud of our hard work. They are the perfect addition to a festive front door.

In this activity we used green paint and a fork!!!! to create the effect of the pine needles on a Christmas tree. This was incredibly messy but once they were dry and decorated they looked great.

Here we were using our cutting, gluing and designing skills. We had to cut out triangles to make the shape of Christmas trees and glue them onto a snowy background. Then we used chalk and different types of line to decorate the trees.

We have also been using technology to get festive. We all got the chance to decorate our own virtual Christmas tree and the highlight of the week has definitely been using ‘The Santa Dance’ as a brain break.

As well as all the fun and games we’ve been having, we have also been reminding ourselves of the reasons behind which we celebrate Christmas. We read different versions of the Christmas story and we are getting very good at retelling it in our own words and remembering all about the different characters involved. We had a go at sequencing writing about the story and drawing pictures to go with our sentences.

Seeing Christmas is the season of goodwill and love we read the most beautiful story called ‘Little Robin Red Vest’ by Jan Fearnly.

This is a heartwarming story about a kind little robin who gave away all of his lovely cozy vests to other little animals he met on his walk who were cold and in need. It started us talking about giving gifts at Christmas time and showing love and understanding towards others especially those less fortunate than ourselves. We also got to design our own snazzy vests for little Robin. Check out some of our cool designs…..

It was been busy week so far and we are looking forward to the arrival of Santa soon and having some relaxing time at home with our families and friends over the holiday period. We would like to thank you for your continued support and wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Signs of Autumn in P2/1

Down in Primary 2/1 we have been embracing all things autumnal. We all decided that it was our favourite season where we can wrap up warm, drink hot chocolate, go trick or treating on Halloween and most of all look at all the wonderful colours that autumn produces.

We have spent some time outside going on a autumn walk to collect lots of natural materials so we can produce some ‘transient art’. This means art that can move around. We had lots of fun using our imagination to make pictures and then using our ICT skills to take the perfect picture with the ipad. Here are some examples of our work.

We had lots of leaves left over so we decided to make some leaf people, we added eyes, arms and legs. They look super cute!

We spent some time investigating the leaves and looking at the patterns of their tiny veins. We painted them and printed them onto paper using autumnal colours and we also used crayons to create a leaf rubbing pictures.

At the moment our favourite story is The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson. We are enjoying using our new puppet theater to retell the story using all the different voices of the characters in our own words. We love how the book rhymes too. We made a Gruffalo tuff tray too so we can act out the story with all the characters and make up our own stories too, we even added some new characters. We especially love the snake and his log pile house.

P3 try Judo and Art

JUDO

We have had a lovely time trying out Judo today. First we took off our shoes and our sweatshirts. We took off our watches. Next we put on a judo jacket. Some were blue and some were white. Some were small and some were large. It was fun trying to find one to fit. Then we got a partner and we followed the instructor to learn a few moves. At the beginning we were using bean bags, and we had to try and spin around so our partner couldn’t get the beanbag (Oscar). My favourite one was the arm wrestles (Bailey), the turtle move (Anton). I liked the sandwich move where you were stuck on your partner’s chest (Kayleigh).

We were learning about the work of Kandinsky He was an abstract artist, and we looked at his pictures where he used warm and cold colours. We used paint and tried mixing our own colours. We made our own versions of Kandinsky’s concentric circle picture. We had great fun, but we got very messy.

New Resources for our Class

We have had a very busy week working on our maths. We have been given budget of some money to spend on new resources for our class. We looked through catalogues to get ideas of what we would like to buy. We made a shopping list of the stuff we really wanted. Unfortunately, we were way over our budget and we had to take some things off our list. We decided we wanted a numbers rug for our maths zone, and we measured the space to check the rug would fit.

We have also been working on fractions, and exploring the relationship between multiplication and division.

We made lovely valentine heart pictures using chalks and stencils.

Stunning Sunrise over Livingston

This photograph was taken on Monday, at the front of the school. During the week, we have discussed silhouettes, and using chalks. We have made some lovely pictures using the photo as our inspiration.

“I enjoyed using the chalks – it was very messy” EC
“It was lots of fun” LM
“Nobody knew the picture was taken from our school” AD

Maths
This week we have started learning about quarter past, half past and quarter to times. We are using analogue and digital clocks. We have also been learning to use the mathematical symbols > greater than, < less than, and = equals. We are also practising rounding numbers to the nearest 10.

Burns Assembly
Today we had Burns Assembly in school. We all took part in a Scottish style dance. We wore sashes and we looked very smart.

Reading & Writing
We have been reading and writing with our class pet dogs this week. We have been writing stories about our pets, and what they might get up to when we are not in class.

“It’s always more fun to read with a dog” “It was fun writing about the dogs”
We all enjoy reading to our pet dogs, but we don’t quite have enough for one each yet. If you have any toy dogs you no longer need and would be willing to donate to our class, please send them into school. They will be looked after, and read to often.

P3 Art

We have finally reached the part in our novel, James and the Giant Peach, when the peach lands on the Empire State Building in New York. We have been looking at the shape and form of skyscrapers, and in art this week, we have been making line drawings of the Empire State Building.
“it was hard at first, but it’s fun” “can we try this again?”

We think our drawings are all unique – we hope you like them.

Primary 6 ‘hot’ topic of Kenya!

Primary 6 have been creating some pictures of Zebras from Kenya using hot colours. We looked at the colour wheel of the hot and cold colours and selected which ones we wanted to use for our images. We then created some ‘cold’ coloured elephants. Primary 6 have been very interested in the wildlife of Kenya and we are looking forward to exploring this further.

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