We have been very busy this week welcoming the p1s into school and helping the p2s settle back into the classroom routines. Our p2s have been very helpful showing the new p1s what to do when they come in in the morning and what to do at the end of the day when we are getting ready to go home as well as helping throughout the day.

Here is a little snap shot of some of the learning we have been doing:

We read ‘The Rainbow Fish’ story and used it to think about how to treat of friends in class. We decided on our class rules and created a class charter which we all agreed to. Elyse enjoyed decorated her own scale to add to our class rainbow fish which will be our charter display. Maris thinks we have been following our class charter well by being kind to each other in the class and in the playground.

P1 have been busy practicing their forming their name and Callum enjoyed using pegs with letters on to make his name and the names of his friends. We have been thinking about the sounds in their own names and their friends names. We have all enjoyed drawing a picture of ourselves and writing our names in our big alphabet book, thinking about the first sound in our names.

P2 have been practicing the maths the learnt last year using laptop and group games which Josh has enjoyed. P1 have been practising their number recognition and counting skills through playing games in small groups.

We have all enjoyed the opportunity to work together and get to know each other more – Oliver has enjoyed creating things from Lego and learning how to use the iPads and laptops.

We are looking forward to a busy term learning lots of new things!

Miss Bredin and P1/2

We took advantage of the sunny weather and took the whole school outside for a collaborative art lesson. The pupils were set a challenge to create a piece of Brazilian art in small groups using only natural materials. We were impressed with the way the pupils worked together and even more impressed with the artwork produced!

Thank you and well done to all the boys and girls for participating so enthusiastically in our sport relief morning! They all ran, jogged and walked their sponsored mile fantastically with some of the upper primary pupils pairing up with the younger pupils and encouraging them along. It was great to see so many participating in the hula hoop and skipping competitions in the hall, with all competitions being closely contested.

A big well done to our winners of all four competitions:

p1 – 3 hula hoop: Jack

p1 – 3 skipping: Meah

P4 – 7 hula hoop: Tia

p4 – 7 skipping: Louise

Finally, a massive thank you to the parents and carers who came along to watch the morning activities and cheer everyone on.

The total money raised will be revealed in due course as we are still waiting for some sponsored money to be returned.

P1/2 had a very busy week preparing for their showcase afternoon, finishing all their art work and deciding on what they were going to say to all the visitors to their castle.

We had a fantastic afternoon sharing what we have been learning with you and completing our knight training. Here are some pictures for those who could not come and for those of you who were there to relive the afternoon’s activities.

Tom, Henry and Isabella very kindly brought in their ducklings to show the boys and girls in nursery. They asked the boys and girls in primary one if they would like to see the ducklings.

Everyone loved meeting them and some of us even got to touch them or hold them.

We have been very busy this week preparing for our showcase afternoon. We have been making a drawbridge and chains from paper chains to complete our class castle. We have also been making costumes ready for our knighting ceremony during showcase.

We have written our own invites to our showcase afternoon – you should receive them today!

We have been making use of our class ipads to practise writing our spelling words and become more familiar with the keyboard.

In maths, we have started learning about time. We have been practising our days of the week using a song and have started learning to tell the time through the use of active games.

In PE, we have been doing ‘keepy-uppys’ with a racket and a tennis ball to improve of hand-eye coordination.

We are looking forward to sharing our learning with all our families at our showcase next week.

We had a fantastic trip to Stirling Castle last Wednesday. We saw the King and Queen’s bedchambers and learnt that the king didn’t actually sleep in his, he slept in a small room elsewhere. In the Queen’s bedchamber we met a Jester how told us lots about the Queen and some of us got the chance to try juggling.

We had a look at the cannons and had a picnic lunch next to them.

In the Great Hall we all had the chance to sit on the King and Queen’s thrones and all sat round the top table together.

We went into one of the towers and looked down through a trap door to see where the dungeons would have been below.

There was an area where we could explore some medieval costumes, music, games and painting, solving problems in groups.

We had a great time looking for all the things we had been learning about in class – there were lots of shouts on the bus up of ‘battlements’ when they were spotted!

We saw and learnt much more but you’ll have to wait until our showcase to find out!

Have a look at our photos to give you some clues!

It has been a lovely short week after our long weekend but p1/2 have still been very busy.

We have been learning about hot and cold colours and we have made a castle picture using half hot colours and half cold colours.

In maths, some of the groups have been learning about subtraction and consolidating their learning using  dice games. Others have been learning about the story of 10 using ten frames to help visualise it. We have also been using games on the ipad to help us remember our facts and recall them faster!

We have also been learning about different parts of a castle – for example, battlements around the top of the walls, arrow slits, drawbridge and portcullis, moat and tallest tower called the keep. We are all looking forward to continuing our knight training next week!

The boys and girls in primary 1/2 have been very busy this week learning their words for assembly and practicing hard.

We have begun the process of creating a medieval castle in our classroom after receiving a letter from King Arthur inviting us all to become knights in training – we are very excited to begin our training and learn about castles and the life of a knight through this!

In art we have been making some fireworks pictures from chalk as part of our learning about Chinese New Year.

In maths, some of us have been learning about adding two numbers together and remembering their doubles. Others have began to revise learning about subtraction from last year and developing their understanding further.

We are looking forward to sharing our Chinese New Year assembly with you next week.

This week is book week Scotland and we have enjoyed sharing our favourite books with our friends through show and tell and also reading them with our friends during activities time in the morning. We had a visitor yesterday from Linlithgow Library who shared three stories with us and then asked us to vote for our favourite. The p1s went home with these three books and were looking forward to sharing them with their families.

We have also been very busy making some things to sell at the Christmas fair and we are very excited to show you these next Thursday.

We were listening to The Jungle Book story and we used this to write our own story about living in the jungle. We had some very imaginative stories about playing basketball or football with some of the animals.

Some of the p2s have been learning their spelling words by typing them on a laptop and changing the size and font.