Author: Mrs Davenport

P2M have had a great week and have really enjoyed learning about technologies as part of ‘technology week’.

Our number concept this week has been ‘odd and even’ numbers. We used lots of socks to help us with this. If we had 3 socks, 2 of them would be paired and there would be one odd sock, which mean that 3 is an odd number.

We played an online game about odd and even numbers. Have a go at this at home:

Odd and Even

Katie said: “2 is an even number so 32 is an even number too.”

Alexis said: “1 is an odd number.”

Sophie D said: “3 is an odd number.”

Teegan said: “9 is an odd number so 19 is an odd number too.”

 

We loved our trip to the apple store on Tuesday.

Jack said his favourite part of the trip was “getting t-shirts.”

Maliha said “I liked getting the wristbands with photos.”

Bartosz said: “I liked throwing the aeroplanes.”

Richard said: “I liked recording the planes flying.”

Have you checked out all of our pictures on facebook?

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.905296499586058.1073741829.342275069221540&type=3

When we came back from the apple store we continued the technologies theme by looking at internet safety. We learned about how to stay safe on the internet. Ask your child how to stay safe online.

We also completed a food technologies task. As it was pancake day we were given pancakes and we had to choose a tasty topping for the pancakes.

Sophie YM said: “I put chocolate on my pancake, it was really tasty.”

We also learned about what ingredients were needed to make pancakes.

Pawel remembered that you need “eggs and milk to make pancakes.”

Huda said “I put a smiley face on my play-doh pancake.”

We have also began our multiplication topic this week. We have done this by putting objects into different groups.

Sophie R said: “we had to count how many were altogether in the different groups.”

Michael said: “If you have 4 groups of 2 that is the same as 2 groups of 4 because they are switchers.”

Emily said: “I made 6 groups of 5 and there were 30 altogether.”

We have also began a new ‘maths topic’ this week. This topic focuses around money. The first week of this topic we have been working on adding together a range of different prices of objects. We set up a shop to help us with this.

Jack said: “We had to add items together, I bought beans and a book and had to add them. I added 30p and 50p, this was easy because 5+3=8 so 50p+30p+80p.” – Super maths Jack!!

Robbie said: “there was a shopkeeper who had to figure out the sum.”

Have a lovely long weekend and I will see you all on Wednesday.

Miss Meechan

 

Another busy and exciting week in P2M.

Our week started off as usual with our spelling lesson on Monday morning. This week we were focusing on the ‘y’ sound e.g. my, cry, reply. Mrs Purdie came to see our spelling this week and she was very impressed with how good we are with this, we loved showing off our skills to her.

Our number lesson this focused on partitioning (breaking up numbers). We done this through the use of hundred blocks, tens sticks and units cubes. It was quite a tricky task but with lots of practise we soon got to grips with this and were ‘building’ numbers using this resource in no time! We even played an online game to further our knowledge with this – look out for this game in the homework next week!

  

We have done lots of practise with our learn-its this week. Have you been using your new individualised learn-its for practising at home? In class we completed a matching task with some learn-its which are quite tricky, we were working to match these up as quick as a ‘CLIC’.

We have come to the end of our addition and subtraction topic and this week we have been working on problem solving. Miss Meechan would read us a problem and then we had to decide if it would be an addition or subtraction problem before solving it. This was quite tricky but very satisfying when we found the correct answer. We also played a new board game called ‘bus stop’. Why don’t you ask your child about this game.

This week was Catholic Education Week and this year was focusing on ‘learning to be merciful’. Ask your child what ‘being merciful’ means?  We took this theme and focused on 2 parables – the lost sheep and the prodigal son. Firstly we listened to the parable of the lost sheep and then Miss Meechan told us that there were some lost sheep in our classroom and it was our task to be good shepherds and find them. We then created our own ‘lost sheep’ and made this into a new display in our classroom.

 

Next week is ‘technologies week’ at St. Ninians. However, we decided to start this theme early. As part of our Katie Morag topic we wanted to learn about transport to and from the island – boats in particular. We looked at a range of images of different types of boats – fishing boats, rowing boats, cruise ships and even catamarans. We then used a range of recycled materials and created our own boat as part of a group. We had to think about what materials would help the boat float and what materials might sink. Floating was very important because we would be taking our boats to the pond to test them out!

 

 

 

 

 

 

We love working as a team and we are very competitive in P2M so we decided to turn this into a competition… a boat race! As you can see from the pictures Miss Meechan and Mr McCurdy took this challenge very seriously… and won the competition!

 

  

Our writing lesson this week was all about writing instructions. To do this we made crispy cakes. After we made the cakes we had to think about the different steps that were involved from washing your hands all the way to letting the cakes cool down before eating. We had some extra cakes left over so we shared these out with Mrs Purdie and some other teachers who thought they were delicious too!

Finally this week we welcomed Miss McCormack into our classroom and we are pleased that she is going to be working with us for 6 weeks! We look forward to sharing our learning with you Miss McCormack.

We started off our exciting week by learning a new sound as part of our phonics: ‘igh’. This was a great task as we used a new vowel house resource to help us with spelling the ‘igh’ soon. We had to find the correct picture and put this sound into the correct place in the vowel house. We were successful learners at this task and Miss Meechan was very impressed with our spelling – some of us even managed to spell the word ‘frightened’ – WOW!

 

This week in our number challenge groups we have been focusing on halving numbers. We are all so good at doubling numbers and we were now looking at the similarities between doubling and halving. We started this task by cutting a plate to half to remind us that when halving an item or number we are splitting it into 2 different groups. With a partner we were given a number of cubes and we had to half the cubes with a partner. We also played ‘hit the button’ on the smart board to help us answer these questions as quick as a ‘CLIC’. Please find the link below to have practise at home too.

http://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button

   

We are now coming to the end of our subtraction topic in number and we were finishing this off by finding the missing number in subtraction sums. The triangles group were using the number line and our tiger to help find the missing value. We also enjoyed playing a challenging game on the smart board which involved us finding the missing numbers – have a look out for this in next week’s homework. We also played a new game in our number groups called ‘magic cauldron’. Why don’t you ask your child about this game? We all enjoyed playing this game.

  

On Tuesday we were lucky to have a visit from a librarian who read us a story. She showed us three story books and we had to vote which story we would like to listen to. 23 of us voted for ‘Mouse’s First Night at Midnight School’. Have you heard this story before?

Would you believe it that P2 have been learning about coordinates?! Yes… you read correctly! As part of Katie Morag topic we wanted to learn about reading a map. We now know that in some maps you have to use coordinates to find a specific place. We had a map of the ‘Isle of Struay’ and had to find certain coordinates as well as planting objects in other coordinates. We worked with a partner on this task and it was so much fun!

         

We continued our maths topic of measuring on Wednesday. This week we were focusing on measuring weight. Again, we were using our estimating skills and estimated how heavy certain objects would be using non-standard units of measurement (cubes) i.e. how many cubes would it take to balance an object on a set of balance scales. We were also working on the language used in measuring weight (heavy, light, heavier and lighter). Finally, we measured using real measurements – kilograms. We done this through an interactive game on the smart board – here is the link to try it out at home.

http://www.ictgames.com/mostlyPostie.html

  

What a fantastic writing lesson we had on Thursday. To start off our instructions writing lesson we made a sandwich. As a class we put the steps involved in this process into the correct order before writing our own instructions. It was so tricky for Miss Meechan to pick a star writer this week.

     

Don’t forget to check out the school facebook page on Friday afternoon for a video of our assembly!

 

We started our week off in P2M by learning about the ‘wh’ sound. This was quite tricky as it was hard to tell between the ‘w’ sound and the ‘wh’ sound. If we hold our hand up to our mouth and make the ‘wh’ sound we will feel a blow of air but you won’t feel that with the ‘w’ sound – this is how we can tell the difference.

We continued with our gymnastics block of learning in PE and this week we focused on partner balances and travelling. Have a look at some of our partner balances. What do you think?

 

We have been really enjoying our maths topic of measuring and this week we were focusing on measuring volume in millilitres. We have been estimating (we know that this means having a guess) the volume of different objects and then testing our estimations by measuring this in a beaker and reading the measurement in millilitres.

 

We have also been practising for our Katie Morag assembly which will take place on Friday. We will be filming our assembly so we can share this learning with all of you. Remember to practise your lines at home and have your costumes/tartan in for Wednesday.

You will never guess what happened to us on Thursday?! When we got to school, we were asked to check the security camera in the playground because Mrs McCabe had found some funny going-ons when she was checking the cameras. We checked and we found that there had been a rocket in our playground! We had a little think about what we thought had happened and then we remembered… Mrs Purdie and Miss Smyth weren’t in school… had they been taken away in the rocket? This called for an investigation! We checked that everyone in our area and the nursery were safe and then asked everyone to help us… if they heard anything about a rocket they had to let us know. When we got back to class we wrote down about what we thought had happened with the rocket.

Katie wrote: “The rocket landed in the playground because it wanted to take Mrs Purdie. A red rocket was going to New York. They were going on holiday. Mrs Purdie was going to a swimming pool.”

Teegan wrote: “Mrs Purdie was in the rocket because a space alien took her. She went to the moon. Miss Smyth was in the rocket.”

We are still enjoying our structured play with our friends in P2B as part of our Katie Morag topic.

What a busy week back in P2M. We started off the week by finding out what our sounds were going to be for our spelling this week. We have been finding the difference between the ‘e’ and ‘i’ sounds this week. This was done through lots of different fun and active spelling games. One of our active spelling strategies this week was choo-choo words. Why don’t you ask your child about how to make choo-choo words? We also played word bingo where we really had to listen for the difference in the ‘e’ and ‘i’ sounds. Bartosz was our bingo winner twice!

We have continued our numeracy topic of subtraction but our sums are getting much trickier now. This week some group have been working on finding a missing number in a subtraction number sentence. Other groups have been working on finding the difference between 2 numbers: they know that in take away sums we always have to start with the biggest number. Did you enjoy playing the interactive subtraction game for homework this week. Here is the link for you to play it again: (remember to select numbers within 20)

http://www.topmarks.co.uk/Flash.aspx?f=PostSortingcalculationsv2

Our maths topic of measurement continued this week and we learned how to measure volume in millilitres and litres. We tried to get the water right on the line so the exact capacity was inside. We also estimated a range of volumes e.g. how many cups of water would it take to fill this jug. We used lots of different sizes of jugs during this task.

We continued our Katie Morag topic this week. Our art lesson this week focused on the skills of using different tones and shades of colour. Using this knowledge we designed and created our very own tartan. We have put some of these on display on our ‘Katie Morag’ display and the rest in our class book. Have a look next time you are at our classroom.

When we created our ‘Katie Morag’ topic plan last week we decided that we would like to learn some Scottish songs. This week we have been learning ‘Caledonia’ and ‘Ye Canny Shove Yer Granny’. We are looking forward to signing these at our assembly in the next few weeks.

We finished our busy week off with some structured play with our friends from P2B. Each structured play station was based on our interdisciplinary topic of Katie Morag.

Here are some photographs of us enjoying our Christmas party. Check out the school facebook page for some videos of our Scottish Country dancing.

 

 

 

 

 

On Monday we had PE with a difference. As the hall was being used for Christmas parties we transformed our classroom into a yoga studio and enjoyed some yoga. Our yoga followed the story of a dolphin who we had to help on an adventure. It was lots of fun.

Tuesday was so much fun and we all looked great in our Christmas jumpers. We also enjoyed our Christmas lunch too. All of our Christmas fun in the morning got us in the spirit for our party in the afternoon where we enjoyed some Scottish dancing, disco dancing, a snack and we even got to meet Santa. What a busy day! Have a look at the P2 Party post for some videos and pictures.

On Thursday we had great fun at the pantomime, it was the story of Jack and the Beanstalk and was very funny.

We are looking forward to our last day before the holidays tomorrow. In the morning we are having a Christmas sing-a-long where we will be singing Frozen’s ‘Let it Go’.

Have a lovely Christmas

Miss Meechan and P2M

What a busy and eventful week in P2M! It is safe to say we are now well and truly in the Christmas spirit.

Firstly I would like to thank you all for bringing the children along to both the evening performances of the nativity, it was a fantastic turn out for both shows. Also, thank you very much for supporting the children by buying the tickets and watching the performances. We hope you enjoyed it as much we did. As you know, the nativity was filmed which will be able to buy on DVD soon. However, P1 and P2’s were allowed a sneaky preview and all gathered together on Friday morning to watch back their performance. Everyone was fantastic!

 

We have done lots of consolidating on long vowel sounds, digraphs and constant clusters this week. We have been consolidating the following sounds: ay, ow, ing, sh, ch, th and ea. One of our favourite activities we done on this was the fly squat game. We had lots of fun and we were all very competitive!

We are coming to the end of our North Pole topic but not without some more fantastic art work. This week we completed chalk drawings and worked on the art of blending colour by smudging the chalk. We create Arctic snowy scenes and then completed these off with foam shapes. Children will be bringing these home next. I can’t wait to hear what you think of them.

 

We loved our teamwork task this week where we had to create a paper chain (frozen themed of course!) This was quite a tricky task to do with a partner but some pairs showed excellent teamwork skills. Maliha and Teegan had a super strategy. Maliha was gluing the sheets and Teegan was threading them through into the chain. After we stuck all the chains together we checked to see how long it was. We were very impressed with how long it was!

Have a lovely weekend,

Miss Meechan and P2M