St Ninian's Primary School

Feeling happy in P1R

What a busy week it’s been.

In literacy the children have been learning the ng sound. They have been playing sound bingo, reading sentences with ng words and playing games on the smartboard. They are really confident at recognising Fry’s words and punctuation as you can see from these pictures.

In maths we have been counting objects up to 20 and have enjoyed some noisy warm ups with our counting songs.

Feelings have been the theme in IDL and we’ve had some great discussions. We listened to some music and had to guess what emotion it sounded like then drew feelings faces. We then made a feelings wheel using lines and colours for different emotions. These are now on our class display.

The competition continued in PE and this week we learned how to throw a javelin. Ask your child the rhyme which helps them remember how to do this. Kyle and Filip were very good at this and threw their javelins the furthest.

I was very proud of all of the children this morning when they led mass at St Philip’s. They all showed how responsible they could be and the parishioners commented on this. WELL DONE BOYS AND GIRLS!

P2M Weekly News

What an exciting week we have had in P2M this week.

We started our new topic of ‘People Who Help Us’. All children have shown great enthusiasm for this IDL topic already. We began the topic by thinking about jobs; why jobs were important; what jobs people in our families have; what jobs could help other people etc. After our class discussion we created our topic plan. Have a look out for it on our new topic plan next time you are in our classroom. This first person who helps us that we have been learning about is a librarian. On Wednesday we visited the library at the Lanthorn to find out all the different ways a library could help us now and in the future.

The librarian read us a book called ‘Dewey the Library Cat’. This story helped us learn about all the different jobs a librarian has to do. If you would like to listen to the story again you can watch it here:

We were also given a class library card and we all picked a book to take back to school. We learned how to work the check-out system and we look forward to returning to the library shortly to return our books and choose a new one.

It was such a sunny day when we went to the library that we couldn’t resist a play in the park on our way back to school.

Our structured play has been updated to meet our new topic. What was your favourite part of structured play? What are you looking forward to doing next week?

Counting fun in Primary One!

It’s been a busy week in P1R with lots of learning and fun!

In maths we have continued to develop our understanding of numbers and have been using songs and games to help us achieve this. One of our favourite games has been paint splat, working out numbers before, after and between. Try it out for yourself on our maths resources blog.

We also enjoyed looking for dot patterns and explaining to the rest of the class how we worked out the answer. Here’s what some of the boys and girls said about this pattern:

“I counted the dots one by one”

“I just knew it was 5”

“I counted the 4 on the outside, then added the 1 in the middle”

Image result for number dot patterns

Look at this dot pattern and tell someone how many dots there are and explain how you worked out the answer. Leave us a comment below.

Image result for number dot patterns

In IDL we planned our new topic, “All about me”, the children came up with some really good ideas which we’ll keep you posted about in our weekly blog posts. This week the focus was on ‘We are all different’, the children took part in discussions, listened to songs, wrote personal descriptions, made a torn paper portrait and did an eye colour survey. I think you’ll agree that they managed to cover a lot of subject areas using their IDL theme.

We also started our inter-house championship in PE, this week’s event was high jump. Everyone tried their best to master the scissor jump and the children loved when the bar got higher and higher! Well done to Oma, Alice and Dominic who were our house winners this week for the event.

Next week we will be trying out the new route for our daily mile, watch this space for an update on how we get on. Some of the route will now be on grass so try to remember trainers for next week.

Well done to all the children for participating in Ninian’s Natter this week, all the children have now had a learning conversation with myself to review last term’s goals and set new ones. If you didn’t make Ninian’s Natter ask them about their goals, we will continue to review these as the term progresses.

Last thing to mention is today’s Achievement Assembly, our class winner was Harry who was chosen for showing creativity in his work – well done!

See you all next week, remember our class mass is on Thursday 28th April at 9.30am in St Philip’s (wee chapel), it would be nice to see some parents/families there to support the children.

P5 Digesting The Facts

This week we focused on learning about the digestive system of the human body. We learned about the functions of the body’s organs involved in the process and how food travels through each section. We then turned this information into a written report using diagrams as well as writing.

In maths we revised our understanding of finding a fraction of an amount, for example 1/5 of 25, and then extended this into finding 2/5s of 25 and so on.

We also looked at finding factors of numbers. As an extra challenge find out what special name we give to a number greater than 1 that can only be divided equally by 1 and itself, post your answer for a dojo! 🙂

On both Tuesday and Wednesday the children worked with Mrs Thomson to produce some very colourful and creative sun designs, once you have looked at these you know summer is nearly here! Where are my shades?!

Now the weather is improving hopefully more of our PE lessons will be outdoors, on overcast days you might want to bring warmer PE kit. Our next step in PE is to use our sprint starts that we learned in the hall outside where we can run a full sprint distance! Looking forward to it…I will definitely need to remember my trainers!

Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Currie

Maths resources for term 4

The children have asked for some maths activities to use at home, here are a few links to songs and games:

Some games, click on the title:

Paint splat

Blast Off-number names to 20

Two less than

Reading numbers to 20

Adding to 10

Let me know which one’s you try by leaving a message for me!

Nursery News

It was lovely to welcome back all the children on Monday and we are looking forward to a very busy but exciting last term. As part of Creative Industries week the children had a visit from Andrew a musician who worked with the boys and girls on their favourite Nursery rhymes. They all did a fantastic job with their singing and dancing.

Nursery rhymes was also the focus in our transition programme as the children had to pick their favourite rhyme and perform it for the Primary 1 children who in turn showed us their fantastic work and learning in their rhymes. We carried on this learning in our water tray when the children decided to put a long tube round the top of the tray and see how the water moved up and down it just like Incy Wincy Spider moved up and down the water spout!

AM children decided on Humpty Dumpty and PM children chose Incy Wincy Spider as their favourite rhymes. As well as singing their rhymes the children also made props and puppets. They all did an amazing job! A big thank you goes to Mrs Roy , Miss Diamond and all the Primary 1 children for working with us on this project. There will be lots of further opportunities to work with Primary 1 as part of our transition programme. A booklet explaining all the planned activities will be issued to parents next week.

Wednesday was a very busy day for baking birthday cakes as Leon in AM and Klaudia in PM celebrated their birthdays. They both did a great job of making delicious cakes.

Also next week as part of our consultative planning we will be asking the children for their ideas on what they would like their next topic to be. Watch this space!

Next Thursday Nursery Natter takes place at 2.00 pm for our PM children and on Friday between 10.30 and 11.00 for our AM children. This gives you an opportunity to come along and read your child’s Learner Journey and discusss with them all they are learning at Nursery.

Also on Thursday during the Natter there will be a Bake Sale . This will be the first time Nursery has been involved with this. Our PM children along with P1D and P2B are asked to bake some cakes which can then be bought during the natter. Half of the money made at the sale will be split between the three classes and the other half goes to the Parent Council. The children can then decide what they would like to buy for Nursery with their share. We would really appreciate any donations of home baking which can be handed in at the beginning of the PM Nursery session on Thursday. The AM children will be involved in a Bake Sale later on in the term.

Hope you all have a lovely weekend.

The Nursery Team.

Creativity in P1R

As the title suggests this week the focus has been on ‘being creative’. P1R have been working on a joint project with the nursery as part of the transition programme this year. Our chosen theme was ‘Rhyme Time’ and we linked the learning in literacy and the expressive arts subjects.

We chose Dingle Dangle Scarecrow as the song we would perform for the nursery.

On Monday we had to identify the rhyming words in the song using highlighters and we played rhyming games on the smartboard. We also used the wooden spoons we had brought in from home to make scarecrow puppets. Then on Tuesday in our reading lesson we had to visualise a scarecrow from the descriptive poem we heard. On Wednesday we played rhyming bingo and washing line rhymes on the netbooks. Thursday was a bit trickier as we had a go at writing acrostic poems about a scarecrow and then did some watercolour collage paintings. Friday was our big performance where we dressed up and sang our song to the nursery children then we went over to the nursery to hear their performance. We all enjoyed ‘Rhyme Time’ and look forward to welcoming the nursery children to our carousel activities over the coming weeks.

In maths this week we have progressed onto developing our knowledge of numbers within 20, this has involved counting forwards/backwards, sequencing and ordering. The children enjoyed using the number flowers to play games, the favourite was when they got to steal flowers from the garden and the other children had to guess what flowers were missing!

Our PE block this term will be athletics focusing on running, throwing and jumping. We will be practising these skills every week in the lead up to Sports Day in June where we will take part in the inter-house championship.

In RE we have started to prepare for our class mass which will be on Thursday 28th April in St Philip’s. Next week the children will bring home a copy of the hymns we are learning and some children will be selected to read the bidding prayers or be a part of the offertory procession. I would be grateful if you could assist your child in these preparations.

Next week we look forward to starting our new IDL topic which will focus on Health and Wellbeing.

P2M Weekly News

We came back to P2M refreshed after our Easter holidays and ready for more exciting learning. There have been a few changes to our learning, one of which is our personalised tricky words. The children were really excited about this challenge in class and were keen to practise their tricky words. We spend 10 minutes every day Monday-Thursday practising reading these words with our partner. Have you enjoyed practising this at home too?

We started our new PE topic of athletics on Wednesday, each different event is a competition with all points going towards our interhouse championship. On Monday in PE, we finished off our ball games topic in PE by having a benchball tournament. It was lots of fun and all teams were very competitive.

Our number topic of multiplication is coming to an end but not before working on some really tricky sums! We were using our multiplication sums to find the missing number in a multiplication sum. Miss Meechan was very impressed with how quickly we all managed to find the missing number.

Have you heard about our ‘Creative Industries’ week? We have participated in a range of activities for this week. On Tuesday we were lucky to join in with a music workshop. It was lots of fun! We learned a new song to sing; kept the beat of the song by clapping and played lots of different instruments.

We also finished our ‘mod rock’ cars. What do you think? We have really enjoyed making these and love the finished results.

On Thursday we created a comic strip with a partner. We had to choose 2 different characters and think about an adventure that these 2 characters could be involved with. After making our comic strip we used our ideas to out on a puppet show to the rest of the class using our new puppet theatre.

We are still learning to tell the time in our maths topic. This week we were learning how to tell the time on ‘half past’ the hour. We then worked out the difference between o’clock and half past.

The game for our maths homework next week is based on this school. Please use this link below for next week’s homework:

http://www.iboard.co.uk/iwb/Set-the-Clock-Getting-Started-1432

Finally, we would like to show you everything that we have bought using the money we made from our bake sale. Thank you to everyone who bought some goodies from our bake sale.

Summer Fair

Our Summer Fair is on Saturday 7th May 10am till 12noon. Pupils were issued a leaflet in school bags this week.

The event needs a large number of volunteers to man the stalls and we really struggle to get people to help. May be you could help for 1 hour or may be 2 hours? Volunteers can be parents, carers, grandparents, aunties/uncles – all family members are welcome to lend a hand. Get in touch via facebook or leave your contact details at the office – WE NEED YOU!

Message from Fundraising/Parent Council

Malaga Spanish Immersion Week

Hola!

This week, Mrs Caskie, Miss Ford and Mrs Scott have been on a Spanish Immersion Course in Malaga, Spain. Funded by the British Council and run by LFEE , it has provided the opportunity for any staff to develop their knowledge and understanding of Spanish.

We arrived on Saturday evening and met our tutors as well as the rest of the group from regions across Scotland. Each day, we have attended classes and been ‘pupils’ for a change – taking part in active learning and working together to communicate in Spanish across a wide variety of contexts.

We have also had opportunities to take part in traditional Spanish culture including a visit to a historic village, a Flamenco dance workshop and sampling local Spanish food.

This has proved a fantastic experience for us all and we are looking forward to incorporating the exciting ideas and resources shared on the course.

Tomorrow is our last day and in groups, we will be presenting our learning from the week.

Adios y Hasta Luego!

Mrs Caskie, Miss Ford and Mrs Scott