This week the P1 boys and girls invited their friends from the other P1 classes to join them for golden time.  Before playtime they worked hard to write then deliver  their invitations.
And after playtime (and much excitement!) the visitors arrived. As you can see, everyone played very nicely!
This  week we have enjoyed lots of birthday celebrations including sharing our learning about 1967 – the year our school opened at Preston Road.  Thank you very much to everyone who came along on Wednesday evening and well done to the tour guides who certainly seemed to have learned lots!
Today the children looked fantastic in their 1960s costumes. They enjoyed the 1960s disco which was organised by P7a. Â The class did not go together today but with their P1 or P2 peer group which they seemed to enjoy.
After a very busy day we enjoyed some ginger beer (a favourite of Enid Blyton!) and a little piece of Mr Kipling cake ( first sold in 19671) to toast “Happy 50th Birthday!” to Linlithgow Primary School.
If you read our blog regularly you will know that we love having visitors in P2/1! Â Today we had some very special visitors because they were invited by the P2 children in our class and came along to join us for Golden Time.
The P2 children wrote invitations to their friends in P2a and P2b and delivered them this morning.
Then at Golden Time we were delighted that they could join us. Â Everyone played very nicely and Mrs Smith brought in a special game called Bagatelle which we enjoyed playing too.
Over the next few weeks the P1 children will have the opportunity to invite their friends to come along and join us for Golden Time too.
This afternoon P2/1 and P6a celebrated Outdoor Classroom Day by taking part in a joint scavenger hunt around the school grounds. Â The theme was weight and measure which is the focus for P2/1 maths learning at the moment. Â The children had a long list of things to find and do – some of them much trickier than others! Here are just some of the photographs.
Below are the  P2/1 Sooty Puppet shows from the other groups. Enjoy!
This term P2/1 are learning about 1967 – the year that the school opened on Preston Road. We are creating some displays to share our learning at our open evening in a few weeks and we really hope that you will come along.
Today we were learning about February 1967 and our team challenge was to create our own Sooty, Sweep and Soo puppet shows. Here are just few photos and  video clips – more will follow of the other groups next week.
As part of our famous artists topic this term we have been learning about Picasso and have been very busy creating our own Picasso style art works.
We took part in in a whole class challenge to make funny faces – everyone drew  2 eyes, a nose and a mouth and then we swapped.  The challenge was to make to make sure that we each still  had 2 eyes, a nose and a mouth at the end before we glued them together!
We learned that when Picasso was sad he painted using shades of blue and this was called The Blue Period. Â We mixed different shades of blue and created our own “Blue Period” paintings.
This term we are practising to write our surnames. So, just like Picasso, we have been signing our artwork with our surnames!
We have been enjoying listening to the stories The Day the Crayons Quit and The Day the Crayons Came Home.
We took part in a team challenge to use crayons to draw things the wrong colour – just like in the story!
This morning P2/1 were delighted to welcome some authors from P5b who had written and illustrated their own rainforest stories. As well as reading their stories to the boys and girls they had made some super props too! Thank you very much P5b – you have obviously been working very hard and had lots of good ideas – we enjoyed your listening to your stories.
We have been even busier than usual over the last few weeks especially with our fundraising for Comic Relief and our visit to Almond Valley. Thank you very much to our parent helpers for coming along too! Below are just some of the photographs!
We have also been taking part in the Primary Engineer Challenge and last week we had a visit from Jemma Quin. Jemma works as an engineer for a company called Morgan Sindall and she told us all about her job and the things that she has designed and built. We asked Jemma lots of questions!
Back in class we read some stories all about robots. Our design challenge was to draw our own robots and write a little bit about what they could do. We have sent our pictures to Jemma and hopefully we will soon receive our awards for being young engineers! Below are just some of them.
We have enjoyed taking part in lots of Spring and Easter activities this week – thank you to the parents who helped us with these!
Today’s challenge was to build a house for the three little pigs. We made sure that all of the teams had exactly the same resources even though our finished houses looked quite different.
The three toy pigs had to fit inside the house and then Miss McDermott tried to blow it down with the big bad wolf hairdryer! Great fun and lots of great designs today!
This morning we were very fortunate to have Mrs Lowe, one of our parent helpers, in class. She helped us plant nasturtium seeds whilst Miss McDermott worked with the maths groups. We learned that nasturtiums are unusual because you can eat their flowers! We know from Mr Hogg that we will need to water our seeds carefully and we are going to have a rota for doing this.
After break we wrote instructions for planting seeds and discussed how instructions are another kind of non fiction text.
In the afternoon, we learned about another Scottish inventor. Here are a few of the pictures that we have drawn so far.
Then we worked with a partner for today’s challenge – to try and make a cow jump over the moon! We had lots of fun trying to make catapults and pinging toy farm animals all over the classroom! Like many of the challenges we do it was not easy but we are getting much better are not giving up and helping each other to do our best.
This week we are focusing on non fiction texts in literacy and the children are choosing their own reading books to share at home.
In the morning we learned about different types of non fiction texts and we have a lovely selection of magazines in class which all the groups will have time to read over the week. Some of the children have suggested we link this to our data handling learning and do a survey of our favourite magazines at the end of the week. Watch this space!
A few of the children searched the newspapers to look for things that might interest children. As you can see from these photos, they did not like getting their hands covered in newsprint!
To celebrate British Science Week, we are learning about a different Scottish inventor each day.  As you will know if you read our blog regularly, we love designing and making things in P2/1 and this week we will be doing some team challenges that have both a design and a farm animal theme.
We have read the story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff and acted it out using puppets and masks. Today the challenge was to design and make a raft or boat to carry the three Billy Goats Gruff safely across our water tray.  This was not as easy as it might look as some of the containers that Miss McDermott gave us had holes in them!
This week we have been practising counting and recognising numbers up to 100 and to help us, we have been playing our new snakes and ladders games. Here is a link to an online version of snakes and ladders that you can play at home. You can either play against the computer or an opponent.
http://www.counton.org/games/virtualmathfest/snakesladders.html
Some children have also been doing some measuring in the hall. We need to know how much bunting to make for the front of the stage for the red nose day assembly. Obviously as an eco-school we don’t want to waste resources and make too much!
This afternoon P2/1 were delighted to welcome Finlay’s grandad, Mr Hogg into class. He showed us a short video all about the farm he manages in East Lothian and we learned all about planting, growing and harvesting crops such as brussel sprouts, potatoes, carrots ,parsnips and cabbages.
Mr Hogg brought lots of things with him for us to look at including the tiny seeds that grow into the crops as well as some freshly harvested crops which most of us enjoyed tasting.
We had lots of fun investigating the crops and seeds and playing with them in our own farm shop.
We asked lots of questions all about farming and were very surprised to learn that the brussel sprouts only take four 4 months to grow from a tiny seed into a large plant ready to harvest and eat. As you can see the plant is nearly as big as a P1!
Thank you very much to Mr Hogg for coming to spend the afternoon with us and for giving us all our very own bag of sprouts to take home!
This morning P2/1 headed off in the sunshine to visit Linlithgow Library. Some boys and girls were already members and some children joined for the first time.
We enjoyed looking at the lovely books and lots of children chose books to take home. We used the self scanning machines which are quite similar to the new scanner in our school library.
Thank you very much to Mrs Crook and Mrs Simcox for coming along with us and helping us to stay safe when crossing the very busy roads in Linlithgow (and thank you also to Mrs Smith who gave up her tea break this morning to come with us too!)
