Author: Mrs Kennedy

It was such lovely weather on Monday, we went outside in the afternoon.  We are lucky to have some outdoor toys and equipment, a good selection so we can choose activities that suit us.

The future of Springfield School football team is looking good Mr Logan – some great skills being shown here!

  

A group of children decided to work together to build the longest cuboid they could – good teamwork guys!

     

We have continued our floating and sinking this week – carrying out experiments by ourselves and making our own boats.  There was a selection of materials available and we had to think about shape and design.  Most of the boats floated, for a little while at least and it was good fun talking about why they sank, what were the best designs and materials? We also thought about what we could do differently next time.

We were learning the ‘oo’ sound this week.  We did lots of different ‘oo’ activities although we particularly liked playing with the ‘goo’ or ‘gloop’ – both good ‘oo’ words!

Looking back at some of my blogs I realised that I don’t post very many maths pictures, not that we don’t do much maths – I just seem to be too busy during maths time to take pictures!  Here are some of us working on subtraction this week.  We were looking at maths language – different word problems that mean we have to use subtraction to work out the answer and we are beginning to link addition and subtraction facts to improve our mental maths.

On Thursday it was our Easter Bonnet Parade.  The Easter Bonnets were all fantastic – thank you very much for all your hard work.  It was lovely seeing some of you at the parade, even though we were a little star struck and didn’t sing as loudly as we usually do!

On Thursday afternoon some of the children from Bonnytoun Nursery came for a visit.  They listened to a story with us and spent some time in the classroom.  Then we went outside for an Easter Egg hunt and some games.

We had a lovely Easter service at St Michael’s church on Friday, walking all the way there and back without a hitch or a grumble!  Well done guys – as usual you were little stars.  Also, a big thank you to the parents who helped us today.

Have a fantastic Easter break and I’ll see you in just over two weeks time.

B1B and Mrs Kennedy x

 

We got a lovely surprise this week when a card arrived in the post from Lauren and Alex’s grandparents.  They have been enjoying our blog and like to see what we get up to in P1B.  The card even had boats on it – the mode of transport we have been learning about recently.  Alex told us all about the scene on the card.  Here is a little clip of us saying thank you:

We did some peer assessment of our writing this week.  We were looking at our friend’s work to check for capital letters, full stops, finger spaces, writing on the line and well formed letters.  It was nice reading our written work to our friends and we were very honest in our assessment!  We used the ‘tickled pink’ and ‘green for growth’ method by colouring pink the areas they had achieved and colouring green the things they should still work on.

A lot of what we’ve been doing this week is top secret – so there are no photos to show of us making surprises for Mother’s Day.  We have all worked very hard to draw, write and create a couple of nice things for our mum’s and we hope they all have a lovely day on Sunday.

Continuing our transport topic we furthered our investigation into boats by carrying out a ‘Does it float of does it sink?’ investigation.  We each chose an object from around the classroom, made a prediction as to whether it would float or sink and gave the reason why we thought this.  We then carried out our investigation and compared the actual results to our predictions – most of them were accurate, the few that weren’t gave good opportunity for further discussion. We will look more at the reasons why objects float or sink next week, including making our own boats.

   

We were awarded class of the week again this week 🙂  Miss Baillie was really pleased to see all the play that has been happening in the classroom and she thinks that we play very well together.  Play is important to us as it fosters curiosity, imagination and experimentation and helps us with concentration. It also gives us opportunities to speak and listen, often processing and putting into practice what we have been learning.  We also learn to share resources, explain actions, negotiate plans and take turns.

We were working on balance, control and coordination in PE this week.  Lots of activities whilst balancing beanbags on our heads – throwing and catching were quite tricky! We also had a few games of ‘Cups and Saucers’ which we love.

As promised last week, here are a couple of the finished spring pictures:

They turned out really well and the sheep are full of character.

Finally, two children brought in achievements this week.  Clara brought in her swimming certificate and Haley won the Enjoy-a-Ball trophy – well done girls!

    

We hope you have a good weekend and the sun continues to shine.

From P1B and Mrs Kennedy

Hello from P1B, it has been lovely to see all the parents at parents night this week and talk about all the progress the children are making.

Last week we did a mini topic on the book Dogs Don’t Do Ballet.

This is a funny story about Biff the dog who fulfills his dreams of becoming a ballet dancer despite continually being told Dogs don’t do Ballet.  Using the Thinking Reader approach we looked at many different aspects of the book.  We drew pictures and wrote about Biff’s feelings when he was sad and happy, made cards and wrote him messages to cheer him up, sequenced the story, designed front covers for our own books, looked at jobs that real dogs do and looked closely at the vocabulary – identifying and discussing interesting and unusual words.  We made a huge list – 48 words!

 

     

Hayley and Lauren read their messages to Biff.

Tess the teddy wrote us another letter, asking us to learn about a different form of transport – boats this time!  She left us a book called Peter the Cruise Ship.  We worked in groups to draw and write about the different kinds of boats we know.  We shared our knowledge of ferries, kayaks, canoes, submarines, sailing boats and many more.  We have also been learning about the history of boats – from hollowed out tree trunks to what the have today.  We will continue with our boat theme next week.

Last week we learned the sounds ‘igh’ and ‘-y’.  They are tricky sounds to hear and use in words but we worked hard and practised in lots of different ways.

This week there were no new sounds but we took the time to use the digraphs we’ve been learning recently and to consolidate our tricky words.

  

We have also been enjoying the (slightly) better weather and thinking about Spring.  We had fun playing outside and have been trying some new art techniques as we make some pictures to go on display in the school corridor.  I’ll upload photos  of the finished pictures when they’re dry and mounted!

We have a school achievement wall in the corridor outside Miss Baillie and Mrs Malcolm’s offices.  We display achievements from within and outside school here.  Please encourage your child to let us know of any achievements outside of school.  Although it can be, it doesn’t have to be an accolade from an organised club – it could be learning to ride their bike or baking a cake, anything they are really proud of.  Last week Imogen and Daisy took part in a gymnastics display and brought their medals in to show us and Ruaridh and Cohen both received trophies from their enjoy-a-ball classes.

  

Well done guys!

Happy weekend, from P1B and Mrs Kennedy

We began the week combing our transport topic with numeracy when we made paper aeroplanes then raced them in the hall.  We worked on our ordinal numbers as we gave them their position in the race. We also practiced flying our planes around the hall, thinking about how they fly. Back in the classroom we learned more about the parts of a plane and how it works – acting out running very fast to take off, using our wings, engine and tail to keep our plane in the air and to change direction, slowing down to land on our wheels.

In literacy we are doing well with digraphs – ee and ea this week.  Our favourite activity was reading a story and marking all the ee and ae words – the best bit was using a highlighter to mark the words!

We love it when  P7s pop in to help us with our learning.  Neve came to help with literacy and was a great at helping us to decide if the words we were reading were real words or nonsense words.

Our fairtrade shop is up and running.  Thank you for all the packaging donations – keep them coming.  We have been very busy making signs, pricing the products and playing in the shop.  Mrs Kennedy is very impressed with the signs – we even have one saying ‘Park your bike or scooter here’ and ‘free fruit’ while we browse.

   

On Wednesday we did ‘Walk a Mile’ with P1A.  It was a beautiful day and we all managed five laps round the pitch.

Thursday was World Book Day.  We had ERIC time – Everybody Reads In Class.  We read our own books, then shared them with our friends.  We made bookmarks too.  In the afternoon we took part in a whole school challenge to decorate our door in a book theme (or wall space in our case as we don’t have a door).  We decorated ours with Biff, Chip Kipper and Floppy.  There was a lovely buzz throughout the school as each class busied themselves in making their entry the best they could before Mrs Manlove and some of the Libary Committee came to judge them.  We didn’t win but we are very proud of our efforts.

There was great excitement on Friday – coming to school dressed up is great fun!  Thank you to all the parents for their help.  We each showed our costume and told the class about our character then we had a parade at assembly.  A super end to the week.

Have a lovely weekend.  From Mrs Kennedy and P1B

P1B have really enjoyed their train topic.  We have created our own train station and have played in it lot.  We also enjoyed learning about trains old and new as well as writing about a magical train journey.  We have a teddy called Tess who has been in our class all year, sitting quietly on the shelf.  She was really enjoying our train topic too and has been writing us letters and postcards and leaving books for us to read.  We are helping her to learn more. She has has us to learn about different forms of transport now.

We have now moved onto learning about aeroplanes (at Tess’ request) We really liked the history of aeroplanes – especially the funny film clips about all the people who tried to build flying machines but they didn’t quite work.  We have been learning about the Wright Brothers and how they invented the first aeroplane.  Daniel and Noah have been playing at being the Wright Brothers and they made a fantastic plane too! 

We have also been learning a bit about Fairtrade.  We have entered a competition organised by the Linlithgow Fairtrade group where we had to design our own faritrade crest, drawing pictures to show what fairtrade is about.  To learn a little bit more about what fairtrade is we have been thinking about where our food comes from before it gets to the shops and supermarkets.  We read a book called ‘The World Came to My Place Today’ which explained it really well and told us lots about where the things in our shopping trolleys come from.  We played with a big map, putting pictures of food in the right countries.  We also had a think about how the food might travel to reach Scotland.

We played a game to help us to understand what ‘fairtrade’ means. Daniel was the owner of a banana farm, we were his workers and Mrs Kennedy worked for a supermarket.  We had to collect lots of bananas very quickly and then we wanted Daniel to pay us for all our hard work.  Mrs Kennedy hadn’t given him much money at all so he had hardly any money to pay us.  Then the supermarket gave Daniel a little bit more money – enough to pay all of his workers.  The workers were much happier then.

Here are some more pictures to show you a little more of what we have been up to.  We have been so busy – even fitting in a visit from a real hedgehog on Friday!

  

Finally, we were class of the week again last week as Miss Baillie was very impressed by our magical train journey stories (although I think we’re class of the week every week!)   Have a lovely weekend.

This week we have been learning our first 2 digraphs – ‘sh’ and ‘ch’.  We already knew lots of words with these sounds in as we are very good at hearing sounds in words.  We are now working on using these digraphs as we write.

Imogen and Lucas made shampoo and shapes for the ‘sh’ sound.

In maths we have been learning odd and even numbers.  We made Even Characters, drawing them using only even numbers – 2 heads, 4 legs, 6 arms, etc.

Next week we will make Odd Houses for them to live in.

On Wednesday we had a visit from Greig of Google Expeditions.  The photographs don’t do it justice but we had a really interesting session, using the handheld devices to have a 3D trip under the sea and then into space.  We really enjoyed it.

In outer maths this week we continued to look at patterns.  We read ‘Aliens Love Underpants’ and then designed our own underpants.  We all made fab designs and we think the aliens would love them!

More pattern through play:

We have been extremely busy turning our home corner into a train station.  We planned together, deciding on the furniture, equipment and signs we would need.  We then set to work to make it and have had a lot of fun playing in it already.     

We have also been thinking about train journeys.  We read the story ‘The Train Ride’ and sequenced it together.  We will be thinking more about train journeys next week – one’s we’ve actually been on and magical ones that we would love to go on.

We have also been trying some yoga at the end of the day for the past couple of weeks.  The children are far more flexible then Mrs Kennedy!  We’re finding it is a nice relaxing end to a busy day.

A few more of my favourite pictures from this week:

   

Have a good weekend, from P1B and Mrs Kennedy

Hello, an eclectic mix this week!  In literacy we have been focusing on alphabetical order and handwriting.  We are getting very good at alphabetical order, singing the alphabet song really helps.  We’ve tried lots of different activities as we practise.

    

We have also been working on our handwriting, concentrating on forming each letter correctly – no lazy letters!  Again, we tried lots of different methods to perfect our skills.

  

In maths, we have been working on some vocabulary – smaller, larger, smallest and largest when comparing quantities and numbers.  We have also been looking at patterns – P1B are very good at making patterns.  We made some patterns with people – see if you can guess the patterns we were making in these pictures:

We also worked in teams to make repeating patterns with coloured card. We worked well together, discussing with each other how to lay it out to make a pattern.  We also made more complicated patterns with shapes and will continue to work on this next week.  We’ll also be looking at odd and even numbers.

We have been looking at steam trains this week and make train pictures, printing using shapes.

 

At assembly in Friday, P6 put on an amazing performance of Scots songs and poems, we really liked the funny one called ‘If You will Marry Me’, they had some very funny actions too.

Each class then told the assembly a little of what they have been working on in class, we showed some of our paintings and sang a song.  it was very exciting performing in front of a big audience – we loved it!

What a super end to the week!  Looking forward to what next week brings.

Have a lovely weekend, from P1B and Mrs Kennedy

P1B have been absolute troopers this week, they are very tired at this stage in the term but are still full of life and are working very hard.  Their excitement is contagious and I don’t think there is a nicer place to be in the run up to Christmas.

On Monday we played party games during PE in preparation for our party next week.  It was really good fun, we were very good sports and were showing some fantastic dance moves!

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We have been doing some lovely art work this week – related to our new sounds j and v.  We made jellyfish and jingle bells for j and vases and volcanoes for v.

     

 

We made snowmen with  Mrs Begarnie on Tuesday as part of our study on forms of water.

Rev. Cheryl McKellar-Young from St Michael’s visited on Wednesday, she told a very good story at milk time.

We are continuing addition in maths, this week we looked at all the ways of adding to 8 and 9.

     

On Thursday we had an afternoon looking closely at Stick Man by Julia Donalsdon, we read the story and watched the short film, then had a carousel of activities: re-telling the story using puppets, send a postcard home to the Stick family, sequence the story by creating a comic strip and draw your favourite part of the story.  It was a great afternoon, the children really got into the story, thinking about the events in detail and how the Stick Man and his family might be feeling.  They really liked the part where Santa saved the day!  Looking at them working during this lesson made showed just how far they’ve come this term.  The writing was excellent and I could see and hear lots of children sounding out as they attempted to write words and sentences. The puppet shows were good too, there are some good organisers in P1B. Good job guys!

 

     

  

           

 

                

 

On Friday morning we read our reading books to a friend.  We like the Biff, Chip and Kipper stories and often notice extra things going on by looking closely at the pictures.  We read really well  – again, lovely to see the new skills they are picking up.

Phew! Another busy week.  Christmas party and church service to look forward to next week, along with lots of Christmas activities.  Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Kennedy and P1B x