Author: Mrs Kennedy

A quick recap of the past two weeks – we have fitted in quite a lot!

Last week we performed our nativity.  The children were very proud of themselves and I’m certain you were proud of them too.  Here we are before the Thursday night performance – it was great fun coming to school at night!

On Friday we had our stall at the Christmas Fair.  For our enterprise task we made salt dough Christmas tree decorations and reindeer lollipops.  We sold out very quickly and raised around £50 which we have to spend on our class.

This week we have been very busy making snowmen for our corridor display.  We tried out lots of different ways to create our pictures.  Some were quite tricky but we kept trying and didn’t give up, showing a lot of resilience.  It was worth it – the artwork is fantastic, well done everyone for helping to make our winter corridor look so good.

For our first snowmen, we were only allowed to rip  paper and glue it down to make a picture.  It was difficult to make the different shapes we needed and we had to use our hands carefully and tear slowly.

         

For our second snowmen, we drew around round objects and stuck cotton wool and felt on to decorate them, cutting the felt into the shapes we wanted.

      

For our last snowmen we used potatoes and white paint to print the bodies and then painted faces, arms and clothing.

N and A helped to make the big snowman.  They painted him, filled his body with polystyrene and designed his clothes from off-cuts of material.

 

Here is the finished result, we love it!  Please have a closer look the next time you are in.

We had some visitors on Wednesday for our ‘Learning Showcase’ afternoon.  The children certainly showed off their learning at the different activities, all relating to what we have been covering over the past few weeks.  We had a full classroom and all the children were eager to show their skills, they were very much on task too.  Thank you for visiting and well done P1B for being so enthusiastic.

  

We have been continuing our phonics and numeracy work.  Sounds ‘j’ and ‘v’ this week and number bonds for 8 and 9.

I can’t believe it’s one week until the holidays!  Next week we will have Santa’s workshop in our home corner, with toy designing and a wrapping station.  We will be enjoying lots of other Christmas activities too, including our party on Thursday and our family church service on Tuesday evening.

Primary 1B and Mrs Kennedy

We are gearing up for the nativity live shows and have been practising really hard this week.  You’re in for a treat – P1 make a lovely choir.  We’re very excited to have a real audience.

We have also begun to think a bit more about winter and Christmas. In art on Monday we made snowflakes by folding paper circles and cutting out shapes and then opening them up – we loved the results and were very surprised at how they looked when they were opened.  We were also able to practise the properties of 2D shapes again as we discussed and decided how to cut our paper.  This was such a big hit that a number of the children have been making snowflakes whenever they can!

We also made some decorations for the walls in the hall.  P1 made sheep, we all drew a sheep and 2 were chosen to be enlarged using a clever trick with a camera and the smartboard projector.  Then groups of children painted them and stuck cotton wool on their bodies.  Make sure you have a look for them at the nativity.

We finally learned curly ‘c’ this week – a few the children have been waiting for this day since the beginning of the school year!  We also learned all about ‘l’. We have been sounding out and writing a lot more words too.

In numeracy, we have been adding to 5 and 6 – learning recall of all the sums that make these numbers.  In outer maths we continued with time, looking again at ‘oclock on analogue and digital clocks.

As always, there has been some really good learning through play going on in P1.  We have some very inventive children who love to make models out of junk or sticklebricks, some like to draw or write, practising their sounds and motor skills, they are also very sociable at the writing table too – lots of chat going on! They have also been enjoying playing with the dolls house where they act out little bits of their own lives and make up stories.  Sometimes they also like to have some quite time with a book.

We’re looking forward to seeing many of you at the nativity.  P1B and Mrs Kennedy

We have been learning vowel sounds and names this week.  We have been singing vowel songs, practicing the vowels in lots of different ways, identifying vowels in written words and listening for vowels in CVC words as we write them.

In numeracy, we have been learning number bonds for 4 and 5.  We played number bond games on the smartboard and used cubes, counting kids and playdough to layout our addition sums.  We also write our sums on whiteboards and in our maths books.

On Thursday we were learning about time.  We sang two songs about days of the week – we really liked the one to the ‘Adam’s Family’ theme tune 🙂  We were reading o’clock times on digital and analogue clocks.  We were really good at it and picked it up really well.  We will continue with time next Thursday.

We have been working hard decorated Christmas baubles for a display in Tesco window.  We drew our favourite Christmas things on the bauble and coloured them brightly.  They are now on display so have a look if you are in.  There is a small picture below.

G brought in his Enjoy-a-Ball trophy to show us.  He told us that he was throwing a ball and Paul Pizza said he wasn’t doing it the right way and showed him a better way to do it, then G worked really hard to get it right – great resilience!  Well done G!

On Friday, at assembly, we learned that we had won the ‘peg challenge’ the week, collecting the most pegs for walking quietly as we move around the school.  We will have an extra 5 minutes breaktime on Monday as a reward.

Have a lovely weekend, from P1B and Mrs Kennedy

We began the week thinking about kindness.  We had a lovely assembly from P5 last Friday all about kindness and we have been thinking of ways in which we are kind already and what things we could do to be really kind to each other.  We practised our detailed drawing as we drew pictures to show how we can be kind,  F did a fantastic drawing of him helping his dad with the washing.  It is very clear from his picture what they are doing, they both have very big smiles too 🙂 for this reason, F is our ‘star writer’ this week.

In literacy, we have been learning the sounds ‘u’ and ‘b’.  We came up with lots and lots of ‘b’ words with our chatty partners!  Some of us have been writing words, sounding out the letters.

In maths, we have been doing more addition and have begun to learn addition facts so that we can recall answers without having to count objects.  We have been learning all the ways of adding to 2 and 3.  We will continue this with numbers 4 and 5 next week.

We also began learning about capacity.  We investigated with water and different sized containers – how many cups of water will it take to fill it up?  We also used cubes to measure capacity too. We looked at measuring jugs and used the numbers on the side to measure amounts.  We have been using the words ‘most’, ‘least’, ‘full’, ’empty’ and ‘half full’.

We are continuing our book study of ‘Wee Granny’s Tartan Bag.’  If you haven’t heard about it yet, ask your child to tell you the story.  As Wee Granny has a tartan bag and skirt we have been looking closely at tartan patterns and designing our own.  They are on display in our home corner and have really brightened it up.  In the story Granny, Emily and Harry bake cupcakes for a bake sale.  We have been busy making cakes of our own this too, using lots of weird and wonderful ingredients found around the classroom!

It was lovely to see everyone dressed in their spotty clothes on Friday.  It was great fun going to the bake sale and spending our own money.  Thank you to everyone who baked and handed in donation money – it was a huge success and I’m sure we will find out soon how much we raised for this excellent cause.

Some photographs from this week:

 

It was a busy, busy week again in P1B.  We began the week by welcoming Mrs Marshall, our lovely new student, she will be in one day a week for the next three weeks.  She was in at the deep end helping us to make some orange dough for our Halloween themed play activities.  It is fantastic and has been well used.

On Monday afternoon we had the Halloween Hop, organised by the PTA, it was great fun! We looked amazing in our costumes and loved the disco with dancing and games and then making our own Halloween masks.  A big thank you to the PTA, parent helpers and P7 chidren who helped to make it run so smoothly.

In literacy we were learning ‘d’ and ‘o’ and we were writing some three letter words – sounding them out to hear which sounds we should write down.

We searched through lentils, spiders and ghosts to find sounds and CVC words.

We tried a challenge task – reading words to match them with the correct picture.

Play dough and writing in lentils.

We’ve been doing lots of maths this week, we started with addition – looking at two and then three sets of numbers and counting to see how many there were altogether.  We tried adding in lots of different ways – putting counting kids on buses, counters on Mickey Mouse ears, frogs in ponds, sponges and people in hoops.  We also have new maths books and we have been practising writing our numbers as we write our answers.

 

 

In outer maths we have been learning more about measure – using non-standard units to measure things around us.  We measured each other, then went outside and had fun measuring out there too.

 

On Friday we played with lots of different measuring tools, including metre sticks and rulers, we really enjoyed using these and I think we’ll have some very practical handymen and handywomen in the future.  In other activities we used cubes and counting kids to measure with.

In our exploration area we have a wooden marble run which has lots of small parts that require a lot of thinking and trial and error to fit the parts together to allow the marble to run along it.  Matthew and Kiernan worked very hard to make this run, they were a great team and didn’t give up until they had managed it.  Well done boys!

 

Some children worked on a Lego challenge this week with Mrs Woolsey our parent helper.  They worked really well together to make a tall tower and then build houses, they each had very clear ideas on how their house should be – fantastic designs 🙂

Enjoy your weekend and have a safe bonfire night.

P1B and Mrs Kennedy

Hello,  We have been learning the sounds ‘m’ and ‘r’ this week, ask your child to show you the action for each of these.  We have been using our magnetic boards a few times this week and we are getting good at working together to sound out and word build some CVC words.  Our letter formation is really coming on too and Mrs Kennedy can see a big difference in our writing books.

A couple of weeks ago Miss Baillie took an ‘Owl Babies’ assembly where she set us the challenge of decorating an owl baby to be entered into a competition. She will choose the best three from P1 to P3 to receive a prize. All of ours are excellent 🙂  We chose from a variety of art materials – paint, cotton wool, tissue paper, crepe paper, crayons and pens and decorated them in the way we wanted.  Our pictures are very good, they will come home soon for you to see.

In maths we have now covered all the numbers to 10, we have practised formation and counting objects accurately.  We will be moving onto ordering forwards and backwards and missing numbers.  In outer maths this week we have been exploring pattern.  We have created our own patterns, continued patterns already started and identified patterns.  We have been listening for patterns too as we use our voices, e.g., “red, yellow, green, red, yellow, green…” hearing the pattern as we say the words.  We will continue to look at more complex patterns next week.

Have a good weekend, if you are out and about and see any signs of Autumn, conkers, leaves, berries, etc, feel free to send them in to school.  We have an ‘investigation area’ in the corridor with magnifying glasses and a drawing area and any interesting objects are very welcome. Thank you.

 

We have been getting stuck into our Handa’s Surprise topic this week.  Thank you very much for all the fruit on Tuesday, we made our bar chart and apples were the clear favourite, followed closely by strawberries.  We all helped to make the chart by drawing our favourite fruit and sticking it on.  We then had a good look at what the chart told us and learned to read it.

We enjoyed eating our fruit together while we had our milk or water and listened to a story.  We also tasted some of the fruit from Handa’s Surprise, the mango and papaya were popular.

We have had lots of other fruit activities this week, we investigated floating and sinking with real fruit in the water tray, playing with fruit in the role play area, making fruit from play dough and looking at books about fruit and healthy eating in the library.

     

On Tuesday we went outside for PE, we are focusing on ‘Better Movers and Thinkers’ at the moment.  This week we were concentrating on moving our bodies well, controlling it and using and sharing space.  We also practised some throwing and catching ball skills, whilst standing still and moving.

On Thursday we were outside again, writing number 8.  We used chalk and stones to write with and skipping ropes to practise the formation of an 8 – which can be quite tricky!

Then we gathered leaves and took them back inside to make 8s using them.  There was super counting going on whilst we were collecting the leaves too 🙂

We worked hard to make our 8s and there was good discussion and thinking about the shape of an 8 and how it is formed when writing.

We also won the peg challenge again!  Extra breaktime on Friday was good fun! Have a good weekend everyone.

P1B and Mrs Kennedy

On Wednesday Abbie, Matthew, Neve and Euan made some new dough for us with our lovely parent helper, Mrs Woolsey.

On Thursday our tough tray had something different in it – it was set up like a scene from the book ‘Handa’s Surprise’.  We have played really well with the objects in the tray and are very good at putting it back to how it shoudl be when we are finished!  We have made up lots of different stories and games using the sheds, animals and pond.  We will be taking a closer look at this story over the next few weeks.

Thomas and Finlay enjoyed looking at one of the books next to the tray, it was all about African animals.

We have been making the number six it lots of different ways.

As it was a short week we have had a revision of the sounds we have looked at over the last couple of weeks, practising our word building skills.

Gregor won the Enjoy-a-ball trophy and brought it in to show us.  Well done Gregor! 🙂

We’ve fitted in quite a lot in 2 and half days!  Happy weekend.  From P1B and Mrs Kennedy

In literacy this week we have been learning the letters ‘p’ and ‘n’.  On Monday we began by sorting items in a ‘feely’ bag – does the item begin with ‘p’?  We had a ‘yes’ hoop and a ‘no’ hoop, listening to initial sounds as well as developing some data handling skills.  We did it together as a class just to see how to do it, then had a go in small groups.

Here we are practising the sounds ‘p’ and ‘n’:

The ‘n’ song and action are about an aeroplane, we have enjoyed flying around the room.

In numeracy we have been working with numbers 4 and 5.  We have been singing number songs, counting objects and working on number formation.  5 is quite tricky so we had two days of lots of different activities out to allow us to practise.

 

We have been reading some stories about being kind to each other and how we can help each other.  We looked at lots of pictures of different behaviours and decided if behaving in a particular way is a ‘green’ choice or a ‘red’ choice.  We were very good at deciding where each picture should go and we worked really well together to make these posters for our classroom.

On Thursday we were learning about 2D shape.  We were remembering the names of the shapes we already knew as well as learning some new ones – pentagon, hexagon and octagon.  We have been describing the shapes using their properties, discussing how many sides and corners they have, we also used lots of good maths describing words like, curved, straight, edge, point.  We played with the shapes to create pictures in many different ways, looking at the shapes and working out hpw they can be put together.

We were delighted on Friday when we were told that we were the winners of the ‘peg challenge’ – ask your child to tell you all about it!  Mrs Kennedy is very proud of us and we got to go outside to play early for break time today and we had the playground to ourselves for a while.

As we had our sports clothes on already we went to the hall for some Zumba with our buddies.  We have also done some yogo in the classroom this week, using the ‘Going on a Bear Hunt’ story and doing some yoga poses to go along with it.  Mrs Kennedy did it too so she wasn’t able to take pictures!

Have a lovely relaxing long weekend.  Love P1B and Mrs Kennedy