Primary 1 – Page 6 – Springfield Primary School and Bonnytoun Nursery School

June 7, 2019

P1a weekly news

As the blog wasn’t working last week, here is the news from last week and this week.

Well it was finally time for the P1a assembly……our P1a journey, it was so nice to see how far we have come.

We had a very busy week learning our lines and songs. Mrs Gordon was very proud of us today when we all showed our Springfield values. We were confident with our lines and songs, we were inclusive by making sure everyone had a turn, we were resilient by continuing to learn our lines even when it was a struggle, we were kind when we helped our classmates and we we were respectful of everyone’s needs and property. Well done P1a!

For the last 2 weeks we have been learning about odd and even numbers in numeracy. We started counting in two’s and realised that if we remember the even numbers end in 0,2,4,6,8 and the odd numbers in 1,3,5,7,9 then we can tell whether any number in the world is odd or even. We still need to practice this as it is quite tricky!

In IDL our topic on local area continues and nearly everyone has had a chance to have a class pet home to explore Linlithgow. We have some amazing stories and pictures in their diaries. This week the focus was on facilities in our local areas and what things a community needs. We made posters of our favourite things in Linlithgow.

In PE we continued our gymnastics journey with Mrs Harris. Our focus was on our tall, tuck and wide shapes within games and then on apparatus, we especailly liked walking over the beam and then jumping onto the crash mat. It was also a lot of fun when we had to go under lots of tunnels and bumps.

In French we learned classroom commands. Mrs Gordon can say lots of commands in French and we know what to do…eg asseyez-vous – sit down, en ligne – line up etc we even taught the P5-7 Language Ambassadors how to do it.

Bon weekend, Mrs Gordon and P1a

June 7, 2019

This Week’s News at SPS and Bonnytoun

We’ve had an action packed couple of weeks in school and nursery culminating in an excellent assembly led by P1B and Mrs Reid today. Children told the story of The Hungry Catterpillar and entertained us all. Well done boys and girls!

Primary 7 and Primary 6 have both enjoyed fantastic camps to Ford Castle and Dalguise. We hope that you have enjoyed seeing the photos of their adventures on Twitter.

Our nursery and P1 and P2 children have taken part in music workshops this week with NYCOS and have been showcasing their talents in this area.

Next week all children will take part in Linlithgow Book Festival and will be given the opportunity to meet authors and listen to different texts being read aloud.

We hope that you will join us next Wednesday for Sports Day (weather permitting), where children will take part in potted sports in the morning and races in the afternoon. We will have tea and coffee on sale for all adults.

Pupil Achievements:

-Well done to the lovely sisters, E in P2 and E in P4 for their success in dancing and swimming!

-Congratulations to M and A in P1 for their Enjoy-a-Ball achievements!

Have a great weekend everyone! Let’s hope that the sun manages to shine a little bit!

Miss Baillie xx💖💫☀️

June 7, 2019

P1B – Week ending 7th June

What an exciting week! Our first class assembly!

We have worked very hard over the past few weeks preparing for our assembly. Not only have we been learning our lines but we have also been practising the musical accompaniment, painting artwork, making butterfly wands and designing butterflies to decorate the walls. We have had great fun and have learned lots about the butterfly lifecycle. We hope you enjoyed watching the assembly as much as we enjoyed performing it!

We have had a very musical week as along with our assembly preparation, we also began a block of lessons with a specialist from the National Youth Choir of Scotland. We were very good at keeping the beat and had great fun singing rhyming songs. Our favourite part of the lesson was definitely the singing games with the parachute!

We continued our learning in Literacy this week, revising a selection of digraphs and tricky words and have been practising making up sentences using our digraph words. We have also started working on our diary writing skills.

In Numeracy we have been practising counting up and down in 2s. We looked at the pattern counting in 2s makes when we ‘painted’ our numbers on a hundred square and noticed that we ended up with painted columns of numbers. We were also learning about odd and even numbers, linking this to our counting and did really well playing the ‘coconut’ game.

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/learning-to-count/coconut-odd-or-even

In Maths we continued to learn about data handling and managed to use the skills we have learned to interpret a variety of pictograms.

In PE we continued our Gymnastics block with Mrs Harris. We had to use our listening skills to know which position we needed to get into and had to co-ordinate our bodies to make tunnels or obstacles in the ‘road’. We worked together in teams and had great fun taking turns to tunnel under a whole team!

As part of our Community focus, we were very lucky to have a special visitor in class, A’s dad, Dr Walker! He came in to talk to us about his job as an Emergency Doctor and taught us how to call for help in an emergency. We worked in pairs, taking turns to pretend to call 999 for help. We also talked about the importance of only calling this number if you have a genuine emergency!

Have a lovely weekend!

Mrs Reid and Primary 1B

May 24, 2019

Butterflies in P1a

On Thursday we were very excited because our first butterfly hatched from it’s cocoon. Have a look at the photos of us today when Mrs Reid helped us to release 2 of the butterflies into the school garden. Very special moments….

This week we learnt our last 2 digraphs aw and au like saw and launch, and the common words do and as. We will now spend the rest of term revising these and consolidating our learning.

In numeracy we focused on ordering and sequencing whilst using the language more and less, smallest to largest etc. We also did some more data handling where we had to sort items and make a pictogram.

In PE we had Paul Pizza deliver an Enjoy a Ball session and Mrs Harris continue our gymnastics journey. We were learning about rolling using our different shapes. We have also been learning how to play rounders which is a lot of fun.

Happy weekend from Mrs Gordon and P1a

May 23, 2019

P1B – Week ending 24th May

What a quick week!

In Literacy, we have been learning the new digraphs, ‘au’ as in launch and ‘aw’ as in draw. We learned that, once again, there is unfortunately no set pattern to follow to work out which au/aw to use when we are spelling using this digraph but, as we have discussed before, this will get better with practise. Our new tricky words were ‘do’ and ‘as’. This was the last week of new digraphs and tricky words for Primary 1. The rest of the term will be used to consolidate learning of all sounds we have learned throughout the year.

In Numeracy we continued to work on our sequencing skills, forwards and backwards, within 20. We took turns to choose a selection of numbers and found the easiest way to sequence the numbers was to work out which were the largest and the smallest numbers and sequence the others in between. We loved using the caterpillar sequencing game and used this to challenge each other. You could play this at home too (https://www.topmarks.co.uk/ordering-and-sequencing/caterpillar-ordering).

In Maths we continued to learn about how to present data in a pictogram. We learned that it is important to create a separate column for each of data sets in the pictogram, making it clear to understand. We began to learn about strategies we could use to interpret the data in the chart.

In PE we were working on eye/foot co-ordination, dribbling a ball and we also continued our Gymnastics block with Mrs Harris. We built on the Gymnastics learning that we have done so far, practising a variety of rolls and jumps. Everyone worked very hard to try to complete the tasks.

We were also lucky to have an Enjoy-A-Ball session this week. Paul Pizza was impressed with the ball dribbling skills on show and how well the children listened to his instructions.

We started thinking about our class assembly which is set for Friday 7^th June. Mrs Reid was very impressed with the ideas which were suggested and we are hoping to incorporate all of them into our performance. We’re keeping this top secret just now!

We arrived in school on Thursday to find one of our butterflies had hatched from its cocoon and shortly after we started our day, another one emerged! We were very excited to see them and had a super discussion about the hatching process. We had lots of questions and researched the answers to these together. We wanted to know if our butterflies were boys or girls and what the red liquid was that came out of the butterflies as they hatched. I wonder if the children can tell you the answers?

Have a lovely weekend!

Mrs Reid and Primary 1B

May 18, 2019

Theatre School Achievements!

We have a number of children who attend theatre school in their spare time and have recently been in different performances. Well done to the following:

-E and I in P3 for being the Woodcutter and The Queen of Hearts in a recent theatre show.

-A brilliant effort from A in P6 who performed in role as a ‘judge’ and M in P1 who also had a part in the performance. Great effort everyone!

Miss Baillie xx💖💫

May 17, 2019

P1a jobs in the community and more…

This week we continued our local area focus by looking at jobs in the community. We invited in any of our P1 parents/carers that had a job in the community to come and share it with the children. We were delighted to invite in a policeman, a firefighter, a midwife, 2 nurses and a community youth worker. The children learned about the jobs by taking part in a rotation around each job where they could interact with resources and ask questions. At the end they shared their learning and Mrs Gordon and Mrs Reid were very impressed with everything they picked up.

Playing a team game with the youth worker

How about putting all this on in 20 seconds…

In French with Camembear we learnt about the weather and how to say it is hot, cold, sunny and rainy.

In literacy we learnt 2 more digraphs ow and is cow and ou as in loud. These were quite tricky ones. Our common words were into and here.

In numeracy we worked on sequencing and ordering numbers to 20. We will need lots of practice as this was quite tricky, especially when we had to do it backwards…. We also started a block on data handling and talked about surveys and pictographs. We asked our friends to vote for their favourite fruits and then made a pictograph with a partner to show the results.

Happy weekend from Mrs Gordon and P1a.

May 16, 2019

Primary 1B – w/e 17th May 2019

We have had another very busy week in P1b!

In Literacy, we have been learning two new digraphs, ‘ow’ as in cow and ‘ou’ as in loud. We learned that there is unfortunately no pattern to follow to work out which ow/ou to use when we are spelling using this digraph but we know that with lots of practise we will get to know which one to use. Our new tricky words were ‘here’ and ‘into’.

In Numeracy we were learning about one and two more or less than within 20 and how to order a selection of numbers within 20, both forwards and backwards. We created number lines in pairs and challenged each other to work out one or two more than or one or two less than. Once we had shown that we could order numbers from 1 to 20, we challenged ourselves by selecting a few cards at random and put these in order from smallest to largest and vice versa. Mrs Reid was very impressed with our ordering skills.

In Maths we were learning about Data Handling. We learned that data is information and that ‘handling’ means how to present the information to make it easier to understand. We did a class survey of favourite fruit. We learned how to collect data using tally marks and how to put this information into a pictogram. We did very well answering questions about the data, using the pictogram to help us.

In PE, we continued our Gymnastics block with Mrs Harris. We were learning about balancing and jumping this week. We worked hard to listen to instructions and did our best to balance on the floor and on sloping benches.

We had some very special P1 visitors this week – a policeman, firefighter, nurse, midwife and community youth worker! Not only were these great community jobs for us to learn about as part of our Community focus but these people were special because they are mums and dads of some the P1a and P1b children! We joined up with P1a for the event and had great fun learning about the different jobs. We got to spend time with each of the visitors and got to pretend we were doing their jobs! Mrs Reid and Mrs Gordon were delighted to hear both classes asking great questions and sharing their learning with each other.

We have continued to learn about the butterfly life cycle and have been watching our caterpillars very closely over the past couple of weeks. We have been amazed at how quickly they have grown, becoming very fat and hairy! When we arrived on Wednesday we found they had transformed into their cocoons.

Have a lovely weekend!

Mrs Reid and Primary 1B

May 12, 2019

P1a’s caterpillars, butterflies and dentists…

Another busy week in P1a.

We had the first of our nursery visitors for their transition to P1. Each week some of the children will come and spend some time in P1 sharing a story and playing.

Our topic for this term is all about our local area. As part of that we are looking at people who work in the local community. We have invited any parents/carers who do a job in the community to come and talk to us about their job. Our first visitor this week was H’s mum who is a pediatric dentist. We absolutely loved learning about the job and playing with all the props H’s mum brought. We loved it so much we did a vote for our next role play area and over half of the class voted for a dentist!

We have been very creative this week. As we have loved making things with loom bands Mrs Gordon taught herself (and then us) to finger knit. It is pretty tricky so we will need lots of practice. We invited in some of the P3’s to help and L and R picked it up very quickly to take back and teach in their classrooms. We love leading learning ! We also learnt the recipe to make our own playdough. We have our own station now. It was challenging but we are learning what to do when it is too wet or dry…

We have also been learning about the life cycle of a butterfly and have 5 very hungry caterpillars living in the classroom. We are looking after them and watching them grown each day.

In literacy we revised our common words and in numeracy we finished our subtraction journey (for now…).

Happy weekend, Mrs Gordon and P1a.

May 5, 2019

P1a’s weekly blog

Another fun packed week in P1. This week we were very fortunate to take part in a Generation Science workshop where we made our own lego goalkeepers and then did some computer programming to make the goalie move! Mrs Gordon was so impressed with how well the children managed this. It was packed with lots of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) experiences. Have a look at the photos and video below, there is also an article in this week’s gazette about this whole school project. Thanks to Mrs Tulloch for organising!

In numeracy we have been talking and learning about the language of subtraction, we discussed word problems like “take 3 from 10”, less than, difference between and “There are 5 bananas and 4 apples, how many more bananas are there?”. These are all tricky concepts but Mrs Gordon was very pleased with how well we are understanding the mathematical language.

We also did some work on volume and capacity talking about why we wouldn’t use a spoon to fill a swimming pool etc. We had fun estimating and learnt that estimate means to guess… Look at us estimating how many spoons of sand and how many cubes it will take to fill containers. We learnt that this is quite a difficult skill…

In literacy we learnt the new digraphs oi and oy and tricky words there and were. Some reading groups learnt about a blurb on a book and why it can help us to choose a book in the library.

We started our local community topic by discussing a little bit about what a community is. As part of this topic we have 4 classroom pets/toys that are going to be going home with the children each weekend. We are hoping that they toys will get to visit parts of Linlithgow with the children and maybe go along to any clubs etc they go to.

Happy long weekend, Mrs Gordon and P1a