Author: wls.alloway-mudd@glow

Our butterflies have been released! It was so exciting to see them fly away and be free. We have loved watching them grow over the last few weeks and we feel very proud that we looked after them so well.

In PE this week we had a mini football tournament. We worked in teams to try and score goals. We practised being defenders and attackers. We were all very supportive and showed great sportsmanship towards other members of the class.

We had a very special visit this week. Miss Mudd was worried she had done something naughty when she saw the police van pull up to school! It turns out the Police were coming to talk to us about the work they do in our local community. We asked some wonderful and rather ‘interesting’ questions to our lovely visitors. They even let us have a go in the police van and turn the sirens on.

In Maths have been learning about symmetry. Since we now have some beautiful butterflies in our classrooms we thought it would be nice to create some symmetrical butterflies. We used finger painting and crayons to design symmetrical patterns. We have also been collecting data on how we travel to school. We were learning about transport in Linlithgow so we asked people in our class and used a tally chart to record the transport they use. We then made a pictogram to show our results. We were also learning about weight and practised using the balances to weigh different items around the classroom.

In IDL this week were learning about maps and we had a go at creating our own map of Springfield. We used our knowledge to create a simple map of our area then used Lego to build key landmarks. We built some houses, Spar, the dentist, the park, Springfield Primary School and Bonnytoun Nursery. We had to work in pairs and think about the shape of our buildings. We had to try and include doors and windows and some of us even thought about the trees in the gardens.

In Literacy this week we were learning how to use interesting sentence starters. We were trying to use words linked to the passing of time. Have a look at how we got on…..

We also used our story plans to start writing the beginning of our stories. We were aiming to introduce our characters and our setting. We also practised our common words and had lots of different stations to help us learn them.

Wishing you all a very lovely weekend.

Primary 1/2 and Miss Mudd

This week we were playing team games in PE and developing our reaction times and listening skills. We had to be quick off the mark to win points for our team. We warmed up by moving around the hall like different animals. Have a look at our best giraffe and elephant impressions.

Our caterpillars have grown so much and when we came in on Monday they had started to form a chrysalis. Miss Mudd is going to move them into their butterfly nets this weekend.

 

In Literacy we were all having an upper case letters week. We had lots of activities to work around to practise forming our capital letters. We have also started writing our imaginative stories. Over the last few weeks we have created a setting for our stories. We have also created a character and used adjectives to describe them. This week we started to plan out our ideas. We used the structure of a story mountain to draw out our beginning, middle and end. We used talking partners to help us talk through our ideas. We looked at the structure of other stories we had read and put them on our story mountain to see how it worked. Next week we will use our plans to start writing our stories. Miss Mudd is so excited to read them as we had some wonderful ideas! Our stories were full of fairies, dragons, goblins and trolls. There are lots of budding authors in P1/2!

    

In Maths we have been learning about multiplication. We practised grouping items and used arrays to show different multiplication sums. We used the grids of circles for some little multiplication problem solving tasks. We have been looking at the 2 times table this week so have done lots of activities linked to that. We have also been learning about tens and units and looking at numbers to 100.

     

In IDL we have continued with our learning about Linlithgow. We used Google Maps to explore our local area and zoomed in to look at all of our houses. We talked about where we live and identified some street names. We worked in groups to locate key landmarks around our town. We used the maps to find a school, church, supermarket and a park. We discussed the symbols that are used on a map. We then looked at pictures of Linlithgow and created a poster to show others what we love about our town! P1/2 decided they wanted to learn more about Linlithgow Palace so we did some research together. We watched a video, used the internet and looked at books to learn some facts. We discussed the difference between a fact and an opinion then we used our knowledge to create a fact file about the Palace. We also learnt how to draw our own simple maps. We pretended we were birds looking down on our school and tried to map out some of the key areas. We labelled the different areas of our school.

 

                          

Some of the boys in the class used their choose time to build boats and bridges for our canal. The rest of the class then decided to make lots of different types of fish to go in the canal. They used the craft area to experiment with different materials.

We hope everyone enjoys the sunshine this weekend.

Primary 1/2 and Miss Mudd

This week we have been busy setting up our new role play area. This term we are learning about our local area. We read the book ‘The Chimpanzees of Happytown’ and started to think about what a town needs for the people that live in it. We talked about the different modes of transport and different facilities. We then had a vote on what we would like to have in our own little Linlithgow. We have made our reading corner into Linlithgow Palace and created a Union Canal going through our classroom. We worked hard to create a doctors surgery in our role play corner.

In the story the chimpanzees are all sad because their town is called ‘Drabsville’ and it is a very glum place. Chutney the Chimp made lots of changes for the community and turned it into Happytown. In P1/2 we designed our own ‘dream’ towns. Some towns had chocolate roads, beds for cars, space hoppers, magical fairy houses. We used our imagination and enjoyed sharing our ideas with each other. Last week we had a visit from ‘Burgh Beautiful’ and we thought about how they try to make our town beautiful and happy. We designed posters to remind people to pick up their litter and to help keep our local area clean and pretty.

In Maths we have been telling the time. We have looked at o’clock and half past times and linked these times to our daily routines. We have also converted times from analogue to digital. Some children have been consolidating their understanding of multiplication. They used the Numicon to set out multiplication sums. We have revised a lot of our number fact families to help us link addition and subtraction.

  

We have some new members of the class – our caterpillars! They have grown so much since we got them and we have enjoyed watching them wriggle about in their pot. We are looking after them well so hopefully they will turn into beautiful butterflies soon.

We have been practising our digraphs this week by reading alien words. Miss Mudd made up some crazy words to check we could sound out and blend our sounds together. We have used our digraphs in sentences.

 

Paddington left us some new challenges in our challenge area this week. He wants to get healthy so we are helping him learn about our bodies. We had to use tape measures to measure different parts of our bodies. Liam even has a bigger head than Miss Mudd! He also set us a ‘balance challenge’ where we had to hold a balance and use a stopwatch to time how long we could do it. We have used pedometers to count our steps and see how active we are. We have been printing with skeletons and trying to name some of our body parts.

Daniel G used his choose time to make a thermometer for our surgery. He thought about hot and cold colours and used these in his model.

Wishing you all a very lovely weekend.

 

Miss Mudd and P1/2

 

Firstly Miss Mudd would like to say a huge thank you to all of the staff at Springfield for looking after her class whilst she was poorly. They were in very good hands and were doing some fantastic learning.

This week we have been learning all about grouping items and linking this to multiplication. We practised grouping items and used lots of different objects around the classroom eg. bottle tops, cubes, pencils, toys and even children! We were then introduced to the different types of language that we can use such as: sets of, groups of, times, multiply.

We were then introduced to arrays. We looked at pictures of arrays in our everyday lives and talked about how it can help us count quickly. We used sponge painting to make our own arrays and described them using the language we had been taught.

 

We even went outside and used the cones and giant dots to work in groups and create different arrays.

 

Maths can be so much fun!!

We enjoyed some free play outside in the sunshine this week. We played with the construction materials, danced with the ribbons, practised our ball skills and even did some group reading outside. We used the ribbons to write our digraphs in the sky!

We also wanted to say a big well done to Miss Harrison and her class for their wonderful assembly. It was so nice to see the progress that our P1 children have made and it meant a lot to look back on the special memories we have all made together.

Miss Mudd and Primary 1/2

Primary 1/2 thoroughly enjoyed their trip to Bo’Ness and Kinneil Railway. We loved seeing the steam train and enjoyed eating our lunch on our journey. We then got to go around the museum and see all of the wonderful trains and carriages. We did some fantastic writing about our trip and used lots of different sentence openers to make our writing interesting.

This is what we thought about our trip……

“I liked going on the train because we went on a real steam train and it was like we went into the past” (Alistair)

“I liked the museum because you got to see lots of trains from the past. We got to go in the royal carriage” (Sam)

“I loved sorting the letters in the post office train” (Oliver)

 

 

A huge thank you to the parents that came along to help us. We had a great day with you and really appreciate your help.

 

Miss Mudd and P1/2

The sunshine has definitely arrived in Linlithgow this week. We are so happy that we can get outside and do more outdoor learning. We haven’t posted in  little while, so we need to fill you in on what P1/2 have been up to.

Each term we have looked at a different season so this term it was time for Spring. We went on a Spring walk and looked for all the different signs of Spring. We talked the changes that occur at this time of year and most of us agreed that it is one of our favourite seasons.

We also went down to the Peel for our Ranger visit. We loved playing the games and using our senses to pretend  we were like the animals. We used our listening skills to try and hear our prey coming and developed our team work skills. A big thank you to our wonderful Rangers.

We talked about how Spring often brings new life and all of the plants and flowers start to grow. We set up an experiment to test what plants need to help them grow. We have planted one bean in the window with the sunshine and the other one in the dark cupboard. We then made predictions about what might happen. We are measuring the shoots each week to see which one grows faster.

We have been working with our buddies to develop our ICT skills. We learnt how to log on and practised our keyboard skills. As a school, we have been learning about Internet Safety and P1/2 have learnt about keeping their personal details safe and secure.

In Maths we have been learning subtraction facts to 10. We have been counting in 2s, 5s and 10s and looking at dot patterns during our Number Talks sessions.  Some children have been learning how to count forwards and back from different numbers to 100. This week we also started learning about Time. We went outside and used the number tiles to make a giant clock. We then used our bodies to make the hands on the clock. Miss Mudd gave us a time and we had to make it with our bodies!

We hope you have a lovely weekend.

 

P1/2 and Miss Mudd

This week has been an exciting week for us as we had our class assembly! We worked SO hard on our acting, costumes, props and singing. Miss Mudd was so proud of us and was blown away by our enthusiasm and commitment. We hope everyone enjoyed it as much as we did. We have loved learning about the Rainbow fish and hope it helps remind everyone to be kind and appreciate their friends. We even used sticks of celery to print scales on our own rainbow fish. Look at all of the wonderful colours.

In Literacy this week we were learning the oa/ow digraph. We have been building and writing words with this sound and trying to apply spelling rules to remember which one to use. We have done lots of sentence writing to practise using our digraphs. We give each other feedback and help each other improve each time. We also became digraph detectives and read short stories and poems to try and spot our digraphs. Some of us have continued to work on split digraphs and have been reading and writing with these tricky sounds.

We continued learning about how to write instructions. Paddington Bear left us a note to say he was feeling very hungry and would love a marmalade sandwich. We worked together to make a sandwich and had to think about the different steps we were doing. We then wrote a set of instructions to tell him how to do it. We used some fabulous sentence starters and as a treat got to try our sandwich at the end.

In Primary 1/2 we are very grateful for all of our wonderful mums who do so much for us. We made them some beautiful finger print cards and wrote about why we love our mums.

In IDL we were learning about the history of flight and watched a very funny video showing the first attempts at flying. We compared the first plane flown by the Wright brothers to aeroplanes we travel on today. They are very different! We then looked at the first hot air balloon flight in Paris and created our own hot air balloons by using collage materials.

Mrs Malcolm had asked us to do some Spring art work for her gallery. We experimented with mixing colours and talked about the colours we would see at Spring time. We painted some beautiful flowers that can be put together like a jigsaw to create giant pictures.

In Numeracy we have been sharing subtraction strategies. We have used fingers, number lines, tens frames and Numicon to look at all of the different ways we can tackle a tricky sum. We have been partitioning numbers to help speed up our mental calculations. It is tricky stuff but we have shown great perseverance.  Miss Mudd has also been setting us daily Maths problems to try. We work in pairs to talk through our thinking then share our ideas with the class.

 

Wishing everyone a lovely weekend and a happy Mothers Day.

Primary 1/2 and Miss Mudd

This week in Literacy we have been very busy learning our new digraphs. We had lots of different activities set out to help us practise our sounds and common words. Here are some of the activities we were doing:

• We made pasta words
• We used sound cubes to build words
• played digraph board games
• used number fans to identify the number of sounds in a word
• bottle top common words – pick one and read it.
• throw a bean bag onto your common word and spell it out
• reading silly questions and deciding whether the answer is yes or no

and the best bit is………they are all things we can do at home too!

We also did a story study this week based on the book ‘Oi! Get off our train’. We worked around the different stations using some of our thinking reader skills.  The story is about a boy who takes endangered animals onto his train to save them and keep them safe. We compared it to Noah’s Ark as we thought there were many similarities. We wrote summaries, sequenced key events, visualised different parts of the story and picked out tricky vocabulary. As a little brain break, we decided to do a parade around the classroom pretending we were one of the animals from the story. Can you guess which animals we are?

We have started learning how to write instructions. We evaluated different examples and talked about when we would need/use instructions. We practised using bossy words (we are wagging our fingers to be bossy here!) and gave each other oral instructions.

In Maths we have continued our work on subtraction. We have been linking addition and subtraction through our learning on number fact families. We used rainbows to help us remember our number bonds and used these to help us write subtraction stories.

 

In topic we were looking at the history of cars. We thought the old cars looked very funny as they only had 3 wheels and they didn’t have a roof or any windows. In the class some of us became car mechanics and had to learn how to fill out forms and we also designed our own number plates. We used cars to experiment with different tyre patterns and we enjoyed getting very messy!

 

We were so excited to get outside in the sunshine and do our ‘walk a mile’. It is a great way to have a little brain break and to keep ourselves fit and healthy. We have also enjoyed sharing our achievements out of school with some of the girls taking part in a gymnastics show. We are very proud of you, well done.

 

Wishing everyone a fabulous weekend.

Miss Mudd and P1/2

 

 

 

In Maths this week we were learning about ordinal numbers. We made some fabulous paper aeroplanes and raced them in the hall to see who came 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th. Miss Mudd had a bit of a disaster as her aeroplane would only fly backwards! We had lots of fun and giggles.

We have also started doing a daily ‘Number Talks’ activity. We focus on different mental maths strategies and work with a partner to talk about how we got that answer. We share our ideas and learn about different ways to tackle tricky sums.

We also continued learning about money and adding coins together. We used tap counting to help us find different totals.

In Literacy we have been learning the ee/ea digraph. We worked together to be digraph detectives and find all of the missing sounds. We played lots of interactive spelling games and looked at the different shapes of our words.

The Blue group were learning about the -y ending that also makes an ee sound. They have been doing some common word work this week to make sure they can read and write all of those tricky words.

We want to thank Miss Prince for coming down and helping us learn some songs for our assembly. We are trying to be super organised and start learning our words and songs now so we have plenty of time to practise.

We can’t finish our blog without talking about World Book Day. There has been an amazing buzz in the school this week and it has been so nice seeing so many people getting into the spirit of WBD. We decorated our door to look like the front cover of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. Daniel Goddard volunteered to be our little Jack so we drew around him and worked together to paint him. Here is a snap shot of some of the other amazing book cover doors.

We did lots of World Book Day activities in the class and even swapped teachers for story time.

A big well done to all of the parents/carers out there who put so much effort into all of the wonderful costumes. We had so much fun sharing our stories and books.

Have a lovely weekend

Miss Mudd and P1/2