The balloons are up….10 days left of school. Miss Mudd has a surprise task for us each day. We have to pop the balloon to find out what it is!
Primary 1/2 x
Move Up Day!
I had a wonderful time meeting my new class this week. I am very excited to be their new teacher in August.
Miss Mudd x
Better Movers, Better Thinkers in P1/2
A HUGE thank you to Mr Stewart for coming and delivering some inspiring sessions with P1/2. We loved our lessons and learnt so much. Miss Mudd was so proud of how well we listened to instructions and helped each other with some of the tricky tasks.
Springfield Stars!
Primary 1/2 are incredibly proud of Sam Parker for his achievements in horse riding. At the weekend Sam won the Championship, Supreme Championship and were champions of all of the champions. Wow!! Here is Sam with his rosettes and sashes that he brought to show us. A big well done to Sam, we are so proud of your achievements.
Lucy Leamy also brought in her medals in to show us. She came third in a Gymnastics competition at the weekend. It is so nice to hear about our talented boys and girls at Springfield. A big well done to Lucy for her achievements.
Miss Mudd x
P1B Fractions, Time and Animals
Hello.  Unfortunately, due to the weather we didn’t make it along to the rugby club for the book festival on Monday, instead, we have been authors this week, making preparations to write our own books by creating a character and a setting. We can also use very good describing words to write about them. We have also drawn pictures to plan our story outline and next week we will write our books and design the front cover. We have really used our imaginations and the characters we have created are very interesting with some good storylines. I’m really looking forward to reading the finished books.
Here we are working with a partner to identifying the setting in some of our reading books, drawing and writing about our characters and settings and taking part in describing word activities:
In numeracy, we began the week learning about fractions. Mrs Kennedy had a packet of sweeties and she had to keep sharing them out as more people visited her house! We were very good at halving them, then quartering them. We are also very good at doing this with pizza and cake too!
We had a really good PE session on Monday with Mr Stewart. We did Better Movers and Thinkers, we had to move and think at the same time, this really helps us with our movement as well as our thinking skills as we really had to focus on what we had to do, filtering out what was going on around us as we concentrated hard. We all had a great time and Mr Stewart is coming back next week to do more of this with us, we’re really looking forward to it.
Later in the week we started to learn about time, learning o’clock and half past on analogue and digital clocks. We also looked at how time affects our lives, why it is important to be able to tell the time and what we do at certain times in the day. We have had good fun playing with clocks and we went outside on Friday to make a human clock. We were very good at finding out where the hands should go. We also had Abby from P6 with us, she was a great help too!
Again, three excellent class talks about Tess’ adventures. She even got some birthday cake this week! Â Well done to Clara, Daniel and Noah.
Finally, we have also had visits from the Dogs Trust and Scottish SPCA. Â Rachel from The Dogs Trust brought Ben the dog with her and we learned how to look after him and what to do if we meet dogs in our community.
We hope you have a good weekend. From P1B and Mrs Kennedy
Story writing in P1A
This week we have turned into authors! On Monday, we started to invent our own characters to share with others. We looked at our favourite story characters and then drew our own. To help us to describe our characters, we learned about adjectives. We played games on the smartboard and computer to identify the adjectives in sentences, we found the missing adjectives in sentences and we wrote our own sentences containing adjectives. Once we were amazing at using adjectives, we wrote some sentences to describe our characters in an interesting way.
 
 
On Wednesday, we started to explore the setting of a story. We know that this is where the story takes place. We worked with a partner to read different Biff, Chip & Kipper books and we told Miss Harrison where our story was set. Later on we looked at different story setting pictures and we were able to tell Miss Harrison stories that we knew that took place in each of the different settings. We are currently working very hard with our own story settings and drawing and writing about them. As part of our setting focus, we used Lego and building blocks to build different settings. Next week we are going to start planning our own books using our settings and characters!
In numeracy and maths this week, we have been using our addition and subtraction skills to add and subtract with money. We have also been using coins to pay the exact value for items. We used magnetic coins and toy coins to make different money amounts and played different money games on Education City. This week we have also been continuing to learn about fractions and using halves and quarters.
This week we were very lucky to have an Athletics session and a Better Movers Better Thinkers session. On Monday, Mr Stewart (who is a PE Officer for West Lothian) came to take us for gym. We looked at developing lots of movement skills whilst making our brains think! We practised throwing the ball up in the air, clapping and then catching the ball and lots of other different movements. We then put these movements together to make a sequence.
As part of our People Who Help Us learning focus, we had a visit from the Dogs Trust on Thursday afternoon. We learned how to look after dogs and what the Dogs Trust do to look after dogs in their care. Next week we will continue to learn about ways in which people in the community help us.
Thank you for reading our blog post. Have a fantastic weekend,
P1A and Miss Harrison 🙂
Rain, rain go away, come again another day!
In IDL were learning about different types of housing and how they meet the needs of the people who live there. We then used our knowledge to design a house for Biff the dog. We had to think about Biff’s needs and use our imagination to come up with some creative ideas. Some houses had a bone room, a ballet studio because Biff loves to dance, sparkly disco lights, flowers and even a welcome mat. The houses were very colourful and were all different shapes and sizes.
For homework, Miss Mudd set us a challenge to make a model of our house. We could use whatever we wanted to make our models and she was blown away by the effort and imagination that had been put in by children and parents. A HUGE well done to everyone for some amazing models.
In Literacy we were learning about the au digraph. We created our own dinosaurs and wrote sentences with adjectives to describe them.
We worked around lots of different phonics stations to practise all of the sounds we had learnt. We showed great resilience when faced with our daily phonics problems and worked together to try and work out the answers. We have been consolidating all of the learning from this term and practising using all of our tricky digraphs. We carried on writing our stories and also designed a front cover for our book. We looked at the front covers of other books and discussed what we liked and disliked. We thought of an exciting title for our stories and made our covers bright and attractive.
  
In Maths some of us were learning about fractions. We learnt how to find halves and quarters of different shapes. We had great fun making up pizzas and using the challenge cards to practise our fractions. For example, we had to make a pizza that was half tomato, a quarter cheese and a quarter pepper.
  
 
Some of us were learning about division and sharing. We practised sharing out different items equally and learnt how to write the division sign. On Thursday we were all learning about capacity. We enjoyed filling different containers and using our estimating skills to guess how much they could hold.
We had a special visitor for PE this week. Mr Stewart came to do some ‘Better Movers, Better Thinkers’ activities with us. We had great fun developing our ball skills and he really challenged us. We were using both sides of our brain and it made us really think hard.
Miss Mudd put some new challenge cards in Paddington’s Challenge area. We had to try and hold difference balances. We were exploring all of the different things that our bodies can do. We realised that we are all very different and our bodies are very different. Some of us could roll our tongues and some of us could touch our noses with our tongue!
This week we also had a fantastic visit from the Dogs Trust. We learnt how to take care of a dog and looked at how the Dogs Trust help find homes for new dogs. A big thank you to Rachel for coming to speak to us.
A huge well done to Emily for winning Gold at a Judo competition. We love hearing about all of our achievements outside school. The class were very proud of her.
Have a lovely weekend.
Miss Mudd and Primary 1/2
Police, Camera, Action! (P1A)
This week we have been learning the ‘au’ sound. We drew pictures with the ‘au’ sound, looked for pictures with the ‘au’ sound, used ‘au’ words to find the missing words in sentences and practised reading and writing ‘au’ words. We also revised all of our common words.
 
 
 
At the start of this week we concluded our subtraction focus and finished looking at missing number equations. We looked at subtraction sums such as ? – 2 = 8 and we used different strategies to work out the number at the start. In maths we have also been learning about symmetry. We were able to create symmetrical pictures and used finger painting to make our own symmetrical butterflies (just like the ones that we have in class). During free play, Thomas and Daniel built a fantastic symmetrical castle!
 
  
  
What a busy week we have had in maths! We also learned about fractions this week! Miss Harrison was very impressed as we were able to find halves and quarters of shapes. We could even find three quarters of a shape! Our learning activities included using our playdough to make halves and quarters of objects, colouring in different fractions of shapes, playing fractions games on the smartboard and laptop and making our own pizzas!
 
 
 
 
On Monday morning we had some very special visitors in our classroom. Chloe’s Auntie Heather and two of her colleagues, Leo and Liam came to talk to us about being in the Police. They told us about all the things that they do to help people and keep them safe and we asked them LOTS of questions! We got to see the police kit and try on the hats and jackets. Heather, Leo and Liam also told us about the different police transport. They brought a police bike and a police van which we were very excited to see! We got to go in the police van and turn on the siren. We really enjoyed going in the back of the police van!
For our writing this week, we wrote thank you letters to Heather, Leo & Liam. Miss Harrison couldn’t believe how hard we worked! Our handwriting was fantastic and we drew detailed pictures of our favourite part of the visit. We used our sounds to write words and we created our own word bank with tricky words that we might need. Miss Harrison gave our letters to Mrs Lee to pass on to Heather, Leo & Liam. We loved having visitors in our class. Thank you!
Over the last few weeks we have been learning about the life cycle of butterflies. We had our own caterpillars to look after and once they went into their chrysalis, we put them into a butterfly pavilion. At the start of this week, some of our butterflies started to hatch! We have done an excellent job of looking after them, but today we released them into their natural habitat.
Thank you for reading our blog post. Have a lovely weekend,
P1A and Miss Harrison 🙂
Our Local Community – P1B
Hello, what a full week this has been! We began the week with a visit from three Police Officers – Heather, Leo and Liam. They gave a very informative talk and we asked them lots of questions. They even let us go into their Police van and press the siren, what a great way to start the week.
We have a new yoga resource and Mrs Kennedy has been on a course to help her to teach yoga to children. We tried it out during PE this week and we had good fun trying the proper yoga positions. It was quite tricky and we had to use lots of muscles, it was also relaxing and we had nice music on and practised being calm and breathing deeply.
In maths, we have been looking at capacity and symmetry. Â We had fun playing in the water with measuring equipment and using cubes to fill objects around the classroom. Â We were also learning how to estimate before we investigated.
Looking at our butterflies inspired our symmetry lessons.
Our topic ‘Our Local Community’ really stepped up a gear this week. Â We had a meeting to decide what we would like to learn about our community, then worked in groups to write our plans. Lots of children want to learn more about local services – the Leisure Centre, shops and landmarks, and people who work locally – police, firefighters, vets, nurses.
    
We also discussed what we could turn our role play area into.  After a vote it was decided that we would make it into the Leisure Centre. We have worked hard making signs and gathering resources.  So far we’ve had great fun playing in it.  There are lots of swimming lessons taking place and they are very efficient at asking for people with a certain colour of band to leave the pool when their time is up.
It is lovely to see how eager and confident the children are at talking in front of an audience.  So far, they have all loved talking to the class about what Tess got up to at their house.  Three more excellent talks this week.
On Friday, we released the butterflies. Â It has been nice having them in the classroom but it was also good to release them into their natural habitat. Â We will be keeping an eye out for them flying around Springfield.
We hope you have a good weekend, from P1B and Mrs Kennedy
Let’s fly away, let’s fly, let’s fly away……..
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
