Springfield Primary School and Bonnytoun Nursery School

September 15, 2017January 27, 2018

P1B – Shapes, Sounds and Winning the Peg Challenge!

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

September 15, 2017

P7a’s weekly news

Another busy week in P7a saw us finish our mini theme of “Cake Fest”. In groups of 4 the children presented their proposed monuments and how they would construct them out of cake. It was a very close competition with marks being awarded for feasibility, creativity, cost effectiveness, presentation and team work. The President Pineapples (Sophie D, Melissa, Rebecca and Beth) won and made their monument “The Dunmore Pineapple” out of cake. The team really worked hard designing and creating their cake which was a very tricky design to make. Thanks so much to our wonderful parent helpers Craig’s mum, Rebecca’s mum and grandad and Mrs Woolsey. Well done to all of P7 for their wonderful entries. Here are some photos.

As it was maths week this week we continued our work on inspirational maths by looking at Pascal’s triangle and patterns within it. We also looked at building 2D and 3D shapes with one loop of rope. Each child had to have one hand on the rope. Not as easy as it sounds…We have had a lot of fun whilst realising that maths is not about speed, but deep understanding, teamwork, patterns, sharing ideas and strategies.

In IDL we started our new Brazil theme by asking the children what they knew and what they wanted to learn. In groups of 5 the children are researching and presenting their chosen area of Brazil (Amazon River, Carnival, Rainforest Wildlife, Landmarks, Tropical Birds and Rio de Janeiro). In their presentation they are aiming to share facts about their topic and compare it to Scotland.

We had a lot of extra-curricular achievements over the past few weeks. Erin C walked over the new Queensferry Crossing with her family. Amelia and Erin C took part in a gymnastics competition and were runners up in their categories. Jack played rugby for the S1’s, Alastair got his Level 5 skiing award and Beth got a 6 second PB on her front crawl. James is seen below with his Om Lite maps. He took part in an orienteering competition with his dad in the Yorkshire Dales. They won the family category and came 9th overall. They walked/ran a total of about 56km…Arran pictured below took part in the 10 mile Linlithgow to Edinburgh cycle as part of Pedal for Scotland. Busy, busy children….well done to them all and to their families for supporting them.

Have a great long weekend! See you all on Wednesday.

Mrs Gordon and P7a

September 15, 2017

When we work together, we learn together.

We really try this year to work together as a team. We know that if we work well together, that together we will learn. Each week Mrs Matos will give us a team building challenge, so that we can practise working together. This weeks challenge involved plastic cups, an elastic and string. We worked in groups of four. Each person in the group was given a piece of string, our string was tied to the elastic. Using only the string, we needed to build the tallest tower with the plastic cups. To start off we found it very difficult, but with a growth mindset, communication and team work we managed to build our towers.

It was Maths week this week, and we took a hands on approach to help us with numbers. We have been working on 7 digit numbers, we’ve been looking at the different ways that numbers can be written , such as in words, standard form and expanded form. We’ve been looking at the place value of numbers and rounding to the nearest 10, 100 and 1000. We took our learning outdoors this week, we worked in groups to collect natural resources to create a ‘big’ number. We used sticks, stones and leaves to create our number. Using the number we created we, wrote the number in words, we showed the place value of each digit and lastly we rounded our number to the nearest 10, 100, and 1000. During class we had various place value and rounding stations set up. We worked in pairs and used concrete materials to answer questions based on numbers. Our last Math challenge this week, was to create as many shapes possible using just one large piece of string, which you could not cut, with team work we raised to the challenge with some great results.

Through a variety games, such as word match and scrabble we practiced our spelling words and sound patterns.

We’ve been working hard over the last few weeks to create our French vocabulary flash cards, this week we worked with a partner and using our flash cards we practiced the pronunciation and meanings of the words we have learnt so far.

One of our PE focuses this term is going to be basketball, to get us prepared we are practicing different skills that we will be using. This week we focused on our dribbling skills. It was important that we kept our eye on the ball, and tried to keep control of the ball, so that it didn’t go all over the place.

We’ve had a busy week, but we will be looking forward to it all again on Wednesday, when we back from our long weekend break.

P6A and Mrs Matos

September 15, 2017

Primary 2B

We’ve had a very busy and active week this week. It was Maths week in Scotland so we had a Maths challenge on Wednesday. We worked in groups and there were certain rules which hopefully the children will be able to tell you about. Each group had a rope with the ends tied together and they had to make various shapes, both 2D and 3D. They managed very well with the 2D shapes but we all struggled with the 3D shapes so had to call on the assistance of 2 Primary 7 pupils to help us. Thank you boys you were great with the P2’s.

We have also being busy doing other activities involving 3D shape, as well as continuing with ordering and sequencing in Number.

Mrs.Begarnie has been working on Energy in Science with Primary 2 as well as Hinduism in R.M.E.

In Phonics we’ve had fun with the sounds “ou” and “ow” in my group and Miss. Mudd’s group have been working on “ai” and “ay”. In writing we have been working on descriptions of landscapes, in preparation for writing postcards next week and the following week.

We have started looking at the Features of the Seaside and what is natural and what is man made. Wwe have also discussed what we hear, see, smell etc at the Seaside.

As it was Roald Dahl day on Wednesday we watched the live Puffin programme on the author and worked alongside the illustrator Quentin Blake to create our own monsters. Some brilliant creations. Well done P2B!!

We’ve used the netbooks this week but didn’t have our P6 Pals to help us this time.

So a busy week and now we can all enjoy a well earned rest over the long weekend. Have fun.

September 15, 2017

Creative week in P3/4

Blog P3 4 15.9.17

Dear All

This week we painted models of a boy and a girl to show that we are all friends.

We made big sized school clothes to put on them. We put them on the wall. We also made cactuses.

In Literacy we researched books to find out about deserts. In High Five French we learned how to say our names in French.

In Numeracy we learned about symmetry. We did formal subtraction in our jotters.

In health and wellbeing we did aerobics to keep healthy. We have been doing Banana Banana Meatball on Just Dance.

Hope you have a good weekend!

September 15, 2017

P2/3 are full of facts!

This week we did some whole class reading about the Pacific Islands and the Great Barrier Reef. We had a go at answering questions about the text in full sentences.

In Writing we looked at the features of a fact file and decided our Maui fact files needed to have:

A heading
Sub headings
Bullet Points
Images

We used information we gathered last week to write our fact files. Here are some of our finished Maui fact files:

Did you know… there is a volcano on Maui called Haleakala.

In IDL this week we compared the Scotland flag to the Maui flag. The Maui flag was very intricate so we decided to make the Hawaii flag instead. We noticed that the Hawaii flag has the Union Jack in the corner. We chose to use collage to make the flags, they look fab!

In Maths this week we have been identifying 2D shapes. We learned about pentagons, hexagons and octagons.

We collected twigs from the field and made 2D shape posters to remind ourselves of the properties of each of the shapes.

We are really enjoying sharing our Golden Time with Primary 3, we especially love arts and crafts! Here are some photos from today:

Star of the Week is Scott for his fantastic work on 2D shape. Well done, Scott!

No homework next week due to the shorter week.

Last bit of news… we won Class of the Week! Woo hoo!!

Love P2/3 and Miss Prince x

September 15, 2017

Rockets and robots in P1A!

As part of Scottish Maths week, we have been learning about 2D shapes. We used circles, triangles, squares and rectangles to make robot pictures, used 2D shapes to make our own pictures and patterns, played 2D shape games on the smartboard and used 2D shapes to create rockets!

This week we have continued to practise our number formation and learned how to write the numbers 4 and 5. We used spaghetti, play dough, pipe cleaners and cubes to make our numbers and practised writing our numbers on the whiteboards and with Miss Harrison.

Our two new sounds this week were ‘p’ and ‘n’. We used our new sounds to make words such as ‘pat’, ‘nap’, ‘ant’ and ‘pan’. We practised writing the ‘p’ sound on post-it notes and in the squidgy paint bags and used our magnetic boards to build words. When learning our ‘n’ sound, we used play dough to make our sound and drew ‘n’ pictures and wrote ‘n’ words on a graffiti wall. We also looked for words with our new sounds in our reading books and played ‘n’ words snap!

On Friday we went to the gym hall with our P7 buddies to take part in some Zumba for Fitness Week! Thankfully we have the long weekend to recover!

We hope that everyone enjoys the long weekend. Thank you for reading our blog post.

P1A and Miss Harrison 🙂

September 15, 2017September 18, 2017

P5a and P5b

This week, we did the SCOOT challenge, where we needed to find fraction cards and answer the questions individually. For our chilli challenge, we looked at shaded fractions and fraction number lines.

We brought in storyboxes on Monday and we retold our stories to a partner. On Thursday, P5a joined with the Nursery to tell them their stories. On Tuesday the 26th of September, P5b, are going to join the Nursery then, to do their retelling. We had a range of stories from Harry Potter to The Paper Dolls, with people being very creative, imaginative and inventive.

On Wednesday, we took part in Roald Dahl Day and we made dream jars after getting inspiration from the BFG. We watched a live feed about Roald Dahl and the illustrator of his books, Quentin Blake. Also, an inventor, called Colin Furze, who showed us a flame throwing guitar to represent one of the dangerous monsters in Billy and The Minpins. We tried to find a Phizzwizard but we haven’t caught it yet………..

Please remember that the children are on holiday on Monday and Tuesday 🙂

September 15, 2017

P2A Fighting Fit!

Miss Mudd noticed we were being a little noisy in class so to try and help us use our quiet voices she downloaded a new app for our computer. The bouncy balls on the screen show the volume in the classroom and the more they bounce…..the noisier it is. It then tells us when we are being too noisy. We got much quieter throughout the week so hopefully we can keep it up!

Literacy

We were writing our weekend news and practising using full stops correctly. We had our red, amber and green targets and had to ‘go for green!’ After writing, we used our traffic light cups to self-assess our work and show Miss Mudd what we think we had achieved. We talked about our next steps and came up with some targets to help us improve further.

On Wednesday it was Roald Dahl day so we tuned in to the live feed along with thousands of other children to hear more about his life. We did a quiz to see which character we are like. Emma T came out as Matilda, Campbell was George (George’s Marvellous Medicine) and Charlie was Charlie Bucket. Quentin Blake showed us how to create some wonderful illustrations and we loved seeing how his ideas were brought to life.

In writing we continued to do some work on description and learnt how to describe different landscapes. Miss Mudd wrote some descriptions of different places and we had to read them and match them to the correct picture. We picked out the wow words and went on to write our own descriptions. They were fabulous!

IDL

We were learning about the features of a seaside. We talked about key features such as lighthouses, caves, cliffs, shops, rock pools, boats etc. We labelled a photograph of a seaside and played ISpy to look for the different features. We then sorted them into natural and man-made.

Our buddies came down to help us on the computers. We used google maps to find our houses and looked at some of our local beaches.

Numeracy

In Maths we started to learn about place value. We were given a large amount of objects and had to sort them into groups of 10 to help us count efficiently. We then counted up in our tens and units. Miss Mudd introduced us to the base ten blocks and we practised making up different numbers and talking about the amount of tens and units.

We continued our work on 2D and 3D shape. We had to use ropes and work in teams to create different 2D shapes. Then we had to convince the class that we had made that shape by talking about its properties. We then used straws, cotton buds, tooth picks and sticks to build 3D shapes. It was very challenging but we used our growth mind set attitudes to help us persevere. Most of us were able to keep trying and didn’t give up when things got tough. Miss Mudd was so proud of our work on shapes and our enthusiasm towards our learning.

We also had a new challenge in our Maths area. We had 7 pots with different materials in. We called it the estimation station. We had to estimate how many were in each tub then check our answers.

Extra bits and bobs

Jacob and Euan brought in their achievements to show us. Euan had done the Pedal for Scotland event and cycled a very long way! We are very proud of him. Jacob had won a trophy for his hard work at Taekwondo.

In Science on Monday, the children learned that the sun is our main source of energy. Without the sun no plants would grow and we would have no food. We planted seeds with sunshine labels to remind us how important the sun is in providing us with energy.

Miss Mudd dug out her old PE kit and joined in with a fitness session for children’s fitness week. Joe Wicks (The Body Coach) streamed his workouts live every day at 10am so we thought we would give one a go. It was tough and we were sweaty but all felt great after we had finished. In PE we played Hungry Hippos and worked on our reaction times and speed.

A huge well done to P7 for their fabulous cake! We were amazed at the detail that they had created. What a talented bunch. Thank for you sharing it with us.

Hope you all have a wonderful long weekend.

Miss Mudd and P2A x