Interdisciplinary Learning – Page 4 – St Ninian's Primary School

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

P2/3 Superheroes

Its been another busy week in Primary 2/3.

We found out that our new topic was ‘Planet Earth, Moon and Sun’ and we all had lots of great ideas about what we’d like to learn in our topic.

Rachel – ‘What is the earth made of?’
Alishba – ‘What’s inside the earth?’
Harry – ‘Why do we get day and night?’
Hasan – ‘What do animals do at day and night?’
Chloe, Carly and Annayah – ‘What is the moon made of?’
Matthew ‘What is the earth’s surface made of?’
James ‘What is the sun made of?’
Aaron ‘Is there ice inside the earth?’

Some other highlights from our week are:

Calvin We wrote a story about St Ninian’s cave. We read our stories carefully to make sure that they made sense.

Alishba In maths we’ve been focusing on a number of the day as a maths starter. Our skills are getting better every day.

Jakub We used felt tip pens to make the sun and the moon then we displayed them on our classroom windows.

Matthew We learnt about nocturnal animals. They have big eyes to help them see in the dark.

Kasia We learnt about day and night by making earth by holding hands in a circle and Mrs Keegan held the torch to show us the sun.

We also used the globe and a torch to help us learn about day and night.

Rachel We saw a video which shows us how the earth moves around to make day and night.

Hasan We learned about St Ninian and where his cave is in Whithorn. We decorated pebbles from St Ninian’s beach.

Have a lovely long weekend.

Mrs Howley and Mrs Keegan

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.

Full timers in P1R

As the title says, P1R were in full days this week and lasted well, the children had bags of enthusiasm and energy for learning across the week. They enjoyed having lunch in the hall with the other classes.

Our phonics focus was ‘m’ and ‘c’ and the children learned about where in their mouth the sounds came from and how to form the letters correctly. They went on a sounds walk around the school looking for objects beginning with ‘m’ and ‘c’ taking it in turns to photograph what they found. Ask your child what colour the sounds are and I’m sure they’ll be able to tell you. They also enjoyed the carousel activities where they were able to use the smartboard and ipads, playdough, strawberry jam and lots more!

using strawberry jam to make the ‘mmm’sound

In maths we continued to practise our counting through games and songs. What great movers we have in P1R! We also used our book study topic in maths and spoke about the size of dinosaurs using mathematical language – tall, short, long, big, small. We had a great idea to then measure our dinosaur drawings from a previous lesson using cubes, I thought this was a good suggestion! We have put our findings on our classroom displays for you to have a look at.

In IDL we also went on a tour of the school as we have some children who went to different nurseries and were keen to have a look around. Mrs Purdie let us all go into her office, it was a bit of a squeeze but we managed to all fit in. Thanks Mrs Purdie! We also made our very own school ties.

The children designed some really nice book covers for Harry and the Dinosaurs and they learned about some of the important features of books – when you’re reading at home see if you can find some of these features.

We wrote our very first stories about our favourite things in big school with a little bit of help from the grown ups, it was great to see all of the children having a go at emergent writing.

PE and the Daily mile was good fun, we only managed half a mile this week but some of us chose to include this in our goal for the term. We played lots of teambuilding games and got used to the big hall. Well done to everyone for remembering their gym kit.

We finished the week with a whole school assembly and then set our personal goals for the term. Come along to Ninian’s Natter and discuss this goal with your child.

We’re all looking forward to next week!

Settling into P1R

What a fantastic start we’ve had to the new school year in P1R! The children have settled in nicely to the routines of the classroom and have kept themselves very busy. Time has been spent getting to know one another and where things are kept in the classroom.

In literacy we have been working on our pencil control making different patterns in preparation for starting our phonics lessons next week.

The children have also been introduced to our book study ‘Harry and the dinosaurs’. We read a story about Harry starting school and shared our own feelings about starting school. We have started a display and played with our class bucket of dinosaurs.

In maths we are developing our understanding of numbers to 10 – counting, sequencing, number formation and lots more.

We went to our first whole school assembly today and earned dojo points for being well behaved and responsible. We then started making our class charter deciding what rights we felt were important to us in our class.

We are all looking forward to starting our full days next week finishing at 3pm, Monday-Thursday.

PE lessons will be on Monday and Wednesday, full gym kit needed on those days.

Here is a glimpse of some of the children in action this week. Individual photographs have also been sent via class dojo – hope you like them!

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.

Busy bees in P1R

This has been a very busy week for P1R as for two mornings they worked in the P7 classroom to allow the nursery children to spend some time in the P1 classrooms in preparation for next session. The children enjoyed sitting on the ‘big chairs’ and working at the ‘big tables’. As always the children showed how responsible they were and continued with their carousel activities in the P7 classroom.

In literacy we have been revising all the sounds we have learned by doing lots of word building and spelling activities. Next week we will focus on the alphabet particularly looking at vowels/consonants/alphabetical order/letter names in preparation for P2. Mrs Gardner was working with the children on their Fry’s words and they all ‘blew her socks off’ as they know so many words now -well done everyone!!

In maths we have been learning about estimation, which to begin with was tricky. We have been estimating in our carousel activities, here are some of the activities we did: guess how many cubes will fit in our shoes?, measuring with cubes, estimation games on the smartboard, and many more. We all agreed that we are making more ‘accurate’ estimates now.

In IDL we started a mini-topic about minibeasts and enjoyed playing guess who?, writing our very own clues for a guess who game, matching minibeasts, drawing minibeasts and learning about minibeast habitats.

Here were some of the clues the children made up, see if you can guess the minibeast they are describing:

” I have 8 legs and I make webs. I eat insects. I am creepy and black.” Dominic

“I fly beside water. You can almost see through my wings. I have a sharp tail.” James

“I have black spots and I can fly. I have six legs. I am red and black.” Alice

“Butterfly’s are beautiful and pretty and they can fly. They are colourful. They like to go to warm places.” Oma

PE was great fun as we learned a new game, ‘Rounders’. Everyone listened carefully to the rules then split into 2 teams – fielders and batters. I was really impressed at how quickly everyone picked up the rules and we all had good fun out in the sunshine.

Have a lovely weekend everyone!! (Sorry no pictures, technical issues with blog this week)

Fun and friendship

I can’t believe how quickly the weeks are flying by, not long to go now!

In our literacy this week we have continued to learn about ar/or/ir/er words. Everyone is getting really good at identifying which pattern they hear in the words even though they sound very similar. We enjoyed playing the Aar Pirate game with a partner and competed against one another to get four in a row. We also wrote sentences in our jotters keeping our writing neat in preparation for P2, used the magnetic letters to make words and played some games on the smartboard.

In maths we have been skip counting in 2’s and learning about odd and even numbers, we did this through songs, games, written tasks and practical tasks. We also had a visitor to the class, Mrs Gallagher, from the WL Numeracy team who did some fun counting on activities with us using counters, numicon and dot patterns, she was really impressed at how well the children were doing in their maths work!

In our PE lessons we got the chance to go outside and use the running tracks. We did the 200m and 400m races, everyone raced in heats before we then had a boys and girls final. It was lovely to see the children supporting and encouraging one another to the finish line. The 3 winners in each final will now earn points for their houses – well done!

In IDL and HWB we focused on friendship and everyone pointed out that this is one of our school values. We learned about friendly/unfriendly behaviour and we all agreed that we preferred the good friend traits. We were all given a challenge to try and make at least one new friend in school or at home and each day the children excitedly told us about their new friends – well done everyone! In our writing we wrote friendship recipes using lots of WOW words – “a sprinkle of happiness”, “100 grams of love”, ” a pinch of fun” and ” 3 cups of kindness”. We also worked with our friends in P1D to make friendship bracelets out in the school garden, this was tricky but good fun! To finish off our friendship week we decided to have Goldentime with P1D at the park, everyone played together nicely showing what good friends they all were, what a lovely way to end the week!

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.

Nursery News

Wow what an even busier week than usual in Nursery. We have been taking part in lots of activities during Health week. These included football, yoga, the Daily Mile, playground games with the buddies and dance clips on the Smartboard. We have been discussing what we need to do and eat to stay healthy and building on teamwork and working together.

The children in both sessions also visited the local library and enjoyed listening to a story about a baby kangaroo called, ” No room for Roo,” which was then followed by a talk about Australia using animal puppets. The children all enjoyed this fantastic opportunity to visit the library and we have planned three more visits which take place on Mondays starting with Monday 30th May.

Next week our transition programme continues with the children who are starting school in August joining the Primary 1 pupils for 10 minutes to experience playtime in the playground. This will involve both sessions. This will be outwith the normal playtime hours so it’s not too busy for them for their initial experience. We would appreciate it if the children could bring a small snack with them which they can eat during the playtime. The nursery children will also be joining the Primary 1 children for a shared learning experience which will be Science based. There will be a lesson in the classroom and one in the Outdoor area. We are sure they will all enjoy this collaborative learning. The nursery children will also be asked to choose their lunch for the following week as they will be able to have the experience of joining the school at lunchtime in the dinner hall. More details of this will be given out next week.

Also next week we are planning a Polish breakfast on Wednesday 25th May and Nathan and Leons’dad has very kindly offered to come in and help us with this. All AM children are welcome to come to this when Nursery opens at 805am.

Just a wee reminder that Nursery is on holiday on Monday. We look forward to seeing all the children back on Tuesday. If you haven’t received a time for our Parental consultations on Wednesday and Thursday and would like one please contact the school office and they will be happy to give you a time slot.

We hope the children have all enjoyed Health week and we are sure they would be very tired. The Nursery Team certainly were! Please check out our Nursery Parents Facebook page for more photos of Health Week.

Have a lovely holiday weekend.

The Nursery Team.