It has been lovely to see the children back after the Easter break. We have had a busy week.
Literacy
Spelling
Our new sounds this week have been the blends sk, sc, sm and sn, and our new tricky words so andvery. You can find the home learning sheet below. Please continue to work at home to consolidate the learning of the new sounds and using them to build and write words.
In writing this week we wrote about our Easter break. It sounds like everyone had a great time.
.
Reading
We continue to work in school on developing our reading skills. As well as reading the words and learning new vocabulary we predict, discuss and comprehend. We hope you enjoy sharing the books with your children at the weekend. If you feel perhaps that they have memorised the book ( which is part of the learning process) then you could ask them to read the book backwards, starting with the last word. Of course this makes no sense , but the children do find it funny and it helps the adults to see if the child can read the words with little context. We use this technique in class so the children are familiar with the idea.
Reading books will be coming home today instead of Thursday this week only.
Please note that we cannot send reading books home on Thursday unless your child has their purple folder with them, and we would respectfully request that the children do not carry their water bottles in the purple bags – we have already had one soggy reading book!
Numeracy/Maths
This week we have started to learn about time, revising the order of the days of the week. Most of us are confident naming the day after, but identifying the day before is a bit more tricky. We have learned how to read o’clock times on both analogue and digital clocks.
We continue to work on our numeracy skills, consolidating counting forwards and back, numeral recognition and addition strategies.
Other areas of the curriculum
In PE we were exploring balancing on one leg, two legs, two legs and one hand etc.
We also explored dance and movement activities on the theme of time.
We saw a tiny budgie egg and then explored which other animals hatch from eggs.
We used our sense of smell to sniff some things in pots. Some smells we recognised, some we didn’t. Some we liked, some we didn’t!
Here are some photographs of us enjoying our independent learning opportunities this week. Please ask us what we were doing.
Things to try at home
Practise knowing the order of the days of the week – focusing on the day BEFORE
Look around the house for all the clocks you can find. How many are digital clocks? How many are analogue ( with hands) ?
Count backwards from 30 to 10 ( or 100 – 30)
Write all your numbers from 1-9. Are they all the right way round? If not, can you practise them.
Practise spelling all the tricky words so far – how many can you write from memory ?
Be Geraldine……. ” Off she went around the house to find something beginning with….. sm/sn etc l” How many things can you find? You could make a list of all the things you find.
Practise your letter formation – are there any letters you find tricky to write ?
We have been revisiting our tricky words this week from our learning in P4. We will work on our dictation challenge at the end of the week so the words are below if you wish to practise them:
L.I. to revise ‘tricky words’.
To spell these words correctly in our own writing.
Literacy: This week we were learning about magic e’s superpowers on the letter ‘u’. This week we also practiced writing our tricky words.
Numeracy and Maths: This week we were learning about position and movement. We explored direction and discussed words that help us give directions. We became pirates and had to guide our ship North, South, East and West.
Health and Wellbeing: We continued our focus on kindness and discussed kind acts we had seen or shown that week.
Other learning: This week we have been learning about Easter and the religious storyline Easter. We have also been developing lots of skills through our learning through play. Have a look at our gallery below!
Well done everyone with another term of Primary 1! You are growing and becoming such wonderful learners and I am so proud of you! This term has been usual but we have had lots of fun together both in the classroom and online!
Here is what we have been up to this week:
Literacy
In literacy this week we learned two new sounds – ‘fl’ ‘gl’ and ‘pl’. We enjoyed thinking of words which have the sounds in them, looking for words in our reading books and drawing pictures of words which have the sounds in them. We also have been practicing to read and write our Block 2 tricky words. Please continue to practice your tricky words at home and our new sounds each week. I have sent home a sheet with words which your child needs to practice writing by memory – any practice of these would be beneficial. Here are some videos we use in school which you could watch again at home.
Things to try at home:
Practice reading and writing both Block 1 and Block 2 tricky words to memory. You could make flash cards, write them using chalk, make them out of pasta, draw them in sand, flour, paint etc..
Read for fun! Read anything – books, magazines, newspapers. Sound out words you don’t know and have a guess using your knowledge of sounds before asking for help.
Write a diary of your Easter holidays. Draw a picture of something fun you do each day and write a sentence describing what you did. Can you use any descriptive language? Can you join two short sentences together with ‘and’ or give more detail with ‘because’.
Numeracy
In Numeracy we had a revision week of areas in SEAL we need more practice on. These included writing arrays, counting jumps between numbers, number bonds to 10 and 20, addition and describing and making equal groups.
We continued our maths topic of Positional Language and Movement. We continued to practice giving other people directions and playing games in P.E.
We also enjoyed doing Easter themed maths activities.
Things to try at home:
Practice counting forwards and backwards to 30. (Up to 100 for an extra challenge.)
Saying numbers before and after in the range to 30. (Up to 100 for an extra challenge.) Try saying the next two or three numbers forwards and backwards!
Making and diving items into equal groups. You could use pens, sticks, stones, toys. Whatever you can find!
Look for numbers in your local community when you are outside! What is 2 more, 5 more or even 10 more!
Other Curricular Areas
P.E: We used our maths focus of positional language to help us in P.E this week.
Art: We talked about spring and made spring pictures of trees with blossom on them!
Music: We enjoyed having our online music lessons where we talked about different musical instruments we could play, clapping along to the beat of songs and listening to the music as it got louder and quieter, faster and slower. Thank you to the music specialist for the wonderful online opportunity!
Handwriting: We took handwriting outside this week and used chalks to practice our cursive letter formation.
RME: We learned about the Easter story this week and had a discussion about what the story means for Christians.
French: We have been learning how to count to 10 in french and basic greetings. We also have been learning the days of the week and how to say ‘Today it is..’ We also learned how to say my name is and practised introducing ourselves to a partner. We are really enjoying learning French with Ms Leach!
Here are some photos of our learning this week:
Happy Holidays!
Ms Leach will be teaching the class on the first Tuesday back after the holidays.
P.E will be on Thursday that week.
I hope you have a lovely holiday! Stay safe, have fun and I look forward to seeing you after the break!
Here we are at the last day of what has been a very different term. Thank you again for all the support over the weeks.
This week’s learning has been centred around Easter. We have explored the Easter story through activities across the curriculum using cartoon strips, word searches, videos ,quizes and science.
We also have had fun playing Chinese Whispers.
Today we had a few pranks for April Fool’s Day!! It was funny!
Enjoy the Easter holidays . School returns on Tuesday 20th April
The highlight was our STEM challenge to create a parachute for an egg. We designed , constructed , modified, reflected, adjusted and finally created a parachute with a carrier for an egg, Then we tested them outside. We worked in groups or on our own . It was fun but a challenge.
Thank you for all your hard work this term P7, both at home and back at school. Have a lovely, relaxing holiday 🙂
Miss Collyns
Literacy
In literacy we wrote a myth about defeating a mythical monster. It had to include setting, quest, hero, dilemma, beast and ending. We read the fifth chapter of Coraline and answered comprehension questions.
We did spelling. Our spelling pattern was how to plural words that end in f, ff or fe. If it ends in one f or fe then you change it to ves. It was our last week of our literature circle books.
Numeracy
In maths we did problem solving with our learning partners. We practiced our money skills like budgeting, calculating discounts, profit and loss, and 4 operations. We did an assessment on money.
Health and Wellbeing
In PE we did circuits. We learnt about equality, diversity, racism and discrimination. We thought about how we can make Buckstone as inclusive to everyone as possible.
Art
We learnt about Holi which is the festival of colour and we made Holi art.
Topic
We learnt about Propaganda that was used in WW2 and created our own propaganda posters.
Home Learning
We could type up our myths (some of us took them home to finish)
We made it! We had an amazing term. It was been a different one as we started learning from home but we were lucky to come back to school and we had a great time learning together.
This is this week’s learning:
Literacy
This week we have been learning three initial blends: fl, gl and pl. Our tricky words were do and as, now we have worked on all the tricky words from block 2. We have sent home a sheet with the words the children could work at home.
For fl we did flying kites. We took our kites outside and they flew!
We also played with flour!
Flying kites
For gl we did glittery glasses.
We played with gloop.
Glittery glasses
For pl we did plates with pl words.
Plates with pl words
This week our writing focus has been writing about chicks.
We have continued to work on our reading books at school. We are working on different reading skills not only decoding and blending: fluency, comprehension, inference, making connections, synthetizing, increasing vocabulary, working memory and attention. Remember that this week our reading books will not go home.
Continue to practice building words and reading words with the sounds worked on so far.
Practice the tricky words that your child has taken home today on his/her purple folder.
Numeracy
We have been learning about Position and Movement. We are learning to use simple directions and describe positions in games in movement, games and using technology. We have learned to programme Bee Bots and to use the Bee Bots app i our iPads.
We have continued to work on our numeracy skills using our SEAL programme. We have been working on sharing equally, ordering numbers, addition with a missing addend, etc.
Home learning ideas
Continue to practice number recognition, counting skills.
Why don’t practice sharing equally with the Easter Eggs?
We have learned about the Easter Story. We are becoming aware of the importance of celebrations, festivals and customs in Christian people’s lives.
Music
We have been singing outdoors with Charlie. We have also done two online sessions with Sarah from Sing for Smiles.
Outdoor Learning
We have created patterns working in pairs. We used masking tape to create different patterns and colour them in with wet chalk. It was great to see how the children worked together and praised each other.
Putting masking tape
Using wet chalk
Taking the masking tape off
Look at our amazing creations!
Independent Learning
News
All children took home today a sheet with the tricky words that they should be working on ( reading and writing), please feel free to work on these.
All children are taking home their spare clothes in a labelled bag, please return this bag next term so we can continue to use them.
We hope you all have a lovely break.
Looking forward to seeing you back on Tuesday 20th April.
Thank you for all your support during this term with your children’s learning. You all did a great job during the Learning at Home period!
Please feel fee to print this reading caterpillar bookmark if you have misplaced the one given with on your purple folder at the beginning of the year.
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.
Literacy
This week we learned two more sounds: ‘g’ and ‘f’.
We had lots of fun watching Geraldine the Giraffe, playing lots of games about our new sounds and singing the Jolly Phonic’s songs! We played a sound race game and writing out 3 sound words which matched an image. We also loved drawing and colouring in our fishes to help us learn the ‘f’ sound. We are enjoying blending the sounds we have learned together to make words.
We also continued with our reading this week and read a new book together. We are learning how to make predictions about a text with the information we have in the text and in the illustrations, we are using the words that are on our books to make sentences. We are working very hard on developing all our reading skills. We really enjoyed looking for words in the book, reading with a partner and we even read the book backwards which we found really silly but super fun!
Things to try at home:
Practice the common words found in the book which were sent home. If you don’t have the flashcards the list of words is: Biff, Chip, Kipper, Mum, Dad, Floppy, and, a, the
Use the alphabet flashcards which were also sent home and ask your child to tell you the sound. (Some we have haven’t learned yet but will have before Christmas – if you have time you could see if your child knows what they are!)
Go on a letter hunt. Look around you for places where you can see any of the letters you know. Remember to say the pure sound of the letter not the name. ( so a= ah, not ay )
On Monday – I will be sending home on a document with words/story of your child’s reading book. As we cannot send the books home it would be great if you could practice reading the text with your child. With the text practice reading the story both forwards and backwards, ensuring your child is pointing to the word they are saying. Also ask your child to find you particular words from the text to practice their recognition of words/sounds. Ask your child to find you a word beginning with _____ from the text, again to practice recognition of the sounds/letters.
Use the literacy home learning sheet linked below. You can either print out the flashcards to build words or simply write them onto paper. Try and build some of the suggested words.
This week in numeracy we had a focus week on pattern.
We learned all about what pattern is and the different types of patterns we might see in our local community. For example, shape patterns, colour patterns and picture patterns. We also learned the difference between natural and man made patterns and played a simple game of “what am I?” The children had to decide if the pattern was either natural, something that has grown outside or an animals feathers, or if it had been made by a person, for example, roof tiles, buildings or windows. We then went for a pattern hunt in the playground and looked for 5 natural patterns and 5 man made patterns. We found lots of leaves, trees, bricks on the the school building and the colours on the school benches. Unfortunately, we tried to then make our own patterns with leaves and sticks but it was too windy for us to build them! We also coloured in shapes to make our own colour patterns, did finger painting to finish the dot/colour patterns on snakes and drew our own patterns where we could do anything we wanted. One of our play stations this week was also using peg boards to copy simple patterns or we could make our own.
We also continued to use the SEAL maths programme for our mental maths this week. We practised saying the number before and number after in the range to 30 and beyond. We also loved playing my turn, your turn counting up and back down to and from 30.
Things to try at home:
Look for patterns around your house, garden or local community. Is it natural or is it man made?
Can you create a pattern using anything you can find in your house? For example, pencils, books, toys, flowers, leaves, stones.
Count items using 1-1 correspondence. Put down a quantity of small items, for example raisins, buttons, counters, small stones or lego bricks. Ask your child to count them carefully, pointing to, or moving each one in turn. can they count the total accurately? Increase the level of challenge by using a larger collection.
Number hunt: Ask your child to look for specific numbers in the street: buses, house numbers and ask your child to say the number that goes after and before that number.
Practice number formation of the numbers 0 to 10 (or more if your child is confident with this already) As an extra challenge ensure they are writing two digit numbers the correct way around.
Other Areas
P.E:
P1 has also been having lots of fun playing outside in the playground. In P.E we have been working on our fitness and spatial awareness when running around the playground. We also have been learning about different ways to move around the playground such as running, jumping, hopping, skipping etc. We had four different games in P.E, focusing on our fitness skills/ways of travelling, which we rotated round in small groups. The first was walking along a skipping rope, practising our balance, then we did five star jumps and ran back to high five the next person in our team. The second, was to run backwards and forwards from the black fence to a row of cones. We had to keep moving for the duration of the time but we could walk, skip or jump if we got too tired running. The third station was weaving in and out between cones whilst running. This made us have to think about where our bodies were going and to think about where our feet need to be to get around the cone. The last station was arguably the most fun for the P1s! In groups of two we had to take bean bags and place them into our hoop. We then had to take bean bags from the other teams hoops and bring them back to our own. We had to keep running and taking bean bags until the time ran out. The four games made us very tired but we had a discussion about why exercise is good for us and why our hearts beat faster after exercise.
Music:
We also did our first music lesson this week. We listened to two different pieces of music and talked about how they made us feel. One made us feel happy and excited where as the other one made us feel sad and sleepy. We then got out some instruments and either played/clapped along to the beat of the music. You can find the game below.
This week for art we had a Halloween theme. We designed our own pumpkins using whatever colours we liked. We also got to design their own faces.We also made a spooky ghost picture by using white paint on black paper. We painted our hands to make the ghosts and decorated with glitter. Some children even painted cobwebs in the corner. Then we used a black pen to add detail to our ghosts, stuck on googly eyes and used a white pencil to add any other images to our pictures.
Handwriting:
We also continued to practice our funky fingers. This helps with holding pens and pencils to get ready for writing, we started using playdough to help make our hands and fingers stronger. We have been having lots of fun following, the videos below. If you have any playdough at home why not practice at home!
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
Play our P.E games in the garden or practise the ways in which you could move your body.
Practice clapping along to songs you might be listening to. Can you hear the rhythm? Also, think about how the music you listen to makes you feel.
Think about where you hear music. For example, on the radio, in games, on the telly.
P1L’s Favourite Moments of the Week
“I liked playing the drum in music.” – Barney
“I liked learning about pattern and making my own one.” – Georgie
“I enjoyed playing with the bricks with Archie.” – Maximos
“I had fun playing music.” – Murray
“I liked painting my ghost.” – Maisie
“I had fun looking at all of the pumpkins.” – Archie
Happy Weekend!
Ms Leach will be teaching the class on Monday.
P.E will be on Mondays and Thursdays – please come dressed and ready for P.E.
Please remember to label all items with your child’s name. We still have items that haven’t been claimed since August. Remember to label hats and gloves too!
We hopefully will be going to do some Outdoor Learning in the woods on Tuesday morning. (I will confirm on Monday by email). If possible, please ensure your child comes dressed appropriately as the woods can be muddy.
If you no longer have any resources at home – please get in touch and I will happily send some home in your child’s purple book bag.
Have a lovely weekend, stay safe and I will see you on Monday.
