Author: s9060915

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How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin?

We practised counting in 2’s, 5’s and 10’s to find out how many seeds were in each pumpkin. The results were surprising!

Outdoor Learning

We worked with P2D to complete an Autumn scavenger hunt.

Our PE lesson focussed on balancing, hand-eye coordination and fitness.

Dear Parents, 

We hope you all had a lovely break. 

This week has been a short one for the children however we have been very busy. 

Our learning this week: 

Literacy 

We have focused on sentence structure and what to look for when writing a sentence. 

Our writing theme was ‘My magic spell’ 

 At home   

• We haven’t sent reading books home this week. Please return any books your child has at home.   
• Your child should continue to work on the word wall related to the stage they are reading. They should become confident in reading these words.  Remember that they should recognise these words by sight. 
• Handwriting, children could continue to practise writing their first and surname in cursive script.   
• Continue to practise reading and spelling the tricky words.  An idea is to play faster finger: have all the tricky words written or on cards you say a word and the first person to find it wins the card (or a point). Then hide the card and ask your child to write it (double points for this). 

Maths 

We have been learning to count in twos. We read the book ‘How many seeds in a pumpkin’ and estimated how many seeds they were inside the four pumpkins we had at school. We carved them and counted the seeds in twos! 

At home: 

• Continue to practice on number formation. 
• We have used this 100 square website to help us to count in twos and to see the number patterns when counting in twos: 

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/learning-to-count/paint-the-squares

• Continue to work on addition skills: 

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/mental-maths-train

Other areas 

As part of the school focus on Black History Month we have been learning about Rosa Parks: her life, why it was important what she did, etc. We discussed about on fair/unfair rules and about being all equal no matter our skin colour.  

Here is a video of the book we read at school. 

We made a fantastic display at school! 

PE we have worked on listening, team work, balance and eye-hand coordination skills. 

As part of our outdoor learning we did an Autumn scavenger hunt. 

Other information    
  
   

• Loose parts on Wednesday 2^nd November. 
• Next Friday Drop-in of the session. The school will be open for half an hour from 8.55am until 9.25am and parents are invited to visit their child’s classroom during this time. This an opportunity to see your child’s learning at school.. 

• Please ensure your child brings a jacket every day to school.    
• Thank you for your support in emptying the purple folders each day.     
• A reminder to name all items of clothing and shoes, and to check names on items brought home in case your child accidentally acquires a jumper belonging to someone else.    
• We would appreciate donations of any unwanted empty or partially used notebooks or diaries (used pages can be removed). Also, any enticing writing implements (i.e., glittery pencils/gel pens/ pencils with feathers etc – anything other than standard school issue type pencils/pens). The children enjoy choosing resources from the table to use in their independent learning.    
• We are looking for small pieces of ‘junk’ for modelling e.g., toothpaste boxes, tea bag boxes, snack bar boxes. The more interesting shapes the better!    
   

Another very busy week.  We are feeling ready for our week’s holiday!

Literacy

This week we learned the digraph sounds oi (boil, foil, coin) and oy (boy, toy, enjoy).  We used the following image to help us to remember the sound. 

We have focussed on what makes a sentence and have done some work on identifying sentences, ensuring that they each make sense on their own. 

In writing, we finished our unit on instruction writing with a piece focussing on our morning routine at school.  We are now confidently using bossy verbs, using words of order and sequencing instructions correctly.  We have been developing our skills in self assessing our work against these success criteria. 

We have been continuing to work on developing our spelling of tricky words and recognition of key words from our reading books. 

Things to try at home:

• Practise reading your new reading book with the illustrations covered up
• Continue to practise word wall words – we should know these by sight
• With an adult practise finding words in your reading books in isolation e.g. ‘find the word pulled’, ‘find the word stream’.
• Following on from parents evening your child will now have a copy of tricky words to practise – use post-its or small pieces of paper and make a pairs game to play – making the cards will further cement the spelling of these words.

Numeracy

This week in numeracy we have continued to practise our numerical skills by:

• Counting forwards and backwards starting and stopping at different points
• Recognising numerals
• Handwriting numbers correctly
• Using a counting on strategy for addition

Our main focus has been revisiting doubles facts using fingers unseen (1+1, 2+2, 3+3, 4+4, 5+5) and extending this to (6+6, 7+7, 8+8, 9+9, 10+10). 

We also introduced the concept of near doubles (doubles plus 1.)

Things to try at home:

DOUBLES! DOUBLES! (*new* 1-10 version) – YouTube

Addition: Doubles + 1 / Growing Brain – YouTube

Loop cards (dominos) games – select ‘doubles to 15’ or ‘doubles to 20’ Loop Cards – 5-11 year olds – Topmarks

Hit the button game – select doubles to 10 – Hit the Button – Quick fire maths practise for 6-11 year olds (topmarks.co.uk)

Other Areas of the Curriculum

As part of our Polly Jean Pyjama Queen topic we have been learning about adaptions animals have developed to live in their habitats.  The two animals we learned about were: camels and how they have adapted to life in the desert and polar bears and how they have adapted to life in the Arctic. 

We enjoyed taking part in experiments to find out how polar bears have adapted to cold climates. 

We used lard to create a polar bear glove and tested this in ice with one hand gloved and one hand bare.  We found that the hand with the polar bear glove could not feel the cold ice at all!  The lard provided a thick layer of fat similar to that of the polar bear. 

We also used cotton wool to insulate our hand against ice, just like a polar bear’s thick fur.  It helped to keep our hands warm!

In PE, we have continued to develop our balance and coordination using a range of resources and activities.

We enjoyed working with the other P2 class to find and unscramble tricky words in the playground.

We learned about Black history month and some important black historical figures.

Other information  

• Please ensure your child brings a jacket every day to school.  
• Thank you for your support in emptying the purple folders each day.   
• A reminder to name all items of clothing and shoes, and to check names on items brought home in case your child accidentally acquires a jumper belonging to someone else.  
• We would appreciate donations of any unwanted empty or partially used notebooks or diaries (used pages can be removed). Also, any enticing writing implements (i.e., glittery pencils/gel pens/ pencils with feathers etc – anything other than standard school issue type pencils/pens). The children enjoy choosing resources from the table to use in their independent learning.  
• We are looking for small pieces of ‘junk’ for modelling e.g., toothpaste boxes, tea bag boxes, snack bar boxes. The more interesting shapes the better!

Another busy week in Primary 2!

Our highlight this week was another loose parts play session.

Literacy

In literacy we revised the ‘ee’ sound and also learned that ‘ea’ can make the same sound.  We found out that unlike some of the other sounds we have been learning there is no rule to tell us which ee/ea to use.  This video highlights the confusion that can sometimes arise!

Danny’s ‘ea/ee’ – Prankster Cam (The Electric Company) – YouTube

This image has been helping us to remember ee/ee.  ‘eee a mouse!’

We have also been checking which tricky words we can read and are focussing now on spelling these words correctly in our writing.  Some information will be coming home soon about which words your child is working on.  In the meantime, here are the lists that we work from:

Block 1: I, the, to, me, he, is, his, was, saw, put, want

Block 2: her, one, you, she, be, go, are, said, all, some, come, they

Block 3: so, very, every, two, only, over, any, water, many, would, should, could, where, what, who, why, find, kind

We learned about writing instructions this week and wrote our own set for ‘How to Clean your Teeth’. Some of the features we discussed were: the use of ‘bossy verbs’ (imperatives), steps which are numbered/ in sequence and words of order (first, then, next).

Opportunities for home learning

• Look at examples of instructions from around the house (lego instructions, recipes, flat pack furniture).  What features can you recognise?
• Practise tricky words using chalk or squirting water from a bottle on the ground outside.
• Using a highlighter and an old magazine or newspaper see how many of each word you can find and highlight.  Focus on finding one word at a time e.g. how many of the word ‘the’ can you highlight on the page?

Numeracy

We are continuing to practise days of the week and months of the year.  We learned a song for days of the week which uses the Adams Family theme tune. 

We focussed on ‘equal groups’ in maths, this is a precursor to multiplication and division.  We practised identifying items that were in equal groups; being able to say how many group, how many in each group and how many all together. 

We enjoyed taking our number work outside, working in pairs to do a scavenger hunt.  We had to answer questions asking for the number before or after a given number.  This was tricky as we sometimes get muddled between the concepts of before and after!

Opportunities for home learning

• Continue to discuss months of the year.  Can you remember which month your birthday fall in?  Can you say which month other family members birthdays fall in?  Are there any months that have special celebrations e.g. Halloween, Christmas?
• Practise writing numbers correctly.  Can you write 0 – 20 with all digits formed correctly?

Other Areas of the Curriculum

In PE, we are continuing to develop our balance and coordination through a range of activities and games.

In HWB we continued to focus on kindness and acceptance. 

We have been practicing forming the letters c, a, d using the cursive font. 

We completed wellbeing webs – a questionnaire about the wellbeing indicators.

(safe, healthy, active, nurtured, achieving, respected, responsible, included)

Other Information

Last week P2 write letters to King Charles III.  We are going to send a copy to the Palace and we will send a copy home for you to keep as a memento.

Have a great weekend! 😊

We hope you had a good week.

This week in P2 we have been learning:

Literacy

In literacy we have learned two new vowel diagraphs -ai and -ay.  These are two ways of writing the same sound.

We learned that ai often comes in the middle of a word (e.g. nail, pain, drain) and that ay often comes at the end of a word (e.g. pray, stay, pay). 

We have used this symbol and the phrase: ‘Eh?  What did you say?’  to help us to remember this sound. 

This week at writing we created a piece of writing without support. We described our own animal that we created by ‘mixing’ two animals. We made very interesting animals!

Maths

In Maths we have been learning about time. Our focus has been days of the week and months of the year.

We have continued to work on our numeracy skills through our SEAL programme (different groups will work with different numbers and skills depending on their abilities to be able to make progress accordingly):

• Counting backwards and forwards from a given number within the range of 30, 100 and beyond for some.
• Adding two collections of items (uncovered and covered).
• Sharing amounts equally.
• Working on doubles to ten.

Other areas

In PE we have worked on balance skills (indoors) and ball skills (outdoors): hand and feet skills.

We have started an interesting topic on animals across the world through the book ‘Polly Jean Pyjama Queen’

We have continued to work on our wellbeing indicators.

Both classes have a special focus on Kindness.

On Thursday we made the most of the rain. We learned how to do paper boats and tried them in the puddles in the playground. They sank…but we are going to keep trying different materials and designs. What a great time we had! 

Things to do at home

Today your child will bring a sheet with how to from cursive letters correctly. Your child could practice how to write her/his name using cursive letters.

Literacy online games

• Choose the sounds we have worked on so far: https://www.ictgames.com/mobilePage/forestPhonics/index.html
• Practice tricky words Block 1, 2 and three. Your child should practice how to read and write these.

Maths

We have listened to this song:

Can your child’s name all the months on the year? Does your child now in which month she/he was born?

Other information

• Next Tuesday we will have a visit from Zoolab linked to our topic.
• On Thursday we will have Loose parts. Please ensure your child has appropriate clothing. We will be outdoors no matter the weather (unless torrential rain).
• Please ensure your child brings a jacket every day to school. As mentioned above children will be outdoors in all weathers.
• Purple folder. Thank you for your support in emptying the purple folders each day.
• Please we would like to remind you that toys and Pokémon cards should not be brought to school.
• A reminder to name all items of clothing and shoes, and to check names on items brought home in case your child accidentally acquires a jumper belonging to someone else.
• We would appreciate donations of any unwanted empty or partially used notebooks or diaries (used pages can be removed). Also, any enticing writing implements (i.e., glittery pencils/gel pens/ pencils with feathers etc – anything other than standard school issue type pencils/pens). The children enjoy choosing resources from the table to use in their independent learning.
• We are looking for small pieces of ‘junk’ for modelling e.g., toothpaste boxes, tea bag boxes, snack bar boxes. The more interesting shapes the better!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Our week in Primary 2…

A few quick notices:

• We use the outdoors in all weathers so please make sure that a waterproof coat is provided and suitable waterproof shoes (wellies/ boots) are worn on wet days. 
• Please leave toys at home, we have lots of lovely resources and activities in school to play with.

Health and Wellbeing

In PE, we have been practising our listening skills and team-work skills by playing games like; don’t wake the sleeping bear and parachute games.

We have used a range of picture books to explore our own diversity and uniqueness, building on the idea that our class is a family and so we must be kind and accepting of one another. 

We have explored our own emotions using the colour monster book and have been practising talking about this using our emotions check in station. 

Numeracy

We have been practicing counting forwards and backwards, identifying numerals and counting two collections of objects.

We have been using different voices such as, robot, mouse, tiger and singing voice to make counting more fun.

Literacy

We have been carrying out assessments using the common words from the Oxford Reading Tree (ORT) books.  Reading books will be issued very soon! 

We have been revising tricky words from Primary 1 and enjoyed taking part in a tricky word scavenger hunt in the playground.

We have been building some words using the digraphs; sh, ch, oo and ee.

Have a lovely weekend 😊