Ninian’s Natter – St Ninian's Primary School

P3 Weekly Round Up!

Another whirlwind week in P3!

In writing, Mrs Scott was so impressed with the quality of work that we didn’t just have one star writer… we had three!! Our three star writers wowed the class with their amazing news reports about Flat Stanley. Using connectives, ambitious vocabulary and understanding that newspapers need headlines – these are all the skills we built on this week. We can wait to show you at Ninian’s Natter next week!

Our reading groups are up and running now that we have settled into the swing of things 🙂 the boys and girls are using their decoding strategies to build fluency as they read. We plan to change the reading books on a Wednesday, though when children begin to read novels it happens as and when the book ends. We hear reading on a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday in small groups where we use various questioning skills to challenge the children’s understanding of what they have read.

As we are continuing to build a reading culture in our class – boys and girls are encouraged to bring a book from home that they might read for enjoyment in class. We have some avid readers in P3 – Roald Dahl and Diary of a Wimpy Kid books have made an appearance this week 🙂

In maths we are continuing to build on our knowledge of number as we practice skip counting in 2s, 5s and 10s. We LOVED the whack a mole game and will continue to use it as we practice counting in 3s, 4s.. etc. Have a go at home – some of us got up to 1000 today!

http://www.ictgames.com/mobilePage/whackAMole/

During Word Boost we read together a picture book throughout the week, focussing on chosen ‘boost’ words to help us develop a broad ranging vocabulary. This weeks boost words were; local, popular, repeat, mumble and vast. Every time you hear any of these words with your child pop your finger on your nose to indicate a ‘boost word’! Can your child use these words in a sentence?

Ninian’s Natter information is on the school’s weekly update – Mrs Scott and I would love to meet the parents/caters of all of our children! Please do come along to meet us, discuss what learning looks like in the P3 classroom and ask questions about the year ahead! 🙂 looking forward to seeing you all then!

P1M Weekly News

What a fantastic first term we have all had in P1M. We have all settled in to school life so well and everyone has such fantastic attitudes towards learning. Well done P1M!

Our numeracy focuses for this week have been counting and recognising numbers and addition. We are working really hard in these areas and our mental addition is improving every day. One of our activities this week was quite tricky but so much fun. Miss Meechan showed us some counters and then covered them up with a piece of paper. She then showed us some counters which she added underneath the paper and we had to say how many counters were under the paper now. This is something that you could try at home too. Here are a few games that we have played this week for you to try at home too:

http://www.iboard.co.uk/iwb/Adding-Two-Dice-716

http://www.topmarks.co.uk/learning-to-count/ladybird-spots

Can you spot Trex doing his addition work?! Trex even earned some dojo points this week too!

We have been working so hard on our writing these past few weeks. We are all trying so hard with our spelling and we are listening carefully for all of the sounds that we know to help us spell correctly. This week we even used some of our tricky words in our writing – great work everyone! For our writing lesson this week we were asked to recall and write about our trip to the park. Miss Meechan gave us some photographs of us playing at the park. We showed our partner our photographs and used our talking and listening skills to discuss these with our peers. Here are some examples of our writing this week:

Jarred: “At the park I was on the slide.”

Esmee: “At the park I was swinging.”

Kaitlyn: “At the park I was climbing.”

Sophie: “At the park I was playing in the tunnel.”

This week we really enjoyed our structured play session. There were lots of different tasks for us to participate in. Next term we are going to introduce 3 ‘play: plan, do, review’ sessions each week. These sessions will offer literacy and numeracy activities and allow us to learn through play. We are really looking forward to this. Look out for our ‘Just Play?’ display in our classroom.

We really enjoyed the opportunity to reflect on our learning in our Ninians Natter this week. We completed a few different activities. With Miss Meechan we started to complete our GIRFEC wheel – we had to think about how safe and healthy we feel. We also were asked to choose a piece of work which were most proud of. This was a tricky choice – have a look for the post-it note in your child’s jotter. We also drew a picture about something we have learned this term too. You can find these pictures in ‘our special work’ poly pocket in our yellow profiles.

Well done to Romera who was one of our stars at our achievements assembly this morning. Miss Meechan was asked to choose someone who had settled into their new class and is working well. Great job, Romera. What a wonderful achievement.

Finally, this week we said a sad farewell to Miss Burns (only for a little while!) as she goes off on maternity leave. Miss Burns has been working with us since the beginning of the term and we are so thankful for all of her support and helping us settle into P1. Today, we decided to throw Miss Burns a surprise baby shower. We wish Miss Burns all the best in the next part of her adventure and we cannot wait to meet your little princess!

I hope everyone enjoys a well deserved holiday,

Miss Meechan and P1M

Nursery News

First of all we would like to thank all the parents and carers who came along last night to our Ninians Natter. It was lovely to see you all and we hope you found it helpful and informative. Don’t worry if you didn’t manage along please ask any member of the Nursery Team and they will be happy to share what we discussed.

This week it is the turn of our PM children to share what they have enjoyed doing in Nursery.

Mark ” I learned about making things. I made a house in the construction area.”

Kayla ” We made a stage so we could all sing and play instruments.”

Liam” We have made rainbow fish for the wall”

Riley and Emilie ” We like playing in the sand”

Jiya ” I like the play dough”

Robert ” I like building things”

A little update from our AM children they have been very busy in all areas of the Nursery and have even been writing their own plans for our new Planning wall which is fantastic.

We continue to welcome new children to our St Ninian’s family and we are very proud of our older children who have made them so welcome and looked after them. You are all superstars.

In P.E. with Mr McCurdy the children were learning how to use all areas of the hall and developing their coordination skills using hoops. Even the teachers had a go!

Just to let you know that paper copies of the Nursery calendar for the year are now available in the Nursery. However if you receive our weekly Nursery update via email on a Monday you will receive an electronic one plus the Nursery handbook in the next few weeks.

A little reminder that Nursery is closed on Monday and Tuesday. We look forward to welcoming the children back on Wednesday 21st.

Have a lovely holiday weekend.

The Nursery Team.

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

P2/3 weekly news

It has been another fantastic week for Primary 2/3. The class is working so well and really enjoying all of the learning opportunities.

One of our favourite tasks was making our spelling words with pipe cleaners then recording our achievements using the iPads.

Drama was great fun when we took turns in answering questions as George and Grandma from George’s Marvellous Medicine – lots of imaginative questions and answers.

Our writing was a real challenge when we wrote descriptions of George – lots of super describing words were used and the use of punctuation was really impressive.

Yoga was great on Thursday to help us to concentrate – and we all had fun getting into stretches. We’re working hard to improve our fitness during the Daily Mile and our times are improving each time we run.

In maths we’ve been working on telling the time – there’s been lots of time-telling all week.

We’re working on greetings in Spanish. Our short conversations were really confident and we loved using our Spanish to play games on the smartboard. One of our favourites is all about colours.

Each of the children has now set an individual aim for the term and look forward to sharing these with you at Ninian’s Natter on Thursday 15th September.

Have a great weekend!

Mrs Howley and Mrs Keegan

Strength and determination to succeed!

I can’t believe that our time in P1R is almost ending, we’ve been using the time we have left to consolidate our learning and prepare ourselves for next session.

Monday started off with a fun filled judo session with our friends in P1D where we got to show off our moves. We worked with a partner using our strength and determination to try to defeat one another. I can’t believe how strong everyone is!!

In literacy we have been focusing on the alphabet – revising all the letter sounds/names, putting the alphabet in order. We were very creative with this and made letter shapes using pipecleaners, used the drawing apps and small whiteboards on the ipads to write the alphabet, played alphabetical order games on the smartboard.

Our friends from P6/7 visited us on Thursday morning for some paired reading which we always look forward to, the older children were amazed at how well we are all reading now, some of can even read with expression!

Maths this week has been about addition and subtraction as it has been a little while since we worked on this. Everyone remembered the strategies to use, eg. counting on or back, using the numberline, using our fingers. I tried to trick the children by giving them challenging missing number sums but as always they rose to the challenge and completed them successfully. As the children are so clever they took it in turns to be the teacher at addition bingo, they did a better job than me!!

We ended the week with Ninian’s Natter and our class bake sale. Thank you to everyone who supported this event, the total raised was £172 which will be shared with the nursery as they also donated cakes. The children will decide how best to spend this money next week.

Have a lovely weekend!

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.

Sailing on the seven seas…

What a hardworking crew we have in P1R, it’s been another busy week!

At the beginning of the week we had a visit from our local librarian, Mrs Campbell to read us a story, we all had to vote for a book which she then read to us. We’re hoping to visit the library shortly to have a look at all the other books they have.

In maths we started a new topic learning all about shapes, we spent lots of time exploring 2D shapes. We used the feely bag to try and feel the shapes then describe them to our partners. We sorted shapes using the smartboard and flashcards, Mrs Roy was amazed at how quickly we could sort them! Our challenge of the week was to think of other 2D shapes and where we might see them in the environment.

We received another letter from Captain Pete this week who was delighted with the applications we had completed for homework to join his crew. He asked us to build our very own ship to use on our Pirate Adventure which we were really excited about. We had to learn about the different parts of a ship and try to recreate this in our design. Our crew have had great fun using the ship for pirate play. We also learned about Pirate life and spent an afternoon trying out some activities which pirates would do in their spare time – playing music, dancing, making things out of wood, playing cards, reading, etc.

The Olympics are beckoning for some of our budding gymnasts, we were are getting really good now at using the large apparatus. This week we focused on being responsible, leadership and core strength.

We ended the week with Ninian’s Natter where every child had a learning conversation to discuss their goals and progress. I will send a photograph to the parents who were unable to make it today of your child with their goal. You can use this as a tool for discussion at home.

Nursery News

Another busy week in Nursery. First of all we would like to thank everyone who came along to our Nursery Natters on Thursday and Friday. If you were unable to attend this time there will be more Nursery Natters coming up.

We have continued to learn about Winter this week and we continued to look for signs of Winter outside. We discovered some ice and discussed how ice was formed and how it changed when it melted. We also looked at patterns on the leaves and how the frost changed their appearance.

Our PM children were worried that the birds were not getting enough food as it was Winter and so decided to make bird cakes. These will be put in our Nursery garden on Monday. We then plan to do some bird watching. We can’t wait to see what birds appear!

We also had a visit from Primary 2M who showed us something amazing on their iPad it was a picture of a rocket which had landed in the playground. They wanted to know if anyone had seen anything but we promised to have a look on the way home. It was all very exciting.

We have also been busy preparing for Grandparents Day which is on Thursday 28th January at 10 am and 2pm. We are very excited to show you what we have been doing. We would also be very grateful for any donations of home baking that could be handed in for this special event. Everyone is welcome to come along .

There is also a Breakfast Blether on Tuesday 9th February at 8:45 am. This is an opportunity for you to have an informal chat and provide valuable feedback to our Headteacher and members of our Nursery team. We are looking forward to seeing as many parents/carers as possible. If you are available please add your name to the sign up sheet in the Nursery . Breakfast is included!

Hope you all have a lovely weekend.

The Nursery Team.