Although it’s been a short week we’ve managed to cram it full of learning!
In maths we have been ordering numbers within 20 and identifying largest/smallest numbers. We worked independently, with partners or as part of a team.
In our CLIC lessons we have been doing lots of counting. Here is the link for our favourite song, give it a go over the weekend!
In literacy things have got pretty tricky as we are now learning initial blends focusing on ‘s’ blends this week, eg. sm, st, sw, etc. The children quickly picked this up and could guess what the word was going to be from its initial sounds. We also got some time to do a Fry’s word spelling test and some us can now spell 32 words independently – good job everyone! Try this game which helps you learn blends. Here is a picture of Ana playing it in class.
In IDL and RE this week we have been discussing our families and how they are all different. It was lovely hearing the children talk so lovingly about their families. We made some lovely family trees using collage materials and different coloured handprints for every family member.
Last week the children made some ‘Me’ bags as part of their IDL homework, we presented these to one another this week and had fun looking at all the things that made the children happy, eg. photographs of memories, sweets, toys, jewellery, etc. Well done to all the children that made these, you earned extra dojo points!
We continued our inter house championship in PE and learned about sprinting this week. We all had a go at racing one another making sure we were using our arms and legs properly. Next week we hope to go outside and try sprinting on the new tracks on the upper field.
To finish off the week Miss Meechan brought some surprise visitors to our class, Jinky and Joey, her pet guinea pigs. Some of us had a cuddle with them. Thanks Miss Meechan!
I hope you are all outside enjoying the warmer weather, hope to see some of you tomorrow at our Summer Fayre 10-12pm!
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.
Although a shorter week at Nursery it was by no means quieter. On Wednesday we were all super excited to get a visit from our friends in Primary 1D and 1R who came to show us some learning apps that they use on their iPads in school. We listened really well to our excellent Primary 1 teachers. Thank you so much for coming to visit us Primary 1. Please come back again. Our pre school children are really looking forward to working alongside you when we start our transition.
As it was very frosty and snowy outside this week the children made some lovely sparkly, frosty pictures using salt and glitter. We are planning to put these fantastic pictures up on the wall.
The frost and snow didn’t keep us away from our Outdoor Learning and we got the opportunity to learn about shapes, numbers and even how long our shadows were and what made them! We discovered that the snow had left some interesting patterns and we made some little snowmen. We also explored the school garden looking at ice patterns, the sun dial and how it worked and we were amazed to see some flowers beginning to grow! We thought we looked great in our new all in one suits for outdoors. As we are trying to give the children the opportunity to go outside every day could we please ask that the children come to Nursery with warm clothing and suitable footwear. Thank you very much for your support in this.
To finish off our busy week Mrs Craig took a small group of children out to try our new balance bikes which arrived last week. Mrs Craig has attended a training day for the use of these bikes and our aim is to show the children how to use these bikes properly and also receive basic bike maintenance tips which is a valuable life skill. Pictures of our first balance bike session will be posted on the Nursery Facebook page for you to see.
We look forward to seeing the parents and carers who have signed up for our Curriculum Showcase which is on Thursday 25th February from 6.30 till 8.00. If coming along there will be a welcome from Mrs Purdie first in the main hall of the school at 6.30 after which you will then move onto your first workshop.
Lastly on World Book Day which is on Thursday 3rd March the Nursery is planning on taking on a Pirate theme and the children are welcome to come dressed as pirates that day. Ahoy, me Hearties!
This week in literacy we introduced a really tricky sound, ‘qu’, the children enjoyed learning a little rhyme to help them remember the rule when writing qu. If you click on the link you can learn the rule too!
Here are some pictures of the children showing off their spelling skills!
In maths we decided to revise all the concepts taught so far, the children amazed me at how much they have learned and remembered! They enjoyed revising addition, subtraction and money using a variety of activities during carousel time – smartboard games, money sorting, smartpal worksheets, using the rekenrek, question time, etc.
The theme for Religious Education this week was Lent, the children learned about Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday. On Shrove Tuesday we enjoyed learning about celebrations around the world and thought it was really funny that in France and USA it is called ‘Mardi Gras’ which translates as ‘fat or grease Tuesday’. We had the opportunity to try some pancakes with our favourite topping, chocolate sauce!! I was really proud of how well they all participated in our whole school Ash Wednesday Mass, it was lovely to see so many children joining in with their prayers and mass responses.
Technology was a whole school focus and we decided to look at food technology but with a pirates twist! We learned about how to prepare our work surface for making different foods, how to prepare ourselves and how to safely use utensils. We enjoyed making treasure map pizzas and pirate ships. Some of us also did some extra food technology at home and made pirate snacks for Friday morning, thanks to Harry and James for making everyone a pirate cake, they were yummy!!
We also had a visitor called Sharon who works in the construction industry. She showed us lots of pictures of different buildings and we were able to link this to previous learning by telling her about different materials they were made from. She set us a challenge in teams to copy a building she had made using bricks, this was really good fun and all teams managed the challenge! To finish off we had a go at P4 work, yes you heard us right, P4 work!! We were able to build a city using co-ordinates and a grid. Thanks Sharon!
Safer Internet Day was on Tuesday and we watched an animation which taught how us about how to stay safe on the internet, we were all really sensible and identified what we should do if people were being mean to us online.
It was also lovely to see our nursery friends as they celebrated Chinese New Year, they certainly celebrated loudly as we could hear them before we could see them! Next week we are going to visit both morning and afternoon groups to teach them how to use the ipads in preparation for when they come to big school.
Have a lovely holiday weekend and I look forward to seeing all the children back in school on Wednesday!
It’s been a grand ole week in P1R with lots of learning and fun. It all began on Monday when we learned a new sound, ‘ai’, we’re flying through the sounds now and getting better every day at blending. We used letterjoin to practise joining the a and i together to remind us that even though it is two letters it only makes one sound.
In maths we continued the sharing theme but focused on learning all about fractions/halves. Chocolate was aplenty in our lessons, we were given a challenge of working out how to share 1 mini-roll with our partners, we decided to cut them in half meaning each person got 1 piece. On another day we looked at whole chocolate bars and counted all the square pieces, we then had to work out half. We even found out that half of 5 is 2.5!! The best bit was getting to eat our share of the chocolate!
We also had a go at making fraction flags using 2 colours and decorating half a pizza (don’t worry they were pretend pizzas!)
In PE we were trying to combine the skills we had been learning and apply this to the different apparatus.
Famous pirates were the talk of the class this week. We learned all about Blackbeard and Anne Bonny. Ask your child to tell you one of the facts they found out. We made Wanted Posters for our class display, puppets and pirate hats for role play, sang Pirate songs, danced like a pirate, wrote some facts about famous pirates and used the Morfo app to create talking and moving pirates.
Outdoor learning was also part of our week although unfortunately the rain changed this slightly, we brought the outdoors indoors! All the children were set a challenge by Mr Hunter to make a ‘Crow’s Nest’. They had to think about which of our school values would be important, the children thought ‘teamwork’ would be the best way to approach the challenge.
We’re all now looking forward to tomorrow’s skills academies and going along to the dress rehearsal of the ‘Great Scots’ show!
