Primary 1 – Page 39 – St Ninian's Primary School

P1M Weekly News

Another busy and productive week in P1M. Here are our highlights:

Monday was ‘European Day of Languages’. We learned how to say ‘hello’ in a few different languages. Polish “cześć”: pronounced “cheh-sh-ch”. French “bonjour”. Irish Gaelic “Dia dhuit” Pronounced “gee-ah-ditch”. Spanish “Hola”. We have been really enjoying learning more and more Spanish in class. Pedro our Spanish Parrot is very impressed. He even joined us on the daily mile on ‘European Day of Languages’. We also made Spanish flags to celebrate this day.

We have been learning all about God’s world as part of our RE lessons. We have watched and responded to the Creation Story. This is the link we watched:

This week we explored the school garden to look for evidence of God’s creation. We loved finding some animals, there were lots of bees in the garden and Patryk told us that the bees were collecting nectar. We found some plants which we loved the smell of, Miss Meechan told us that this plant was called lavendar. Trex enjoyed watching the bees too!

On Tuesday we went to the library. We were very excited to take Trex with us because this was part of our topic plan. We found out about how to behave properly in the library and all of the different things the library can help us with. We listened to a story called ‘The Library Lion’. We even got our own class library card and we all chose a book to take back to the classroom. We will return to the library in a few weeks time to return our books and choose a new one.

We have now learned all of our set 1 sounds and we are busy completing lots of different activities to consolidate our knowledge of these sounds. Ask your child to tell you about some of the activities from this week.

On Thursday when we came into our classroom we were very happy to find an office area! In the office area we have been very busy answering phone calls and writing out important notes and filing them away. It has been a very busy office! Trex sent us a new letter this week. He told us that his baby brother was going to be joining our class. He asked us to write his brother a letter to tell him all about our classroom. We can’t wait until Trex’s baby brother joins us! Watch this space…

Trex also wanted us to take some photographs so he could send them to his Mum and Dad. We have made a book for Trex with lots of photographs; all of our names in the book and some drawings too. Have a look for this next time you are in our classroom.

This week we have been continuing to order numbers to 10 as part of our numeracy lessons and we have also been learning about number names. We completed some dot-to-dots but instead of numbers, it was number names. This was quite tricky but we all tried our very best. We have been using a resource called numicon and ordering these from smallest to largest. One of our favourite games in our class is bingo and this week we played number name bingo. Miss Meechan has been so impressed with how well we are learning number names.

Pupil voice. Our favourite parts of the week:

Casper: “I liked getting dojo points.”

Kyle: “I like when everyone gets dojo points.”

MacKenzie: “I liked play time.”

Kaitlyn: “I liked handwriting.”

Jakub: “I like saying my prayers.”

Kerr: “I liked playing in the office.”

Kaimee: “I liked playing with Sophie.”

Jarred: “I liked going to the library. I like the book I picked from the library.”

Adam: “I liked taking pictures of Trex around the school.”

Oliver: “I liked playing with toys.”

Sophie: “I liked going to assembly.”

Being active and reflective in P1R

Wow, where has this week gone, it’s been full of fun, learning and reflection.

Monday started with European Day of Languages and we decided to start the day by greeting one another in different languages:

Amber chose to use French and said “Bonjour” to the class.

Dawid and Klaudia taught us how to say hello and good morning in Polish “cześć and dzień dobry”.

Ephraim chose to use Spanish and said “Buenos dias”.

Mrs Roy chose to use Italian and said “Buongiorno”.

This theme continued throughout the day and during Maths Klaudia and Dawid taught us how to count to 10 in Polish, we found it tricky but had good fun trying! Then before hometime we did a fun Spanish fitness song which is Mrs Roy’s favourite. Click on the link and have a go at home!

This week we introduced ‘k’ and ‘ck’ to the class and we quickly realised that they sound the same but are written differently. We spent most of our phonics lessons revising our set 1 sounds and blending sounds to make words. Some of the activities we did were: musical sounds, using our ‘big mouth’ to match the sounds, blending with cubes and the mats and using the ipads to practise forming the letters correctly. Next week we will begin to do some assessments with set 1 sounds so will spend some time consolidating and reflecting on what we have learned so far.It has been lovely to read and hear about what the children have chosen to do at home using our new literacy homework menu. Keep up the good work!

In maths we are almost finished learning about the numbers to 10 and progressed onto ordering and number names. We are all getting better at putting the numbers in the right order and did some super independent work during our carousels to show this. We did a cut and stick ordering task and played some fun ordering games on the smartboard, you can do these at home too using the maths homework menu links. Have a look at our Talking Book when you’re next in our class to see our progress so far – we enjoy looking back and reflecting on our learning.

Trex was at the forefront of our IDL this week as we had to do lots of tasks to help him settle in and find his way around the school and local area. In our writing lesson we wrote him a letter which was tricky as we had to do it all by ourselves by having a go and using our phonics and tricky word walls. Mrs Roy was so proud of us all! We received another letter from Trex and decided to make him some picture maps and routes that he could follow to find places near our school. Next week we are hoping to go for a walk on Wednesday to visit one of these places. The most enjoyable activity was using Google Earth to find out where our school was on the map. We all sat down, put on our seatbelts and enjoyed travelling down from space and landing in our school playground. As an extension of this task many children wanted to visit other places so that’s what we did!

Bernice wanted to go to the beach so we went to ‘Burntisland’. Paul L wanted to go to ‘Bubbles’, James wanted to go to ‘his house’ and Klaudia wanted to go to ‘McDonalds’. Try using Google Earth at home to find your own address, it’s great fun!!

PE was all about teamwork and developing our movement skills. We set up lots of different stations to allow us to practise throwing, catching, balancing, running, travelling, etc. These are all really important skills to develop as later on in PE we will look at some specific sports which use these skills. We worked in trios and had to sometimes wait for our turn to use the equipment, share resources and help one another. This links in with our value of teamwork and friendship which is really important to us in P1R.

European Day of Languages

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDovNibBLd0

On Monday it was the European day of Languages and to mark the occasion many classes took part in some language-based activities. Here are a few examples:

In Primary one they practised morning greetings in French, Spanish, Polish, Italian and English. Then Dawid and Klaudia taught the class how to count to ten in Polish. They also took part in a Spanish fitness song.

Primary three learnt to sing a Spanish song and Primary five tried to match different words for Hello to the right language. They also took part in a language carousel.

Try practising a few of the different languages using the link above!

P1M Weekly News

P1M managed to squeeze a lot of learning into this short week. Our sounds for this week were ‘i’ and ‘n’. We completed lots of different activities to help us learn these. We have also started to blend our sounds together to make some words. We had fun playing with stones and building words – even Trex took part! Well done Trex!

As part of our ‘Travelling Trex’ topic we really wanted to show our buddies Trex. Therefore, this week we participated in a structured play session with our buddies. We only managed to complete a few stations so we are looking forward to finishing this on Monday. Here are some photographs of the different activities. I think Jakub makes a fantastic dinosaur! What do you think?

Finally, this week we celebrated ‘International Day of Peace’. We learned about what peace means and some symbols for peace. We created some art work displaying these symbols – either the peace logo or a dove. Today, we used our art work to create a path of peace between our school and Dedridge Primary. Well done to Jakub who represented P1M at this. Check out the school facebook page for the photographs. Also on ‘International Day of Peace’ we took part in some yoga. We enjoyed it so much that every day after lunch time or break time we are going to take part in some yoga.

Today we joined our first committee. Ask your child if they can remember their committee and what activities they completed during that committee?

Peace and unity in P1R

As the title suggests the theme for this short week has been ‘peace’ as we celebrated International Day of Peace on Wednesday.

We began our day by taking part in some yoga to relax our bodies and minds in preparation for the day ahead. The children enjoyed this smartstart and have asked that we continue this next week. Everyone agreed that we all felt ‘peaceful’ when it was finished, even the adults in the room joined in too! We enjoyed learning a song about peace and decided to add some of our own actions to accompany it. The children suggested that we make a video of our singing so that’s what we did! It was fun watching it back in class on the ‘big screen’. In Art we made our very own peace pictures by doing some handprinting and drawing. They all looked lovely and everyone tried really hard to make their doves. These were then used to make a path of peace to our friends in Dedridge Primary School on Friday morning. We were really proud of James and Paul who represented our class and helped to lay the path of peace. Check out our school facebook page for photographs of the community event.

Here is the link to the song we have been learning. Ask your child to sing along and show you the actions.

In literacy we managed to learn 2 more sounds – ‘i’ and ‘n’. We tried out some new carousel activities and two of the favourites were the ‘butterbean sounds’ and the ‘n’ craft activity. Now that we have learned another vowel sound we are quickly realising that we can make more words.

On Thursday we attended our first Achievements Assembly led by Mrs Purdie. It was nice hearing about all the achievements children are having outside of school. Amber shared her success with the whole school and brought in something to show us all.

Finally on Friday we got to take part in ‘Committees’ – all the children were asked to select a committee they would like to be a part of for the school year. Everyone was really looking forward to this as they would get to work with children in other classes and with other members of staff. These will run throughout the school session and many of the children will be involved in projects and events. Ask your child which committee they have joined and what they liked about the morning.

Trex joins P1M

What an exciting week we have had in P1M and the highlight for all the children has been the arrival of Trex. On Tuesday we found a letter in our classroom. The letter told us about a new visitor that would be joining our class. This person is from a land far away and wants us to show them about our local area. The letter told us that the person is very tall, with a long tail and 3 claws on each foot, they also have green skin. We listened carefully to these instructions and drew a picture of what we thought they would like. We decided that it was going to be a dinosaur that was joining our class! Thankfully, the letter told us that it wasn’t a scary dinosaur and in fact he is very shy and nervous. Finally, after a long wait, on Thursday Trex appeared in our classroom – he was hiding on Adam’s chair! We took Trex a tour of the school (we loved visiting P4/5 and Mrs Wassell) and we even took him on the daily mile. We have decided that we want to teach Trex all of our sounds and numbers that we now know – he even has is own dojo account too!

In PE we have been developing our gross and fine motor skills. Our PE lessons with Mr McCurdy and Miss Meechan follow the same pattern where we make our way around 9/10 circuit stations with a partner. Each station helps us build and improve our gross or fine motor skills. Each week we add a few new stations to explore.

Have you heard about Pablo our Spanish parrot? This week Pablo was teaching us how to say our name in Spanish. Me llamo Pablo (my name is Pablo) – pronounced: mee yamo. Pablo has already taught us how to say hello (ola), adios (goodbye) buenos dias (good morning) buenas tardes (good afternoon) and buenos noches (good night). What a clever parrot he is! Here is Kaimee and Poppy telling Pablo their names in Spanish. Have you practised your Spanish at home?

We are continuing to work on our 1:1 correspondence and number formation in our number lessons. This week we took part in lots of fun activities to help us with this. Did you see our paper plate and pom-pom activity on display on our maths wall last night at Ninians Natter? We have also made different shapes and towers with cubes. We had to count out the correct number of cubes and make a tower with them. We played a new game on the smart board this week. Here is the link for it if you wish to play it at home too:

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

In the photographs you can see 2 photos of us participating in a counting exercise song. Why don’t you try this at home too?

This week we learned the ‘a’ and ‘t’ sound. The ‘a’ sound is a very special vowel sound. It is a black sound because to make the sound it comes through a big black tunnel in our mouths, at the back of the tunnel is a special house where all the vowel sounds live. Check out the ‘a jolly phonics’ video on youtube for our song for this sound. The ‘t’ sound is a blue sound as it comes from our tongue. Have you listened to this song on youtube too? This week as part of our literacy activities we played phonics hop-scotch, i-spy and bingo. We also used black play-dough to form the ‘a’ sound and blue paint for the ‘t’ sound. We have even started to stretch our sounds together to make some words – cat, map, cap etc. What a busy week!

Our writing lesson was very exciting this week. Last week, we created our own dinosaur character. This week, we had to imagine that our dinosaur came alive and jumped out of our jotters. He walked about the classroom for a little while and then decided he wanted to go somewhere. Some dinosaurs wanted to go to the park, some wanted to go swimming and some even wanted to go camping! We are beginning to share our ideas with our peers before we begin our writing and Miss Meechan is so impressed how much our listening and talking skills are improving through these tasks. Before or after we complete our story writing we can participate in a range of different literacy based activities. Below are some pictures of Patryk reading a book in the story; Sophie is watching a puppet show that Romera and Rutendo were putting on; Daniel is playing a phonics game on the smart board; Jarred and Esmee and drawing and colouring in pictures and Kaimee is writing her story. We are all really enjoying our writing lessons.

Have a lovely long weekend everyone, see you on Wednesday.

Miss Meechan and P1M

A new addition to P1R

The children are all looking forward to their holiday weekend as a reward for all their hard work and effort in class this week.

Our literacy work got interesting this week as we introduced our first vowel sound ‘a’. The children were excited to slide sounds together to make words and were very proud of themselves when they could read CVC words. Next week we’ll introduce another vowel sound. In writing we used the heading ‘my pet dinosaur’ and I introduced the children to my friend ‘Dino’. We all enjoyed giving Dino a cuddle and then talking about what we would do if we had a pet dinosaur. This then prepared us for writing our stories. Ask your child what they wrote about, there were some super stories.

In maths we continued to work on our counting skills enjoying a variety of tasks to help us with this. We joined in with some counting songs, drew numbers, used pom poms to count, used the number fans for number recognition. One of our favourite activities was ‘subitising’ – this is where we had to count the dot patterns as quickly as we could looking for patterns to help us.

IDL took a twist this week when the boys and girls received a letter from Trex. They were given some tasks to do in preparation for Trex joining the class on Thursday. They had to listen to a description of him and draw a picture, they had to tidy the classroom and lots more. As he was a little shy we had to go hunting to find him and James found him hiding behind the puppet theatre. We’re all excited at the new arrival and can’t wait to teach Trex about our school and local area. We took him on our daily mile on Thursday. Have a look at our topic plan on display in our P1 area.

We decided to do our structured play in the lunch hall this week and set up lots of games. We chose values to focus on and picked teamwork and friendship. It was a lovely afternoon where the children worked in teams and played together.

We rounded off the week with our feast day celebrations. We learned all about our school saint and attended our first school mass. It was a lovely way to end the week.

Enjoy the holiday weekend!!

Thank You Message from Fr. Paul

Just a wee note to say how touched I was with the events surrounding my final day in the school. Thanks for the Gift Card, and in particular thanks for the Book of Memories. It brought a tear to my eye when sifting through it.

I wish you, the staff and the kids at the school every grace and blessing for the future.

In Christ,

Fr Paul.

P1M Weekly News

What a fantastic week for P1M again. We have all settled in to school life so well and we are all engaging in the learning opportunities we are provided with. It has been a very busy week for us but we would like to share our highlights with you.

The sounds we have been working on this week are ‘s’ and ‘p’. We have really enjoyed the songs that go along with these sounds. Check these out on youtube by searing ‘s jolly phonics song’ and ‘p jolly phonics song’. One of the tasks we really enjoyed this week was forming the ‘s’ sound with pipe cleaners and wool – we used the colour blue for this because ‘s’ is a blue sound. Can you tell someone at home why it is a blue sound? Can you remember what colour of sound ‘p’ is? Why is it that colour?

We have continued our number topic of counting and number formation. We have now learned about the formation of numbers 0-8. We will be doing some work on 9 next week. We have also been working on counting through a range of different activities and games. We used our number formation booklets to practise our number formation. We also practised forming numbers in sand trays. We played games on the ipads and smartboard to help us with out counting and we loved playing hop-scotch too where we explored numbers to 20! Here are some pictures of our learning experiences in number work this week.

We are coming to the end of our ‘Harry and the Dinosaurs’ topic. This week we created our own dinosaur masks. We all picked a different mask to colour in and then we used lots of different materials to decorate them. We can’t wait for our masks to dry so we can pretend to be dinosaurs – keep an eye out for our pictures of this next week!

We loved our technologies lesson this week. We used coloured clay to create our own dinosaurs. After creating our dinosaurs we used the ipads to film short video clips of our classmates telling a short story using their dinosaur. Some of us were very creative and even use clay shaped rain to use in their video too. Miss Meechan and Miss Burns loved watching all of the videos!

Remember that on Monday we are getting our photographs taken for the courier so remember to bring your smiles and full school uniform!

Have a lovely weekend,

Miss Meechan and P1M

Learning through play

What a busy week we’ve all had in P1R!

In literacy we introduced ‘s’ and ‘p’ – the children are quickly picking up the sounds and looking forward to introducing our first vowel sound next week. They had fun in the glitter tray finding the hidden sounds, playing literacy games on the ipad and smartboard, sorting out the toys by their beginning sound and lots more.

Our story writing lesson, linked to our topic work, was really productive and everyone had a go at drawing a dinosaur and then describing it using their own words. We chose Nathan and Amber as our star writers this week as they had managed to sound out some of the words in their story. Their work will go on display in our classroom for everyone to see.

In maths we have been working on our counting skills through play based activities. We enjoyed playing hopscotch, tracing number shapes in flour and counting stickers in a matching game. We even had a go at Mrs Roy’s fitness challenge – we had to exercise and count at the same time.

IDL has been great fun as we have continued to work on the theme of dinosaurs. We made dinosaur masks to use in our drama and structured play, made playdough dinosaur models which we then used to film our very own mini-movies using the ipads.

Play was again at the heart of our Goldentime activities where the children chose an activity as a reward for gaining lots of dojo points. Here are some action shots.

I can’t wait to see what we’ll all get up to next week. Remember to bring your biggest smile for the Courier photographer on Monday.