Author: Mrs Kennedy

Hello,

We continued our odd and even numbers in numeracy this week.  We’ve been taking a little time over this, playing with the numbers in lots of different ways to make sure we are confident at counting in 2s and can tell an even from an odd number.  We are getting very good at it and really like looking at really big numbers to see if they are odd or even.

In PE, we continued with tennis.  We didn’t use the rackets this week, instead we concentrated on our hand-eye co-ordination as we bounced a ball around hall. We then practised some of the movements we need around the court to get to the tennis ball, in particular, moving sideways.  We also did some running and stopping quickly, getting into the ready position.  It was good fun as always and the children are very enthusiastic, many showing good resilience as they try to do things that, at first, may not be easy.

Each class in the infant section of the school has been working on a new text this week.  P1 chose ‘Commotion in the Ocean’ It’s a lovely bright book, with great illustrations and lots of rhyming words. Our literacy focus has been rhyming and adjectives.  We did lots of listening, talking and matching up words that rhyme.  We also wrote some sentences describing the shark in the book.  The children had great suggestions of words to describe him – powerful, fierce, enormous and beautiful were just a few.

We have also begun to create an underwater wall display in the corridor.  We’ve been using lots of different art techniques as we make underwater creatures for the display.  We watched some ‘Blue Planet’ and saw the lovely bright colours that there are under the sea.  We are making our display bright too. Have a peak the next time you are in or pop in at the end of the day.

On Thursday, we went outside into the outdoor classroom where there were lots of eggs hidden!  It was good fun finding them and we counted them afterwards, there were almost 50 eggs!

We have been very busy playing this week too.  Planning, co-operating, socialising, and using our imaginations too.

Have a lovely Easter, from P1B and Mrs Kennedy

Another busy week in P1B!  We have been learning the spelling patterns ‘oa’ and ‘ow’.  We have been practising these sounds inside and outside  – even though the weather wasn’t very kind to us we didn’t mind and we are remembering the sounds really well as we remember the activities we did outside.  The different environment meant  that different senses were heightened than those we use inside and this helps us to learn.

We have been counting in 2s a lot!  Not just at numeracy time but also at lots of different times during the day to help us to become very familiar with counting in this way.  We made ‘even number aliens’ every part of their bodies had to be an even number, drawing these made us think carefully about even numbers and we counted in 2s as we drew.  Here are some of our creations:

Mrs Kennedy read us a funny story called ‘The Badly Behaved Bus’ he was very naughty – he went through puddles and splashed people, didn’t stop at the bus stop and drove straight over roundabouts.  We made Wanted posters to let everyone else know about him.  We wrote very good sentences and some of us were using ‘and’ as a joining word to allow us to write even longer sentences.

In PE, we continued to pracitse our tennis skills.  We were trying hard with our hand-eye coordination, throwing the ball at first and then hitting it with a racket.  We know that good tennis players are in control of the ball so we were careful to hit it gently and accurately rather than really hard.  We’re getting really quite good.

Have a good weekend.

P1B and Mrs Kennedy

 

Hello,

P1B have been learning about Fairtrade this week.  We played a game called ‘Go Bananas!’  On Tuesday afternoon our classroom was covered in bananas.  Our job was to be banana pickers, we had to collect the bananas as quickly as we could and put them in the basket for Farmer Euan.  We worked very hard but were disappointed when Farmer Euan did not get enough money for the bananas to pay us.  We thought about all the problems we would have if we didn’t have enough money – no food, clothes and maybe even no house!  We had worked very hard, it just wasn’t fair!  Luckily, he managed to negotiate a better price for all our lovely bananas – one that was fair – then he was able to pay us.

We also took part in the Linlithgow ‘Design a Fairtrade Football’ competition.  There were 3 top entries selected from each class, K, A and E were our winners.  They each worked very hard and spent a lot of time to make their designs the best they could.

To help us think about where the food we eat comes from before it is in the shops, Mrs Kennedy read us a book called ‘The World Came to my Place Today.’  It is about a boy called George who receives a supermarket delivery and his Grandad helps him to learn about where all the things in the shopping bags came from.  At the beginning of the lesson we were discussing were our food comes from, lots of us knew that food can come from a factory but this helped us to think about where is comes from before that.

We also have a farm set up in our corridor play area, this has been helping us think about our food too.  We have been enjoying playing with it and re-arranging it as we like.  We have also been colouring fairtrade pictures and painting our own fairtrade signs.

In numeracy this week, we started ‘Number Talks’  these are daily, short exercises to help us improve our number sense.  We share our thinking with our friends, helping us to develop our problem solving and mental maths skills. It is good to talk about numbers and to see the different ways others work things out.  

To begin with we have been looking at ‘ten frames’ and discussing how to work out how many spots there are without counting them (subitising).  There has been lots of great discussion, for example, “I see five spots and three spots so I know there are eight, ” “Well, I see six spots and then two spots so that’s how I know there are eight.” This is also a great way to revise number bonds.

We tried lots of ten frame and subitising activities in the classroom too.

In literacy we learned the sound ‘igh’ as well as practising all the sounds we have been learning over the past few weeks.  We’re getting very good at them. We really like spotting these sounds in words and using highlighter pens to highlight them.

M got an award from his Masterbuilders Lego club this week.  He built two boats, one small one and one ginormous one!

During Golden time on Friday, K, G and M made a treasure map, I overheard them discussing some of the places on it, they mentioned the Star and Garter and Tesco as well as lots of other places in Linlithgow.  They took it along to Mr Wells to out up in his office.  A great map boys!

Have a good weekend everyone, from P1B and Mrs Kennedy

P1B have had a busy couple of weeks!  Our transport topic is well underway, we started by investigating trains.  All of the children have really been enjoying it.  We have made a train and created a train station and cafe in our classroom.  We have also got a train set in the class  which has proved to be very popular too.

Some excellent writing on our train information board.

Some bridge building as part of our trains topic.  We also worked in pairs to make bridges using junk, plastic cups, lollypop sticks, glue and selotape.  The children had to plan with their partner and they worked well together. Almost all of the bridges met the criteria – a train must be able to go along the top and a boat must fit underneath.  It was so busy that I didn’t get a chance to take one photo!

Here are some bridges built during play using wooden blocks.

Train oil pastel pictures.

 

When I asked the children what they would like to learn about trains, many of them said they want to know more about how they move, we began looking into this by looking at forces, rolling and friction to investigate wheels and the best surfaces for a train to run on.  We tried our train on different surfaces and found that a smooth flat one was best and that tracks were even better.

We also investigated rolling and tried to roll different shapes and sizes of objects.

   

We have also looked at the history of trains and will be looking more closely at steam engines next week.

In maths we have begun to look at numbers to 20 and beyond.  We have been counting objects up to 20, ordering the numbers forwards and backwards and filling in the missing numbers.

    

 

We used Numicon to learn about place value – using the parts to see that ‘teen’ numbers are 10 plus some units.

In outer maths we have been data handling.  this week we were sorting objects, making up our own criteria to get them into categories.  This was a big hit and the children have sorted lots of things around the classroom!  They did a great job.

Finally, some lovely photos of the children playing in the snow last week 🙂 It was great fun!

   

F won the ‘Golden Boot’ for his excellent football skills – Well done!

Enjoy your weekend, P1B and Mrs Kennedy

A very short final blog of the year.

Here are a couple of pictures from today.  Our buddies surprised us with story books that they wrote and illustrated.  They read us the stories and gave them to us as a Christmas gift.  We love them!  Thank you very much P7 🙂

We are saying “Merry Christmas” (very loudly!) in this photo, taken just before our Christmas party.

Enjoy the festivities, have a happy and peaceful time.

P1B and Mrs Kennedy