First of all we would like to thank all the parents who came along to our focus groups as part of our review week. We really appreciated you taking the time to come along and we value your continued support.
We have been continuing with our Space topic this week and the children had the opportunity to make alien headbands and space play dough. The children also made a model of Earth using a football. What a great idea! Lots of rockets continue to be built in the construction area and some children even became human rockets!
In our Outdoor learning we have been looking at Numeracy and Literacy using ten green bottles and using books to look for signs of Spring and nature. The children then recorded their findings on paper. We have continued this indoors using matching games and Space pictures as a stimulus for writing. The children have also helped make a lovely Spring tree and painted some beautiful grass to go under it.
Our focus next week will be Easter. We will be looking at Easter traditions, take part in Easter crafts and of course looking for some hidden Easter eggs!
Just a little reminder that on Wednesday 23rd March the Nursery is joining the school to have Daily Mile with dad or grandad at 10.00am and 2.00pm. If you are free to come along and join in you are more than welcome to . No running required! Also on Thursday 24 March at 10.00am and 2.00pm we are having a Sponsored Bunny Hop where the children will be hopping round the school. Parents and Carers are invited to join us for this. There will be no sponsor forms issued for this but we would welcome any donations which will go towards the buying of new Nursery resources in consultation with the children.
Please note Nursery finishes on Thursday 24th March for the Easter holidays and everyone returns on Monday 11th April.
Have a lovely weekend.
Apologies for no photographs this week as our media space is full on the Blog. They will be added as soon as space becomes available.
Sorry we can’t post photographs this week but there is no media space on the blog, hopefully I can add these later.
As you may have guessed from the title we started a new topic in maths – time. The children have been learning about daily routines, clocks and recognising o’clock times. They have enjoyed taking part in a variety of activities this week to help them learn, eg. making a clock, playing time apps, using small clocks to make times, being teachers and checking others clocks, time bingo and using the time playdough mats. It has been great to see everyone making links in their learning and the children are now using the class clock with ease, especially to remind me when it is lunchtime!!
A game which we used for our plenary sessions was Stop the Clock, Oma is the current class champion with 18 seconds to beat. Try playing this at home and see how quickly you can match the times.
In phonics we were learning about ‘sh’ and ‘ch’, these are not easy yet the children were confidently reading and spelling words with these sounds very quickly. Some of the activities which helped us were glitter tray writing, sounds bingo, interactive games on the smartboard and much more! Here is a game to try out which practises sh,ch and th.
In IDL this week the focus was on Scottish produce – we had a great afternoon on Wednesday tasting lots of different Scottish produced food – salmon, tablet, porridge, raspberries, shortbread, oatcakes to name a few! Everyone had to choose their favourite which we then wrote about in Thursday’s writing lesson. It was interesting to see so many different foods being chosen, shortbread was very popular! My favourite was the tablet, delicious!!
PE was good fun as we continued to learn about travelling with objects, we introduced some new equipment this week and we are now using basketballs, footballs and tennis bats/balls. Some of the boys were showing off their dribbling skills they have learned at their out of school football clubs.
We ended the week with some outdoor learning, Mr McCurdy joined us on an environmental walk in our local area. We were able to spot many signs of spring and at the same time increase our fitness levels by walking 2 miles, yes that’s right, 2 miles! We used a map and followed the signs as we walked. It was only fair that the children were rewarded with some time at the playpark on the way back to school.
Thank you also to P7 for teaching us about the Stations of the Cross on Friday, we learned a lot about the Easter story. We will continue to learn about Easter next week.
Another busy week! Last week we gathered data from around the school to see which fruit children liked best in each class (this will be useful information for the Friday Healthy Tuck Trolley). We used the technique of tally marks to record the data and then we created a frequency table. Once we had this data organised we turned it into a bar graph using our learning from last week of what makes a “good” bar graph. Here are our completed graphs,
In our writing this week we recapped our knowledge of writing a science report and we completed another investigation where we heated up a salt water solution. we watched as the water evaporated and left the salt behind. We now know we can describe creating a salt solution as a reversible change. We used the following interactive resource in class to show this and Kieran asked if I could blog it so you can try it out at home. Enjoy.
This week we also participated in a basketball festival. Many thanks to Mrs Stewart, Mrs Rafferty and Mrs Mortimer who gave up their time to come along and help out. The children all had a great time.
Next week is our final week of the term, please remember we finish on Thursday! There will only be reading homework next week 🙂
We have had a fun filled week in P1D again this week.
We have decided as a class what our highlights have been and decided to share some of them with you!
We have been learning all about time and are experts at exploring O’Clock times using analogue and digital clocks. Maybe you could quiz us at home!
We loved playing time games on the Smart board and i-pads, making our very own clock and using playdough to make a specific time.
In Literacy we have been learning new sounds. We have been using the sounds to help us read words, spell words and practise writing using joined up handwriting! One of the highlight was using glitter trays to practise writing shiny ‘sh’s’.
As part of our farming topic we ave been looking at Scottish produce and where in Scotland some of these come from. We loved our food tasting session where we tasted haggis, potatoes, strawberries, raspberries, tablet, oatcakes, shortbread, cheese and smoked salmon! After deciding what we liked and what we weren’t so keen on, we wrote about our favourite one in story writing.
We ended the week with a music lesson exploring pitch, sound and rhythm and were very musical when we introduced musical instruments to the mix!
P2M had a fantastic week. We had a few visits from the review team this week and we were more than happy to show off our learning and our skills. Here are some of our highlights…
We have been working really hard with our ‘big maths’ – our version of ‘mental maths’. We are working on evaluating our own learning and thinking about what particular ‘big maths’ we personally need to improve on. Therefore, we have had the opportunity to choose what we do in maths lessons. This week we had some different stations to choose from. We could work on our ‘counting’ by playing ‘whack a mole ict games’ on the smart board (last week homework game) or by playing an app on the ipads. This app is called ‘skip counting’ if you want to download and use at home. We could also work on our learn-its through a range of different games. One of these games is also on the ipads and is called ‘math racer addition’ – why don’t you have a go of this at home too? One of the trickiest parts of our ‘big maths’ is ‘it’s nothing new’ and recently in this section we have been working on: if 7 – 2 is 5 then 50 – 20 is 50.
We have started our new maths topic of ‘time’. This week as an introduction to time we consolidated our knowledge of time from p1 and extended this further. We ordered some daily routine cards from the first thing we do in the morning to the last thing at night. As a challenge we tried to order these cards backwards too! We love a challenge in P2M. We also made clocks using a split pin to keep the hands in place so we can use this clock to learn how to tell the time. The first ‘time’ we learned to tell was ‘o’clock’ – it is ‘o’clock’ when the big hand points to the 12. We used time fans to play a ‘show me’ game. Miss Meechan thought we were so good at this game that she decided that we should be the teacher. Have a look at Miss Roy and Mr Quinn showing off their teaching skills. Miss Meechan wasn’t very good at the game and kept showing the wrong time… we had to help her find the correct time. We played a game on the smart board to help us with telling the ‘o’clock’ time. Have a go at home using this link: http://www.oswego.org/ocsd-web/games/StopTheClock/sthecR.html
Transport is such a fun topic and we are really enjoying our range of learning experiences. As you can guess we are very excited about our class trip on Wednesday to the transport museum in Glasgow. Remember to hand in your letter back to Miss Meechan if you want a school lunch to take on the trip with you! This week we began making cars using mod-rock. We don’t have any pictures of this as it was such a messy task our hands were all too dirty to take any! Check back next week to see the finish product. As promised from a few weeks ago here are our pictures of our paper mache hot air balloons. Can you spot anyone familiar?
Did you hear about the fairy door that magically appeared in our classroom this week? We all had some super ideas as to how it got there and we turned these ideas into imaginative stories. Ask your child who they thought put the door there?
This week was a new session from structured play with 8 new stations. Miss Meechan and Miss Boyes had a look at our self-evaluation forms from our last structured play to check what the favourite stations were and these were slightly changed to make them even better. Have a look of our photos of our new structured play session.
We raised over £150 at our bake sale meaning we have £51 to spend on some things for our classroom. Have a look back after the holidays to find out what we bought.
Finally, we say goodbye to Miss McCormack who has been working in our class for 6 weeks. Thank you Miss McCormack for all the exciting learning experiences you have provided us with… we are going to miss you.
Have you heard all about the game we played in PE this week? It was called dice dash. This game incorporates a range of skills from social interactions to speed and stamina. Ask your child about this game.
We are continuing with our number topic of multiplication and everyone is working really hard with this topic… Miss Meechan is really impressed! Our learning this week focused on ‘switcher’ sums. Sophie ‘switched’ the sum ‘2 x 4 – 2 groups of 4’ around because we can’t count in 4’s. She switched this sum to ‘4 x 2 – 4 groups of 2 because we can count in 2’s’. Great work, Sophie.
We have also been learning about ‘arrays’ to help us with multiplication. Last week we learned about arrays and this week we consolidated that knowledge through a range of activities. One of our activities was a competitive game with a trio or partner. In this picture you can see Robbie, Ethan and Imogen using the array flashcards to create and practise ‘times’ sums. Well done!
We are continuing to practise counting in steps of to help us with our multiplication knowledge of skip counting to count quickly in groups. We really enjoy playing the ‘pass the ball game’ to help us count in steps of. Did you enjoy the homework task this week? I loved reading your comments on the blog about what numbers you counted to… great work! We listened to and sang along with a new ‘counting in 2’s’ song this week. Have a listen and sing along at home too.
We finished off our maths topic of money this week. We completed a money assessment to show off how much we had learned over this 5 week topic. As well as completing this assessment we played 2 games to showcase the skills we have learned. One of these games was an ‘Orchard Toys’ board game called ‘Pop to the Shops’. Do you have this game at home? This is a fantastic game which requires children to recognise coins, count coins, pay for things with the exact amount and give change too. If you have this game at home I would love to see some photographs of you playing. You could post them in the comments section or bring them to school. As well as playing a board game we played a game on the ipads using an app called ‘Moca GPB’. Why don’t you download this app on a device at home and have a go. Let me know how you get on playing this game.
I’m sure you have heard all about our topic of ‘Transport’. All children have shown such enthusiasm with this topic and have loved learning about a range of different modes of transport from old to new. This week we watched a video of the first moon landing. Here is the video we watched:
After watching this video we wanted to make our own rockets. We had to work with a partner to create a design, develop that design into a model and think of a name for our rocket. We then took our rockets outside and launched them using our very own rocket launcher… we even remembered to do the countdown just like we watched in the video. Check out the school facebook page for some of our rocket launching videos.
Lots of the children have been interested in cars as part of our topic. We know that the roads around our school can be very busy with lots of cars… vans and lorries too. Therefore, it was important that we learned about road safety. We crossed a road outside of our school gates and remembered the important points when crossing… don’t stand too close to the kerb, look and listen for vehicles before you cross and when it is safe to cross the road remember to keep looking and listening for cars.
We had a look at the main road outside the school and spotted some ‘islands’ in the middle of the road. We know that these can help us cross one part of the road at a time. But do you know we don’t even need to use these islands? Some of us knew about the underpasses around Dedridge. These go underneath the roads which make getting to the other side of a road even safer. We also learned about ‘crossing patrol – lollipop man or lady’ and we learned how these people could help us when crossing a road. Sophie was playing a spelling game on the iPads and found this picture of a lollipop man and managed to spell the word ‘stop’. This game is called ‘spelling bug’ if you want to download this at home.
When we got back to the classroom we created posters with all of our knowledge about road safety and we even received a certificate to show that we know how to safely cross a road.
Our posters were so good that we decided we would like to share our learning with some other children in the school. We showed the nursery, P1D and even P4 our posters and gave them some tips and advice about road safety.
What a busy week. I look forward to seeing you all again on Monday for more exciting learning experiences.
Yet another jam packed week in P1r, it’s been so busy I haven’t had much time to take photographs so I’ll share the few I do have with you!
In IDL we have continued to learn about farming, with a particular focus on animals and how they give us milk, meat and lots more. The children wanted to make a new collage in the classroom so with some sighs we took down one of our pirate displays. Everyone contributed to this display:
“I helped colour in the farmer” said Madison.
“I made some farm animals and wrote some signs” said Ahmad.
“I worked with the blue table to make the barn” said Alice.
In maths we are learning about time and this week focused on days of the week and months of the year. We enjoyed this and used songs and games to help us learn.
A few of us found day before/after tricky so for homework next week I’ve given you some activities to help with this. We have also changed our maths wall to help us remember the days of the week and months of the year.
In literacy we continued learning tricky sounds and words, this week we introduced the rude sound, “th”. The children enjoyed sticking their tongues out at me when making this sound! To help us learn our tricky words we tried 2 new games this week, bean bag toss and the fly swat game. We had to work together in teams and take turns at being the teacher. In our written tasks we had to be a codebreaker and try to break the code, we also had to read ‘th’ words and then draw a picture for each word. Some of us got to build words with the letter cubes, “I was very good at this” said Elenta. Everyone was very focused at the reading table and every week I am amazed at how well they are all reading – I can’t keep up!!
In PE everyone progressed from dribbling with a basketball to a football, it was agreed by all that good control and focus was needed in these lessons. At the end of the lesson we had a team game, everyone was a great sport!
To end our week we took part in a competition organised by our local Hobbycraft store, we had to design a class Easter Bonnet. Voting starts tomorrow so please go into Hobbycraft and vote for St Ninian’s, if we are successful we will win vouchers up to £150 to spend in the store. We are all really excited about this and hope we can be one of the lucky winners!
One final thing, thank you to all the children who donated to our Lenten Appeal today and wore their PJ’s to school, I loved coming to school dressed in my PJ’s too!!
What a busy week we have had in Nursery. We started our new topic Space planned with the children. All their super ideas are now on our Talking Trees. Please feel free to have a look at these the next time you are in Nursery. Also if you have any ideas or thoughts on this topic we would love it if you could write these in our Talking Books which are on display beside our trees.
One of the most favourite activities to come out of the planning was to make a rocket and these are now flying up on our Space display and from the ceiling. This gave the children the opportunity to discuss what shapes they might use in their models. The children have also become astronauts zooming into Space in our big rocket discussing how they would walk and eat in Space! Lots of sparkling stars will also soon be appearing in the sky keep an eye out when you are in. We also listened to the story Aliens love Underpants which the children loved. We talked about the author and illustrator and some children drew their own aliens which we have displayed in our Reading Corner.
On Thursday we celebrated World Book Day with a pirate theme. Lots of pirates were seen in Nursery trying to discover the lost treasure! We started the day with a yummy pirate breakfast and then we listened to a pirate story. Our Space rocket seats then became pirate boats and we even had some pirates walking the plank! The Nursery team were glad we didn’t have to do that!
Also on Thursday the children who are preparing to go to school in August went through to join the Primary 1 children for a shared story which was My granny is a Pirate which they all really enjoyed. They all behaved so well and were confident individuals. They are all certainly ready for this next exciting step in their learning. We were all really proud of them. Our transition programme will continue next week with some of the children getting an opportunity to visit the Primary 1 classrooms and get a chance to sit at a desk and have a look around.
A big well done to Jarred who received a reading Achievement certificate at our Achievement Assembly on Thursday afternoon. Our AM children will get an opportunity to go along to the next morning Achievement assembly.
Hope you all have a lovely weekend and Happy Mother’s day on Sunday.
Apologies there is not enough storage space to upload more photographs. When more becomes available I will post some more.
Primary 6/7 have had another busy week! We have been continuing to learn about decimal numbers and have been multiplying decimals by 10, 100 and 1000 and we have also been dividing numbers by 10, 100 and 1000 to create decimal numbers. We have all made a great deal of progress with this and have been receiving lots of purple dots!
In writing we spent time looking at our Victorian newspaper articles and we made improvements to make them even better, by using interesting openers, connectives and interesting vocabulary.
We have now completed our Charles Rennie Mackintosh drawings and we are very pleased with the finished pieces of work. Some of them are already on display and they look amazing!
We all enjoyed dressing up as our favourite book characters yesterday as part of World Book Day. As you can see we had a wide variety of different characters visiting our classroom yesterday, ranging from Alice in Wonderland and Matilda to the Joker!
Last night some of our class attended the Film Club and we saw ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid – Dog days’. There were over 100 children who turned up to see the film and we all had a fabulous time! We are already looking forward to the next film!
Well as you can see from the title Health and Wellbeing has been a focus for us. We have been doing our daily mile most days and yesterday we managed the full mile in the allocated time – go team 1R! Ahmad says, “I’m really fast”! In PE we have now started a new block focusing on travelling with objects, we have been working with a partner and as a team using balls and hoops. Tomorrow sees the launch of our school healthy tuck shop which we posted on our class dojo story page.
In phonics we have been learning about ‘ou’ which is from Vowel House and we are confidently making sentences and reading ‘ou’ words. We enjoyed a new activity this week which was highlighting words in a story, Angelina said ‘ I love this activity’! There was a challenge at the reading station as the children had to make longer sentences which were muddled up, Matthew said, “I’m good at this” and he was!!
In maths we revisited the concept of money but challenged ourselves by now adding combinations of coins to make totals. We played at being the people who work in a bank by counting all the coins, played a game on the smartboard where we had to do the shopping and then work out the change and we played a team game of matching amounts.
We also started a new topic, “Farming”, the children used their talking book to plan the learning experiences for the rest of the term and they came up with some really good ideas – have a look in our book when you’re next in class. They started by building their very own farm which is now proudly standing up in our library corner (if you have any soft toy farm animals to add to our farm we would be really grateful) and worked well in teams to colour all the different parts. In art they used printing to make fantastic farm landscapes, our hands got very messy! They learned about the parts of a plant and new life in Religious Education, watch out for next week’s homework which involves some outdoor learning about this. In music we made a sound story for Old McDonald has a Farm, the children had to select instruments to play for each of the animals, it was good fun but noisy!
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