Author: Miss Muir

Please have a look at what we have been doing in our play based learning this week…

In our Relationships topic we looked at food chains. We discussed what we already knew about them. We then watched Dr Binocs who was great to watch to introduce us to food chains. We learned that the animals in a food chain depend on each other. We learned what the words producer and consumer mean. We now know that a producer is always at the start of a food chain. We explored different food chains and the animals that are in them from sea to woodland animals. We participated in various activities as individuals or in small groups.  We played a food chain challenge game on the board which we did really well in. We even took part in a food chain quiz!

In Literacy it has been our second week of learning the ‘u-e’ sound. We watched and sang along to the Jude the Mule song where we picked out lots of u-e words. We enjoyed watching Jude the Mule fly in the parachute. That was the biggest u-e word we had ever seen! Using the magnetic boards we were shown picture cards with missing letters of u-e words. We had to show what the missing letters would be using our boards. Some of us after drew our own u-e picture cards which the class had to figure out at the end of the lesson. We also enjoyed figuring out what common words were hidden behind Bullseye and some of us played another round of common word scavenger hunt in the open area. In writing we wrote a procedure based on what we had been learning about food chains. We read the story ‘Ronald the Rhino’ and used the animals in the story to create a food chain. We had to make sure we wrote our food chain in order and described what happened at each stage. Some of us even used challenge words such as first, then and producer.

In our Money topic for Numeracy and Mathematics we have continued with adding different amounts of coins within 20p and £1 to make a given total. We have also been adding up coins to 30p, 50p and/or £2. We are still enjoying playing the Toy Shop game on the board and playing in our very own toy shop in the classroom. In Time this week we looked at the months of the year. We were able to order them correctly and say them backwards in order…mostly! We learned what the terms ‘month before’ and ‘month after’ meant too.

In P.E we looked at improving our coordination. We practised catching and throwing by participating in different activities. We played Keep the Garden Tidy, Zookeeper Tig and Flick and Catch. Flick and Catch was challenging. We discussed the challenges of it and what we could do to overcome it. We then tried it again and it got a little easier. Practise makes perfect!

Stay safe and we hope to see you again soon to share our learning.

P2A and Miss Muir 🙂

 

We have had fun learning a new sound, finding out how to look after a baby and buying toys with money from a toy shop.

Please have a look at what we have been doing in our play based learning this week…

In Health and Wellbeing we have started our Relationships topic for the next couple of weeks. This week we looked at how to look after a baby. We had great discussions about when we have helped look after a baby and what we did. We even carried out a class survey using tally marks to see who had a baby in their family or had little brothers/sisters. We then looked at the basic needs of a baby. Why they cry, why they need love and why they need cared for. We were able to draw and write what a baby needs and doesn’t need. This helped us with our writing this week too, keep reading to find out what we wrote.

In Literacy we have looked at magic ‘e’ and some of us have been revising our common words. We have been learning what ‘u-e’ sounds like with help from Geraldine the Giraffe. We did really well using the magnetic boards to sound out and blend ‘u-e’ words. Some of us even came up with our own such as rule. We also completed a task where we had to find out real and nonsense ‘u-e’ words. Some of these made no sense at all! We liked playing Bingo when revising our common words. We even played common word snakes and ladders which was really fun. Some of us have also been creating different magic ‘e’ words using Lego. In writing we wrote instructions of how to look after a baby.  First we read a story about a princess called Polly who was going to be a big sister. We then drew 4 pictures of tasks involved when looking after a baby. We all put lots of effort into our pictures because they would help us with our writing. When we were writing our instructions we used bullet points to show what equipment would be needed and how the equipment helped to look after a baby. Some of us even explained why it is important to do these tasks.

In our Money topic for Numeracy and Mathematics we have continued with adding different amounts of coins within 20p and £1 to make a given total. We played a game called Toy In The Bag where someone from the class closed their eyes, picked a toy from the bag, checked the price tag then the class helped by using coins to pay for the toy. We have really enjoyed the games on the board to help us with our learning. Our favourite one this week is the toy shop money game where we buy lots of different toys. Some of us were even choosing to challenge ourselves and go beyond £1. In Time this week we have been looking at one hour before a given time. We wrote our answers in digital time and some of us even wrote it in analogue time too.

In Science with Mrs Bergarnie we did our last lesson in melting and freezing. We completed a task where we had to organise what freezes and what melts. We used words like solids, water vapour and condensation.

We hope you enjoy the weekend. See you soon!

P2A and Miss Muir 🙂

It has been another busy week in P2A where we have been learning non-stop. Please have a look at what we have been doing in our play based learning this week…

In Literacy we have looked at magic ‘e’ and some of us have been revising our common words. We have been learning more about ‘o-e’ and remembering the sound that this makes in words. We watched an Alphablocks clip to remind us of ‘o-e’. We enjoyed watching and listening to all the sounds. Some of us went on a common words scavenger hunt. We had fun looking for all the words around the infants area. Some of us enjoyed making words using the magnetic letters in the glitter. The wand came in very handy when we were making them! In our short read we completed an activity called Jigsaw Jumble. We listened to the Aliens Love Underpants audiobook. We then had to rearrange the sentences from the book so that they made sense. We worked well as a team to do this. This week we were learning to write a recount. This is where you retell a story in your own words. We read a book called ‘Lost in the Toy Museum’. We liked the character called Bunting who was in charge of all the toys in the museum. We had to identify what happened in the beginning, middle and end of the story. We also tried to include a joining word. Some of us challenged ourselves and tried to use different joining words. There were even pieces of our writing that included phrases that were said in the story.

In Numeracy and Mathematics we have been looking at time durations. We have been working out what the time would be one hour after any given time. We learned that there are 60 minutes in an hour. We have used our learning about writing analogue and digital time to be able to do this. Some of us could say how many minutes were in half an hour and a quarter of an hour. We also started our Money topic this week where we added coins to 20. We discussed when we have used money, what kind of money we know about and why we use money. We watched a fun money song and played a coins game to help us with this.

For our IDL topic we were learning to demonstrate basic problem solving skills using simple programs. To help us with this we used a programmable toy called Earl. We learned what the words debug and algorithm mean. We then looked at what functions Earl had. In groups we went around different mats programming Earl to a place we wanted him to go to. When he didn’t go to the right place we had to identify the problem then solve it. We call this debugging. We had lots of fun using Earl and we think he might be making an appearance in our classroom again next week!

On Thursday it was World Book Day. Lots of us dressed up as characters from a book we had read. We discussed our favourite books in class, our favourite places to read and our favourite book characters. We also designed our own bookmarks and designed new underpants for the alien from ‘Aliens Love Underpants’. We even had an author visit and had a mystery reader come into our class who Miss Muir knew very well!

Thank you to the parents who were also able to come to our BEAR event this morning. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.

We hope you have a lovely weekend. See you next week.

P2A and Miss Muir 🙂

We have been busy this week learning in Literacy, Maths, Science and Art. One of our favourite activities this week was creating our own Pop Art pictures. If you read on you will see our amazing work!

In Literacy we have looked at magic ‘e’ and some of us have been revising our common words. We have been learning ‘o-e’ and the sound that this makes in words. We watched Geraldine the Giraffe who helped us at first with the ‘o-e’ sound. We were even able to think of our own words and make them using our magnetic boards. We have played different games this week to help us practise them such as board games and class Pictionary. Some of us played Snap with our common words which was really fun. This is helping us to recognise our common words. We even had the chance to write our common words on the board to see what letters were below and above the line. In our writing we did explanation writing about our favourite toy. We watched a clip called ‘Spot’s Favourite Toy’ which we enjoyed watching. We then had to think about our favourite toy and drew these in our jotters. We also created our own title for our writing. The next day we wrote about our favourite toy. We had to make sure that we were explaining why it was our favourite toy so we had to include different reasons. Using joining words such as because helped us to do this. We did really well checking over our work and looking back at our success criteria.

In Numeracy and Mathematics we have been looking more closely at the link between subtraction and addition. As well as this we have been revising our subtraction topic. We have looked over the different words for subtraction, bridging 10, missing numbers and subtracting using teen numbers. We liked playing the ladder game where we were asked different questions and if we got the answer right we went into the trees. We got so many right that we ended up in the clouds!

In Science with Mrs Bergarnie we tried to identify mystery powders by looking at what happened to them when they were added to water. We predicted what might happen then carried out the experiment. We noticed that the flour went cloudy, the icing sugar dissolved and the baking powder went foamy.

This week in Art we were creating images using different materials (oil pastel and crayon). We looked at Pop Art, specifically the artist Andy Warhol. We discussed the use of colour and pattern used in these pictures. We noticed that his pictures repeat themselves and Pop out at you! We created our own Andy Warhol style pictures using different toys. We could choose from a tablet, robot or teddy bear. We used bright colours to make sure our pictures would be eye catching.

The whole school had an 80’s themed day on Thursday. We had a fashion show, played 80’s games, listened to 80’s music and we even learned about 80’s toys. We had lots of fun. Check out our 80’s gear!

We have also had fun with our Numicon tuff tray…

We hope you enjoy the weekend. See you soon!

P2A and Miss Muir 🙂

 

We have had a busy 2 weeks in Primary 2A with a little break in between! We are definitely ready to be back having fun learning.

In Literacy we have looked at magic ‘e’ and some of us have been revising our consonant blends. We have enjoyed playing interactive ‘i-e’ games on the board and writing words we have remembered on kites and fluffy slime. During play we have been identifying adjectives by playing a game of Guess Who in partners. We have had lots of fun trying to guess each other’s person. In writing this week our task was to create a new Toy Story character if there was a Toy Story 5. We watched a clip of Forky being introduced to all the Toy Story characters which was funny. As a class we described what Forky looked like using adjectives. We learned that we can have different adjectives to describe Forky such as shape and colour. We kept this in mind when we had to do our writing. We drew our new characters which included labels. We had thought of lots of different characters from robots to cuddly toys. We then wrote a character description using adjectives and tried to challenge ourselves to use different joining words as well. They turned out great!

In Numeracy and Mathematics we have been recalling subtraction facts to 20. We have looked at different strategies to help us with this such as using our knowledge of doubles. We have also been looking at the special link between addition and subtraction e.g. 10 + 5 = 15, 5 + 10 = 15, 15 – 10 = 5.  Some of us have been looking at this link using 2 digit numbers as well. We have had fun telling the time in class. Miss Muir has set us a challenge that if we spot an o’clock or half past time on an analogue or digital clock in the classroom we have to say! We have been doing really well with this so far. We played a game on the board called What’s the Time Mr Wolf? We had to make sure that the Wolf could get his turkey dinner in time by answering the o’clock questions. Over the past 2 weeks we have been learning to write the digital time for half past and have been drawing the hands on an analogue clock when given an o’clock or half past time as well. Some of us have even been creating digital and analogue times in our airport.

In our Toys topic we explored how toys are made and why they are made of certain materials. We also looked at how toys move. Did they use a battery or have to be wound up? We enjoyed watching clips of toys and discussing what they were made from, if machines or people made them. We even learned about what some of our toys we play with today are made from. We were able to show our new learning by completing a toy materials table.

Last week in Science we looked at melting and cooling. To understand this process we made chocolate krispie cakes. They smelled great and we even had enough for everyone in the class to eat one. Miss Muir couldn’t get a photo fast enough as some of us had already eaten them before the photo was taken!

 

Please take a look at what we have been doing in our play based learning…

We hope you enjoy your weekend!

P2A and Miss Muir 🙂

This week we have been busy learning about thermometers, toys from the past and drawing robots!

Look below at what we have been doing in our play based learning…

In Literacy we have looked at magic ‘e’ and some of us have been learning the ‘tw’ sound. We drew ‘a-e’ pictures and wrote ‘a-e’ words in our pictures. We enjoyed watching Alphablocks clips with magic ‘e’ in the black hat. Magic ‘e’ does a good job making vowels longer. We wrote lots of ‘a-e’ and ‘tw’ words on the graffiti wall on the interactive board. Some of us even thought of our own ‘a-e’ words and used the big magnetic board to spell these. We really enjoyed watching a Lego advert to help us create our toy posters this week. Our task was to persuade people to buy our favourite toy by creating a poster. We discussed times we have tried to persuade people and talked about how toy companies try to persuade us to buy different toys. They use bright colours and lots of pictures so we had to make sure our posters were like this too. We also had to include the different ways you could play with the toy to persuade people even more. In our Short Read this week we completed a ‘Picture It’ activity. We were given information about a robot which we then had to draw. We did really well highlighting the important information to help us with our robots.

In Numeracy and Mathematics we have been recalling subtraction facts between 16 and 20. We have been playing a fun game to help us recall these subtraction facts called ‘Hit the Button’. We have looked at different strategies to help us with this such as using our knowledge of doubles. We have also been practising missing number questions. Some of us have been subtracting a 2 digit number from a 2 digit number using partitioning and 100 squares to help us. We have also been practising more half past times this week. We are becoming more confident as a class recognising this on an analogue and digital clock. Some of us were even learning how to recognise when it is quarter past.

In Science with Mrs Bergarnie we looked at thermometers. We discussed where we have seen a thermometer before and what they do. Mrs Bergarnie set up an experiment where we had cups with cold water and cups with warm water. We predicted what would happen to the cups after they had been sitting in the classroom. We used words like degrees Celsius so we could tell exactly what temperature the cups were when we each used our thermometer. We did really well at predicting if the cups of water would be hotter or colder at the end of the lesson and why this happened.

In our Toys topic we looked at toys in the past and what our parents and grandparents might have played with when they were in P2. We loved watching the ‘100 years of toys’ clip. Lots of us spotted toys we had seen or heard of before. We had lots of discussion about this. One of our tasks was to work in pairs to complete a toy timeline on the Keynote app on the iPad. We had lots of fun figuring out where each toy should go.

This week was Scotland loves Languages Week. In class we have done lots of things to celebrate this. We had a visit from the Language Ambassadors and Mrs Gordon on Wednesday. We played a fun game to practise our numbers to 30 in French. Some of us can even say our numbers up to 50 which we have been practising in the line before lunch and using as a countdown. On Thursday we practised the months of the year. We played snakes and ladders in pairs where we had to say the month in French to move on.

We hope you have a lovely weekend.

P2A and Miss Muir 🙂

 

This week we have been busy learning about toys, time and subtraction. We can’t believe we are at the end of January already!

Look below at what we have been doing in our play based learning…

In Literacy we have begun looking at magic ‘e’. We have learned that it is very powerful and makes the vowel in a word sound longer. We also found out that it can change words like cap to cape. We were amazed by this. We had fun thinking of as many ‘a-e’ words as we could. Some of us have been learning: ‘st’ and ‘sw’ this week. We enjoyed writing different ‘sw’ words on the sweets. In our writing we read a book called ‘The Toy Shop’. It was about an old man who ran his own toy shop who would say “hello” to his favourite toys when he opened the shop. We then thought of our favourite toys and when we had been to a toy shop before. We had lots to say in this discussion, it could have lasted for days! Miss Muir set us the task of writing an imaginative story about creating our own toy shop. We had lots of ideas of which toys would be in our shop and who would be in charge of it. We had to include adjectives to describe the toys in the shop and joining words to make our writing flow better. We think our toy shops would be really fun to visit. They would definitely give Smyth’s a run for their money! In our Short Read this week we watched a Toy Story trailer where we answered different questions after watching it. We then played ‘blankety, blank’ as a class where we had to fill in the missing words from what was said in the trailer.

In Numeracy and Mathematics we have been recalling subtraction facts between 13 and 15. Some of us have been subtracting within 100. We have been explaining the strategies we use to get to our answer in class discussions and when we are helping each other with our work. We also started learning about time this week in Maths. We learned that there are two different clocks: analogue and digital. We discussed where we see clocks in our everyday lives and why we think time is important. We then went over o’clock and looked at half past on an analogue and digital clock. This was a little tricky on an analogue clock as the little hand is between two numbers when the big hand is at 6. We enjoyed playing time board games with each other during the lesson and when we were playing.

Our new IDL topic for this term is Toys. We have done lots on this topic already from completing a class Short Read to writing our toy shop imaginative stories. We also had a class discussion on what we already knew about toys and were able to write/draw our ideas. We were asked if there was anything we would like to know about toys. We had lots of ideas for Miss Muir to write down.

Our P6 pals came to visit us this week. They were learning about electricity and had made games for us to play using batteries and wires. The games had lots of different questions for us to answer. We had so much fun playing the games and seeing our pals again.

We hope you enjoy your first weekend of February!

P2A and Miss Muir 🙂

This week we have been busy learning all things to do with Scotland.

Look below at what we have been doing in our play based learning…

In Literacy we have been revising our consonant blends and some of us have been learning: ‘sn’ and ‘sp’ this week. To revise our blends we looked at pictures with the different blends and had to figure out which blend the picture represented. We enjoyed playing a game on the interactive board to help us revise our blends as well. We read a book called ‘The Reiven Rat’ which was all in Scots. Our task was to describe the rat from the book using Scots words. We discussed what the rat looked like and how he behaved. We learned that words that describe something are called adjectives. We had fun using adjectives to describe what each of us were wearing to help us with this learning. We then included adjectives in our own writing. We were also able to identify Scots words, know what they were in English and able to include them in our writing. We wrote words like lang, purpie and troosers. Please have a look at our rats!

 

In Numeracy and Mathematics we have been subtracting within 20 and 100 looking at a strategy called bridging. This is where you cross over a 10. We liked moving the frog across the number line on the board to help us with this. We have also been recalling subtraction facts for 11 and 12. Some of us have even been subtracting 2 digits from multiples of 10 and recalling subtraction facts to 50. We have been challenging ourselves lots this week. Some of us are even asking for more challenging questions. We have had fun as a class playing the mental maths train on the board to help us recall these facts.

During story and milk this week we have been listening to stories which are all in Scots or have Scots words in them. We have really enjoyed listening to these and finding out about what different Scots words mean.

In P.E we learned how to balance while moving in different ways. We became Woodland creatures from The Gruffalo’s Child. We balanced on our two feet, arms and some of us on one foot. We even created our own obstacle courses in groups. We had to make sure it would make us balance and move in different ways. We used lots of different equipment to create them which we all used in different ways.

We can’t wait to see what next week brings, see you then!

P2A and Miss Muir 🙂

We have been busy learning in P2A this week.

Look below at what we have been doing in our play based learning…

In Literacy we have all been learning new sounds: ‘st’, ‘sw’, ‘sk’ and ‘sm’ this week. We have enjoyed using the magnetic boards to spell our words. Some of us have even thought of our own words with our sound and written these down on whiteboards and our jotters. We were able to create our own sentences using these words as well. Some of us enjoyed completing the ‘st’ word hunt in the classroom.

In Numeracy and Mathematics we have been subtracting within 20 and 100 this week. Some of us were subtracting a single digit from 20. We went over the different strategies we could use to help us with this from using number lines to counting with cubes. We also were subtracting a teens number from a teens number. Some of us found this challenging to start with but we were resilient and were able to complete our work. As a class we learned that ‘find the difference’ is another way of saying subtract so we wrote this on our subtraction class mind map. It is getting very full now!

In P.E we were exploring different movements, how we control these in a safe way and how you can balance. As a class we were able to state and demonstrate lots of different moves we can make. We had lots of fun playing an activity called ‘Visit to the Zoo’. In partners we moved like different zoo animals from crocodiles to penguins. We realised how these animals move in different ways. We even had an ‘Animal Quiz’ where we had to guess the animals people were by looking at how they moved. It was really fun.

In Art we have been creating pictures using different materials and bright colours. We looked at the artist Steven Brown and his pictures. Some of us knew who he was and had noticed some of his pictures before in shops we had visited and hairdresser’s. We discussed the colours and lines/shapes he used in his work. We then created our own highland coos and giraffes in the style of Steven Brown.

Hope you have a lovely weekend.

P2A and Miss Muir 🙂

We have finished our first week of 2020 in school and have already been working hard.

Look below at what we have been doing in our play based learning…

In Literacy we have all been learning new sounds: ‘tw’, ‘pl’ and ‘sl’ this week. We have enjoyed using the magnetic boards to spell our words and creating our own ones as well. We completed a jumbled words task where we had to unjumble a ‘tw’ word. We were given clues to help us. Some of us even challenged ourselves and didn’t look at the clues. We listened to a story called the ‘Slimy Slug’ which we enjoyed listening to and finding the ‘sl’ words.

In Numeracy and Mathematics we have been subtracting within 10 and 20 this week. We thought of all the words that meant the same as subtraction like take away, minus, less than. We did really well as a class thinking of all these different words. We created a mind map to show our learning which we are proud of and have displayed this on our Maths wall. In Number Talks we have been sharing our strategies for working out subtraction sums. We choose between a Hot or Spicy question, some of us have been choosing the more challenging Spicy question.

During story and milk this week we read a story called ‘The Gruffalo’s Child’. It is about the Gruffalo’s Child having an adventure in the wintery wood to find a big, bad mouse which the Gruffalo has told her all about. She goes out to find this mouse but…we won’t tell you the end in case you want to read it! In the book the Gruffalo’s Child wants to eat the mouse for a midnight feast so we were set the task of writing our own midnight feast menus for the Gruffalo’s Child. We discussed what a menu looks like and we got very excited telling the class where we have seen menus before. There were many ideas we thought of, from rat cake to snow topped acorns. We had lots of fun creating them and hopefully the Gruffalo’s Child will like them too.

On Thursday afternoon we watched P6/7 perform their Scottish Opera performance. It was great. We can’t believe they sung a whole story. The songs were really catchy!

We hope you have an enjoyable weekend.

P2A and Miss Muir 🙂