wls.alloway-mudd@glow

November 3, 2017

Happy Halloween

This week we had the Halloween Hop! A big thank you to all of the parents who organised and ran the event. The children all had a wonderful time. They danced the afternoon away in the Disco room and got crafty making scary masks.

In Numeracy we have been learning about addition. We have revised our addition to 10 facts and enjoyed practising our strategies at the different stations. We have been using ten frames to develop our understanding of number and used this to support our learning at our desks.

We have started our new class novel ‘The BFG’. In the first chapter we were introduced to the ‘Witching Hour’. We practised our cutting skills to create a window frame with the BFG inside it. We pretended to be Sophie looking out into the night sky.

We were making tricky word towers. We had to pick a Jenga brick, read the word then build the tower.

Miss Mudd had put out some new resources in the Finger Gym and Maths Challenge area. We have to practise threading beads onto sticks and make different patterns. We practised weighing different Autumn objects and tried to see if we could make them balance.

This week we started our Big Writing Adventure. We were introduced to Fizz who is our P2 Writing Agent. He set us challenges and sends us messages with tasks to complete. This week we were looking at nocturnal animals and used some fabulous adjectives to write some descriptive sentences.

Have a lovely weekend!

Miss Mudd and P2A x

October 27, 2017

Rugby Club

There will be no after school Rugby for the next 2 weeks due to other commitments.

We will be back training on Tuesday 14th November.

Thanks

Miss Mudd x

October 27, 2017

Outdoor Adventures

This week has been out ‘Outdoor Learning’ week. Miss Mudd organised a trip to the Loch for us and we had a workshop with the Rangers. We played lots of fun games and learnt about animals that hibernate. We also made bug hotels to put in our gardens. Thank you to the lovely parent helpers who came with us. We can’t do these trips without you!

We also went on an Autumn hunt on our school playing field. We collected leaves and made leaf collages of different animals. It was a nice relaxing atmosphere in P2A as we listened to Vivaldi and ‘The 4 Seasons’ as we worked this week. We learnt all about hibernation and even wrote some hibernation diaries where we pretended to be a hibernating animal.

We were getting in the Halloween spirit this week and watched the story ‘Room on the Broom’. Miss Mudd set up a potions lab for us and gave us some recipes to make potions for other classes. We made Brain Juice, Flying Potion, Handwriting Helper and Make Your Teacher Crazy Juice! We loved measuring out the different potions and delivered them around the school. Miss Mudd had even collected some Troll Snot so we could play in it…….gross!! It was slimy.

This week we also started to learn the songs for our Nativity! How exciting. It is top secret so we can’t say more than that.

We are very proud of Mairi and Chloe for completing their fun run in Aviemore. Well done girls! What an achievement.

Hope you all have a lovely weekend

Miss Mudd and P2A x

October 6, 2017

Ingenious Inventors

This week we were learning all about the story of ‘The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch’.

We have been working with P2B to create a lovely corridor display to show off all the work we have been doing. Mrs Miller has been helping us make seagulls and build our very own lighthouse.

We were applying our work on adjectives to create a character profile for Mr Grinling and Mrs Grinling. Here are some of Miss Mudd’s favourite describing words we used:

Intelligent
Encouraging
Caring
Hard-working
Jolly

Miss Mudd also set us a design challenge to design a new basket to keep the pesky seagulls out! We had some AMAZING ideas! Some of the baskets were full of sleeping gas to send the seagulls to sleep, some gave out electric shocks, some had scary faces and noises to scare the seagulls away. We wrote sentences to explain how it worked.

We also had a go at weaving our own paper baskets. We had to listen carefully to instructions and follow the steps to create our baskets. It was very fiddly and we had to be patient but it was good fun!

In PE we were developing our team work skills. We were split into teams and had to work out how we were going to get from one side of the hall to the other to deliver Mr Grinling’s lunch on time!! We were only given a mat and a bench. It took a while to come up with some ideas but we communicated well and worked together to solve this tricky problem!

We finished our PE session with some relaxing yoga. Miss Mudd taught us some positions to help us stretch our muscles. We loved the animal names.

In Numeracy we have been finishing our work on place value. We have been using the Numicon to build numbers and we have been partitioning numbers.

We played games to speed up our mental recall. We have also been learning how to add/subtract in multiples of ten – starting with the concrete materials and by the end of the week we were doing it mentally!

As our warm ups this week we have been using the shape fans to consolidate our learning on 2D shape.

We hope you all have a lovely weekend.

Miss Mudd and P2A x

September 29, 2017

Alien Invasion in P2A!

We added to our seaside this week. We painted a lighthouse to go in our classroom. Some of us also started helping to make our ‘Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch’ display and created light up lighthouses and paper plate seagulls! Thank you to Mrs Miller for helping us with this.

This week we were studying a book called ‘Beegu’. It is about a little alien who comes down to Earth and gets lost. On Wednesday we had a surprise visit! Miss Mudd had got a text from Mr Wells saying there were aliens spotted in our classroom. She rushed from Stirling to come and see them but must have just missed them. They left us lots of learning activities in the classroom and some tasks to do. Here are a few…..

We were building with moon sand
Writing with our digraphs in moon dust
Practising our fine motor skills by using the spoons to fish out alien eyeballs from the soapy water
At the Finger Gym we were decorating underpants with patterns using the tweezers and pompoms/beads/counters.
Moulded foil to make moon rocks
Reading words and sorting them into real words and alien words

We were also writing postcards from Beegu back to her family on her own planet. This was our last lesson on postcard writing so we had to try and remember all of the key features of a postcard.

We used fabulous describing words to create and describe our own aliens. We watched a short film by Andy Martin called ‘The Planets’. It is a short animation showing 12 different planets. We then created our own planets and labelled them. Miss Mudd was so impressed with our creativity. We then stood up and described our planets to the rest of the class.

We used question starters to come up with key questions that we would ask Beegu if she came to visit us. We then used ‘hot seating’ to get into character and practised interviewing Beegu.

In PE this week we continued our work on movement and ball skills. We practised using the rugby balls and did some obstacle courses and team games at the end to apply our skills. We also played some games to speed up our reaction times. We had to listen for the whistle and get up as quick as we could starting from different positions.

A big well done to all of the children who have brought in their owls for Miss Baillie’s competition. We have some wonderful entries. Here is Thomas showing us his owl baby.

In ICT we were practising how to log on independently. We played some keyboard typing games and practised our mental maths on Hit the Button.

In Maths we were looking at 2D shapes. We were talking about their properties and counting their sides and corners. We used the faces of the 3D shapes to create our own 2D shape aliens!

P2A were named class of the week! Miss Mudd is so proud of them. What stars!!

September 28, 2017

Springfield Rugby Stars

This week we started our after school Rugby club. All of the children showed great potential and were keen to develop their skills. We worked on passing and receiving the ball and communicating to our team. Here are a few pictures to show what we were up to!

September 22, 2017

Terrific Targets in P2A

We hope everyone had a lovely long weekend. It has been a short week in P2A so just a few pictures this week.

Literacy

We were busy setting targets and talking about our next steps in writing. We have target targets to help us to improve our writing and we have to try and get 3 ticks on our target cards. Some of us have got a tick this week already!

We were writing newspaper reports telling the world about George’s marvellous medicine and telling them what has been happening at the Kranky farm! We were great at remembering key details and sequencing the events from the story.

We received a postcard from the kindness fairy as she is away on holiday in fairyland at the moment. It sounds very magical! We evaluated her postcard and created a check list to make sure she had included everything she needed. We then used this to write our own postcards talking about one of our favourite holidays.

HWB

In PE we played rats and rabbits to speed up our reaction times. We enjoyed chasing each other and had to listen carefully for the whistle. We then started to use some of our ball skills in a game of benchball. We practised our chest pass and held our hands our ready to receive a pass.

We wanted to say a big thank you to Chloe and her lovely family for making us all a beautiful gold ribbon for childhood cancer awareness month. We talked about raising awareness and why it is important for people to help and support children battling cancer. P2A showed a lot of love and kindness so the kindness fairy will be very happy to hear this!

Numeracy

We continued our work on place value and practised using the base ten blocks to build numbers. We were able to identify how many tens and units were in each number.

Have a lovely weekend!

Miss Mudd and P2A x

September 15, 2017

P2A Fighting Fit!

Miss Mudd noticed we were being a little noisy in class so to try and help us use our quiet voices she downloaded a new app for our computer. The bouncy balls on the screen show the volume in the classroom and the more they bounce…..the noisier it is. It then tells us when we are being too noisy. We got much quieter throughout the week so hopefully we can keep it up!

Literacy

We were writing our weekend news and practising using full stops correctly. We had our red, amber and green targets and had to ‘go for green!’ After writing, we used our traffic light cups to self-assess our work and show Miss Mudd what we think we had achieved. We talked about our next steps and came up with some targets to help us improve further.

On Wednesday it was Roald Dahl day so we tuned in to the live feed along with thousands of other children to hear more about his life. We did a quiz to see which character we are like. Emma T came out as Matilda, Campbell was George (George’s Marvellous Medicine) and Charlie was Charlie Bucket. Quentin Blake showed us how to create some wonderful illustrations and we loved seeing how his ideas were brought to life.

In writing we continued to do some work on description and learnt how to describe different landscapes. Miss Mudd wrote some descriptions of different places and we had to read them and match them to the correct picture. We picked out the wow words and went on to write our own descriptions. They were fabulous!

IDL

We were learning about the features of a seaside. We talked about key features such as lighthouses, caves, cliffs, shops, rock pools, boats etc. We labelled a photograph of a seaside and played ISpy to look for the different features. We then sorted them into natural and man-made.

Our buddies came down to help us on the computers. We used google maps to find our houses and looked at some of our local beaches.

Numeracy

In Maths we started to learn about place value. We were given a large amount of objects and had to sort them into groups of 10 to help us count efficiently. We then counted up in our tens and units. Miss Mudd introduced us to the base ten blocks and we practised making up different numbers and talking about the amount of tens and units.

We continued our work on 2D and 3D shape. We had to use ropes and work in teams to create different 2D shapes. Then we had to convince the class that we had made that shape by talking about its properties. We then used straws, cotton buds, tooth picks and sticks to build 3D shapes. It was very challenging but we used our growth mind set attitudes to help us persevere. Most of us were able to keep trying and didn’t give up when things got tough. Miss Mudd was so proud of our work on shapes and our enthusiasm towards our learning.

We also had a new challenge in our Maths area. We had 7 pots with different materials in. We called it the estimation station. We had to estimate how many were in each tub then check our answers.

Extra bits and bobs

Jacob and Euan brought in their achievements to show us. Euan had done the Pedal for Scotland event and cycled a very long way! We are very proud of him. Jacob had won a trophy for his hard work at Taekwondo.

In Science on Monday, the children learned that the sun is our main source of energy. Without the sun no plants would grow and we would have no food. We planted seeds with sunshine labels to remind us how important the sun is in providing us with energy.

Miss Mudd dug out her old PE kit and joined in with a fitness session for children’s fitness week. Joe Wicks (The Body Coach) streamed his workouts live every day at 10am so we thought we would give one a go. It was tough and we were sweaty but all felt great after we had finished. In PE we played Hungry Hippos and worked on our reaction times and speed.

A huge well done to P7 for their fabulous cake! We were amazed at the detail that they had created. What a talented bunch. Thank for you sharing it with us.

Hope you all have a wonderful long weekend.

Miss Mudd and P2A x

September 8, 2017

Revolting Recipes in P2A

This week started our class novel ‘George’s Marvellous Medicine’. We used our predicting skills and became book detectives to try and look for clues as to what the story may be about. We were introduced to the character of ‘Grandma’ and came up with a list of fabulous describing words. We then put these into sentences and drew some detailed pictures of Grandma. We also created our own Marvellous Medicines. We made a list of some rather disgusting and unusual ingredients then created a revolting recipe for other people to follow.

In phonics this week we have been revising some of our digraphs from last year. Miss Mudd’s group were looking at the wh and ai sounds and Mrs Burton’s group were looking at the oo and ew sounds.

In Maths we have been learning our numbers to 100. We have learnt to recognise them, read them, write them and order them. Miss Mudd gave us a team challenge and we had to help her piece together the 100 square as it was all in a muddle. We had to race to put it back together and we had to work as a team. We also revised 3D shape and talked about the different properties of shapes. We looked at the faces, edges and corners. We used the shapes to create models and identified the shapes we had used.

Our P2 Pals came to say hello and helped us with our ICT skills. We practised how to log on and even created our own wild characters online.

We got a little surprise in P2A this week. Paddington Bear was away on his holidays so he sent us a postcard telling us what he has been doing. We looked at lots of examples of postcards and came up with a list of things we would need to include when we wrote one. We practised using interesting describing words in our sentences to help us describe different places.

This week we started our new IDL topic ‘From Front Door to Sea Shore’. We planned the topic together by looking at what we already know, what we would like to know and wrote down questions we would like to answer. We used google maps to look at where we live and compared Springfield to seaside resorts that we have visited. We talked about what was similar and what was different about these environments. Mairi even showed us a beach she used to visit when she lived in Australia.

Formation Friday has returned! We have been pracisiting our number formation as Miss Mudd noticed some of us have been writing our numbers backwards. We worked around the active stations to make sure we were getting our numbers perfect!

Another busy week for us. Miss Mudd wanted to thank you all for coming and showing your support at our ‘Meet the Teacher’ evening. She is really excited to work with you all this year and always appreciates your support.

Have a lovely weekend!

Miss Mudd and P2A x

September 1, 2017

Every mistake you make is progress!

The kindness fairy paid a visit to P2A and set us a challenge. She wanted us to spread kindness and love across Springfield Primary. She even left us a little bag of kindness to spread in our class. Miss Mudd sprinkled it over us!! She left us little slips of paper so we can write about the kind things we have seen and done and put them on our display. The fairy sent us ‘The Kindness Project’ to do in class. We talked about thoughts that we should say out loud and thoughts that we should keep in our heads. Miss Mudd gave us examples of words and actions and we had to sort them into kind and unkind things. We also made a class promise that we are all going to follow this year.

This week we have had a growth mind set week to prepare us for the year ahead. We read the story ‘My Fantastic Elastic Brain’ and learnt all about the different parts of the brain and the jobs they do. We learnt about the neurons in our brain and how we can make them stronger when we learn new things and practise new skills. This makes our brain grow bigger and stronger. We made a collage of these neurons with wool, string and straws to show the strong and weak neurons.

We compared our brains to an elastic band. When we stretch it, it grows bigger. Here are our brains at the beginning of P2…….Here they are at the end! We are going to work hard and learn new things to stretch our brains!

We also made a brain hat to show the different parts. We talked about things we can do already and we all chose something that we can’t do….YET! We learnt a song about the power of yet. It taught us that with a bit of hard work and practise we can stretch our brains and we can achieve.

We have been revising some of our Maths concepts from last year to get back into the swing of things. We practised our number bonds and addition/subtraction strategies.

We read a story called ‘The Most Magnificent Thing’ about a girl who wants to create something magnificent. But making her magnificent thing is anything but easy, and the girl tries and fails, repeatedly. Eventually, the girl gets really, really mad. She is so mad, in fact, that she quits. But after her dog convinces her to take a walk, she comes back to her project with renewed enthusiasm and manages to get it just right. After watching the story we tackled the rubber band challenge. In teams we were given 20 rubber bands and had to work together to create something magnificent. When things got hard we had to persevere and not give up! We made necklaces, ropes and even a butterfly!

We also read a story called ‘The Dot’. It is about having confidence to believe in yourself and encouraging and nurturing others. We all struggle at some point and feel like we just can’t do something. The Dot by is a wonderful story that helps to show that with a little perseverance and a change of perspective, amazing things are possible. We used paints to create dot pictures. We used lots of different objects to create different sized dots – corks, stones, bottle lids, cups, pencils, cotton buds. Miss Mudd also set us a challenge to help us see mistakes as a positive thing. We had a piece of paper with a giant black smudge in the middle…whoops! We had to use our imagination to create a picture using the smudge. We made a mistake into something wonderful!

“Just make a mark and see where it takes you”

What a busy week in P2A!

Wishing you all a fabulous weekend!

Miss Mudd and P2A

xxx