Welcome to the Primary 1 Lion’s blog!
The Lion’s have had another great week in Primary 1! We have had lots of fun playing with our friends both inside the classroom and outside in the playground.
Each P1 pupil were given a purple book bag today. Although at the moment reading books are not being sent home, we would like the children to bring the purple bag to school each day. It will be used to send home any paper communications which are required, and for the return of any forms. If the children have drawings or worksheets which they have completed in school then they will bring them home in the purple bags too. The children’s snack can also be popped in the bag, negating the need to bring a bulky schoolbag. Lunch bags and water bottles can be carried separately. If your child has a Tupperware type lunch box rather than one with a handle, it can be brought in a lightweight carrier bag such as one from a supermarket. We appreciate that the children love the novelty of having a special schoolbag, but current covid related restrictions on cloakrooms and storage of bags make it tricky to store the large quantity of rucksacks appropriately.
Please check and empty your child’s book bag daily to avoid a large build up of contents which may hide important communications.
Thank you for your continued support.
Literacy
This week we learned two more sounds: ‘s’ and ‘i’.
We are still loving to watch Geraldine the Giraffe to help introduce the new learning. There is a video for every letter so you could watch the sounds we have learned at school again at home. (video below) We also learn the jolly phonics song for each sound. This week we even took our snakes on a walk around the classroom and pretended to be mice covered in sticky ink. This helps us learn the sounds as it brings the stories about the sounds to life. We also enjoyed trying to blend the sounds together to start making words. We used magnetic letters on whiteboards to do this.The full list of jolly phonics songs is linked below, find the sounds we know and have a practice at home! It would be good if you could practice the sounds we have learned with your child by recognising the letter, saying the sound and blending sounds together to make words.
We also did another piece of writing this week. We talked about what it looks like to fasten up a coat or jacket. We practised putting on our coats with a partner and looked at what their hands and body were doing. This helped us draw a story of a time when we have had to put on our coats ourselves. We then told our story in a picture where we had to draw a very detailed and colourful picture. Well done P1 for completing your another piece of writing!
Here is our literacy home learning:
Numeracy
This week we continued the SEAL maths programme which teaches children the foundation skills in maths. We practised counting forwards and backwards to 10 and beyond together, counting claps, recognising dice patterns and random dot patterns and counting in sequences. The children are already showing that they are retaining the knowledge they are learning, which is showing greatly in our small group time.
We also have continued to practise writing numbers with the help of our number animal friends. Each number has a story which helps the children to remember what the number looks like. This week we learned about Naughty Nine and Tiger Ten. The children have loved learning how to write the numbers with the help of the animals! I asked each child to choose 3 numbers they find the trickiest to write to practice at home. They can practice writing them, making them out of sticks or leaves. Writing them in sad. Drawing them on somebodies back or if you can think of a fun and exciting way to practice drawing numbers, I would love to see their work!
The video below is also great for practising the skills we are currently learning in numeracy. Have a go at home and challenge someone in your family to have a go with you.
Other Areas
P1 has also been having lots of fun playing outside in the playground. In P.E we have been working on our fitness and throwing skills. This week we were practising throwing bean bags into hoops from a distance and working together as a team in our exciting races.
This week we also continued our castles topic. Thank you so much for bringing in the materials so that we could build our castles. The children loved building them and getting messy painting. This allowed for the children to be creative and explore different materials to build their very own castle!
We have had lots of fun developing our social skills by playing with our peers in the classroom. We have lots of fun drawing pictures and making crafts, playing in the home corner and reading in the book corner. We also have lots of fun building castles and towers with the construction blocks. There is always lots of fun things to do in the classroom to support our learning and play.
Things to Try at Home
- Ask your child to give you X amount of various things. For example sticks, leaves, stones. Whatever you can find. This will help with our counting skills.
- Practice using your ‘bunny ears’. Ask your child to show you a number on their fingers using the bunny ears method. They should practice holding up the number of fingers straight away without needing to count each finger. They then look at their fingers to check if they are correct. This is great for numeracy development.
- Ask and adult to clap their hands so many times, can you count how many times they clapped? For an extra tricky challenge try clapping your hands at different speeds, for example 2 slow and 3 quick. Can your child count the number of claps?
- Can you recognise dice patterns within different shapes?
- Practice making words out of the sounds we have learned so far – ‘a’ ‘t’ ‘p’ ‘n’ ‘s’ and ‘i’ – for an extra challenge can you write and sound out the words you have made?
P1 Lion’s Favourite Things of the Week!
“I enjoyed doing maths this week.” – Sofie
“I liked making my castle.” – Isla
“I liked playing in the castle.” – Chloe
“I liked playing outside with my friends.” – Alex
“I liked jumping on the number squares.” – Haniya
“I enjoyed building my castle.” – Abigail
Happy Weekend!
- Ms Leach is teaching the class on Monday.
- Parents evening times can be booked from Monday via the email sent home.
- Also, it would be greatly appreciated if you could drop off and collect your child from the top of the steps in the upper playground. The small courtyard outside the classroom sometimes becomes too busy, especially now with 3 classes dismissing in this area.
- P.E will be on Mondays and Thursdays – please come dressed and ready for P.E.
- This was emailed home last week regarding reading in P1. Here is another copy in case you didn’t see it.
Thank you for your continued support with your child’s learning and time in school, it is greatly appreciated. I hope you have a lovely weekend and I look forward to seeing you on Monday!
From Miss McGillivray
Buckstone Primary School 