Achievements – Page 3 – St Ninian's Primary School

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.

Nursery News

Another week has flown by in the Nursery. Our school corner continues to be popular with the children practising their writing and mark making. We have also had lots of role play with the fire station and house corner.

In the creative area this week some of the children made masks to be super heroes and some banners were made for our Sports day planned for next week.

Robots and astronauts popped up at the construction area and in the library we have been reading “Elmer” which is our book of the week.

Today it was the turn of AM children to have a bake sale along with Mrs Roy’s class and the fantastic total of £172 was raised. This will be split between the two classes and we will discuss with the children what they would like to buy for Nursery with this money. A great big thank you to all the parents and carers who very kindly donated lots of delicious and yummy cakes. We really appreciate your support.

We also celebrated our last Achievement Assembly of this session today and a big congratulations to our successful learners and confident individuals Casper from AM and Poppy from PM. Well done to you both.

Just a little reminder that we will be having our Nursery Sports Day on Tuesday 21st June at 10 am and 2pm (weather permitting). If possible could the children wear a top the colour of their group and wear appropriate footwear. It will be fun races and there will be a race at the end for the parents and carers. We look forward to seeing you on Tuesday. Our Nursery Graduation for our preschool children is planned for Wednesday 29th at 10am and 2pm. More details on this will follow next week.

Have a lovely weekend.

The Nursery Team.

You are a star!

I am so proud of all the children this week as they have shown how confident and responsible they have become.

There have been various opportunities for the P1 children to support the pre-schoolers this week as part of our ongoing transition work. Every day we went outside in the morning and afternoon for some playtime, the P1 children were fantastic at assisting the younger children by opening their snacks, playing with them, showing them around, etc. We also had some science lessons and again the P1’s had to work with a nursery child to support them in the carousel activities. They went outside for a mini-beast hunt with Mrs Caskie and then worked with myself to do some senses experiments. I can’t believe that almost a year has passed and we are now preparing our current P1’s for their transition to P2. More details to follow in the coming weeks about these preparations.

In class we continued to learn about numbers within 20, with the focus on number names which can be really tricky. The children played some matching games, used flashcards, did some written work and used the smartboard games. All were very successful in these activities.

Mr Hunter took the children for a fun outdoor lesson and the children worked in teams showing their creativity. Have a look at their efforts!

We ended the week with our Achievements Assembly and P1R had the honour of presenting their class assembly to the whole school. I was so proud of each and every one of them as they all stood confidently in front of a large audience. They said their lines clearly and sang their hearts out.

This was the song the children chose to end their assembly with, why don’t you ask them to sing along at home with the link below.

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.

P1R need your vote!

They have entered the Easter Bonnet competition in our local Hobbycraft store. All entries will be placed on display in the store, with a public vote selecting the top three winners from Saturday 12th March. Don’t forget to tell families and friends to pop in store and vote!

Voting will end on Sunday 20th March, after which the votes will be tallied and then the winning schools will be announced.

Working together to become better learners!

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIvQOab00OQ

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!!

Nursery News

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.

The Nursery Team.

We’re going on a ………hunt!

Wow I can’t believe it’s Friday again, what a busy week we’ve had in P1R!

In reading this week we have been focusing on revising all the sounds we have learned and blending sounds together to make CVC words. We have used a variety of approaches and resources to do this, Miss Smyth even paid us a visit and spent the morning observing us as we worked. She was very impressed at how well the children used the apps on the ipad and their classroom displays as a tool for learning.

Maths has been great fun as we continued to learn about shapes, this week we looked at 3D shapes and spent lots of time exploring the shapes using our sense of touch and sight. We played games on the smartboard, went on a shape hunt, played shape bingo and dominoes and even wrote detailed descriptions for each of the shapes in our writing lesson.

In IDL we looked at how pirates defended themselves when at sea and how they used different weapons in battles. Everyone chose a weapon they would like to make using junk or recycled materials. We have put these on display for everyone to look at, hopefully we won’t have to use them too often!! On Wednesday we went outdoors for learning on a pirate scavenger hunt, we had to listen carefully to the clues and then go and look for evidence of pirates in our school grounds. We worked in two teams and chose names and captains for our crew – The Jolly Rodger and The Squeaky Sail. It was lovely to see everyone working together and helping one another in their search. The fun continued on Thursday when Mr Hunter asked us to create our very own sea monsters which were often a feature in pirate stories. We again took the learning outdoors for this and the children created fantastic monsters! Harry loved making the weapons and pirate play, Matthew enjoyed making weapons and Angelina liked finding pirate things in the school garden.

For Catholic Education Week we spent time discussing how we could show mercy to others, the children enjoyed watching the Pope Francis animation and all produced their very own Hands of Mercy for a whole school display.

Finally we finished off the week with an Achievements Assembly and our committees. Oma was awarded a special certificate for being a reflective learner – well done Oma! When asked how she felt she said, ” I felt really good.”

Well as I said at the beginning of the entry, it’s been a busy week! We’re all looking forward to next week when we have Technologies Week as our focus and Lent begins.

Ahoy me hearties!!!

It’s been all systems go this week in P1R as we continued our Pirate Adventure. The children enjoyed learning about the different jobs pirates did when they were on their ship, made pirate portraits using oil pastels, sang pirate songs, did some pirate dancing, started our pirate displays with P1D and chose facts to write about and illustrate. In reading they heard about the adventures of Captain Pugwash and had fun finding examples of VCOP in the story. Ask your child to tell you all about Punctuation Parrot, he has been helping us recognise different punctuation marks in stories. In writing they had to complete the sentence, “If I were a pirate…”, there were some super ideas:

Ahmad – I would have a battle with other ships and shoot the cannon.

Matthew – I would have a ship race.

Elenta – I would fight the pirates and push them in the water.

Ryan – I would drink rum (I think Mrs Gardner liked this answer the best)!

Why don’t you ask the children to teach you this song, they even made up some actions for it!

In phonics we learned all about ‘l’ and ‘r’ having a go at blending the sounds to make words, writing the sounds using letterjoin, finding objects that began with the sounds and lots more!

Sharing continued to be the focus in maths and the children have picked this concept up really quickly, we all had fun sharing out the pasta and toys and playing interactive sharing games on the smartboard. We also met some pirates who needed to share out the treasure they had captured!

Try some of the games they’re good fun! Here are the links:

http://pbskids.org/curiousgeorge/busyday/dogs/

http://www.topmarks.co.uk/Flash.aspx?f=sharingv2

In PE we developed our gymnastics skills and started transferring last week’s floor work to apparatus. The children were amazed when Mrs Roy was able to demonstrate a forward roll to the class (I amazed myself!!!!) Well done to all the children who were finding this difficult to begin with, they persevered and by the end of the week everyone could do a forward roll!

In RE we learned about the importance of speaking to God, we revised how to make the sign of the cross properly and learned how to say the ‘Our Father’. We were asking children of other religions how they prayed and next week Ahmad is going to teach us a new prayer which we are all looking forward to.

We also got some good news on Friday, congratulations goes to Matthew who was a winner in the road safety competition organised by the JRSO, we were all really proud of him! This week we took part in a Robert Burns colouring in competition for Morrisons, fingers crossed we do well!

Next Friday we will be starting our Skills Academy, all the children selected a skill they would like to develop, the choices were amazing, we’ll tell you more next week.

Nursery News

We were all so proud of our Nursery children this week as they performed in our Nursery Nativity. They were all so confident and expressive. A big thank you to everyone who came along to see and support the children. It was great to see so many and the children loved having you there.

We have been continuing with our countdown to Christmas by opening our Advent tree and are getting very excited about how close Christmas is coming.

The children used their listening skills this week when we read the Stick Man story. Please ask your child if they can tell you anything about this lovely story. Our PM children then took this learning further by going for a walk round the school grounds with Mr McCurdy to look for shapes and some sticks which they are planning to make into their own stick men or ladies. Our AM children worked with Mr McCurdy developing their coordination skills.

Our AM children have been making some Christmas decorations using natural materials and our PM children finished off their salt dough decorations. Both sessions used the Talking Floor books to record what they had learned from their Nativity.

Well done to our two children who received the Achievement award this time. Joshua from AM and Riley from PM. We’ll done boys!

Nursery children are welcome to wear their Christmas jumpers on Tuesday 15th December. Christmas parties will be Thursday 17th December for PM children and Friday 18th December for AM children. Rumour has it a special visitor may be arriving!

Nursery finishes for the Christmas holidays on Friday 18th December and we look forward to welcoming the children back on Wednesday 6th January.

Hope you all have a lovely weekend.

The Nursery Team